It seems like Play credit would be an easy way to make this a less sour PR blip. (Not to say it's the same, I just found out my Nexus 10 order is stucked pending, needless to say I'd prefer it over Play credit right now).
If you look at the email sent, they're crediting the shipping charges, which were $13.99. I think that's a pretty good gesture on their part.
That being said, mine shipped out today and should get here Monday. I don't know why they didn't give the option for overnight shipping or ground service. Or they should have planned better than having 2 day shipping with a weekend included, so it's really 4-day shipping.
No kidding. At least they are shipping from Kentucky otherwise I'd be even more upset seeing as how where I live I always get 2 day shipping from California when it's shipped via ground anyway.
While technically it's still "2-day shipping" since it's always been 2 business days, I wish they would have added Saturday delivery for the ones that were shipped on Thursday.
Oh well, better to have it shipped than to be one of the unfortunate that got the back-order email.
Shipping air from Kentucky is about the best service you can get since UPS has their main air hub in Louisville. I actually expected ground shipment since it said 3-5 days for delivery and was pleasantly surprised to see my Nexus 10 shipped as 2 day air.
They're giving us free shipping, but the optics probably would have been better if they had given us free stuff rather than free shipping, since free shipping is so commonplace.
That means it won't be available again for ordering until all those orders are shipped (> 3wks).
I guess they still have enough to sell for $500 through T-mobile... And enough to supply the scalpers on eBay. I'm still upset from the errors during the order window but maybe it's all for the best.
Google is still not making any visible effort to communicate what's happening to the customers. Very disappointing. Do no evil?
I signed up to be notified. I tried to buy many times and failed. I lost time and sleep because Google decided to play all these tricks on us. I never got an e-mail or any sort of communication. I guess it depends on your definition of customer but in the physical world when someone goes in a store to purchase something and talks with the staff I would consider them to meet the definition of a customer.
EDIT: Let's say you drive to a store knowing a product is going on sale. You go to a shelf, they have pieces of paper saying take this paper and claim the product at the register. You take the paper. You queue up, you get to the register and they tell you tough luck, we have no inventory. Wouldn't you be annoyed? Then you leave the store to find stalls of people selling the product for double the price.
This sort of stuff can happen but it would be nice if Google said something about it. The only thing they told the community is "sold out" and "check again soon". I was hoping to use this phone while traveling next month but I'll have to make some other arrangements for a reasonable unlocked phone.
I got the email. It's a disappointment, but such is life. I'm in no rush and now I'll get to enjoy the installation of CM 10 I installed last night a litte bit longer.
Got my order in a solid 4 hours after the actual release so I'm not that surprised.
You'd think a company like Google would have a better system for 1. Preordering and 2. Giving a better estimate for when you'll actually receive your product.
The funny thing is, I ordered 5 minutes after it opened. Then they closed it. Then they reopened it. I guess Canadians are getting the short end of the stick on this launch.
edit: I mean, they said 'Sold Out', then after a few hours apparently they allowed more people to buy. I wonder if anyone is getting a phone within the original time span, or if they're buying time at this point.
I think a key mistake is assuming that when the web site said sold out that they actually were. You could refresh 10 times and it would flip-flop between available and not.
While I didn't buy a Nexus 4 I did buy a Nexus 10 and it was plagued with the same ordering issues. I spent over 40 minutes refreshing the page to try to get my order in. Much of the time it just reverted to the "Coming Soon"; even when I got it added to the cart it kept failing over and over when trying to confirm the transaction. Yet my tablet was shipped today.
I think it's telling that now wallet.google.com is talking about "building a smarter wallet." I think they've realized they really screwed up. It would be nice though for them to just come out and say it and apologize for the really horrible buying experience. Especially for those Nexus 4 buyers that now have to wait after already being charged.
Something that ought to stop is folks blaming the buyers without realizing that having to refresh the page 20-50 times was the only way to get an order through for many if not most people.
You'd think a company like Google would have a better system...
I would think the opposite, since Google is not used to selling physical products and they've managed to botch every previous Nexus launch in some way.
This. But, not everyone at Google is a search engineer. Many many engineers at Google work on one of our other products. We should, and probably do, have experts on online retail scale-ability somewhere
It isn't just a scale-ability issue, though. Well, it kinda-sorta is, but not in the strictly technical sense.
Every interaction I've had with buying physical goods from Play was far more painful than my average online buying experience, even when buying items that are readily available. Once you place a Play order for hardware it basically goes into a black hole where you're never quite sure if the order was actually processed or not and you usually get no indication from Google of the actual status until after the device arrives at your doorstop. Attempts to get information about the order results in robo-emails that manage to appear even stupider than your average "reading from a script" custom service drone. If you keep replying to these robo-emails, sometimes a real person will email you like 2 days later, but not always. Using the phone is nearly as bad, the whole system is clearly designed to stop your from ever talking to a real human, and while I understand the cost reasons for doing this, as a customer it totally sucks, especially compared to companies like Amazon and Newegg who totally nail this stuff (IME).
Play customer service is just busted from top to bottom and woe unto anyone for whom the default process doesn't operate as expected the first time. I love Google for many things but I hate buying hardware from them.
I was being a little ridiculous but only because rhizome seemed to be implying that Google shouldn't have hiccups like this because they've been hiring intelligent people.
Am I supposed to believe that they've been selling cellphones for almost three years without putting their recruitment strategies toward their fulfillment chain?
Yes. People fuck up all the time. My employer has been in the eCommerce for almost 12 years and we still have feature launches that destroy our website. I'd say I work with some of the brightest people I've ever had the chance to work with, but we're still just human and we sometimes underestimate demand and over estimate our hardware. Just because Google is Google doesn't mean they are infallible, they are perhaps overly arrogant due to their culture.
Google has some of the world's smartest software engineers.
Whether or not they have world-class supply chain, fulfillment, and retailing people is far from sure - in fact evidence suggests they do not.
Heck, up until not so long ago, Google didn't even have a very good design team.
Google's competencies are surprisingly narrow.
Having worked at Amazon before I'll say this: retailing is really, really hard, and it takes a lot more than being smart. It takes years of experience. People who try to go toe to toe with Amazon don't often realize this.
This was a clusterfuck, but I'm still sore at Yahoo, when the same thing happened to me trying to buy world cup tickets. So I dunno if others are any better?
What irks me the most about this whole ordeal is the utter lack of communication from a company that prides itself on being open and transparent.
There was no release time, no numbers on the amount of phones after they sold out way too soon, no excuse for the Play Store and Wallet glitches, and now, finally, no statement on how they somehow managed to miscount their inventory.
I cannot even fathom how something like this can happen to a company like Google to begin with.
I'm really disappointed in Google, to say the least.
> What irks me the most about this whole ordeal is the utter lack of communication from a company that prides itself on being open and transparent.
The amount of suckage with Google's automation-first customer service pattern and the corporate ossification of the various carriers still leaves an opening for Apple to exploit. The question is, will Apple remain supple enough to exploit this, and will the other companies wise up?
(I'm on a 2nd hand Verizon phone bought off ebay, with StraightTalk no-contract 4G for $45 a month.)
I've never heard of StraightTalk before, but after checking them out they seem like that might be a path I want to go down. I'm been shopping around for pay as you go/ unlocked plans for a bit now, I'm kinda fed up with verizons offerings. How do you like the plan/ do you get service everywhere/are there roaming charges?
So far, no roaming charges. The service seems okay. It's basically AT&T towers. I may change back to SimpleMobile once their 3G access for iPhone gets good enough. They're not so uptight about tethering as StraightTalk. (Probably because of AT&T)
Off-topic, but I think the Nexus 4 is a good opportunity for Mozilla. It will be sold mostly unlocked, I imagine, and mostly to geeks, so it could be a great platform for Boot2Gecko. Nice looking, fast hardware for a relatively low price will make for a good development platform.
And I accidentally ordered multiple Nexus 4 because it wasn't clear if the system took my order or not. I wonder if their ordering system was hosted on App Engine.
On the other hand, it's quite possible that they'll bump us multiple orderers to the bottom of the line, due to the possible perception of abuse. We could have also been bumped to the bottom because we were given an additional opportunity to cancel one of our orders because Google thought that one of our orders may have been an error.
That was the case for me, but rather than cancelling one of the errors, I offered the phone to a friend who didn't manage to order in time. I hope I don't regret that decision.
If Google sold 1 million vs 30 million would really matter to you as a consumer? The sales numbers only matter to stockholders, competitors and analysts. Why is there such a demand to know how much N4s were sold during launch to the consumer? Aren't we just perpetuating the "sheep mentality" Android users accuse Apple users of by demanding that we know the sales numbers during launch to assure that we don't have buyers remorse?
Of course not. Hacker News isn't just a random consumer electronics board, or Android / iPhone fan page. Many people here are interested in the business of consumer electronics.
Yes, it matters a lot to me as a consumer. One of the reasons I stick with ios is its popularity. Popularity leads to better/more apps, better first party support (more retail Apple stores), better third party support (forums), better third party features (jailbreaking), more accessories, etc.
It doesn't really matter as a consumer. However, many people are interested in the industry as a whole and there's a lot of armchair analysis put forth that the Nexus 4's sold out status puts it in the same league as the iphone and galaxy s lines, the only phones anyone ever seems to hear hard figures on.
It matters to me. I want to know if I've been "PR stunted".
We "oversold" 300.000 nexus 4 just to create demand in time for Christmas is different from we really didn't see that coming in spite of registrations and sold the first batch of 3M phones.
Also, it's different the waiting in line at an Appletore. I wanted to buy a N10 but didn't expected to have it in hand the very same day. You're kind of comparing if I may say, apple and oranges.
That said, if it's a stunt, it half failed because newspaper talks about the N4 but not about the N10.
Yes, it matters. The psychological reward of validation of your choices through group behaviours is very real, and very strong. Call it the "sheep mentality" as much as you like, but it is just as much the "human mentality" - popularity is a key indicator for us for the quality of a product, but even more so it also shapes how happy we are with the product after purchase.
It does matter in real ways too. The Palm Pre may have been an awesome device, but tell that to the people using it with no community for support and development.
Seems like they launched with 1000 units or less. 3 stores in LA got 5 units. So 15 units for the 2nd largest city in LA? They probably got shipments late, or manufacturing went behind schedule, but they had a published launch date so launched even though they weren't ready.
I am traveling so I had the phone shipped to where I am now. Got the email about the 3 week delay. Just called them and they said that they can't change the shipping address due to the "privacy policy." The rep couldn't explain what that meant, but said I would receive a follow up email. Pathetic customer service.
"Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to change a shipping address once an order has been placed due to security reasons. If the current shipping address for your order is accessible to you, we recommend leaving it as is and receiving your package there.
If that won't work for you, we can instead intercept this order immediately with your consent. You are welcome to update your shipping address in your Google Wallet account and place a new order.
If you'd like for us to intercept your order, please reply with a message containing "I Consent"."
Now I get to call back and ask what "intercept" means. Great.
What doesn't make sense here is that they can only issue an intercept order on a purchase that's been back ordered three weeks. In that case they should have zero problem changing the shipping address. Google really needs to get on top of their shipping and customer service issues.
In the absence of actual numbers we can look at Google Trends. iPhone 5 is about double Galaxy S3 and Nexus 4 had been about half of Galaxy S3 for a week before almost reaching it on Tuesday. It may have peaked though (Wed shows it falling but that could be an artifact of the weekend/holiday or whatever); another week should give us a better idea. My guess is it will get swallowed by the Droid DNA hype train which Verizon will be pushing like crazy.
You know that I'd like? To be able to pre-order one now. I don't want to have to keep track of news for when I can buy one (I got the notification email hours after it was sold out in the UK). I want to give them my money and have one within a month.
63 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 75.4 ms ] threadThat being said, mine shipped out today and should get here Monday. I don't know why they didn't give the option for overnight shipping or ground service. Or they should have planned better than having 2 day shipping with a weekend included, so it's really 4-day shipping.
While technically it's still "2-day shipping" since it's always been 2 business days, I wish they would have added Saturday delivery for the ones that were shipped on Thursday.
Oh well, better to have it shipped than to be one of the unfortunate that got the back-order email.
Will Google return money for 2 day shipping? :)
I guess they still have enough to sell for $500 through T-mobile... And enough to supply the scalpers on eBay. I'm still upset from the errors during the order window but maybe it's all for the best.
Google is still not making any visible effort to communicate what's happening to the customers. Very disappointing. Do no evil?
EDIT: Let's say you drive to a store knowing a product is going on sale. You go to a shelf, they have pieces of paper saying take this paper and claim the product at the register. You take the paper. You queue up, you get to the register and they tell you tough luck, we have no inventory. Wouldn't you be annoyed? Then you leave the store to find stalls of people selling the product for double the price.
This sort of stuff can happen but it would be nice if Google said something about it. The only thing they told the community is "sold out" and "check again soon". I was hoping to use this phone while traveling next month but I'll have to make some other arrangements for a reasonable unlocked phone.
Does that mean that we're getting free shipping for our backordered phones?
You'd think a company like Google would have a better system for 1. Preordering and 2. Giving a better estimate for when you'll actually receive your product.
edit: I mean, they said 'Sold Out', then after a few hours apparently they allowed more people to buy. I wonder if anyone is getting a phone within the original time span, or if they're buying time at this point.
While I didn't buy a Nexus 4 I did buy a Nexus 10 and it was plagued with the same ordering issues. I spent over 40 minutes refreshing the page to try to get my order in. Much of the time it just reverted to the "Coming Soon"; even when I got it added to the cart it kept failing over and over when trying to confirm the transaction. Yet my tablet was shipped today.
I think it's telling that now wallet.google.com is talking about "building a smarter wallet." I think they've realized they really screwed up. It would be nice though for them to just come out and say it and apologize for the really horrible buying experience. Especially for those Nexus 4 buyers that now have to wait after already being charged.
Something that ought to stop is folks blaming the buyers without realizing that having to refresh the page 20-50 times was the only way to get an order through for many if not most people.
I would think the opposite, since Google is not used to selling physical products and they've managed to botch every previous Nexus launch in some way.
(disclaimer: i am a search engineer at Google)
Every interaction I've had with buying physical goods from Play was far more painful than my average online buying experience, even when buying items that are readily available. Once you place a Play order for hardware it basically goes into a black hole where you're never quite sure if the order was actually processed or not and you usually get no indication from Google of the actual status until after the device arrives at your doorstop. Attempts to get information about the order results in robo-emails that manage to appear even stupider than your average "reading from a script" custom service drone. If you keep replying to these robo-emails, sometimes a real person will email you like 2 days later, but not always. Using the phone is nearly as bad, the whole system is clearly designed to stop your from ever talking to a real human, and while I understand the cost reasons for doing this, as a customer it totally sucks, especially compared to companies like Amazon and Newegg who totally nail this stuff (IME).
Play customer service is just busted from top to bottom and woe unto anyone for whom the default process doesn't operate as expected the first time. I love Google for many things but I hate buying hardware from them.
Whether or not they have world-class supply chain, fulfillment, and retailing people is far from sure - in fact evidence suggests they do not.
Heck, up until not so long ago, Google didn't even have a very good design team.
Google's competencies are surprisingly narrow.
Having worked at Amazon before I'll say this: retailing is really, really hard, and it takes a lot more than being smart. It takes years of experience. People who try to go toe to toe with Amazon don't often realize this.
How long do we give Google the benefit of the doubt? How long do we let them off the hook? This isn't their first phone or device launch.
They know how to sell product by now.
My drug of choice might not be here on Saturday. :(
There was no release time, no numbers on the amount of phones after they sold out way too soon, no excuse for the Play Store and Wallet glitches, and now, finally, no statement on how they somehow managed to miscount their inventory. I cannot even fathom how something like this can happen to a company like Google to begin with.
I'm really disappointed in Google, to say the least.
The amount of suckage with Google's automation-first customer service pattern and the corporate ossification of the various carriers still leaves an opening for Apple to exploit. The question is, will Apple remain supple enough to exploit this, and will the other companies wise up?
(I'm on a 2nd hand Verizon phone bought off ebay, with StraightTalk no-contract 4G for $45 a month.)
I also ordered a 32GB Nexus 10.. I wonder if this will impact the delivery of that item as well :S
That was the case for me, but rather than cancelling one of the errors, I offered the phone to a friend who didn't manage to order in time. I hope I don't regret that decision.
It doesn't really matter as a consumer. However, many people are interested in the industry as a whole and there's a lot of armchair analysis put forth that the Nexus 4's sold out status puts it in the same league as the iphone and galaxy s lines, the only phones anyone ever seems to hear hard figures on.
Also, it's different the waiting in line at an Appletore. I wanted to buy a N10 but didn't expected to have it in hand the very same day. You're kind of comparing if I may say, apple and oranges.
That said, if it's a stunt, it half failed because newspaper talks about the N4 but not about the N10.
"Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to change a shipping address once an order has been placed due to security reasons. If the current shipping address for your order is accessible to you, we recommend leaving it as is and receiving your package there.
If that won't work for you, we can instead intercept this order immediately with your consent. You are welcome to update your shipping address in your Google Wallet account and place a new order.
If you'd like for us to intercept your order, please reply with a message containing "I Consent"."
Now I get to call back and ask what "intercept" means. Great.
Note that they probably cannot use the intercept to deliver to a new address if they are requesting signature authorization/etc