fisher price 0673 motor AM update

[fox46]

If they handled this shortage like their others, it is likely that teams placed orders with AM before hand so when the stock came in it was possible that 200 were already claimed leaving only a few still available. At that, it wouldn't be unrealistic for teams to order 10 at a time.

If I see someone posting on Chief Delphi or ebay offering 0673 motors for sale at a markup, I'm getting my hammer and comming to find you...

[pribusin]

I was able to get some by being logged in and ready to go right at 12:00 EST. I signed up with AM's e-mail notification a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I got the email alert that they would go on sale at noon today. Those alerts really do work.

There must have been tons of people on their site at that time because it slowed to a crawl.

@Bruceb, the items are not actuall take out of the datadase inventory until the sale is completed. Someone else must have completed the sale just prior to you which meant that they were no longer available to you.

[Aren_Hill]

They did not allow preorders

[Hadi379]

Originally Posted by Mr. Van

All I can say is WOW.

300 motors in 6 minutes...

How did people know when they would go on sale? I was checking frequently this morning...

I wonder how many teams actually got to place an order?

- Mr.Van
Coach, Robodox

On AndyMark's site, if a product is out of stock, you can enter your email to be notified when the product becomes available again. He also posted a message on the 0673 motor page that indicated it would go on sale as of 12pm (noon) today.

Fox46, I'm not sure that people could pre-order these motors or anything that is "out of stock" for that matter. I tried that through the website and as soon as you click on add to cart, you get a message that says:

"(00801-0673 F-P (Fisher Price) motor (am-0821)) is currently out of stock. Please click "Email when Available" Below to be one of the first notified."

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by fox46

If they handled this shortage like their others, it is likely that teams placed orders with AM before hand so when the stock came in it was possible that 200 were already claimed leaving only a few still available. At that, it wouldn't be unrealistic for teams to order 10 at a time.

If I see someone posting on Chief Delphi or ebay offering 0673 motors for sale at a markup, I'm getting my hammer and comming to find you...

From what I have seen from their POS (point of sale not the POS) you can't buy more items than they have is stock. Getting it into your cart is not the same as buying them. Not sure if they had 200 already claimed if that were the case. I have a feeling that there were several folks who bought several at a time.

[Bruceb]

The site would not allow you to pre-order out of stock items. I was refreshing the screen at 11 am central(an e-mail went out saying they would be available at 12 am eastern) and as soon as I saw them be in stock(like 11:00:03) I put 4 in my cart. I went to my cart and confirmed I had them then started check out. About half way through check out I got the message that they were out of stock so AM allowed someone with a faster computer or link to steal them out of my cart. I don't get how any retailer could see that as a good business practice. Never been disappointed with AM before. Hope they correct this in the future.
Bruce

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

E-commerce must work at a faster pace than my fingers type.

Truer words were never spoken. There were probably a fair number of people thinking that exact thing at 12:07.

As for how we knew they were on sale, AM sent out emails updating people on the incoming stock and when they'd go on sale, etc. Provided you signed up to be emailed when the item came back in stock. AM is using the heck out of that feature to keep people updated on the stock status of items. I think I got 4 emails updating me on the changing status of the 0673's.

[Bob Steele]

I was on the site at 9:00 AM PST and could not get a refresh until 9:08 and didn't get any motors.

No pre-orders were accepted by AM so they all went this morning.

I do think that if teams ordered 10+ of them they were only thinking of themselves and not being gracious considering that many teams will not get them. AM asked teams to only order what they really needed.

You can only use 2 on your robot. so 2 and 2 for the practice robot/spares

Many teams got none...

[wilsonmw04]

Is there another source for these?

[Hadi379]

Originally Posted by pribusin

I was able to get some by being logged in and ready to go right at 12:00 EST. I signed up with AM's e-mail notification a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I got the email alert that they would go on sale at noon today. Those alerts really do work.

There must have been tons of people on their site at that time because it slowed to a crawl.

I did the same thing, logged on at 11:50am and kept refreshing the page until it said "Available". I also noticed how slow the site was as well when trying to place my order.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Bruceb

The site would not allow you to pre-order out of stock items. I was refreshing the screen at 11 am central(an e-mail went out saying they would be available at 12 am eastern) and as soon as I saw them be in stock(like 11:00:03) I put 4 in my cart. I went to my cart and confirmed I had them then started check out. About half way through check out I got the message that they were out of stock so AM allowed someone with a faster computer or link to steal them out of my cart. I don't get how any retailer could see that as a good business practice. Never been disappointed with AM before. Hope they correct this in the future.
Bruce

What's your proposed alternative, exactly? They take them out of stock as people add them to a cart? And then put them back in stock if the person takes them out of the cart? What if your browser crashes? What if your internet goes down? How long do they wait before they decide you're not actually going to buy those motors after all?

Doing things that way would make for an incredibly chaotic stock status. Those motors would have been going in and out of stock for 30 minutes, and you'd have people even MORE annoyed when they gave up at 11:10 and someone came in at 11:15 and grabbed some that came back in stock. Their current method makes far more sense. Especially from a database standpoint: process one transaction and you're done, instead of half a dozen transactions for every order. I think the only other sensible way they could've handled it would be to set up a lottery for the things with a limit on the number you could purchase. And even then, there would be people left out and offended.

I understand you're frustrated that you didn't get any of those motors, but I think you should cool down a bit and think things through before you start besmirching AM's handling of the situation. They did the best they could given the limited supply of these motors.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Bruceb

About half way through check out I got the message that they were out of stock so AM allowed someone with a faster computer or link to steal them out of my cart. I don't get how any retailer could see that as a good business practice. Never been disappointed with AM before. Hope they correct this in the future.
Bruce

Pretty much all online stores use browser-side cookies to store what items are in your cart, and only process orders based upon a first-come, first-served basis based upon who pays first.

It would be unfeasible for online stores to track what items people put in their online carts in real time and deduct that from available inventory, as this would be incredibly easy for someone to abuse the system and screw over honest buyers. If such a cart-tracking system were in place, one random anonymous person could go to an online store, add EVERYTHING to his cart, leave it there and then simply never actually buy it, while meanwhile genuine customers could be prevented from actually buying it because those cart items were already deducted from available inventory.

Thus, the only fair way to prevent this is to process orders first-paid, first-served.

[Mk.32]

I believe our order for 4 0673 went though. We have been using a AM9015 in our shooter for the time being.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

It would be unfeasible for online stores to track what items people put in their online carts in real time and deduct that from available inventory, as this would be incredibly easy for someone to abuse the system and screw over honest buyers. If such a cart-tracking system were in place, one random anonymous person could go to an online store, add EVERYTHING to his cart, leave it there and then simply never actually buy it, while meanwhile genuine customers could be prevented from actually buying it because those cart items were already deducted from available inventory.

Fab.com does exactly the process you are describing. The way they get around "hoarders" is by limiting quantities and placing a time limit on how long your cart is valid.

I akin this to ticketmaster. If anyone has ever purchased tickets to a concert through them, once you have chosen the tickets you want, ticketmaster holds those tickets for 5 minutes or so until you've paid.

Now, I don't think AM is quite at the traffic volume of ticketmaster. I find their system perfectly acceptable. I just wanted to point out that there are plenty of sites that do monitor inventory based on placement in cart versus final purchase.

-Brando

[nitneylion452]

I was originally hoping to use the 0673's in our shooter, but we ultimately decided to go with the banebots RS550 instead. We get similar performance to the 0673 with that.

What swayed our decision was we were using the FP gearbox for our turrent and were going to use BaneBots motors on it and the BaneBots gearboxes for our shooter and use FPs on it. I finally went, "wait a minute..."