[blackberry4life79]

That still doesn't say anything.

They don't know what channel you want to purchase through - just that you are generally interested.

All channels sold out because they didn't manufacture many at all. That is the story and back when they delayed a March release because they had to stock up for demand was a lie straight from TCL.


Posted via CB10

[conite]

All channels sold out because they didn't manufacture many at all. That is the story and back when they delayed a March release because they had to stock up for demand was a lie straight from TCL.


Posted via CB10

Canadian carriers still have stock. That's 9 more channels plus retail stores.

[ray689]

Canadian carriers still have stock.

I edited my replay. This discussion is about the US launch and availability at Amazon and Best Buy. Also, Amazon.ca doesn't have any which was communicated by BlackBerry Mobile themselves. And I don't care what the reason is (carrier pressure or whatever). This is a multi billion dollar corporation, they need to have their ducks in a row before making statements they can't back.

[nogutsnoglory]

Apple doesn't need to contain inventory risk. They just flood everything. They know full well that everything will sell eventually.

TCL, with limited supply and resources, has to manage each individual channel carefully.

At some point BB Mobile has to put its big boy/girl pants on and perform. Excuse after excuse. This is totally unacceptable.

If they are "sold out" already even TCL knew demand for the phone was low, since they clearly didn't manufacture enough. Because if they had an ample product supply and sold out in hours they would be screaming from the mountain top. All I hear is crickets! I call BS!

[conite]

I edited my replay. This discussion is about the US launch and availability at Amazon and Best Buy. Also, Amazon.ca doesn't have any which was communicated by BlackBerry Mobile themselves. And I don't care what the reason is (carrier pressure or whatever). This is a multi billion dollar corporation, they need to have their ducks in a row before making statements they can't back.

We can debate competence all day, but neither of us have near enough data to support any conclusion.

I've met and spoken with Cistulli and many of his senior staff, and I've followed the parent company TCL since the DTEKs were first announced.

Incompetent is one of the last words that would come to mind.

Overwhelmed by the work required in 5 short months and humbled by big carriers is perhaps more fitting.

[conite]

At some point BB Mobile has to put its big boy/girl pants on and perform. Excuse after excuse. This is totally unacceptable.

If they are "sold out" already even TCL knew demand for the phone was low, since they clearly didn't manufacture enough. Because if they had an ample product supply and sold out in hours they would be screaming from the mountain top. All I hear is crickets! I call BS!

They aren't sold out. There are 9 carrier channels in Canada that still have stock.

I would also guess that the balance of the inventory will be pushed to Amazon after today's events.

We can revisit this after the initial dust settles where we can probably have a more fact-based discussion.

[ray689]

We can debate competence all day, but neither of us have near enough data to support any conclusion.

I've met and spoken with Cistulli and many of his senior staff, and I've followed the parent company TCL since the DTEKs were first announced.

Incompetent is one of the last words that would come to mind.

Overwhelmed by the work required in 5 short months and humbled by big carriers is perhaps more fitting.

Funny how you jump to the word incompetent when I never ever used that term. You meeting him and his team means absolutely nothing also.

[conite]

Funny how you jump to the word incompetent when I never ever used that term. You meeting him and his team means absolutely nothing also.

Botched launch would imply incompetence, no? Perhaps I misunderstood.

Of course meeting them does not provide a complete picture, but I thought I could contribute somewhat to the discussion by providing my general impression. These are some smart, experienced people, and give off a completely different vibe than the old BlackBerry guard. Take it for what it's worth.

[ray689]

Botched launch would imply incompetence, no? Perhaps I misunderstood.

Of course meeting them does not provide a complete picture, but I thought I could contribute somewhat to the discussion by providing my general impression. These are some smart, experienced people, and give off a completely different vibe than the old BlackBerry guard. Take it for what it's worth.

No, lots of competent companies have botched things (Galaxy Note 7 for example). So yes you misunderstood but the fact remains that it can be botched no matter how nice, well intentioned, professional or whatever you want to say about them from meeting them.

[bluesqueen23]

Just wondering, did they already ding your account/card for the purchase price?

They shouldn't until it ships.

[conite]

No, lots of competent companies have botched things (Galaxy Note 7 for example). So yes you misunderstood but the fact remains that it can be botched no matter how nice, well intentioned, professional or whatever you want to say about them from meeting them.

And you are right, of course.

But one has to leave space for things beyond their control - of which I am not privy.

[dbollman423]

Just wondering. I ordered a phone on Amazon and they charged immediately.

Edit: not a BlackBerry but didn't ship for 2 weeks.

[mister2d]

We can debate competence all day, but neither of us have near enough data to support any conclusion.

We kinda do when you think for just a few moments.

The Priv sold approx 200K units? If you're TCL you have to think, 'Do we believe we will sell more than the Priv?'. If so, then make more than 200K. If you don't believe you'll touch that number, then make more than 101 devices available. It's real easy. You're not going to write a billion dollars off by producing up to 200K units.

The hard math comes to play when that projection number scales to the millions. Since you aren't even near a quarter of a million, you should be able to pull that off if you're a company of this size.

[consv93]

We can debate competence all day, but neither of us have near enough data to support any conclusion.

I've met and spoken with Cistulli and many of his senior staff, and I've followed the parent company TCL since the DTEKs were first announced.

Incompetent is one of the last words that would come to mind.

Overwhelmed by the work required in 5 short months and humbled by big carriers is perhaps more fitting.

They may have whispered sweet nothings in to your ear, but that means nothing to everyone else. I'm due to return my cracked Priv to the insurance company today, thinking I would have the K1 in hand tomorrow. Now I'm going to have to buy the S8 + keyboard case and wait who knows how long for the K1, though I may decide not to buy the K1 at all.

[conite]

We kinda do when you think for just a few moments.

The Priv sold approx 200K units? If you're TCL you have to think, 'Do we believe we will sell more than the Priv?'. If so, then make more than 200K. If you don't believe you'll touch that number, then make more than 101 devices available. It's real easy. You're not going to write a billion dollars off by producing up to 200K units.

The hard math comes to play when that projection number scales to the millions. Since you aren't even near a quarter of a million, you should be able to pull that off if you're a company of this size.

That's the thing. How many did they send to each channel? And how big is the follow up reserve? We'll soon find out.

[conite]

They may have whispered sweet nothings in to your ear, but that means nothing to everyone else. I'm due to return my cracked Priv to the insurance company today, thinking I would have the K1 in hand tomorrow. Now I'm going to have to buy the S8 + keyboard case and wait who knows how long for the K1, though I may decide not to buy the K1 at all.

[mister2d]

That's the thing. How many did they send to each channel? And how big is the follow up reserve? We'll soon find out.

Whatever a channel is doesn't matter to me. The end result still will be X devices in as many people's hands (in the US of course).

[Jose Vazquez5]

What did you guys expect? It was released in the U.K. over a month ago and it is still sold out there. They are just not producing enough units for some reason. Seems odd since I expected TCL to be able to produce a few thousand units at least enough to satisfy those who wanted to buy it on release day.

[mister2d]

What did you guys expect?...

...I expected TCL to be able to produce a few thousand units at least enough to satisfy those who wanted to buy it on release day.

You just answered the question in your own post.

[ltoncb]

What did you guys expect? It was released in the U.K. over a month ago and it is still sold out there.

I doubt this changed in the last 2 hours. I have been checked every couple of days over last 10-12 days. It isn't completely sold out. At the moment of this posting it in stock at carphone warehouse. But yes, out of the 3-4 outlets at least half have been running on empty for the whole month at some point or other. If one catches up then another falls behind.

Seems odd since I expected TCL to be able to produce a few thousand units at least enough to satisfy those who wanted to buy it on release day.

not only has KeyOne been running behind in UK but they have been running behind in Germany also ( and other EU folks going cross border for other countries ). So that was two countries where didn't catch up demand. Then today BBMobile threw two more countries on top of the other two they were not keeping up with.

They did presales at carriers in Canada. That probably skewed the distribution table of what was already short allocated. ( of the four countries Canada is only one where had Cell service stores on board. ) If take the reports of pre-sales those all ran way above expectations also. ( that probably pragmatically nixed the amazon.ca as that smaller allocation probably used to cover that. )

Either the cross border launch leakage is way higher than expected or someone was extremely over conservative in estimating what the needed production capacity needed to be set to. It is more probably a bit of both.

A few thousand distributed over the whole USA and two major retailers wouldn't last that long at all. The initial demand bubble is probably higher than that. That isn't also isn't reflective of what the baseline demand really is though. That is the demand they need to be careful of not blowing out with gross overproduction. ( Blackberry Inc. consistently did that and gradually drove the business into the ground. )

[donnation]

To me this is all pretty simple. TCL communicates to us through CrackBerry. We've heard nothing, which to me means it's time to huddle together and come up with some out of left field reason that this launch was such a disaster, and put Kevin on the front lines to deliver whatever ridiculous reason they come up with.

As someone said above, if they would have had a large amount of stock that sold out in hours they would have been making statements all over the place about massive first day sales. Silence to me says everything.

[ltoncb]

Got tired of waiting so I reached out to Amazon. This is the chat I had with their rep:

You are now connected to Ann Mary from Amazon.com
.....
Ann Mary: I am sorry to hear the trouble you had with your order.
I have checked and see that the item is currently unavailable in our fulfillment center.
I am sorry for this.
Me: So, Amazon actually didn't have any stock when I placed my order?
Ann Mary: Sometimes, unexpected fluctuations in supply can add time to our original availability estimate. Though the item is out of stock, we do list the item and receive the order.
Once we receive the order we will immediately contact the supplier to obtain the item.
Sometimes as the case like yours shipped to failed to obtain the item.
....
CDMA users got screwed.

There is nothing in that conversation that supports the thread's title premise that there were never any CDMA phones there. The rep says that there currently aren't any. Current is not 'never'. Even if there were phones in stock before you started your order that doesn't mean other users couldn't have completed their payment transactions before yours. That also doesn't mean never.

That the CDMA page temporary disappear.. . it really didn't. It got screwed up during part of the day where referred to GSM phones but really had the same product ID number as it has now. So that had not relevancy on never. In fact from the early afternoon from when you intiallaly posted this till later the CDMA phone climb from 9 to 2 then sagged a bit to #3 in unlocked phone sales. Amazon clocked alot more orders after your reported 'disappearance'.

if you missed out Amazon will automatically go to the supplier and request more. (this is what the rep covers). That also doesn't cover anything about before you payment transaction completed.

At least "almost nobody" go a CDMA phone shipped today. yes. Nobody did? You need alot more proof. That quoted conversation doesn't have any,

[allbetsareoff29]

I ordered CDMA at 9:30pm on 30th which was only couple hours after it became available. Still no word when it will ship.

Granted I haven't read all the forums but from what I read: even people that ordered before me still didn't get theirs shipped (talking about CDMA only)

From lack of bragging, I conclude they had 0 units in stock ready to ship (again, talking only about CDMA)

[SinCitySon]

There is nothing in that conversation that supports the thread's title premise that there were never any CDMA phones there. The rep says that there currently aren't any. Current is not 'never'. Even if there were phones in stock before you started your order that doesn't mean other users couldn't have completed their payment transactions before yours. That also doesn't mean never.

That the CDMA page temporary disappear.. . it really didn't. It got screwed up during part of the day where referred to GSM phones but really had the same product ID number as it has now. So that had not relevancy on never. In fact from the early afternoon from when you intiallaly posted this till later the CDMA phone climb from 9 to 2 then sagged a bit to #3 in unlocked phone sales. Amazon clocked alot more orders after your reported 'disappearance'.

if you missed out Amazon will automatically go to the supplier and request more. (this is what the rep covers). That also doesn't cover anything about before you payment transaction completed.

At least "almost nobody" go a CDMA phone shipped today. yes. Nobody did? You need alot more proof. That quoted conversation doesn't have any,

Sorry if I didn't say before, but i had ordered mine at around 6pm PST, had been sitting on my Amazon account hitting refresh every few minutes (I OCD quite often). I had ordered it maybe a few seconds after it went live. The rep even said they opened the phone to orders based on expected stock from the manufacturer, which they didn't receive. So yeah, it did confirm Amazon didn't receive them. I challenge you to find one person that ordered CDMA via Amazon that has gotten their phone. I'll wait. Not that it matters, i already cancelled my order since I'm on Sprint. I'll just wait for the carrier version that will hopefully have most bugs, if there are any, already worked out.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

What did you guys expect? It was released in the U.K. over a month ago and it is still sold out there. They are just not producing enough units for some reason. Seems odd since I expected TCL to be able to produce a few thousand units at least enough to satisfy those who wanted to buy it on release day.

I expect TCL knows that production needs to match normal sales, not just the launch demand. And until enterprise commits (if they ever do), sales will probably drop off pretty quickly after the initial fan phase is over.

Too I think this protracted "launch" period of MONTHS, has allowed BlackBerry Mobile to take advantage of some much needed free marketing. A one and done launch would have put BlackBerry in the news for a couple of weeks. As it stands they have gotten several cycles out of most ever tech site.

I expect all is going as planned.....