FRC Blogged - FIRST Choice Issue (And Part II)

[McGurky]

Teams adversely effected by Inventory Management Issues should contact frcparts@usfirst.org.

Good afternoon,

There was an issue with FIRST Choice inventory management yesterday that allowed teams to place orders for parts that were no longer available.

If you believe you were adversely affected by this issue (i.e. you ordered an item that you thought was in stock, but later learned that the part was not in stock, and thus missed out on ordering other parts you would have ordered had you had accurate inventory data), please contact us at frcparts@usfirst.org.

Meanwhile, as stated in an earlier blog post, the credits spent on these items have been returned to your account.

We’re so sorry for this issue and for the frustration it may have caused.

Kate

[David Brinza]

Perhaps FIRST will take some action for teams <1000 who were unable to log-in to FIRST Choice?

Good afternoon,

There was an issue with FIRST Choice login yesterday that initially prevented teams with team numbers under 1000 from logging in for the first 15 minutes.

If you believe you were adversely affected by this (i.e. you tried to log in, couldn’t, and by the time you could log in, the items you wanted weren’t available), please contact us at frcparts@usfirst.org.

We’re so sorry for this issue and for the frustration it may have caused.

Kate

Our team had a plan going in that included 4 Talons plus a Digital Sidecar, but those items were gone by time we successfully logged-in at 9:20 PST.

[Peyton Yeung]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

Perhaps FIRST will take some action for teams <1000 who were unable to log-in to FIRST Choice?

Yeah it would appear some teams got the shaft...but what can they do?

The only thing I think FIRST can do is make every item from FIRST Choice free for every team in the BOM.

Peyton

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by Tubatroopa

Yeah it would appear some teams got the shaft...but what can they do?

The only thing I think FIRST can do is make every item from FIRST Choice free for every team in the BOM.

Peyton

That doesn't really help all teams though... the teams that don't have the funds to purchase some of the items that were available through FIRST Choice are the ones who will feel this the most. It doesn't matter if it becomes free in the BOM if you could never afford it in the first place.

FIRST is taking steps to make things right... we lost half of our order to the restocking issues, and FIRST is offering help with some common items. I got this email the other day after I responded with having troubles with the system:


Hello Mr. Basse,

Thank you for your response. Again, please accept our apologies for your frustrations.

To compensate, we offer your choice of one of the following items at no cost to you (dollar or credit): Power Distribution Board, E12 Classmate, 4-slot cRIO chassis (no modules), battery, or Rev B radio. Due to our limited inventory, we can only accommodate so many requests of particular items. For that reason, please let us know your first and second picks. We'll do our best to give you your first pick and the item will ship for free (FedEx Ground or track-able USPS).

Take your time discussing this with your team, but please let us know your decision by January 25, 2013 (but if you let us know by December 28, you should have it by Kickoff).

Thank you for your understanding.

Kate

---
Kate Pilotte


Kudos to FIRST for taking steps to lessen the burden on teams that were adversely effected. I am happy to be a part of an organization that recognizes the need that teams have and respects the entry fee that we all pay does indeed need to be respected. With that said, we will take the cheapest option on the list because it is what we need. We would have suffered without a battery to make it through the season, and it seems like a small price for an item but when $70 buys you two batteries and that is a around 10% of your budget... I just hope this will result in less of a chance of me or our lead mentor footing the bill for our robot build personally again. With the way Michigan politics are going, I need to keep a close eye on my paychecks...

[Cal578]

FIRST is going above and beyond when they offer free items like that. It's great to work with an organization that not only acknowledges mistakes, but works so diligently to take responsibility for them and to correct them.

That said, I think we (the teams who are consumers of FIRST Choice) need to be careful in our complaints. I've seen many posts that are some variant of "we lost our order due to the restocking problem". That happened to me, too. But it is important to understand that we didn't actually lose an order, because we never had it. If the restocking problem had not occurred, the order would have been rejected to begin with. We only "lost" an order compared to our mistaken belief that we had an order.

It is possible (but I bet a careful analysis of the data would show this only happened to a few teams) that the restocking issue caused a loss in this limited scenario: You were considering ordering two items, one that is close to going out of stock, and one that incorrectly appears to have stock but is actually out. You only have enough credits to get one, and you choose the one that is actually out of stock, and that order is (incorrectly) accepted. By the time you find out that your order must be canceled, the other part has gone out of stock. You've lost out on that order. I'd be curious to find out how many teams actually experienced that.

Where some of us actually lost orders was due to not being able to log in for the first 10 to 15 minutes, so stock was gone before we had a chance to place the order. In that case, there is a reasonable possibility that we could have gotten a valid order in, had we been able to log in at the correct time. That happened to my team, and I have sent an email to FIRST (in response to Kate's email sent out yesterday). It will be interesting to see if they can do anything about it.

It's also been great to see all the constructive suggestions for a better system, on this and other threads. I bet we'll see a much improved FIRST Choice next year. Keep up the great work, everybody!

[Wetzel]

I think part of the problem was that items were not removed from stock when placed into a cart, only when the pay now button was clicked, causing items to jump out of carts. The items should be removed from available inventory as soon as it was placed into a cart. If items get dropped later and put back "on the shelf", then someone else has the opportunity to pick it up. I suspect this would be an easy way to reduce some of frustration faced by teams.

Wetzel

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

I think part of the problem was that items were not removed from stock when placed into a cart, only when the pay now button was clicked, causing items to jump out of carts. The items should be removed from available inventory as soon as it was placed into a cart. If items get dropped later and put back "on the shelf", then someone else has the opportunity to pick it up. I suspect this would be an easy way to reduce some of frustration faced by teams.

Wetzel

This method has it's own problems, of course. Specifically, when do you decide that someone isn't going to complete their order and empty their cart? You'd have to put some kind time limit on it, and a short one could be really frustrating. On the other hand, a long limit is going to cause a lot of confusion when Talons start coming back in stock 30 minutes after FIRST Choice opened. I don't think there's any good way to set things up with the current Black Friday rush philosophy. Any little tweaks are akin to arranging the shelves and aisles to minimize the injuries during the mob scene after the doors open.

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by Cal578

That said, I think we (the teams who are consumers of FIRST Choice) need to be careful in our complaints. I've seen many posts that are some variant of "we lost our order due to the restocking problem". That happened to me, too. But it is important to understand that we didn't actually lose an order, because we never had it. If the restocking problem had not occurred, the order would have been rejected to begin with. We only "lost" an order compared to our mistaken belief that we had an order.

But when you place an order and the order goes through, then gives you an invoice that has your full order included, and the next day you get an email that says you actually won't be receiving all the items you selected and paid shipping for... that counts as a "lost item" in my book. Again, I am frustrated, but I am not complaining. Yes I am disappointed, but also happy that things are being remedied.

[Cal578]

Originally Posted by Cal578

...That happened to my team, and I have sent an email to FIRST (in response to Kate's email sent out yesterday). It will be interesting to see if they can do anything about it. ...

(responding to my own post, just to let everyone know what happened)

I got a response from Kate at FIRST (about the same time as my previous post, actually), and yes they are doing something about it for my team, as I'm sure they've done for others. I just want to publicly thank FIRST and AndyMark for their professional response to a tough situation. Just one of many reasons I love working with this organization.

[daniel_dsouza]

Originally Posted by ksafin

12:25 & 12:28

We made two separate orders.

Really? My Spanish teacher let me out 10 minutes early, and by the time I got to my Robotics teacher, it was 5 min. before 12. The teacher let me into TIMS, and I had the password 30 seconds after 12. (Not too bad).

By the time I had logged onto First Choice(which took several tries), 5 minutes later, the Talons, Sidecars, Classmates(which we needed - ours bit the dust), were gone. 12:15 Eastern. Thankfully we ordered a cRIO and a pair of batteries (ours was having problems last year), and some other components.

Apart from the mad grab for components, and the login issues, which have pretty much been covered, the only other thing I would change is to improve the cart. For one, the cRIO would not stay in our cart. Teams should be allowed to keep a hold of items in cart or allow the PDV to be used for shipping. We lost our talons and sidecar because I had to find someone with a credit card to pay shipping!

[Clinton Bolinger]

Originally Posted by Tubatroopa

Yeah it would appear some teams got the shaft...but what can they do?

The only thing I think FIRST can do is make every item from FIRST Choice free for every team in the BOM.

Peyton

FIRST needs to do the opposite. They need to make it so that none of the FIRST Choice or KoP items are considered "free" in the BoM and raise the $3,500 budget constrain.

-Clinton-