So, today I had a package at my door...

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

...and, behold, it was none other than the Bimba cylinders we had ordered with our PDV in the first week of build season.

Honestly, I realize that this stuff is free, and I'm thankful for the generous donation, but "better late than never" doesn't ring quite true when "late" ends up being "two weeks after stop build day."

We're fortunate in that we ended up not needing them, but I think it very likely that delays like this could really wreck a season for a low-resource team. Any ideas for things FIRST could do to ensure they don't include PDVs for things that can't realistically be shipped in time for teams to use them?

Do you want FIRST to decline vendors who offer to give them massive amounts of free product? You can get at least $250 in free cylinders (based on McMaster prices). At almost 3000 teams, that's close to $750,000 in free product they are potentially offering each year.

Maybe they could include a warning that there is potentially extended leadtime, but it would be foolish for FIRST to say "Thanks, but no thanks". Especially to a company that has been a sponsor for something like 15 years in Bimba.