"ONEt" model, and today I've received a delay email from Elonex as
follows:
Demand for the ONEt free upgrade and accessories has exceeded our
estimations, with the majority of customers ordering a range of
accessories, including the indispensible wristVAULTs. As a result we
are experiencing a delay on deliveries. The official launch of the
ONEt is 1st September however Pre-orders, of which you are one, will
receive their order in the last week of August, ahead of this product
launch.
We sincerely apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience
caused. We would therefore like to offer you the following options:
• Continue with your order as it currently is (no action is
required by you)
• We are able to temporarily refund your order and re process the
payment when your order is dispatched (please call 0870 240 1060)
• If you would like to cancel your order (please call 0870 240 1060
or email us here)
Please accept our sincerest apologies, your order is of the utmost
importance to us and we are putting every effort into speeding up all
deliveries.
Best Regards
4 comments:
Demand for the ONEt free upgrade and accessories has exceeded our
estimations, with the majority of customers ordering a range of
accessories, including the indispensible wristVAULTs
I really have to wonder why companies continue to put out statements like this. It doesn't take a genius to work out that if you produce what appears to be a robust, powerful and compact computer at a very cheap price then people will rush to buy it? At that kind of price they just know it's going to fly off the shelves so why not just make more to start with? Or am I missing something?
I think the answer is that companies don't learn from the past experience of others. We did have similar problems in the days of the Spectrum and BBC Micro and such like.
From the other end of the business, actually predicting how many of any given item you will sell is very much guesswork, and if you get the answer wrong (either too low a guess as here, or too high a guess as in some cases elsewhere) you can lose a lot of money and reputation.
My guess as to how Elonex work is that they put out feelers to try to generate reserved orders and then place an order with the factory in China (or wherever) on that basis - review and beta test machines are air-freighted to the UK while those for normal delivery follow by sea. Accessories may be sourced elsewhere on a faster turnaround, but the bulk order of 200,000 Elonex ONEs is only available at the price it is because Elonex have placed such a large order on the factory and booked their slot in between the Digital Photo Frames and Portable DVD Players (or whatever) that the factory also make.
So, the order with the factory was placed - but more reservations kept being placed for the ONE and the next available manufacturing slot was some time (maybe even months) away, so Elonex decide to try to avoid bad publicity by trying to get some of these reservations moved over to the ONEt - where they have an earlier manufacturing slot with a different factory and a production quantity that's still open to negotiations.
This is all guesswork, but it might explain the current situation...
I checked other order numbers similar to mine. I could only find 20,000 ish orders not the 200,000 they expected. Therefore a more likely scenario is that they had to cancel the Elonex One order of 200,000 (didn't want 180,000 unsold computers in stock) and substituted the OneT which prsumably they could get in lower numbers at a reasonable price.
I suspect the 200,000 includes sales via Littlewoods and bulk orders direct from some (educational?) organisations...
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