Director of Sales
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If pending Green Ronin orders don't ship until after the 12th when the sale ends, will we still be charged the sale price for the items or will we be charged the full price?
To quote Vic (when I double checked): "Of course not."
:)
Also, is it possible to remove one backordered item from my order so that it can ship now? AFAIK I am only waiting on one item, my order number is 739625.
Done.
Thanks,
cos
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Chief Technical Officer
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If pending Green Ronin orders don't ship until after the 12th when the sale ends, will we still be charged the sale price for the items or will we be charged the full price?To quote Vic (when I double checked): "Of course not."
To be clear, that "of course not" is to the "will we be charged the full price" portion of the question.
I was going to make a new thread, but saw this one, and thought it would probably fulfill the need.
I have a few questions about how Paizo is doing their inventory and selling. Mostly this is due to people assuming things and posting them. I think there is growing a sense of concern from some and as always, information is the best cure.
Does Paizo use inventory software that limits the number of an item to be purchase to only what is in stock. That is, if Paizo only has 10 Player's Handbooks, can only 10 total be ordered by various people, or can more be ordered on back-order? If not, is there any desire to get such software?
When an order has items on back-order, what happens to the rest of the items that are currently in stock? Does it get set aside to wait for when all of the inventory comes in, or does it all get gathered at one time? If it only starts to get put together when all items are in stock, might this cause a loop where: item A is in back-order, while waiting item B runs out, now item A is in stock but item B is not, while waiting for item B to get into stock item C runs out, ...
If items are set aside as they come in, are orders given priorty on items based on First-Come-First-Go basis or on First-Filled-First-Go basis? That is if you only have one copy of a book and two orders are waiting on it, do you put the book into the order that came in first, even though it may be waiting on other material as well, or in the order that is just waiting for it to ship out? Is it better to make smaller orders over time or larger orders as soon as possible?
That's all I can think of at this moment. I would appreciate any answers you could provide, so as to perhaps calm the feelings of some customers. Thank you for your time on this.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Does Paizo use inventory software that limits the number of an item to be purchase to only what is in stock. That is, if Paizo only has 10 Player's Handbooks, can only 10 total be ordered by various people, or can more be ordered on back-order? If not, is there any desire to get such software?
Second part first—our software is developed in-house. As for the first part, it's more complicated than that. We track status of items in our warehouse to the unit, but many more items are available from our distributor. We don't have unit quantities on their inventories, but they update their in-stock status daily. So, to continue with the Player's Handbook example, if we had 10 copies locally, but our distributor shows that they're available, we would continue selling them after the first 10 (although we'd quote longer shipping times after those ten, to reflect the time it takes to restock from our distributor). If, on the other hand, our distributor is temporarily out of stock, we'd offer it as a backorder item. And if our distributor is permanently out of stock, the product would no longer be available for sale. Generally, the only way we can oversell a product is if our distributor's inventory is cleared out in a single day—that is, if an item is listed as in-stock, but more copies are ordered in a single day than they actually have (and by the next day, it will be listed as out-of-stock, so the potential for oversale is less than a single day's worth of orders). This almost never happens, but unfortunately, heavy volume during the Green Ronin sale made it happen for a few products. We've done everything we can to ameliorate the situation, including cleaning out Green Ronin's own inventory, and contacting other distributors, but some products are just plain gone.
The bad news is that it's a problem we can't really solve until our distributor is able to provide access to real-time inventory and ordering, but the good news is that it happens very, very rarely.
When an order has items on back-order, what happens to the rest of the items that are currently in stock? Does it get set aside to wait for when all of the inventory comes in, or does it all get gathered at one time? If it only starts to get put together when all items are in stock, might this cause a loop where: item A is in back-order, while waiting item B runs out, now item A is in stock but item B is not, while waiting for item B to get into stock item C runs out, ...
It depends on whether or not you chose to ship everything together or as it becomes available. If you say to ship together, we don't queue anything until it's all available, so yes, the situation you describe can happen. Again, it would normally be a rare circumstance, but the Green Ronin sale has caused it to happen in some cases.
If items are set aside as they come in, are orders given priorty on items based on First-Come-First-Go basis or on First-Filled-First-Go basis? That is if you only have one copy of a book and two orders are waiting on it, do you put the book into the order that came in first, even though it may be waiting on other material as well, or in the order that is just waiting for it to ship out? Is it better to make smaller orders over time or larger orders as soon as possible?
Last part first again—that answer depends on whether you value speed or lower shipping. It's not usually a question of whether you'll get something or not, but when you'll get it. As for the other question, it's also not simple. There are a lot of variables that are considered when determining order priority. The time the order was placed is a huge factor, or course, but so are the shipping method, and a handful of other things that you wouldn't have control over or visibility on. But again, we don't queue anything until the package, as specified in your order, is completely fulfillable.
That's all I can think of at this moment. I would appreciate any answers you could provide, so as to perhaps calm the feelings of some customers. Thank you for your time on this.
One thing I'd like to be clear on is that the Green Ronin sale has been so popular that we are definitely struggling to provide the usual service that we expect to deliver, especially with respect to timeliness. Where our usual volume may be a few Green Ronin books per week, we've had several shipments of multiple pallets of Green Ronin product lately, and it's coinciding with the already-heavy holiday ordering season. It's not just us, either; our distributor had to revise some processes to handle the load of the Green Ronin sale on their end, and they're also doing everything they can to help us get things in as quickly as possible.
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When an order has items on back-order, what happens to the rest of the items that are currently in stock? Does it get set aside to wait for when all of the inventory comes in, or does it all get gathered at one time? If it only starts to get put together when all items are in stock, might this cause a loop where: item A is in back-order, while waiting item B runs out, now item A is in stock but item B is not, while waiting for item B to get into stock item C runs out, ...It depends on whether or not you chose to ship everything together or as it becomes available. If you say to ship together, we don't queue anything until it's all available, so yes, the situation you describe can happen. Again, it would normally be a rare circumstance, but the Green Ronin sale has caused it to happen in some cases.
Given the situation that has arisen with this sale, now might be a good time to change this. While things will usually work out, the chance I won't get a book I ordered, but someone else who ordered after me will, just because one of the other items in my order took a while to get in is unacceptable. It should be first in, first served. I don't care if it takes a month to get the last item, every other item I ordered should be held for me, just in case you run out in the meantime. Not trying to come across as rude, I know how hard it can be to account for every edge case when creating a system, just suggesting that now that the problem has come to the forefront, you take steps to prevent it from happening.
Vic,
Thanks for the explanation. I have a couple of follow-up questions directly related to my order (#755791).
I ordered my products from the Green Ronin sale on the 16th November. At some point after this Egyptian Adventures:Hamunaptra was put on backorder. When that came back in I was told that Crisis in Freeport, another item from that order, was now completely sold out so I missed out on getting a copy.
Why wasn't a copy of Crisis in Freeport held for me for while I waited for Egyptian Adventures to come back in stock? Was Crisis in Freeport actually sold out at the time I ordered it or, as a result of me waiting on a product on backorder, did it then sell out after I had ordered it?
If Crisis in Freeport did sell out after I had ordered it, why does Paizo decide who gets a copy based on whether or not their whole order can ship rather than the date and time the order was placed? Surely first in, first served is a much fairer way to treat customers.
And why isn't it made clear somewhere on the storefront that products won't be reserved for customers while they wait for backordered products to arrive? If I had known that products might sell out while I waited I might have just shipped my order, rather than run the risk of other products selling out in the meantime.
Olaf the Stout
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If it sold out after I had ordered it, why does Paizo decide which customer gets a copy based on whether an order can ship rather than when an order was placed? Surely first in, first served is a much more equitable system.
Olaf the Stout
I would love to know the answer to this as well. While these products were uber-cheap and I appreciate that, the fact I had product canceled really irks me.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Olaf, I don't have the ability to check to see what the status of a particular product is at a certain time in the past.
However, I do have one piece of information I should have included in my prevous post. When we have to cancel items because we're sure we won't get more, we'll cancel the latest unfulfilled orders first, so the people with the oldest orders *will* get the available copies.
Surely first in, first served is a much fairer way to treat customers.
It's just not that simple. Imagine this scenario:
Let's say it's Monday, and we have one Player's Handbook and no DM's Guides in our warehouse.
Monday morning, Sam places an order for a Player's Handbook and a DM's Guide, and elects to ship them together.
Monday afternoon, Diane orders a Player's Handbook.
So, we have to order one DMG and one Player's Handbook from our distributor. Let's say they'll both arrive on Thursday. No matter what, Sam's order has to wait until we get the DMG on Thursday.
Now, using our current allocation strategy, we can ship Diane's order immediately. However, if you instead allocate the PH in the warehouse to Sam because he ordered first, then Diane's order has to wait for the PH that's coming in on Thursday. Basically, her order gets delayed from now until Thursday for no good reason.
So, while you're right that allocation to the first purchaser is more fair in the case of products that are going to sell out before all orders are fulfilled, it's not very reasonable in this situation—and this sort of situation happens *ALL THE TIME*, whereas products overselling happens exceedingly rarely—again, it only happens when one day's worth of orders on a product exceeds both our inventory and the inventory at our distributor. And, in those rare occasions when we do oversell, we'll go to great lengths before we give up on that product. We'll try alternate distributors; we'll try the publisher; in one case we even went to a retail store and purchased a copy at full retail price to fulfill somebody's order. And then ultimately, if we can't get that product, we'll cancel it from the most recent order first.
Obviously, we don't like overselling, but given the nature of the external systems we're working with, it's sometimes unavoidable; despite that, I genuinely believe that our system is designed to treat the most customers the most fairly.
One thing to consider with the current method, is it actually discourages large orders. The larger the order, the more likely it is that things will come in and out of stock, thus longer delays, despite the fact that all items might have been in stock at various times earlier on.
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Chief Technical Officer
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The larger the order, the more likely it is that things will come in and out of stock, thus longer delays, despite the fact that all items might have been in stock at various times earlier on.
This is only true when our distributor can't fill our orders all at once from their inventory, which they almost always can. Generally, when you order a bunch of stuff that's not in our warehouse, it arrives within a couple of days, usually in a single shipment. It's really only a problem when we order a hundred copies of a book and they tell us they can get us fifty now and more next week.
Also, if you're concerned about timeliness, during checkout you can choose to have us ship items as they become available, though it potentially increases your shipping cost.
Olaf, I don't have the ability to check to see what the status of a particular product is at a certain time in the past.
However, I do have one piece of information I should have included in my prevous post. When we have to cancel items because we're sure we won't get more, we'll cancel the latest unfulfilled orders first, so the people with the oldest orders *will* get the available copies.
Surely first in, first served is a much fairer way to treat customers.It's just not that simple. Imagine this scenario:
Let's say it's Monday, and we have one Player's Handbook and no DM's Guides in our warehouse.
Monday morning, Sam places an order for a Player's Handbook and a DM's Guide, and elects to ship them together.
Monday afternoon, Diane orders a Player's Handbook.
So, we have to order one DMG and one Player's Handbook from our distributor. Let's say they'll both arrive on Thursday. No matter what, Sam's order has to wait until we get the DMG on Thursday.
Now, using our current allocation strategy, we can ship Diane's order immediately. However, if you instead allocate the PH in the warehouse to Sam because he ordered first, then Diane's order has to wait for the PH that's coming in on Thursday. Basically, her order gets delayed from now until Thursday for no good reason.
So, while you're right that allocation to the first purchaser is more fair in the case of products that are going to sell out before all orders are fulfilled, it's not very reasonable in this situation—and this sort of situation happens *ALL THE TIME*, whereas products overselling happens exceedingly rarely—again, it only happens when one day's worth of orders on a product exceeds both our inventory and the inventory at our distributor. And, in those rare occasions when we do oversell, we'll go to great lengths before we give up on that product. We'll try alternate distributors; we'll try the publisher; in one case we even went to a retail store and purchased a copy at full...
I appreciate you taking the time to reply Vic.
Yes, in your example, Dianne has to wait for PHB. However Dianne should know at the time of placing her order that the PHB was out of stock (because the copy sitting in Paizo's warehouse is reserved for Sam). Sam, on the other hand, isn't aware that there is any problem with receiving the PHB. He knows that he will have to wait for the DMG to arrive in stock (or not, as was the case with me. When I placed my order for Egyptian Adventures it was in stock. Somehow it became out of stock after I had placed my order.), but he doesn't think that ordering the PHB will delay his order, or that he might miss out on it altogether.
If these situations happen *ALL THE TIME* (your emphasis, not mine) then maybe the issue is that you aren't holding enough copies of particular products in stock at your warehouse.
Another point you might like to consider is that the current system Paizo uses discriminates against people that have large orders. The larger the order that you place, the higher chance that any one of those products is currently out of stock. Since none of the other products are reserved while you wait for the out of stock one, there is also a chance that another product becomes out of stock in the meantime. This means that a person with a large order could end up waiting a lot longer than they would compared to the first in, first served method.
People that are placing large orders are generally spending more money with you and yet they are disadvantaged. On top of that, there is a chance that they may miss out on product while someone else that orders after they do (and probably with a smaller order) doesn't. That doesn't make good business sense to me, nor does it seem fair.
I understand that the Green Ronin sale is something that doesn't happen all the time, but if you are supposedly the biggest online RPG store on the internet, surely you should have systems in place to ensure that the customers who order first get their copies first, especially when there is only a limited stock available.
Olaf the Stout
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Chief Technical Officer
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It's really only a problem when we order a hundred copies of a book and they tell us they can get us fifty now and more next week.
Especially, I should add, when lots of people are placing large orders simultaneously for the same set of products. That sort of thing also doesn't usually happen.
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It's just not that simple. Imagine this scenario:
Let's say it's Monday, and we have one Player's Handbook and no DM's Guides in our warehouse.
Monday morning, Sam places an order for a Player's Handbook and a DM's Guide, and elects to ship them together.
Monday afternoon, Diane orders a Player's Handbook.
So, we have to order one DMG and one Player's Handbook from our distributor. Let's say they'll both arrive on Thursday. No matter what, Sam's order has to wait until we get the DMG on Thursday.
Now, using our current allocation strategy, we can ship Diane's order immediately. However, if you instead allocate the PH in the warehouse to Sam because he ordered first, then Diane's order has to wait for the PH that's coming in on Thursday. Basically, her order gets delayed from now until Thursday for no good reason.
Respectfully, I have to disagree that this is a bad thing. When Sam placed his order, the website should update itself to indicate that the usual shipping time has changed (as you indicated earlier) for all later orders. So when Diane places her order, she can clearly see that she's going to have to wait longer. So its not like she's all of a sudden having to wait longer, she knew from the moment she placed the order what the expected shipping time was going to be. Rewarding her for placing a smaller order of stuff you have in-house by shipping it earlier isn't fair to the orders that came in before her's.
Not putting the PHB on hold for Sam and instead shipping it to Diane puts Sam's order of a PHB at risk. Let's change it around a little bit. Suppose you had PHB in stock instead of 1. So Diane and nine other people place an order for one between Sam's order and shipment. On Thursday, you get the DMG as expected, but find out that the distributor has no more PHB and won't be getting any more. So Sam doesn't get his, even though 10 other people who ordered *after* him got one. That's not fair to Sam.
So it looks like we have two options:
- A) Hold any available items for an order that is waiting for one or more items. This has the following effects:
* Makes sure that if something is available when its ordered, you're guaranteed to get one
* Any orders that come in once the in-house stock is no longer avaible will have a longer wait time, as indicated on the product page
* If it turns out you won't get any more in, only the last order(s) for that item will be affected
2) Ship items only as full orders are available, regardless when the order was placed. This has the following effects:
* Encourages people to make multiple smaller orders, or ship available items immediately, thus possibly increasing shipping costs
* Penalizes orders that have one or two out of stock items by risking that other items in the order will sell out before the in stock items come in*
With option A, everyone knows what to expect as far as shipping times go and only the latest orders are at risk of not being fulfilled. With option 2, some people are rewarded with shorter than expected shipping times, while others run the risk of being penalized by having a previously available item become unavailable while waiting for another item. Now which seems the most fair to everyone?
[* This can also lead to a revolving wait. Doug orders three items, a PHB, a DMG, and MMI. You've got both the PHB and DMG, but need to order to the MMI, which'll be in on Thursday. By the time Thursday rolls around, you've sold out of the PHB and need to order another one, which won't be in until next Tuesday. On Tuesday, you no longer have the DMG and need to order another one, which won't be in until Friday. Now Doug is waiting a whole extra week, with no guarantee that the shipment will be ready on Friday. A bit of an extreme example, agreed, but I get the strong feeling this is *exactly* what happened with this most recent sale. And with each of these delays, more and more books in this order become unavailable.]
[Edit: It looks like you can't nest list tags?]
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Chief Technical Officer
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Yes, in your example, Dianne has to wait for PHB. However Dianne should know at the time of placing her order that the PHB was out of stock (because the copy sitting in Paizo's warehouse is reserved for Sam).
That's exactly my point—under the current system, it *isn't* out of stock for Diane. The bottom line is that, however you care to view it, "first-in, first-out" unnecessarily delays Diane's order. Our system does not, and it would be worse for more customers if it did. I agree that if we were routinely selling products where demand is high and stock is limited, "first-in, first-out" would be the way to go, but that's a rarity for us.
Yes, the Green Ronin situation exposes an edge case where our system is not optimal for some orders. Well, every system has an edge case. When designing complex systems, you have to make choices; there are pros and cons to each approach, and I believe we've made the choice that serves the most customers best. I am genuinely sorry that it's not serving you ideally in this case.
Yes, in your example, Dianne has to wait for PHB. However Dianne should know at the time of placing her order that the PHB was out of stock (because the copy sitting in Paizo's warehouse is reserved for Sam).That's exactly my point—under the current system, it *isn't* out of stock for Diane. The bottom line is that, however you care to view it, "first-in, first-out" unnecessarily delays Diane's order. Our system does not, and it would be worse for more customers if it did. I agree that if we were routinely selling products where demand is high and stock is limited, "first-in, first-out" would be the way to go, but that's a rarity for us.
Yes, the Green Ronin situation exposes an edge case where our system is not optimal for some orders. Well, every system has an edge case. When designing complex systems, you have to make choices; there are pros and cons to each approach, and I believe we've made the choice that serves the most customers best. I am genuinely sorry that it's not serving you ideally in this case.
I don't think I explained myself clearly enough. What I meant in my example was that, if you used the first in-first out method, the website would update to show Dianne that you were out of stock of the PHB (technically there is one copy in the warehouse but it is reserved for Sam).
As I tried to explain in my earlier post, and as Void Eagle points out in his, Dianne would know when she is placing her order that there is a delay for the PHB.
On the other hand, when Sam places his order knows that the DMG is in stock and he'll have to wait for it to arrive before his whole order. He's fine with that (since he goes ahead and places the order). What he doesn't know is that the PHB may sell out while he waits for the DMG to come in, which will then delay his order even more.
As Void Eagle also pointed out, Sam may even be unlucky enough to have various products in his order go out of stock while he waits for others to come in. This means that under the current system, the larger your order, the more likely it is that your order will get delayed or not completely filled, possibly multiple times.
I think that Void Eagle post above explains it pretty clearly.
Olaf the Stout
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Yes, in your example, Dianne has to wait for PHB. However Dianne should know at the time of placing her order that the PHB was out of stock (because the copy sitting in Paizo's warehouse is reserved for Sam).That's exactly my point: under the current system, it *isn't* out of stock for Diane. The bottom line is that, however you care to view it, "first-in, first-out" unnecessarily delays Diane's order.
But it shouldn't. Dianne should know that the shipping on her copy will take longer. To quote you on this:
...we would continue selling them after the first 10 (although we'd quote longer shipping times after those ten, to reflect the time it takes to restock from our distributor).
So at the time Diane places her order, the product page should refect the longer shipping time.
Yes, the Green Ronin situation exposes an edge case where our system is not optimal for some orders. Well, every system has an edge case. When designing complex systems, you have to make choices; there are pros and cons to each approach, and I believe we've made the choice that serves the most customers best. I am genuinely sorry that it's not serving you ideally in this case.
It's not that it's not serving us ideally, it's that we're getting penalized for making a larger order. My order was over $100, including 32 physical books. Since I wasn't that worried about the timing (none of these are gifts), I decided to save about $30 (forget the exact amount, but that seems about right) and have the entire shipment wait for the several items that had a longer shipping time, safe (so I thought) in the knowledge that since the order was going through, a copy of the books that were currently in-stock would held for me. Since then, I've had one book that you tell me I probably won't get (it's been moved to different order so it won't hold up the rest), and six more are currently listed on their product pages as unavailable so I'm not sure if I'll get those. That's 20% of my order that I might not be getting, for products that were still listed as available (not backorder) for days, and in some cases over week, after I placed my order! How is that fair to anyone?
True, this may be an edge case, but that's no reason to dismiss it as unimportant. Especially now that its been shown that this edge case *will* show up, and people will be rightfully upset that orders placed after their's are being filled with "their" books? First in, first served. Clear, concise, fair.
Yes, in your example, Dianne has to wait for PHB. However Dianne should know at the time of placing her order that the PHB was out of stock (because the copy sitting in Paizo's warehouse is reserved for Sam).That's exactly my point: under the current system, it *isn't* out of stock for Diane. The bottom line is that, however you care to view it, "first-in, first-out" unnecessarily delays Diane's order. Our system does not, and it would be worse for more customers if it did. I agree that if we were routinely selling products where demand is high and stock is limited, "first-in, first-out" would be the way to go, but that's a rarity for us.But it shouldn't. Dianne should know that the shipping on her copy will take longer. To quote you on this:
...we would continue selling them after the first 10 (although we'd quote longer shipping times after those ten, to reflect the time it takes to restock from our distributor).So at the time Diane places her order, the product page should refect the longer shipping time.
Yes, the Green Ronin situation exposes an edge case where our system is not optimal for some orders. Well, every system has an edge case. When designing complex systems, you have to make choices; there are pros and cons to each approach, and I believe we've made the choice that serves the most customers best. I am genuinely sorry that it's not serving you ideally in this case.It's not that it's not serving us ideally, it's that we're getting penalized for making a larger order. My order was over $100, including 32 physical books. Since I wasn't that worried about the timing (none of these are gifts), I decided to save about $30 (forget the exact amount, but that seems about right) and have the entire shipment wait for the several items that had a longer shipping time, safe (so I thought) in the knowledge that since the order was going through, a copy of the books...
That pretty much describes my situation and thoughts on the matter to a tea (apart from the fact that I only had about 15 itemss and I should only miss out on one of them).
My main issues are that:
- People that ordered after me got a copy of the book I missed out on.
- At no stage was I notified that an item in my order had been changed to backorder (it was available when I placed the order)
- When I ordered I did not see anything on the website that stated that if you were waiting for books on backorder you were risking missing out on other books in your order (i.e. they weren't reserved for you).
At this point in time I'm angry enough about this to end my Pathfinder subscription and not buy anything from the Paizo store ever again. A little melodramatic maybe but at least I'll avoid putting myself in that situation again. All I can really do is voice my opinion and vote with my wallet.
Olaf the Stout
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Simply put, your system is delaying large orders and potentially punishing those people who make larger orders. In some cases this means some people who ordered a product very nearly A MONTH AGO are being screwed out of a product they have already provided payment for, whether you process that payment immediately or not. Meanwhile Diane strolls in a few days later, perhaps even a week or two later, and grabs her copy of the book because my large order is waiting on back ordered product. I have very little sympathy for Diane when my order is one of those that is being screwed up because it happened to be bigger than Diane's. She jumped the line and got her product. It is extremely frustrating to wait nearly a month only to have products yanked from you. Especially since I placed my order near the beginning of this damn sale.
Thank you for explaining the system to us, I did not understand it before though I starting suspecting something like that was happening last week, that is why I cancelled my one backordered product today. I will watch my order more closely (order # 837123) for backorders as they come up and cancel them as they pop up, thanks.
I'm going to cast my voice for the "this is a bad idea" group. Understandably this is a rare occurance that probably only happened because of the Green Ronin sale, but as one of those people who is likely to get screwed because of it, I'd like to have my say.
You might be thinking no one is getting "screwed" because of this, as not getting a discounted sale on a book doesn't actualy screw anyone. I agree partialy. In my case, I pay with a debit card that I put money in rarely, so I generaly have just enough to pay for the order I make on most occassions. Now, I think my order came to a little over a hundred dollars, which discounted the shipping. I'm not sure if something is back ordered, as I don't know how to check on that, but something is delaying my order. Crisis In Freeport becomes unavailable, which drops the total price of my order. Right now, I think I'm good, but a few more drops and my order will likely be below the discounted shipping, which will jack the price back up, possibly resulting in a nice pleasant over draft fee. Normaly this wouldnt happen, as say a full price D&D book drops from my order, taking 20-30 dollars off it, and the lack of discounted shipping increases it only $10. But in the case of $2 books, this becomes possible. Granted, I realize this is largely a problem with my own finances, and is only POSSIBLY going to happen, but I still feel I'm getting screwed.
It would take a lot, and I do meen a LOT for me to become so disgusted with Paizo that I would not resubscribe to Pathfinder once mine runs out, but this is definetly causing me to reconsider my decission to order non Paizo product from here, as there are other, cheeper places. I love what the compony did to Dungeon and Dragon magazine, and now that Mulhavoc isn't realy producing RPG product anymore Paizo is, in my opinion, the hands down best source of original high quality work. But the way your handeling your orders I feel is a mistake.
I really do look fowrward to future orders from Paizo, but right now I'm not pleased with the way things are going.
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In some cases this means some people who ordered a product very nearly A MONTH AGO are being screwed out of a product they have already provided payment for, whether you process that payment immediately or not.
Just want to say that Paizo's policy on payment is clearly stated in their FAQ: You get charged while your order is about to be shipped. Anything that shows on your card before that is only a pre-charge, to make sure the method of payment is valid and there's enough money/space for fulfilment.
As for shipping small orders early, having worked in a warehouse before, holding up on stuff for backordered items is not necessary an option. In a perfect world, your warehouse is big enough that you can store all those things and keep them warm untill all orders are ready to go. Unfortunately, warehouse space is often limited, so filling up on orders as soon as possible is usualy better for everybody.
I understand your points though, about keeping rare items for the first ones that ordered it (and I'm not a little concerned about a big order I placed some while ago that was waiting for a pre-order item and is now pending). If their software always made things go smoothly before the GR sales, they probably couldn't foresee the problem they face now. I guess they'll learn from that situation and do better next time.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I don't think I explained myself clearly enough. What I meant in my example was that, if you used the first in-first out method, the website would update to show Dianne that you were out of stock of the PHB (technically there is one copy in the warehouse but it is reserved for Sam).
As I tried to explain in my earlier post, and as Void Eagle points out in his, Dianne would know when she is placing her order that there is a delay for the PHB.
My point is not that we can't communicate the delay—my point is that that shipment doesn't NEED to be delayed. Using the current method, Diane gets her package several days earlier than she would with the "first-in/first-out" method. For most situations, the method we're using genuinely is the better method. In this case, it's not working for some of you, and again, I'm sorry about that, but the alternative you're suggesting is just plain worse.
I love you guys, I really do, and you are are normally really great at customer service, and you guys also do a great job and finding out what your customers want. That having been said, I have to say I'm a little disappointed now that this completely dawns on me.
Essentially I'm watching as things that were ordered are chipped away bit by bit, by smaller orders that came after mine, on products that I'm not likely to be able to get after this sale is over.
I understand why you use the system you do for most normal items, but I think it was a mistake in this case. I do appreciate you being open enough to explain the system, but I think, while its fine for most items on a day to day basis, this really bothers me.
I worry now that a week from now I'll be looking at what's left of the order, with only a couple items still left in stock, while order that were smaller that came after mine basically chipped away at what I could get, even though my order was in sooner.
Furthermore, had I know this up front, my order probably would have been in several smaller waves to make sure I got all of them.
Seriously, I love you guys, and you have been great in the past, but I have to step away from this for a bit, because I'm starting to get a little mad about this, and I don't want to be irrational or unfairly uncomplimentary.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Right now, I think I'm good, but a few more drops and my order will likely be below the discounted shipping, which will jack the price back up...
No worries on that. If Cosmo modifies an order to the point that it no longer qualifies for the discounted shipping, he's been applying the discount manually.
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Chief Technical Officer
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What [Sam] doesn't know is that the PHB may sell out while he waits for the DMG to come in, which will then delay his order even more.
As Void Eagle also pointed out, Sam may even be unlucky enough to have various products in his order go out of stock while he waits for others to come in. This means that under the current system, the larger your order, the more likely it is that your order will get delayed or not completely filled, possibly multiple times.
Yes, it is true that these things can happen. But they rarely do. As I mentioned above, the rest of the stuff on Sam's order, even if he has a whole bunch of stuff, is likely to arrive simultaneously a few days later. Just like it has for thousands of orders over the past several years we've been doing this. We're not going to rewrite our system to solve a problem that rarely exists at the cost of creating frequent delays under normal circumstances. THAT'S not good service.
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Just want to say that Paizo's policy on payment is clearly stated in their FAQ: You get charged while your order is about to be shipped. Anything that shows on your card before that is only a pre-charge, to make sure the method of payment is valid and there's enough money/space for fulfilment.
I know. Thank you for pointing that out in the other thread, I appreciated it. That's why I said "provided payment". Whether or not they charge the account, I feel like I provided my end of the bargain. But then, that is my perception and I can recognize that does not always reflect reality. :)
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We're not going to rewrite our system to solve a problem that rarely exists at the cost of creating frequent delays in normal circumstances. That's NOT good service.
Then what are you going to do now to make up for the bad service this situation has provided? Or is this a matter of simply being out of luck because we decided to order the "wrong products at the wrong time"?
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Yes, it is true that these things can happen. But they rarely do. As I mentioned above, the rest of the stuff on Sam's order, even if he has a whole bunch of stuff, is likely to arrive simultaneously a few days later. Just like it has for thousands of orders over the past several years we've been doing this. We're not going to rewrite our system to solve a problem that rarely exists at the cost of creating frequent delays under normal circumstances. THAT'S not good service.
I completely disagree. And obviously I'm not alone in this opinion, as the messages on this board indicate. Regardless how you feel about this personally, if a bunch of your customers are telling you they don't like how you're doing something, maybe you should look into changing it. And how many people don't know about the message boards, just coming to the site to order stuff and then not know why items they ordered are being removed while they wait for backordered things. The obvious default impression when placing an order is that if something is going to be held up, the rest of the items will be reserved until the whole order is ready. Just from the reactions on here, I can see that most of your customers also had this impression. At the very least, you should've warned people that setting an order to wait for all items would not reserve the items already available.
To show you how bad this comes across, let me give you an example with a real-world store:
You're out doing your grocery shopping. As you pass down the coffee aisle, you see that they've got your favorite flavor on sale so you grab a bag. Later as, you go past the coke, you see that it too is on sale, but there aren't any on the shelf, although there is a sign that says you can have the cashier go in the back and get you some if you don't mind waiting, or you can come back tomorrow. Since you've got everything you want anyway, you head up to the checkstand. As the cashier is ringing up your stuf, you mention that you want some coke out of the back. She finishes ringing you up, and then says she'll run and grab the coke, but it'll be about 5 minutes. While you're waiting for her to come back, you see another customer walk up to a cashier and ask him if they have any more of the coffee, since there's none on the shelf. The cashier says they don't, and probably won't get any more in. Then he looks around sees the bag sitting with all your stuff. He walks over, grabs the bag, and hands it to the other customer, who promptly pays and leaves.
If this happened to you, you'd probably be pretty upset, right? Well, this is how we feel. When we placed our order, most of it was available. But because we decided to wait on an item that was on backorder none of our available stuff was held, and orders that were placed after our's were filled, taking the last of some of the items. All without even a warning that this might happen.
To be perfectly honest, despite all the great customer service I've received in the past, this is really upsetting me. How this gets resolved will have a big impact on if I ever order anything from Paizo again.
[Edit: Also, I'd like to apologize to Shakespeare By Monkeys for hi-jacking his thread. :)]
Then what are you going to do now to make up for the bad service this situation has provided? Or is this a matter of simply being out of luck because we decided to order the "wrong products at the wrong time"?
We're not going to rewrite our system to solve a problem that rarely exists at the cost of creating frequent delays in normal circumstances. That's NOT good service.
I think the best option at this point is to request that any order of more than a couple of items is changed so that items are sent as they become available. This way you can be treated by the system as a small orderer, at least that is how I understand it at this point.
My point is not that we can't communicate the delay—my point is that that shipment doesn't NEED to be delayed. Using the current method, Diane gets her package several days earlier than she would with the "first-in/first-out" method. For most situations, the method we're using genuinely is the better method. In this case, it's not working for some of you, and again, I'm sorry about that, but the alternative you're suggesting is just plain worse.I don't think I explained myself clearly enough. What I meant in my example was that, if you used the first in-first out method, the website would update to show Dianne that you were out of stock of the PHB (technically there is one copy in the warehouse but it is reserved for Sam).
As I tried to explain in my earlier post, and as Void Eagle points out in his, Dianne would know when she is placing her order that there is a delay for the PHB.
Ok, I still don't think you're understand what I'm getting at here. I'll try explaining it again.
Current System - No Items Are Reserved
Sam orders the PHB and DMG. The DMG is out of stock (and the website shows this and gives a longer estimated time before the item ships) so it is reordered from the distributor. A PHB [u]is not[/u] reserved for Sam.
Dianne orders the PHB and it is sent out to her straight away.
The DMG arrives at the warehouse. However the PHB is now out of stock as it has been sold to Dianne (and whoever else ordered one while Sam was waiting for his DMG to arrive at the warehouse).
Sam must now wait for a PHB to be backordered. It turns out that the PHB has completely sold out and he can't get a copy of it, despite one being available in the warehouse when he placed his order. Dianne gets a copy of the PHB, despite the fact that she ordered hers after Sam.
If the PHB can be reordered Sam still has to wait again as it is backordered from the distributor. He also has no guarantee that, while he is waiting, the DMG that arrived on backorder for him won't be sold to someone else. This means that he to wait again while the whole cycle repeats itself.
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Suggested System - First In/First Out
Sam orders the PHB and DMG. The DMG is out of stock (and the website shows this and gives a longer estimated time before the item ships) so it is reordered from the distributor. A PHB is reserved for Sam.
Dianne orders the PHB. She sees that the PHB is out of stock (and the website shows this and gives a longer estimated time before the item ships). Technically there is an PHB in the warehouse but it has been reserved for Sam's order so that it can ship as soon as his DMG arrives off backorder.
The DMG arrives at the warehouse. Sam gets sent his PHB and DMG. Dianne has to wait for the PHB to be backordered. It turns out that the PHB has in fact sold out from distributor. Dianne misses out. However, at least Sam, who ordered before Dianne, still receives his copy.
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In the current system ordering a product first does not guarantee that you will receive a copy of it, even if it is in stock at the time of your order. It does make shipping faster for smaller orders.
In the first in/first out system if a product is in stock when you place an order you are guaranteed to get a copy of it. Smaller orders may take longer to fulfil than the current Paizo system but customers will know what the expected shipping time is at the time they place their order.
In both systems someone still misses out on a product that they wanted. However, in the first in/first out system it is always the person who orders last. This seems the fairest way to me.
What you're saying to me is that Dianne getting her package sooner is more important that Sam getting all of his order. You can say that won't happen, but exactly that situation (and, judging by the other posts I have read on the messageboards, there are many others with the same situation) has happened to me.
Olaf the Stout
I think the best option at this point is to request that any order of more than a couple of items is changed so that items are sent as they become available. This way you can be treated by the system as a small orderer, at least that is how I understand it at this point.Then what are you going to do now to make up for the bad service this situation has provided? Or is this a matter of simply being out of luck because we decided to order the "wrong products at the wrong time"?
We're not going to rewrite our system to solve a problem that rarely exists at the cost of creating frequent delays in normal circumstances. That's NOT good service.
Considering how much international shipping costs, I really don't see how paying more for shipping by splitting my order up is the best option for me to take.
I don't understand why you would have a system that discourages people from making large orders with you. Because that's what it is doing at the moment.
Olaf the Stout
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Chief Technical Officer
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You're out doing your grocery shopping...
Fair enough—let me give you an example of what the "first-in/first out" method can do.
You're out doing your grocery shopping. You take the last pint of ice cream to the register. You're told that you can buy the ice cream, but you can't take it home until Sam gets his ice cream. When you ask who the heck Sam is, you're told that he's a guy who also wants ice cream, but he's waiting on a gallon of milk, and the truck from the dairy with the milk and more ice cream won't be arriving for a few days.
The bottom line is that optimizing for an edge case at the cost of delaying your much more common cases just doesn't make sense. It's like noticing that your car doesn't drive well in sand, so you decide to get big ol' dune buggy tires even though you mostly just use the car to go from your apartment to your job and back. It'll hurt more than it helps.
Seriously, I know you're upset, but do you really think that we should delay several hundred orders over the next few months—when in most cases that delay provides literally zero benefit to anyone—to solve a problem that comes up only during a very particular set of circumstances that are outside the realm of our normal business?
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I think the best option at this point is to request that any order of more than a couple of items is changed so that items are sent as they become available. This way you can be treated by the system as a small orderer, at least that is how I understand it at this point.
At this point I have requested to just cancel any other items that are not currently in stock and send the items that are. We'll see when that thread gets a response. While I would like those out of stock items, at this point I just want the stuff I ordered and if I have to drop some items entirely to get this whole irritating debacle over with I will.
Unless there is some pressing need I shouldn't do this of course. Otherwise, I want them to give me the product I requested to the best of their current ability. I can just cut my losses on the other stuff.
But the point of my question was to see of Paizo was going to do something more than tell us this is the way it is and we have to deal with it. I shouldn't have to work around the system to get my product and I certainly don't like being told that something I ordered 19 business days ago, nearly a month of real time, has been given away to someone who came in after me.
One answer to this question tells me Paizo is trying to make it up to disappointed customers. It makes me want to continue doing business with them. The other tells me the modus operandi is tell customers to cope and deal with mistakes their system has made in this situation. Despite the fact we had previously no idea such a situation was even possible and we weren't even given a head's up when it did.
Normally the service this company provides is top notch. This situation makes me mad and I am starting to doubt that service.
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I think the best option at this point is to request that any order of more than a couple of items is changed so that items are sent as they become available. This way you can be treated by the system as a small orderer, at least that is how I understand it at this point.Considering how much international shipping costs, I really don't see how paying more for shipping by splitting my order up is the best option for me to take.
I don't understand why you would have a system that discourages people from making large orders with you. Because that's what it is doing at the moment.
I agree absolutely, on both points. The current system discourages large orders, because if even one item is delayed, the rest of the order is left at risk of being "snaked" by someone else. Even if there's only a small chance, there's still a chance. And *any* chance that could've been prevented is not fair.
Also, splitting a large order into smaller orders isn't always an option, even for those of us that live in the US. Hell, I only live about 20 minutes from their office, and if I'd split my $100 dollar order, which came to about $115 after taxes and shipping, it would've come to over $150 if I'd decided to not wait for all items. That's a 30% increase! Doesn't sound reasonable me.
What [Sam] doesn't know is that the PHB may sell out while he waits for the DMG to come in, which will then delay his order even more.
As Void Eagle also pointed out, Sam may even be unlucky enough to have various products in his order go out of stock while he waits for others to come in. This means that under the current system, the larger your order, the more likely it is that your order will get delayed or not completely filled, possibly multiple times.
Yes, it is true that these things can happen. But they rarely do. As I mentioned above, the rest of the stuff on Sam's order, even if he has a whole bunch of stuff, is likely to arrive simultaneously a few days later. Just like it has for thousands of orders over the past several years we've been doing this. We're not going to rewrite our system to solve a problem that rarely exists at the cost of creating frequent delays under normal circumstances. THAT'S not good service.
My counter to that arguement is that if you are out of stock of particular items so frequently, do you think that perhaps the issue is that you aren't holding enough copies of it on site? If you don't have room to hold more copies then maybe you need to increase your warehouse space.
Please understand Vic that I'm not trying to be difficult and argumentative just for the sake of it. My experience with online stores (albeit totally anecdotal and therefore statistically insignificant) is that if an item in your order isn't in stock, they will reserve all the other items for you until it is. They don't make you ship it in smaller orders or risk missing out on items.
Yes, I realise that this issue doesn't happen all the time, but it is happening at the moment to quite a few people. Given this I would have thought that Paizo would be looking at how to avoid it happening in the future, rather than just accepting it as one of the unavoidable weaknesses of the system.
Olaf the Stout
Seriously, I know you're upset, but do you really think that we should delay several hundred orders over the next few months—when in most cases that delay provides literally zero benefit to anyone—to solve a problem that comes up only during a very particular set of circumstances that are outside the realm of our normal business?
While I see your point and are trying maximize your effectiveness in this fashion, making comments like "provides literally zero benefit to anyone" when people have made a good faith effort to order from your company, expecting to get items they agree to pay for, only to have those items sold to other people and in some cases never being able to get the item as a result, comes across as ... insensitive to put it nicely. There are literal benefits for someone to be treat as first in/first out.
You have repeated said that there can be continuous loops where various items in an order keep coming in and out of stock. You say this is rare, ok, so it is rare. That doesn't make the person who it happens to feel any better just because it is rare, they are still feeling like they are getting the shaft in that case. That it happens even once is a big deal for some people, even if everything has been fine for eons.
I'm not really expecting anyone to change their system, as it does indeed seem to work fairly well for the day to day operations. I get that, and I can appreciate that. I was hoping that since this situation is out of the ordinary, that out of the ordinary circumstances, circumstances that would not have to become the norm, might be put in place, just for this situation.
I know you have limited staff, and that you guys have been more successful than you even figured you would be. I know its the Christmas season, and likely you have a bit more to do than you would normally have to do. I know you guys are likely working long hours, and probably really reaching your wits end.
I don't want to add to this stress, but given that my wife ordered this for me for Christmas, this has added to her stress. I know that you guys do go above and beyond, but to be fair, I have too. Even though I haven't subscribed to Pathfinder or GameMastery adventures, I have, since the cancellation of the magazines, had my local hobby shop order my Item Cards, Map Packs, Spell Templates, and Combat Pads so that I could simultaneous support my local hobby shop and Paizo, because I felt that strongly about supporting you.
I understand that you may not have the manpower or the ability at this time to really change anything, and your hands may be tied as far as trying to alleviate any hard feelings. It could be that words alone would have made me feel better about the situation.
I guess what I'm saying is, "I'm sorry that we weren't prepared for how this sale would take off, we wish that we could have done things differently, but we didn't have a plan in place and we are too busy to change course now, in the future we'll have something in place to make things work more smoothly," would have made me feel a lot better than, "the system usually works, but it doesn't in this case, but this case doesn't make us want to do anything about it."
I know you guys do care about your customers, and I don't want to be a pain, but at the same time, this is becoming a big problem for me.
I don't know the technical difficulty of it (although I imagine that it is quite difficult) but is it possible for certain big sales in the future (like the Green Ronin one) to be treated as first-in, first-out? I'm trying to look for viable solutions here.
At the very least, there should be some information visibly placed on the website so that people know that none of the items in their order are "safe" when they are waiting for an item on backorder. I certainly didn't know about it when I placed my order, otherwise I may not have bothered to wait for the Egyptian Adventures boxed set to come off of backorder.
Olaf the Stout
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You're out doing your grocery shopping. You take the last pint of ice cream to the register. You're told that you can buy the ice cream, but you can't take it home until Sam gets his ice cream. When you ask who the heck Sam is, you're told that he's a guy who also wants ice cream, but he's waiting on a gallon of milk, and the truck from the dairy with the milk and more ice cream won't be arriving for a few days.
But your example doesn't hold because under the inventory system of said grocery store the ice cream should already be held by Sam. It shouldn't even be on the shelf to buy. So, more likely, I should expect a delay because someone already got to the ice cream before me. When you can receive more orders than you have in stock, heck more orders than even the distributors and publishers have in stock, there is a problem.
Let's say I order a PHB and DMG. Under a first-in/first-out system I get those books first. If the DMG is currently in back order but you have two PHBs I get one and the person after me who orders a PHB gets one as well. My order doesn't go out the door but the one ordered by the person after me does. Then, like magic, I would assume your site would be updated to show there are no more PHBs in stock. Then my DMG comes in and I get my order. Meanwhile, presumably more PHBs will come in stock. But if they don't then I still got my order and I am a happy customer. No one else tried to order a PHB in that time because your site was up front about your inventory and so they don't go away angry either. Maybe disappointed they couldn't find a PHB here but at least you didn't take an order you couldn't fill in the first place.
The way it looks you are selling items that aren't in stock. You took more orders than you had of available product. That stinks. Especially since, theoretically, I placed my order when product was in stock and it was given away to people who came in after me. So what really happened was Sam stole the ice cream from my cart and had the assistance of the store manager in the process.
As an example, the only time I have had trouble receiving a product from Amazon was when I knowingly ordered a product that was backlogged. I knew what I was doing at the time and I didn't receive the product. Here, I assumed I was purchasing a product that was in stock because the site did not provide any information to the contrary.
At this point, telling your customers your system can't be changed is one thing. I can understand that and it has worked fairly well up to this point. But this discussion has started to take on the tone of a dismissal.
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Fair enough—let me give you an example of what the "first-in/first out" method can do.
You're out doing your grocery shopping. You take the last pint of ice cream to the register. You're told that you can buy the ice cream, but you can't take it home until Sam gets his ice cream. When you ask who the heck Sam is, you're told that he's a guy who also wants ice cream, but he's waiting on a gallon of milk, and the truck from the dairy with the milk and more ice cream won't be arriving for a few days.
That's not an accurate description of the FIFO system. In FIFO, that pint of ice cream wouldn't have even been in the freezer, it would've been in back wait for the gallon of milk to complete Sam's order.
Also, you lose the analogy when you say I can buy it now, since you don't charge the CC until the shipment is ready, and that won't happen until my copy of the book/ice cream is in, regardless if its the current one, or the one being backordered.
So, a better version of this story would be:
You're out doing grocery shopping. You see that ice cream is on sale decide to get some, but when you get to the freezer you find that your favorite flavor is gone. There's a note saying that the store is currently out, but they'll have more in a few days. If you reserve it now, you can even get it at the sale price, even though the sale may be off by the time they get some more in. At this point, you have several options: wait your flavor to come in, buy a different flavor, or go to a different store and see if they have it (although it probably won't be on sale).
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The bottom line is that optimizing for an edge case at the cost of delaying your much more common cases just doesn't make sense. It's like noticing that your car doesn't drive well in sand, so you decide to get big ol' dune buggy tires even though you mostly just use the car to go from your apartment to your job and back. It'll hurt more than it helps.
Again, your analogy doesn't directly apply. For the car, the only person you have to please is yourself, you're the one driving it and you're the one that'll have to pay the repair bills. But for this, you have to keep your customers happy. That means sometimes having to do something that'll cost you bit more than you'd normally pay, but the benefits make it worthwhile. Or better yet, split the horns. You can either get some knobby tires, so that driving on the road is acceptable, but you still get good traction on the sand. Or you could just buy a set of each, then swap out for the dune buggy tires when you know you're going to the beach.
As for implementing this on your site, that'll require some code work, true. For option A, something that keeps track of your distributors inventory, and when the orders get over a certain percentage of that, start reserving copies. For option 2, some alternate code, that you can use instead of your normal code for when you know or suspect that you'll have lots of orders, particularly for a small grouping of items, that makes sure that orders are filled in a FIFO manner. Either way, use this as a learning experience rather than just saying "Damn, looks like that edge case we never thought was gonna happen... happened. Oh well, bummer for them. Next?"
Seriously, I know you're upset, but do you really think that we should delay several hundred orders over the next few months—when in most cases that delay provides literally zero benefit to anyone—to solve a problem that comes up only during a very particular set of circumstances that are outside the realm of our normal business?
See above for suggestions on splitting the horns and dealing with this. But to answer your question: yes, I do think that. If the options are only First Filled, First Out or First In, First Out, then you should go with FIFO, regardless of the minimal delays. As long as people are told at the time of ordering exactly what they're getting, and generally what the delay is, there shouldn't be any problems. As it stands now, neither of those 100% ture. Besides, in the FIFO scenario describe above with Sam and Diane, if Sam's copy got reserved and Diane's copy was going to take a few days longer, she'd probably never even notice.
You're out doing your grocery shopping. You take the last pint of ice cream to the register. You're told that you can buy the ice cream, but you can't take it home until Sam gets his ice cream. When you ask who the heck Sam is, you're told that he's a guy who also wants ice cream, but he's waiting on a gallon of milk, and the truck from the dairy with the milk and more ice cream won't be arriving for a few days.But your example doesn't hold because under the inventory system of said grocery store the ice cream should already be held by Sam. It shouldn't even be on the shelf to buy. So, more likely, I should expect a delay because someone already got to the ice cream before me. When you can receive more orders than you have in stock, heck more orders than even the distributors and publishers have in stock, there is a problem.
Let's say I order a PHB and DMG. Under a first-in/first-out system I get those books first. If the DMG is currently in back order but you have two PHBs I get one and the person after me who orders a PHB gets one as well. My doesn't go out the door but the one ordered by the person after me does. Then, like magic, I would assume your site would be updated to show there are no more PHBs in stock. Then my DMG comes in and I get my order. Meanwhile, presumably more PHBs will come in stock. But if they don't then I still got my order and I am a happy customer. No one else tried to order a PHB in that time because your site was up front about your inventory and so they don't go away angry either. Maybe disappointed they couldn't find a PHB here but at least you didn't take an order you couldn't fill in the first place.
The way it looks you are selling items that aren't in stock. You took more orders than you had of available product. That stinks. Especially since, theoretically, I placed my order when product was in stock and it was given away to people who came in after me.
As an example, the only time I have had trouble receiving a...
Exactly, the grocery store doesn't tell you "You can't take your ice cream home until Sam gets his milk." The shelf is empty (because Sam is holding onto the last tub) or the store has put it in the storeroom freezer out back for Sam to pick up when his milk arrives.
At this point you can then decide that you'll wait for more icecream to arrive or you'll buy some ice cream at another grocery store. You may also wonder why the store doesn't keep more ice cream out in the storeroom freezer if it keeps running out all the time. Maybe it needs to increase its icecream order or get bigger freezers.
Sometimes there may be a new limited edition flavour of ice cream that sells a lot lot more than the store expected and the store runs out. That's ok, you can't help that. Not everyone will get a tub. That's no excuse to take the limited edition ice cream out of the hands of the people who grabbed a tub first, even if they haven't gone through the checkout because they are still waiting in the store for some milk to come in.
Olaf the Stout
I worry now that a week from now I'll be looking at what's left of the order, with only a couple items still left in stock, while order that were smaller that came after mine basically chipped away at what I could get, even though my order was in sooner.
I'm in the same boat on my order from Nov 15. The "good" news about the 30-day lag is that my order is on pace to drop from $36 to $6.
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Chief Technical Officer
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While I see your point and are trying maximize your effectiveness in this fashion, making comments like "provides literally zero benefit to anyone" when people have made a good faith effort to order from your company, expecting to get items they agree to pay for, only to have those items sold to other people and in some cases never being able to get the item as a result, comes across as ... insensitive to put it nicely. There are literal benefits for someone to be treat as first in/first out.
To be clear, the "literally zero benefit to anyone" was said with respect to the particular case of Sam and Diane, should the "first-in/first-out" method be applied. In that case, Diane's package will arrive several days later, and nobody benefits. Sam doesn't get anything faster; nobody saves money; nothing good happens. But Diane gets to wait longer.
I absolutely understand that in *this* circumstance, you are not being served as well as we'd like.
I'd also like to clarify that I'm answering here as the Technical Director, not as Customer Service. I can tell you why things happen the way they happen. Customer Service can tell you what we can do when what happens is not good enough for our standard. Many of you expect us to do something to make it right for those of you who are inconvenienced. *I* expect us to do something to make it right. But I'm not the person who will figure out what that is. Please don't take my absence of an answer on that point to mean we won't answer it.
I'd also like to clarify that I'm answering here as the Technical Director, not as Customer Service. I can tell you why things happen the way they happen. Customer Service can tell you what we can do when what happens is not good enough for our standard. Many of you expect us to do something to make it right for those of you who are inconvenienced. *I* expect us to do something to make it right. But I'm not the person who will figure out what that is. Please don't take my absence of an answer on that point to mean we won't answer it.
I appreciate that Vic, and I look forward to hearing more. Thank you for taking the time to respond to this.
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I'd also like to clarify that I'm answering here as the Technical Director, not as Customer Service. I can tell you why things happen the way they happen. Customer Service can tell you what we can do when what happens is not good enough for our standard. Many of you expect us to do something to make it right for those of you who are inconvenienced. *I* expect us to do something to make it right. But I'm not the person who will figure out what that is. Please don't take my absence of an answer on that point to mean we won't answer it.
Thank you Vic, I appreciate that response and the honesty behind it.
While I see your point and are trying maximize your effectiveness in this fashion, making comments like "provides literally zero benefit to anyone" when people have made a good faith effort to order from your company, expecting to get items they agree to pay for, only to have those items sold to other people and in some cases never being able to get the item as a result, comes across as ... insensitive to put it nicely. There are literal benefits for someone to be treat as first in/first out.To be clear, the "literally zero benefit to anyone" was said with respect to the particular case of Sam and Diane, should the "first-in/first-out" method be applied. In that case, Diane's package will arrive several days later, and nobody benefits. Sam doesn't get anything faster; nobody saves money; nothing good happens. But Diane gets to wait longer.
I absolutely understand that in *this* circumstance, you are not being served as well as we'd like.
I'd also like to clarify that I'm answering here as the Technical Director, not as Customer Service. I can tell you why things happen the way they happen. Customer Service can tell you what we can do when what happens is not good enough for our standard. Many of you expect us to do something to make it right for those of you who are inconvenienced. *I* expect us to do something to make it right. But I'm not the person who will figure out what that is. Please don't take my absence of an answer on that point to mean we won't answer it.
Fair enough Vic. It's just that many of your posts were coming off as dismissive. I felt like you were saying that the problem was a limitation of a system but you weren't going to change anything so we should just deal with it.
I'm hopeful that this isn't the case. Paizo have been good to me from a customer service perspective in the past. I really feel like you guys dropped the ball on this one though. I'll wait and see what Paizo does to try and make this right before I make a final decision on whether I give you any of my business in the future.
Olaf the Stout
Thanks for hanging in here tonight Vic, and doing your part to help alleviate people's concerns and answer their questions to the best of your ability.
Also, I am just glad to see everyone has been civil in this discussion. It is a rare argument/discussion that comes off this well. Bravo to all participants.
Thanks for hanging in here tonight Vic, and doing your part to help alleviate people's concerns and answer their questions to the best of your ability.
Also, I am just glad to see everyone has been civil in this discussion. It is a rare argument/discussion that comes off this well. Bravo to all participants.
** spoiler omitted **
Although I am not happy with the situation as it stands, flaming and abusing Vic for it really isn't going to achieve anything. I'm sure he didn't intend for this to happen. In fact, I'm sure he wishes that it never did. And abusing Paizo really isn't going to motivate them to do something about the situation.
Wait a minute.......this is an internet messageboard.......there can't be any civil discussion........this must be stopped
I heard that Paizo sacrificed puppies to their evil gods to make the Green Ronin sale possible. They are an evil conglomerate that must be stopped.
DOWN WITH PAIZO! DOWN WITH PAIZO!
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To be clear, the "literally zero benefit to anyone" was said with respect to the particular case of Sam and Diane, should the "first-in/first-out" method be applied. In that case, Diane's package will arrive several days later, and nobody benefits. Sam doesn't get anything faster; nobody saves money; nothing good happens. But Diane gets to wait longer.
But it happens with zero penalty also, especially if Diane knew from the get-go that her order was going to take longer. As I stated earlier, if the product page she saw said it was going to take longer, she'd probably even be none the wiser that the order right before hers would've gotten it a few days earlier. Whereas the current method carries a *heavy* penalty in certain circumstances. True, they don't come up very often, but obviously do come up, and I don't think they minimal benefit of Diane getting her order a few days earlier are anywhere near the penalty the rest of us are having to pay right now.
I absolutely understand that in *this* circumstance, you are not being served as well as we'd like.
It's more than that. It's not like I ordered something and had it take longer than I wanted, or even longer than you quoted. It's that I ordered something, the order went through, and to the best of my knowledge I had it, and now it's being taken away. You keep talking about this being an edge case, and the current method being better overall. But this is more than an edge case, its a *worst* case.
I'd also like to clarify that I'm answering here as the Technical Director, not as Customer Service.
..snip..
Please don't take my absence of an answer on that point to mean we won't answer it.
That actually helps a bit, although I'm still waiting to see how all this plays out before I make any final decision on if I'll be placing any future orders.