Hey, I have a suggestion.
Is there some way that you guys could put up a sticky saying "Hey! XYZ has started shipping!" and then replace it with a sticky saying "Hey, XYZ is done shipping!" when something's going out the door?
My guess is that would eliminate the need for all the people that post messages saying "Hey, I didn't get my PDF yet. Is my order okay?"
Instead of you folks having to answer, everyone else could help you out and go "hey! See that 'not done yet' sticky? Don't bother SM and Cosmo!!"
It would also let those people who do actually have problems with their order know for sure that they should contact customer service.
Anyways, just a thought :)
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Lol, you haven't gotten your pdfs yet?
SoS here every month.
I don't think they lay out their orders in an A-B-C setup. I think order priority is based on ease of completion.
I think the trick - for me at least, is to stop adding things to my orders. You would think that the larger orders would get priority and get knocked out first but I think (based on what has been said here before) is that their system is focused on getting a higher number of orders out per day, so the less you order or the easier the order is to fill the faster you get the order sent out.
System seems a bit punitive to those who actually order/subscribe more and spend more money on a monthly basis. I have yet to get my monthly pdfs on the first or second day of release, not even once. So I know the system is not random.
Chief Technical Officer
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Hey, I have a suggestion.
Is there some way that you guys could put up a sticky saying "Hey! XYZ has started shipping!" and then replace it with a sticky saying "Hey, XYZ is done shipping!" when something's going out the door?
My guess is that would eliminate the need for all the people that post messages saying "Hey, I didn't get my PDF yet. Is my order okay?"
Instead of you folks having to answer, everyone else could help you out and go "hey! See that 'not done yet' sticky? Don't bother SM and Cosmo!!"
It would also let those people who do actually have problems with their order know for sure that they should contact customer service.
Anyways, just a thought :)
Hmm. I find your idea appealing... the only problem is that it's not obvious when something is "done" shipping. We know when *most* people are done, but there are always edge cases, like people with credit card issues, or people who start their subscription on the day that we would have been "finishing." The best we could do is make a note that says "Subscriptions shipping this week: X, Y, and Z. We expect it to take most of the week to get to everyone."
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Chief Technical Officer
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I don't think they lay out their orders in an A-B-C setup. I think order priority is based on ease of completion.
I think the trick - for me at least, is to stop adding things to my orders. You would think that the larger orders would get priority and get knocked out first but I think (based on what has been said here before) is that their system is focused on getting a higher number of orders out per day, so the less you order or the easier the order is to fill the faster you get the order sent out.
Close, but not quite. It is about optimizing the speed of completion for the warehouse folks, but that optimization is primarily about similarity of shipments, not about the volume of stuff in the shipment. As long as your shipment contains *just* the subscription items that we're releasing that week—even if you're a superscriber—and you don't have a weird shipping method, an unusual destination, or a credit card problem, you'll probably be wrapped up pretty early. But if you've added some other non-new-release item to your sidecart, it may take a couple of days for your order to come up.
Now, within each group of similar shipments, we do actually prioritize people who have more subscriptions, and customers who have spent a lot of money with us over time, but since each group is relatively small, the difference between high priority and low priority will likely be measured in minutes or, at best, hours.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I should also add that doing things that modify your sidecart while we're shipping subscriptions is generally inadvisable if you're concerned about speed. While there are times that such modifications wouldn't make any difference, there are other times where it would probably bump you back in the queue.
Hmm. I find your idea appealing... the only problem is that it's not obvious when something is "done" shipping. We know when *most* people are done, but there are always edge cases, like people with credit card issues, or people who start their subscription on the day that we would have been "finishing." The best we could do is make a note that says "Subscriptions shipping this week: X, Y, and Z. We expect it to take most of the week to get to everyone."
Yeah, I suspect that's true.
But I also suspect the majority of the people wasting bandwidth with "ZOMG WEREZ MY PDF?!?!?" are not in that category :)
Edit: Besides ... there must be a point at which our favorite warehouse folks *think* they're done with the subscriptions ... that's the point I'm talking about ...
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Chief Technical Officer
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Hmm. I find your idea appealing... the only problem is that it's not obvious when something is "done" shipping. We know when *most* people are done, but there are always edge cases, like people with credit card issues, or people who start their subscription on the day that we would have been "finishing." The best we could do is make a note that says "Subscriptions shipping this week: X, Y, and Z. We expect it to take most of the week to get to everyone."Yeah, I suspect that's true.
But I also suspect the majority of the people wasting bandwidth with "ZOMG WEREZ MY PDF?!?!?" are not in that category :)
Edit: Besides ... there must be a point at which our favorite warehouse folks *think* they're done with the subscriptions ... that's the point I'm talking about ...
True enough. I think it's a good idea.
In this case, the answer is that the warehouse folks currently anticipate getting to all but the edge cases by the end of the week.
How do you know if you're an edge case?
That was what I was trying to fix - if there was a sticky saying "hey, we're done with the subscription orders," then anyone whose order hadn't yet been sent could go "hey, my order is stuck."
The point being that sometimes something in the order makes it 'stuck' and it sits in limbo - it's happened to me before. As things now stand, there's no way to know if you're in limbo or not. If there was a sticky saying "we think we're done" then anyone whose order hadn't been shipped would know they were in limbo and could contact customer service.
(And, conversely, anyone who contacted customer service before that sticky was posted could justifiably be railed at for wasting Cosmo and Sara Marie's valuable time).
