Folks
As you may be aware, rather than annoucing the times of sales as we did with the original FCD, with everyone scrambling to their keyboards in the middle of the night, I spent a lot of time getting a pre-order waiting list set up, although if I am honest at times it feels like I should have left it the way it was!
If you were invited to purchase on Thursday or Friday, your name/email should be on this list (in email address order). If you’re on the list and didn’t receive an email from me, please email me at g6lvb at amsat dot org.
The waiting list software is not perfect: I used a third-party hosted eCommerce product to do it, and it took a very long time to set up (in fact, I did it while I was on “vacation” *cough* in September). In retrospect it took longer than it would have taken me to hand-code something myself. There are almost no eCommerce solutions that allow for waiting lists without taking credit card details first. As you may know, I have never been comfortable about taking payment unless I have a real product in stock ready to ship. So the waiting list solution I have takes very basic details only to allow an email shot as units become available, and only when we have stock available do we request payment.
Unforunately the software is less than helpful at informing those on the waitlist that they are indeed on it, so I have to run a semi-manual email shot on an ad hoc basis. I ran another one last night, so everyone on the waiting list up to about 2219UTC on 20 October should have received an email from me. If not, please check your spam folder. Let me know at g6lvb at amsat dot org if you have not received that email and I’ll see if I can find you. There were definitely some dodgy emails in there as I have received about twenty or so undeliverable email responses.
If you have placed an order with another party such as ML&S Martin Lynch & Sons or another reseller, then that is completely separate from the waiting list run on this website, and you should discuss your order directly with the reseller. As you would rightly expect, I have no access to their systems to see who has placed an order. The only thing I know is how many orders they have placed with me, and how many orders I have on my waitlist, and units are distributed proportionately. Therefore, there is no benefit to hedging your bets by placing orders with multiple outlets: in fact, in the long run it adds another big headache for us because we pay up-front for large bulk orders based on the demand shown by the waiting lists and forward orders from resellers.
I really, really hope this has cleared this up once and for all. I am starting to think that the old “scrum ordering” method had its benefits where we had no pre-ordering at all!
In the meantione I thank you all for your patience as we ramp up production over the next few weeks.
Many thanks, Howard
