I have an honest question that I'd love to hear some feedback on, particularly from the empeg folk.

On December 31st I ordered a Fitbit. I ordered it with the full knowledge that it was an incredibly popular device, and that it was on backorder. At the time of my order, my order page stated that they expected my Fitbit to ship at the end of January. At mid-January, that date was changed to mid-February. At the start of February, that date was changed to February 28th.

Around March 12th, the date was still February 28th, two of my emails in that time period had gone unanswered, the company had stopped posting on their own forums, and the company had no phone number other than a public relations number. The next day, an employee finally posted to their forums that there had been a manufacturing delay that he didn't know the cause of, and said that they would soon have a better idea of when our orders would be shipped.

A few days ago, my expected order date was finally changed from 2/28 to April 1.

Now, I was actually being fairly patient at first. I only started slightly grousing when it became quite clear that they would be missing their 2/28 date. I then started outright complaining during the second week of March, in which I had no way in knowing what was going on. I understand that manufacturing delays happen, and I can't really complain because they fortunately haven't taken my money yet. What I have been complaining about is the real lack of customer service when it would have been so easy to simply post a message on their own official forums.


This leads me to my question (sorry for the long rant). What do you think is the problem? I honestly don't know myself, and I'm trying to understand it. Do they have an incredibly unreliable manufacturer? I would have thought that the company would know exactly how many units were being made and how long those would take to ship. Manufacturing delays aside, how can they be off by well more than a month?

All sorts of things could have caused this, from bad to indifferent to good. They might have had a whole run of units come back bad from the factory (maybe there was a bad batch of a component). Their container might have fallen off the boat in mid-Pacific. They might be insolvent and unable to fund a production run. Or a big distributor might have said to them, we'll stock your gizmo in 5,000 stores but only if you sell us your entire Q1 production.

None of which are an excuse for not keeping customers informed, of course. They haven't charged your card yet, have they?

Peter

Thanks, those are good insights. I hadn't thought of some of those scenarios.

No, they haven't charged my card yet. They only charge when the product is shipped.

And really, the main annoyance I've had is with the communication. I seem to recall that you guys were very forthcoming with information when we were all waiting for our units to ship back in the day. All I'm asking from these people is that when a shipping estimate has been exceeded, with no update, we get an idea of what's going on, or at least a standard corporate statement. Something!

Oh well, I've put my patient hat back on, and I'll wait until the 1st. And no, I won't find it amusing if they delay a shipment on April fool's day

It may be a situation similar to one I saw back in 2008 when I was in negotiations with a startup for some contract work. They were behind on the software and it ended up pushing out their product release. They finally did release, but the Mac software took even longer still. Much longer than what I had quoted them in my proposal. Guess they backed the wrong horse with that one.

I don't think it's that. They've been shipping product, and plenty of people have it already. They've just been super behind on their December preorders.

For example, I believe that people who ordered in early December got theirs in mid January, but those of us who ordered in late December are now waiting till April 1st.

If you think it's coming April 1st, you may be a fool. Ha! couldn't resist

Yeah, like I said, I won't be amused if it doesn't ship on that day. I mean seriously, you miss a big deadline, and push it more than a month back, do you really want to set your new deadline for April Fool's Day? I know it's a small thing, but considering how badly they're messing up with customer service already, why tempt more ill will? Heck, that's a Thursday, why not just set it for April 2nd?

Ah well, since I don't have anything that's actively annoying me about the process, I've ceased to complain about it. Expect me to start up again in approximately 12 days.