Folks<\/p>\n
As you may be aware, rather than annoucing the times of sales as we did with the original FCD,\u00a0with 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!<\/p>\n
If you were\u00a0invited to purchase on Thursday or Friday, your name\/email should be on this list<\/a> (in email address order).<\/strong> If you’re on the list and\u00a0didn’t receive an email from me, please email me at g6lvb at amsat dot org.<\/p>\n The waiting list software is not perfect: I used a third-party hosted eCommerce product to do it, and it took a very\u00a0long time to set up (in fact, I did it while I was on “vacation” *cough*\u00a0in 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\u00a0have never been\u00a0comfortable about taking payment\u00a0unless 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\u00a0we have stock available do we request payment.<\/p>\n Unforunately\u00a0the software\u00a0is less than helpful at informing those on the waitlist that they are indeed on it, so I have to run a semi-manual\u00a0email shot on an ad hoc<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n If you have placed an order with another party such as\u00a0ML&S Martin Lynch & Sons\u00a0or 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\u00a0units are\u00a0distributed proportionately. Therefore, there is\u00a0no benefit to hedging your bets by placing orders with multiple outlets: in fact, in the long run it\u00a0adds another big headache\u00a0for us because we\u00a0pay up-front for\u00a0large bulk orders based on\u00a0the demand shown by the waiting lists and forward orders from resellers.<\/p>\n I really,\u00a0really hope this has cleared this up once and for all. I am starting to think that the old “scrum ordering”\u00a0method had its benefits where we\u00a0had no pre-ordering\u00a0at all!<\/p>\n In the meantione I thank you all for your patience<\/strong> as we ramp up production over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n Many thanks, Howard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Folks As you may be aware, rather than annoucing the times of sales as we did with the original FCD,\u00a0with everyone scrambling to their keyboards in the middle of the night, I spent a lot of time getting a pre-order … Continue reading