Nexus 4 stock shortage down to 'huge demand', LG explains

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/nexus-4-stock-shortage-down-to-huge-demand-lg-explains-50009924/

by fam • 14 years ago

53 41 14 years ago

crave.cnet.co.uk

bitcartel• 14 years ago

This doesn't cut the mustard and should not excuse LG and Google for the purchasing chaos. People who ordered just a few days ago have already received their phones, while others have been waiting for weeks. Some people are even ordering a second phone just to see if they get a shipping notification, and if they do, cancelling their original order. It's a bit of a farce.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1962514&...

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

I sympathize with the low estimate of demand. The Play Store debacle is embarrassing though. I suspect that's Wallet's fault.

chaz• 14 years ago

Agree, but it does debunk the suspicion of artificially constrained supply. Phones are too hot and cycle too quickly to string out sales.

thibauts• 14 years ago

> Some people are even ordering a second phone just to see if they get a shipping notification

I got mine before the shipping notification

Alaskan0052• 14 years ago

I wonder how many they have sold. Does anyone have any concrete numbers?

jarcoal• 14 years ago

Nope, Google doesn't give them out. If you're an investor, don't worry, they're "huge" -_-

Alaskan0052• 14 years ago

Nah, I was trying to see if it's really a f-up, a marketing scheme or a mix of the two. Maybe demand is really unexpectedly high.

dangrossman• 14 years ago

They likely ran through their stock of replacement units for warranty issues, too. I reported mine defective and have an RMA to send it back, but it's been a week and they still haven't shipped the replacement.

linhat• 14 years ago

I wonder what part LG actually plays in this shortage. When you are producing a device for somebody else that is strikingly similar (as in sharing the exact same hardware platform) to one of your own devices, which you are selling for way more (with of course small but nonetheless important differences)...well, something just screams conflict of interest to me. I am in no way accusing LG of doing so, I'm sure they have had their contract with Google on this and followed it to the point, but still, something just doesn't feal right.

Uhm, well, maybe just my paranoia distortion field kicking in, I for one hope I am completely astray on this one.

tadfisher• 14 years ago

LG isn't selling their device directly to consumers, they are selling them to carriers and retail channels. For your statement to be accurate, you'd need to compare the cost to the reseller to purchase either device.

yareally• 14 years ago

I wonder how many phones LG is capable of making at a given time? I know that Samsung can put out 5 million a month (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung-idUSBRE...), but I would imagine LG cannot come anywhere as close as them, given the size differences in their mobile divisions.

pja9• 14 years ago

My experience ordering a Nexus 4 was a bit of a farce: Google managed to trigger the anti-fraud block on both of my credit cards, each with different UK banks. It looks like they put through a small value transaction (£1) first to test whether the card works & only then put through the full purchase transaction.

Why they can't just put the transaction through in the first place & just report back if it fails I've no idea, but thanks to Google I had to phone up the respective banks to get the cards unblocked. Not the best use of anyone's time...

ig1• 14 years ago

(entirely speculative)

They may be doing it precisely for that purpose.

Risk systems generally working on scoring mechanism, if the £1 transaction was enough to push you over the threshold then your cards may well be on the borderline for "this card might be stolen".

Google might be using it to test if the card is a borderline "stolen card" case because they want to be extra cautious about who they ship phones to.

alvarosm3• 14 years ago

Read my reply to see how they're also extra-cautious about selling $1 apps...

pja9• 14 years ago

Yeah, that would make a twisted kind of sense.

I never have this kind of trouble with other vendors though.

alvarosm3• 14 years ago

That's another of the many virtues of Google Checkout / Wallet... it blocks a ton of transactions based on some dubious anti-fraud checks. I guess regular sellers just move on to a better payment processor but those of us who sell on Google Play are stuck with this joke of a payment processor. Also, Google gets a 30% cut just for exposure at the store and the poor payment processing they do, I mean, support is beyond a joke, it's simply non-existent. Just like when I ordered the Nexus 4 and got in contact to complain about the delays, talking to the "support" staff (when you manage to get an actual human being to reply at all) is like talking to a brick wall with some FAQs stuck to it in post-it notes. I once sent a screenshot to a couple of reporters to show them just how many transactions were automatically cancelled as a side note -we were talking about other Google Play issues- and I guess they didn't even bother to look into the cancelled transactions issues because it looked unreal. I think it got a bit better over time, it's probably 10% cancelled now, but it used to be up to 50% in particularly bad days and maybe 20% average. A total joke.

pja9• 14 years ago

Nope, it's not Wallet doing the blocking (at least not in my case): it was the banks which had issued the credit cards in question.

I've had it happen before, but that was when I'd bought a small pile of cheap Android Apps & then gone to buy something expensive elsewhere (not via Google Wallet) and those transactions triggered the fraud checks, not entirely unreasonably even if it was a little annoying at the time.

Having my cards blocked because Google is issuing fake test transactions for no good reason whatsoever that I can see is somewhat more annoying however!

taligent• 14 years ago

The small value transaction is called a pre-auth and yes it is designed to test whether the card works. It's not a big deal in most countries since it just disappears automatically. But IIRC in the UK it doesn't. Google probably figures they can use the same rules in every country. Pretty dumb move.

The reason stores do it this way is because of legal reasons. They can't bill your credit card until it is shipped but yet need to know you have the money before building it.

pja9• 14 years ago

They're still issuing a pre-auth for the whole amount even after the small-value one, so what's the point? They could just pre-auth the full value in the first place!

They can't legally take payment until they actually ship regardless so they're going to have to put the transaction through the card at a later date whatever they do initially.

ludwigvan3• 14 years ago

Sidenote: Google's customer service is absolutely horrible. I was reading the horror stories, but now that I have experienced it personally, it seems worse than I imagined.

Basically, my unit is about to be shipped on Dec 19, and I have been trying to cancel it since last week; but they refuse to cancel it on the grounds that it is only possible to cancel it within 1 hour of purchase.

I am leaving US on Dec 12, and this means the unit is going to get shipped to an address I no longer have access to, and I will have to ask the landlord to do a delivery refusal when the UPS guy appears at the door. I have emailed and called them about 10 times to cancel the order, or change the shipping date or address; and they won't bother to do any of that.

If you have been reading about Google not treating its customers properly on the net, rest assured that the situation is not exaggerated at all; they are very unprofessional.

Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?

mynameishere• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargeback

Just call the number on the back of your credit card.

Lewisham• 14 years ago

I'm not sure the credit card will perform a chargeback in this case: it's not that Google is misrepresenting their product or the product isn't being delivered, it's that he's changed his mind.

While Google is being extremely uncooperative, that's not enough to warrant a chargeback.

subsection1h• 14 years ago

    Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?

Might your landlord allow you to post a sheet a paper to your front door stating that you refuse delivery? This is what I did to refuse delivery of a 16GB Nexus 7 (I found a 32GB Nexus 7 for a little over $200), and it worked. I didn't need to interact with a UPS driver.

That being said, the 16GB Nexus 7 I ordered was delivered to Google on Nov 29 and I still haven't received a refund or been contacted by Google regarding my order.

ludwigvan3• 14 years ago

Thank you, this is what I am going to do, although in my case, the situation is a bit more complex.

The apartment complex I live in receives packages from UPS en masse, and then classifies it according to apartment numbers, so there is a possibility that they might not detect my package before accepting it, but I will ask them to keep an eye on it.

brandall10• 14 years ago

I know on the xda dev forums plenty of people have complained about it through normal customer service channels (ie. where a person is involved, email/phone). It seems some have found success by logging in to their Google Wallet and canceling that way. Apologies if you've already tried this as it may seem obvious - but there are users claim success in canceling orders locked in a limbo state for weeks and re-ordering and getting a phone from a later allocation.

My theory is not they're trying to be terrible, but that they simply do not have the bandwidth allocated to handle a launch of this size... mistakes du jour.

To Google's credit, it does sound like for those who have received a phone with defects they've been pretty receptive in sending out replacements. I don't know why they have that part of the process covered but not the initial procurement.

I feel blessed my experience wasn't too bad (got a weird shipment notification 6 days before it actually shipped) but the phone itself it mostly spot on.

pja9• 14 years ago

I don't know why they have that part of the process covered but not the initial procurement.

Because the cost to Google if they don't is huge: credit card chargebacks are very expensive for the vendor. Then there's the PR cost of having hacked off customers complaining all over the net about receiving broken goods and being given the run around by Google.

Far better not to ship anything at all than to ship something broken and then refuse (by inaction) to do anything about it.

sahaskatta• 14 years ago

If you sign up for a UPS MyChoice account. You can pay a one-time $5 fee to have the package redirected to a new address of your choice.

That definitely won't solve the complains you have with Google, but its a solution if you still want the phone.

Also, my experience has actually been fairly good so far. I had purchased a Nexus 7 and about 3-4 months later the screen began separating on the side. I called the support line. They picked up in less than a minute. They sent out a brand new unit and let me continue using mine until the replacement arrives.

pja9• 14 years ago

Go here: http://support.google.com/googleplay/bin/request.py?hl=en-US...

and paste in the order number from your Google Wallet transaction history, which you'll find here:

https://wallet.google.com/manage/#transactions:

Why they don't put a link to cancel the order in the transaction history I've no idea. The one hour thing is to do with the timelag between Google Wallet taking your order and that order being transferred to Google Commerce. This second cancellation method lets you send an order cancellation directly to Google Commerce. Yes, it's ridiculously obtuse.

ludwigvan3• 14 years ago

Thank you, that's what I have been doing, but it doesn't work unfortunately. I get an automated response each time I try that, and when I called them, they said there is nothing they could do, even though the unit has not shipped yet.

"Thanks for contacting Google Play regarding cancellation of your order. All orders are processed directly after your purchase is complete. As a result, this means that there is a very short window of time to cancel an order prior to shipping.

Although we attempted to honor your request, we were unable to cancel your order in this window. "

Whatever that "window" is, it seems longer than 10 days!

nQuo• 14 years ago

Back in November after the first batch sold out within half an hour, I wanted to get a Nexus 4 to give Android another go and check out Google Now and other new features of 4.2, as iOS6 felt a bit stale despite being a big fan of the black & slate iPhone 5's industrial design. But I got tired of checking the Google Play link everyday which always read "Out of stock". So I got the iPhone 5 instead.

When the second batch became available, I ordered one for a friend, still waiting for it to ship. (it said 1-2 weeks so it should ship this coming week)

From everything I've read so far, the Nexus 4 seems like a great phone at an unbelievable price, but Google and LG are really shooting themselves in the foot with customer service, shipping on a frustrating not-on-first-come-first-ordered basis and repeated delays.

I think a lot of customers would've been happier if they sold it through Amazon instead.

fungi• 14 years ago

I have a theory :)

Nexus 4 was built with a "defective" qualcomm LTE chip that LG was able to pick up for a bargain. hence the great nexus 4 rock bottom price.

Now LG have exhausted their "defective" chip supply, they need to negotiate a new deal with qualcomm/google.

This is based on a random comment i read fsck knows where explaining how high spec, short run, chinese phones come in to being.

Raphael• 14 years ago

Perhaps the LTE radio was defective, but the rest was fine.

keeperofdakeys• 14 years ago

From a hardware perspective, the Nexus 4 uses the same SoC as the LG Optimus G, it just lacks amplifiers and antennas designed for LTE frequencies (one LTE frequency is in the UTMS band, so it can function in most phones unofficially). So you could be right, although I'm not sure if LG puts together the final SoC.

pja9• 14 years ago

ArsTechnica (IIRC) had LTE working on their Nexus 4 in Canada. The chipset is fine, the phone simply doesn't have the power amplifiers required for all the LTE bands.

general_failure• 14 years ago

mm, I ordered one and it was pretty easy. Things just worked. Am I the only one with such a good experience?

I am guessing the ones for whom the ordering process failed rant the most :)

Nexus 4 stock shortage down to 'huge demand', LG explains

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