***MORE AGH DVD SHIPPING INFO AND ANSWERS*** Hey everyone. For those that are asking how are the DVDs being shipped in regard to ordering date, Id be happy to explain. What you have to first understand about the pre-order system, is that the only first come, first served protocol that we publicly offered up was that the first 500 orders would be signed by Ryan and I. Beyond that, EVERYONE was entitled to their DVD on Sept. 18th. That means if you bought your DVD on July 7th or May 23rd as a pre-order, our initial target release date for ALL DVDS was Sept. 18th. Once that date was missed (for a multitude of reasons that weve explained in previous posts) our first initial thought was the obvious, which was just go in order, even though we never offered to the public a first come, first served process, as that was never considered, as the goal was to hit the release date. Well, the just go in order method immediately became problematic for a multitude of reasons. First off, the first 500 ordered were autographed copies which ultimately took much longer than anticipated, as once the late DVD shipments arrived, I signed the first 500 while on tour in whatever time I had, which took three days, and then I shipped them to Ryan, which took about a week and a half for him to sign them (which as Ive stated before, all things considered with his condition, I was thankful they were done that fast). In order to further save time, I rerouted my tour bus to actually pick them up. All in all, the total time it took to get them all signed and back was over two weeks. Now, if we were to ONLY ship on a first come, first served basis, that means that we would have shipped NOTHING for over two weeks, as the first 500 represented the first come orders. Obviously sitting around for two weeks, shipping nothing to protect a protocol that was never offered, was clearly NOT an option we should have chosen. With that being the case, we chose to just start shipping. And initially, we just started with order 501, with multiple people shipping from the bottom of the list... which again became problematic, because we had a team in Los Angeles shipping, and I had a two person team (and myself) shipping from the road, as I was on tour. This lead to tons of double checking, several double shipments, and in general, an extremely slow process. So after we all discussed the process, we chose to keep one person shipping in the order that the orders first came in, with another person tackling another section on the master list, and a third person would tackle a different section of the master list. The result was that our production output TRIPLED once we made this decision - which was a major step in the right direction, as ALL ORDERS WERE DUE immediately, as they were all due on Sept. 18th. This also seemed to tackle the issue of fairness as well. Countless people have emailed us saying, I ordered my DVD on July 10th as a pre-order, which means it was initially due on Sept. 18th with the rest of the pre-orders. You never stated anywhere that it was a first come/first served process. If you had, I would have bought it earlier! The people making these complaints were absolutely correct. Outside of the initial 500 autographed copies, we never stated that DVDs would be shipped in the order they were bought, as we never anticipated missing the initial release date of Sept. 18th, as ALL pre-orders were initially scheduled to be delivered at the same time. And THIS is the reason that people with different order dates are receiving their DVDs simultaneously. This is because EVERYONE who ordered a DVD before Sept. 18th is owed that DVD as soon as we can possibly ship it to you. Obviously we currently lack the ability to ship every single order out at once (for more reason that you could possibly imagine), or we would have already done that. So we just have to attack the master list as a whole. Every single day. Package. Lable. Ship. Mark off the list. Repeat. Also, its very important to understand that if you ordered your DVD on June 19th, that doesnt mean that your DVD was three months late on Sept. 19th. That means that on Sept. 19th, your DVD was one day late, with every other pre-order. Im just pointing this out so that hopefully you can all see that from our end, we have to consider EVERYONE who bought a DVD before Sept. 18th, as EVERYONE is our priority. The bottom line is that since the beginning, Murphys Law was in full effect with our first ever attempt at this, as a later manufacturing delivery collided with poor timing, while a massive influx of orders landed squarely on top of a platform that was designed to handle the shipping of about 10 percent of the orders that rapidly came in during the days leading up to Sept. 18th. This led to a domino effect of issues, which weve been battling (and thankfully slowly winning) ever since. I said this in another email as well, but I could truly write a book about the things Ive learned in regard to the creation of a distribution center. But while these delays are both stressful and embarrassing, I also know that our failures, if nothing else, serve us well as the teachers of all future endeavors. So needless to say, this will never happen again. But as far as THIS delay goes, we can never apologize enough to all of you. But what we can do, is maintain our promise to keep fixing the system, in which were packaging and shipping daily. And we will not stop until EVERY LAST ORDER is fulfilled, as evident by those posting their pics and photos of their DVDs that they are receiving daily... WHICH WE SINCERELY THANK YOU ALL FOR THAT! In retrospect, perhaps the pre-order system wasnt the best idea without a clear idea as to how excited the public really was to see the film, which their excitement far exceeded our expectations. This is one of the rare cases where being humble truly bit us in the ass. But with the pre-ordering system being so successful with other companies here in Los Angeles, we should have realized why such successful artists as even the DAVE MATTHEWS BAND do not give an EXACT DATE as to when pre-orders will ship. Why dont they? Because theyve done this before. They know the system. Theyre wise with age and the experience that we are now gaining. If you check the link below, youll see the latest DAVE MATTHEWS PRE-ORDER states that there DVD/CD combo pack will ship on or around December 13th, while they also DO NOT give a final date in which the product will be received. Again... the learning curve. The reason they are giving a floating shipping date is because they have no idea how many ordesr they will receive, which means they dont know exactly when, for sure, they can ultimately ship... or fulfill those orders. These are the things we now know. Much love, everyone. As promised, the DVDs are coming, as were getting better and better at this each week. And THANK YOU ALL who continue to order your DVDs. Your faith in us, as well as the faith of those who have already ordered, continue to provide us with all of the drive we need to not only continue to fix this system, but also to ensure that the system stays fixed for all future releases. All the best. - Chad
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 06:49:44 +0000
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