[Nexus 4 General] cvfl:
Going to start by saying PLEASE DON"T TURN THIS INTO AN ATTEMPT AT A SHIPPING STATUS THREAD

OK - I've been silent enough and think now's the time when I weigh in. I'm a logistics guy that worked for a mobile device manufacturer for 14 years, and currently stuck in queue as part of the Nov 27th US sale date. I will summarize the likely scenarios for the uninitiated, and those that flat out haven't been following the saga on the previous million posts to the shipping info thread - good info there but getting buried in "mine shipped today" posts.

We have in US 4 parties in the Supply Chain: Google, LG, UPS Logistics and the angry mob of customers.

So Google exists in the cloud - taking orders (sometimes), processing payments (haphazardly), communicating (ha!) status info to customers, creating individual shipments & associating those shipments into a consolidated manifest that they transmit to UPS, and dropping purchase orders to LG for devices. Basically looking like this:

What is unclear is:

Does Google have just one massive PO that LG is attempting to build and ship against, and thus may be the fundamental reason why we have no inclination at all about shipment dates?

If it is broken down, how closely is Google managing their PO schedule lines and why aren't they communicating information publicly?

Odds are Google owns the inventory as soon as it leaves LGs docks - knowing the way UPS logistics works, they likely have segregated inventory pools, and likely 2 separate pick/ship areas. Inventory pools are by use IE round 1 orders, round 2 orders and customer satisfaction/warranty. Pick/ship is broken into some attempt at FIFO sales order managed queue, and RMA/replacement device/pissed off customer satiating. Question here is who is controlling what shipments from LG go into what pool, Google? UPS? The guy on the forklift? Important implication for (4) below

Google is transmitting order info to UPS, tracking numbers get assigned, and whole groups of tracking numbers get assigned to a manifest to be wave picked and processed. Whether Google is doing this or UPS is doing this really just depends on how the contract was written. The speculation is coming from how manifested orders are getting assigned to those pools of inventory - is there really a pool/sale date tie, is it FIFO/LIFO in one big vat, or FIFO/LIFO by pool assignment?

IMO here's how things should be working - meaning Google should be directing how inventory gets into which bucket for processing and also what that processing order is:

And so here begins my open letter to Google:

Your purchasing department/buyers better be riding LG like a horse, managing those schedule lines. Not doing so is the quickest way to guarantee continued loss of customer faith in the backend. Me coming from a mobile device manufacturing arena - either you guys just totally blew the forecast, LG has totally overstated their manufacturing capacity (shame on Goog for not sending IEs in to verify it), or there is such a high manufacturing failure rate in final test.... The last one scares the hell out of me since I'm in the process of handing you $700. FIX IT. You own it.

Your group managing accessory fulfillment needs a 3 Stooges style realignment of attitude as well. You may as well just pull the bumpers off the website and say "we have no accessories at this time". We get kinda pissed when you dangle nice things in front of us and we can't have them. PS - where the hell are the orbs? YOUR MARGIN IN ACCESSORIES IS HUGE. There is no excuse - how long has the Nex4 been in your product roadmap? FIX IT. You own it.

Likewise the person that is liasing with UPS Logistics needs a stern talking to. Either there's no direction of the inbound inventory causing good inventory to go to pools out of order, bad communication of order management info to UPS, or UPS is just in the weeds doing the pick/ship. I'm inclined to believe it's the first - the implication is that if orders are transmitted to UPS in batches or manifests and assigned to a pool, they get picked shipped FIFO by pool only when inventory arrives and gets put in the rack (which seems to be what we are seeing). Somebody dumps inventory into pool 3, and December orders start shipping before November ones. FIX IT. You own it.

Oh yeah - given the price point of these items - can you please send everything signature required? I know your contract declared value per shipment is probably set at like $100, and you are playing the numbers game - what's your true device cost vs how many get lost. But it sucks for that ONE customer whose been waiting 7 weeks to get their tracking number, a delivery notification, and comes home to find an empty porch. I can't begin to describe the suckage that person feels. At most it will cost you $1 per shipment, and make us all very happy and our fault if we say "no go ahead, driver release it" and it disappears. Bad enough us UPS MyChoice people have to try and redirect shipments before the first attempt anyway...

Your project manager for this product launch and your IT service managers for both the Play store and Wallet either have their heads in the ground for what their true capacity for order management is, or you didn't give them the budget to make the systems & services robust enough to handle what happened. Twice. Not saying someone here needs to fry, but I personally tried to order first round, had devices fail getting into my cart 4 times, cart itself crashed twice, and Wallet just continually was vomiting. Second round devices went into cart smoother, but cart did crash twice. The Wallet handoff went ok this second time. However, there's an distinct lack of flexibility in being able to manage payment after order confirmation but before product shipment. Orders are taking so long that my credit card expired and I had to activate a replacement. Fine, I update payment methods, but it didn't flow through to the order. Your CSRs advice to me? Cancel your order and re-enter one. ARE YOU FRIGGIN KIDDING ME? Somebody needs to take a deeper look at the tier 1 call center scripts, and maybe take a harder look at allowing things to go to tier 2 a little more often. FIX IT. You own it.

Lastly, your relationship management with us is sucking balls at the moment. Lack of information to us allows us to fester and boil blood in environments like this - and causes people like me to come out of the woodwork. I'm not a Google hater, I think you are driving innovation further with every single product you unveil. I don't resent that you knocked my old employers private parts in the dirt - shame on them for not paying attention. I do hate that you also are falling in the trap that most in the mobile device arena do - know your end customers expectations and be there for us. We hate the carrier subsidy market as much as you do. We're willing to hand you their part of the margin so that we don't have to put up with their bloatware. We LOVE the open developer community you have built for us. We really want to show off our new phones and say eff you Apple fan boys, look what I got. We are trying to hand you our hard earned money. Please give us a Merry Christmas.

To the folks that may get a bit of a smackdown for anything I wrote above - sorry. But ya gotta scream and yell on our behalf, or we're going to scream and yell on our behalf. Keep fighting, learn from any mistakes made, and move forward - not just onward. I wish y'all continued prosperity and a Happy Holidays.

Now give me a tracking number. :D