I have tried since day 1 in just about every drop that has happened.
I followed tons of different people on Twitter, joined one guys discord server where they announce drops ahead of time by knowing people that work in the different retail chains, etc.
I believe that I finally got one the other day through Walmart.
But like you said, it is a damn joke.
I hope retailers are learning a lot from this years launches. As soon as the drop starts, most of their sites go down because they can't handle the bots hitting their site 1000's of times in a matter of seconds.
Sony direct is the only good one, as they have an online queue it puts you in, so their site has never crashed, but the queue is random, to make it fair, so it doesn't really matter when you get in queue, you can get selected to get one.
Other than that, most sites just put in a reCaptcha that they think is keeping out bots, nope!
I don't use a bot, but I do have an auto refresher extension in Chrome that will refresh a page automatically every 10 seconds or whatever time you set, it can search for words on the page, like add to cart and notify me when those words show up.
I then tried an extension that automatically fills in the reCaptcha for me and gets me past it.
And it still took me over a month.
And I say that I believe I got one, because I won't fully believe it until I receive the tracking number from Walmart.
I thought I ordered one from Khols a couple weeks ago. I got the confirmation number, I got $180 in Khols cash, etc, only to receive a cancellation email the next day. Their site sold 100k units and they only actually had 2k units to sell.
They let everyone keep their khols cash though. So I bought some new luggage and put the $180 towards it.
But it has definitely been a shit show for sure!
GameStop, BestBuy, Antonline, Walmart, Sams Club, Costco, Adorama, Belk, Target, Amazon, NewEgg, B&H Photo, Gamefly, Playstation Direct, I have tried them all!
Their sites crashed almost immediately for me and then when they come back up, out of stock!
I tried their sites, their apps, etc.