Order Placed

Google stated in the announce­ment of the Nexus 7 that the tablet would be shipped/available “mid-July.”

Google’s Order-Fulfillment Clus­ter F*ck

As noted above, I placed my order on the Google Play store within 30 min­utes of the announce­ment of the Nexus 7 at the Google I/O devel­oper con­fer­ence. A charge was autho­rized on my card. (It was only later that I dis­cov­ered that that amount was never processed.) Fast for­ward sev­eral weeks later, and rumors started to sur­face that GameStop, Ado­rama, and Office Depot had received ship­ments of the tablets. Accord­ing to reports on Fri­day, July 13th, retail­ers were specif­i­cally told not to sell or release of of the devices. Nev­er­the­less, GameStop has been hand­ing out Nexus 7s to any­one that pre-ordered, as well as a few that hadn’t. There were a num­ber of peo­ple who were run­ning around with their hair on Fri­day, July 13th. (I’m not super­sti­tious.) My out­rage was more tem­pered and focused than many I saw going apoplec­tic online. My ire was not directed at GameStop, or those who were able to get their Nexus 7 tablets at retail stores before those of us that ordered through the Google Play store. No, my annoy­ance is directed squarely at Google.Come on Google. What a shitty way to treat cus­tomers who fol­lowed your encour­age­ment to order through the Play store!

This is the mes­sage that Google deliv­ered on Twit­ter Fri­day, July 13th.

Locked and loaded, ready to play: we’ve started ship­ping +Nexus 7 pre-orders today! google.com/nexus/#/7

— Google Nexus (@googlenexus) July 13, 2012

Of course, yours truly, and prob­a­bly a num­ber of other peo­ple, are not on Twit­ter. Was it too much for Google to send an update email to all of the peo­ple that placed pre-orders through the Google Play store? Fri­day the 13th came to a close with absolutely no word about ship­ment from Google. Bummer!

Appar­ently, the Pony Express finally reached Google’s head­quar­ters with the news of con­sumer out­raged about the bun­gled release of the Nexus 7. The fol­low­ing mes­sage was posted on the Google Play store sup­port page on Tues­day, July 17.

An update on Nexus 7 pre-order ship­ping sta­tus
We’ve had incred­i­ble demand for our new Nexus 7 tablet and are ship­ping them as quickly as pos­si­ble. When your device ships you will receive a noti­fi­ca­tion from Google Play with a ship­ping track­ing num­ber. We will have all orders placed through July 13 processed and shipped soon. Orders placed after July 13 will ship accord­ing to the quoted time­frame when you pur­chased and we will update you with a track­ing num­ber when we’ve shipped. Thanks for your patience.

Below are more spe­cific details by coun­try for devices ordered through July 13. If the below infor­ma­tion is not true for you, and you ordered on or before July 13, please reach out to our sup­port team so we can investigate.

In the US:

We’ve shipped all stand­alone Nexus 7 8GB orders (e.g.: those with­out a case, charger or Nexus Q). By the end of day on July 19 (PDT), we will have shipped all stand­alone Nexus 7 16GB orders placed through July 11 (PDT), and upgraded these orders to overnight ship­ping. We will process the remain­ing stand­alone Nexus 7 16GB orders by the end of next week with overnight shipping.

If you ordered your tablet with a case, charger or Nexus Q, your Nexus 7 will ship this week with overnight ship­ping, in some cases ahead of the rest of your order. But don’t worry, the rest of your order will be on its way soon.

In Canada:

We’ve shipped all Nexus 7 8GB orders. We are in the process of ship­ping Nexus 7 16GB orders and will ship them in 1–2 weeks.

In the UK:

All Nexus 7 8GB orders will ship by July 20 (BST). All Nexus 7 16GB orders placed through June 30 (BST), will ship by July 20 (BST). The remain­ing Nexus 7 16GB orders will ship next week.

In Aus­tralia:

All Nexus 7 8GB and Nexus 7 16GB orders will be ful­filled by the end of day on July 19 (AEST) and will arrive in 3–5 days.

My Odyssey With UPS

I was greeted Sat­ur­day morn­ing, July 14, with an email from Google, sent at 3:33 am.

My excite­ment about receiv­ing a ship­ping noti­fi­ca­tion was tem­pered by the fact that there was not pro­jected deliv­ery date given on the UPS page. There was just a mes­sage that the label had been cre­ated, but UPS had not yet received the pack­age for ship­ping. Inter­est­ing, as you can see from the email, the label was actu­ally cre­ated on Mon­day, July 9. Why did it take six days to actu­ally set the UPS ship­ment process in motion?

I got all excited on Tues­day, July 17, because my UPS ship­ping track­ing page showed the I was due to get my Nexus 7 that day. Womp Womp! The UPS page never updated to show that the tablet was “out for deliv­ery.” I called the UPS store where the Nexus 7 was being shipped, and the guy told me, rather matter-of-factly, that he’s pretty sure that they’re not get­ting any more deliv­er­ies for the day. He fol­lowed by say­ing that I should expect to see it the next day. Incred­u­lous, I con­nected with a UPS rep on its web­site. The rep told me that the pack­age was, indeed, out for deliv­ery and it would arrive at the UPS store before it closed. I left work and decided to camp out in front of the store from about 6:10 on. Just as my hopes began to crum­ble, I see a UPS truck rum­ble up to the store. My heart started to race. The dri­ver go out the truck (spy­ing me look­ing like a puppy in the win­dow wait­ing for mama to open the door) and walked into the UPS store. She came out with a num­ber of pack­ages to be shipped. She put the pack­ages in the back of the truck, got set­tled in her seat, fired up the big brown box, and rolled out. My heart sunk. I got back online with a rep from UPS and was told that the pack­age won’t be deliv­ered until Wednes­day, July 18. I slumped down in the driver’s seat and tried to muster up the energy to drive off — Nexus 7less. Sigh! What’s another day? It’s just around the cor­ner. At that point, I was deflated and sim­ply resigned to wait­ing to see what hap­pened the next day.

Here is a lit­tle some­thing that struck me as bazaar about the han­dling of my pack­age by UPS. Here is the track­ing page updated as of 7 am, Wednes­day, July 18.

First of all, that “Out for Deliv­ery” at 7:47 am on Tues­day, July 17, was not listed all day. That must have been added overnight Tues­day. Inter­est­ingly, if the pack­age was, in fact, out for deliv­ery on Tues­day, July 17, why didn’t it reach Rockville? Why is there a depar­ture scan from the same loca­tion, Lan­dover, at 7:59 pm? Did the pack­age ride around in the truck all day and then come back? Why was it sent to Lau­rel, and the returned to Lan­dover? In fair­ness, UPS would tell you that my ship­ment was 2nd Day Air, and Wednes­day is still within the promised second-day deliv­ery. I don’t dis­pute this time­line, but if the pack­age was out for deliv­ery on Tues­day, why wasn’t it deliv­ered? What Brown Can Do For Me is answer some questions.

If you’re not famil­iar with the Wash­ing­ton, DC met­ro­pol­i­tan area, Lan­dover (A on the map) and Lau­rel (B on the map) are not that far from each other — about 15 miles. The UPS Store in Rockville, MD, where my pack­aged is to be shipped, is about the same dis­tance from Lan­dover than is Lau­rel. If noth­ing else, I will have a well-traveled Nexus 7.

Wednes­day, June 18 was sup­posed to be “The Day.” I checked in around 11 am, and was told by the UPS web­site and by rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the phone that the pack­age was, indeed, out for deliv­ery. I checked with the UPS Store, and the per­son told me that they received their pack­age drop off, and there was noth­ing for me. I called UPS to inquire, and some­how the story change. One per­son told me that the pack­age was out for deliv­ery. Another per­son said that it appears that the pack­age is still sit­ting in Lan­dover. Or was it. I spoke to some­one at the UPS facil­ity and Lan­dover and she said, in no uncer­tain terms, that they didn’t know where the pack­age is. WTF?!

Come again! UPS scans every­thing. How on the world could a pack­age go miss­ing??? Per­haps because I was still hope­ful that I might receive my pack­age on Wednes­day, I was patient than I might nor­mally be with con­flict­ing answers and matter-of-fact cus­tomer ser­vice. Late Wednes­day, I was trans­ferred to some­one in the “inves­ti­ga­tions unit” of UPS. A very pleas­ant woman walked through my dilemma, and she revealed that the pack­age had, for the last two days, been rid­ing around in a truck for deliv­ery in DC. Because the pack­age was sup­posed to be redi­rected, the dri­ver — for two days — scanned the pack­age and real­ized that it was not sup­posed to be deliv­ered to my house. The dri­ver would bring this pack­age back to the Lan­dover facil­ity, which does not deliver to Rockville to be sent to the Lau­rel facil­ity, which does deliver to Rockville. It appears the pack­age was routed to Lau­rel for deliver to Rockville, but then the machines or a per­son scanned the orig­i­nal label or bar code and sent the pack­age back to Lan­dover. Argh! The UPS rep­re­sen­ta­tive assured me that both the Lan­dover and Lau­rel facil­i­ties were noti­fied about my pack­age. I was annoyed that another day was com­ing to a close with no deliv­ery, but I felt (naively) hope­ful about a Thurs­day delivery.

I was plan­ning to go to New York on Thurs­day after­noon, and I really wanted to have the Nexus 7 with me for the trip. I must admit that I approached the day less hope­ful, because the UPS track­ing page showed the pack­age was yet again in Lan­dover. Hon­estly, I was start­ing to reach a point where I no longer cared. Nev­er­the­less, I called UPS to see what story (read: excuse) they would yarn. What hap­pened to “We Love Logis­tics®?” I was shut­tled from per­son to per­son, demand­ing to speak to managers/supervisors. I became increas­ingly frus­trated because I had to explain my sit­u­a­tion to each per­son. I finally asked, rather angrily, “Don’t you all have/keep notes?” I never really got an answer. It sounds like a call log is kept, but pos­si­bly not much more. After finally blow­ing a gas­ket, I was con­nected to some­one in UPS’s “tracer unit.” (Does that mean that the per­son in the “inves­ti­ga­tions unit” was not really inves­ti­gat­ing? I was told that there was no refer­ral of my sit­u­a­tion to a the investigations/tracer unit. Ugh!) I had to leave to get on a train to New York, but I was told that they would have the super­vi­sor of the dri­ver from the Lan­dover facil­ity call me. Before leav­ing for the train sta­tion, I sub­mit­ted a sec­ond com­plaint, this time online, with Google. About 90 min­utes later, while relax­ing on the train to New York, some­one called me, say­ing that she was from the UPS in DC. The young woman basi­cally told me the same thing I’ve heard for the last three days. This young woman had no answers, but told me that they would call me back once they reached the dri­ver. About 45 min­utes later, I got another call say­ing that the pack­age was, in fact, on the truck for deliv­ery in DC. The dri­ver will bring it back and it will be sent to Lau­rel for deliver to Rockville. I just about burst into flames in my seat.

What Hap­pened to “We Love Logistics®?”

I, qui­etly scream­ing, told her that I’ve been given this same line for the last three days. How can I trust that any­one at these two facil­i­ties is going to get this right? She replied sharply, “LIKE I TOLD YOU…” Whoa! Pump the brakes. Is this chick give me atti­tude? Oh Hell.To.The.Nah! Lucky for her, I was sit­ting a table with three young kids, oth­er­wise she would have got­ten cursed out. Instead, I just said, “Fine. We’ll see if you all can get this right, but I’m not hold­ing my breath. Thank you (sar­casm)!” Click.

On Fri­day, July 20, I received sev­eral emails from UPS indi­cat­ing that they ini­ti­ated a deliv­ery inter­cept on the pack­age — mean­ing it should be routed to Lau­rel for deliver to Rockville. Isn’t that what I did with UPS’s own MyChoice ser­vice? (A ser­vice that costs $40 a year, by the way.) At 11:05 am, I received another email noti­fi­ca­tion from UPS.

Just before noon that day, I received a call from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from UPS. She wanted to make sure that I knew that the pack­age had been deliv­ered. Nice touch, but a lit­tle too late. This track­ing detail sheet almost serves as a sto­ry­board for this story.

This week, I am going to demand that UPS refund the $40 I paid for the MyChoice ser­vice. I have also asked (read: demanded) that Google refund the amount that I paid for ship­ping! I have yet to receive any reply to the two com­plaints that I lodged with them.

This whole thing is the epit­ome of shitty cus­tomer ser­vice.

I don’t want to start a flame war, but I keep think­ing that Apple would never have allowed such a clus­ter f*ck with a prod­uct release. If Google hopes to con­tinue sell­ing prod­ucts directly to con­sumers through the Google Play store, I cer­tainly hope that it has learned some valu­able lessons from the mis­han­dled Nexus 7 release. This whole thing, top to bot­tom, is the epit­ome of shitty cus­tomer service.