[Nexus 7 General] zdshadow:
Nexus 7 Pre-Order Borked by Google!

We have heard that the first wave of Nexus 7 devices shipped on 7-13-2012.

Remember that high-volume retail distribution is not a new business challenge. Thousands of organizations have already tackled this specific business challenge, and any one of them could have been consulted. My professional opinion is that Google failed due diligence, by being unprepared to distribute the Nexus 7 in high volumes. ( Google would have had warning and time to notify UPS given high pre-order volumes as well, so there is no good excuse for their lack of planning. )

My frustration is that an order placed on June 27th at 5:31pm PT did not ship on 7-13-2012, in the first wave of devices shipped. Google's agents expressed that they "hope" it will ship on Monday the 16th of July.

It does not even matter what the problem is on Google's end. There is no excuse good enough. I pre-ordered the very first day, and my device should have been one of the very first to ship via reasonable FIFO order fulfillment practices. As further insult I also cannot cancel the order, to buy a device that is already available locally.

Whatever gains I could have expected by pre-ordering have been negated by Google's error. The issue is further aggravated because a host of buyers have received ship notifications, or even their devices today, Friday 13th of July, 2012.

I have a very reasonable expectation that ALL orders placed on June 27th should have been shipped in 7-13-2012's first wave. The only reason it would not have, is because Google made a human, system, programming, or logistics error.

The implicit expectation for 'First in, First out' delivery of a pre-order was not met by Google. That leaves me questioning why exactly did I bother to pre-order from Google at all?

Even Google's own customer service agent and the service supervisor were surprised to see my order had not charged, nor shipped yet, given my order date.

UPDATE - Google Reps Provide a "Reason"...

As of about 2:15am CT, Google did have a reason why my package had "not shipped":

According to Google Customer Service, the overwhelming volume of orders shipping today had exceeded UPS' ability to receive them.

While that seems a very reasonable explanation on the surface, it still leaves a lot to worry about.

Google has stated that they will ship all pre-orders over the next 3 business days. That is the 13th, 16th and 17th of July, 2012.

Given this explanation, UPS and Google have some catch-up to do for Day 1 already.

So how will Google get all remaining orders shipped in the next 2 business days if they could not even get all 'Day 1' packages received into UPS systems?

Seems to me like someone, or several people really screwed this up by failing to think ahead and prepare accordingly.

You could argue that Google never did retail distribution before, but:

Google has plenty of strategic retail partners they could have asked for advice. There are thousands of internet retailers out there that could have been used as a model for how to handle the high-volume logistics challenge. Google simply did not seek out the knowledge. Ironic behavior from a company that is all about smarter ways to use information and knowledge.