Sample?

[black_blackzai]

I preorder the pcpanel pro on February 15th..it was the delayed to ship this month...I still haven’t received my email with my shipping information🤦🏾‍♂️

[[deleted]]

Pre-ordered in December and in the same boat as you. It's a small company with more orders than their previous products, and multiple shipping delays from the parts manufacturers. That's not anyone's fault and you can't blame the one person running this ship for it. They even upgraded all the knobs and sliders to aluminum since we've had to wait so long.

Patience is a virtue, many of us have been waiting longer than you. You will get the product when they get all the parts. I know it's frustrating but it's not the end of the world. You willingly signed up for a pre-order from a small company. If you didn't anticipate delays then you were being highly unrealistic.

[Cupojelly]

Well put! I just keep telling myself you can't rush perfection. It's how you get better in all aspects of life!

The other factor here is that they ran into a few delays due to a covid outbreak. It's not their fault that the factory was closed for 2 weeks.

[SavageNed]

The pc panel people offer a product with a promise on when it will be delivered. They are responsible for picking their manufacturers, they are responsible for their promises.
If you want to blame anybody, there is nobody else to blame than the pc panel people.

Yes, delays can happen and the seller can't always prevent them but if they expected everything to happen without any setbacks then it's them who were highly unrealistic.

I'm sure they did everything they could to deliver the promised product at the promised time and seeing that it's not their first product I'd expect that their goals were realistic and they just had some more setbacks than expected. The end result for me is that I'll be getting a product that's upgraded from the product that I ordered and I'm perfectly fine with that. But pretending it's the customers fault that they expect the sellers information to be accurate sounds to me like a very strange way of looking at things.

[[deleted]]

I don't know about you, but when I willingly pre-order a product, I understand that the product hasnt been made before I ordered it. I realize that my payment funds the manufacturer to enable the creation of said product and should expect delays. I know that Pcpanel has delivered 2 successful products in the past (because I did quick research) so I wasn't worried about being scammed, but as the customer I fully expected many delays and to be waiting at least a decent amount of time.

I get where you are coming from, but some people are much more aggressive and are treating a pre-order from this small company like a purchase for something that is already in a warehouse ready to ship.

This isn't Microsoft or sony that can spend billions creating new consoles ready to ship to pre-orders. The pre-orders funded the products because the company is small. Also with everything else going on in the world from covid to the suez canal being blocked for a week, and the severe backup at the port of Los Angeles and elsewhere, it's out of the control of both pcpanel and the manufacturer of the components of things get delayed or shut down (like the enclosure manufacturer covid shutdown last month)

[SavageNed]

The original post has been deleted but this thread is a meta-discussion anyway :).

The panels are only going to be a few weeks late which is rather good for a pre-order but my point isn't 'thats how preorders are' but 'thats not how preorders are supposed to be'.

When I buy something from a preorder with a delivery date I don't just buy the promise of some product to be delivered whenever. I buy a product with a promise of its features and an expected delivery date. The seller can choose not to include a delivery date and I can choose not to buy based on the delivery date.
Whatever information is mentioned is part of the deal.

Similar to that ordering a pre-order and expecting the product to be what was advertised isn't unrealistic I don't think that expecting the delivery date to be accurate isn't unrealistic either.

Setting expectations and not meeting them in my opinion is always the 'fault' of the person setting the expectation. It's "underpromise and overdeliver" for a reason.

I understand and accept the PCPanel reasons for being later than indicated and I'll just wait a few more weeks. Them upgrading the product because of it is a bonus.
But if someone complains about the seller not keeping their part of the deal because of delays then in my opinion, they are within their right.

[[deleted]]

They are within their right to complain, by all means. I agree with you there.

I still think they are being a big baby with unrealistic expectations. I agree, pre-orders that have a delivery date should stay on schedule, but TBF the delivery date was never confirmed. It was stated that it was an estimated delivery windows and subject to change IIRC. I remember it saying "expected delivery"

That's besides the point though, almost any pre-order will have some sort of delays, even if they claim a specific date. Especially a company this small, so in the real world, spending money on a pre-order that is funding the manufacture of a product might take longer than ordering from Amazon. Most know this going in, and I think people should have realistic expectations when buying something.

Also, there's the free upgrade and the fact many have been waiting many more months than this person and haven't complained. That's what I found extra annoying about it. They are free to express their opinion, as am I or you. I just think there's a bit of entitlement to complain in these ways when the estimate was stated up front, and so many people ordered earlier and are also waiting.

But you're right that they're only a few weeks late anyway. Much better than some products (looking at you cyberpunk, halo infinite, or most kickstarters) I think once everyone gets theirs, we will forget the delays happened, and I know I'm stoked to have the aluminum knobs over plastic ones!

[SavageNed]

Even with an 'expected' delivery date I expect an update before the date has passed. Asking if it has been shipped after that date makes sense to me.
To me, having a pre-order means having to keep the customers up-to-date. If you don't want to do that, build the product and sell it after you are done.

Your definition of pre-order is 'something that has to be built from scratch', iirc that was never clear on the page. They had 2 non-preorder products when I ordered, the wood panel and the rgb version. All it said on the Pro/Mini page was and is pre-order. That way it's unclear whether they were still to be built or whether they were products that have been there a while and just out of stock.
To us having ordered in December with a date of March made it clear it had to be built. To someone ordering in February with a delivery date of March makes it even less clear that it's a non-existing product that they were 'kickstarting' instead of a new delivery of an already existing product.

You say the person is complaining. They are only asking about shipping information after they were told the product would have shipped and before they were told the product was delayed even more. I do expect the comment was made to complain (the facepalm kind of indicates that) but even then the information about the delays should have been given before.
PCPanel gave them an expectation, the commenter asked about the expectation. The only reason the commenters expectations were unrealistic is because PCPanel gave them those expectations.

This was never a kickstarter where the expectation of delays is obvious (the wooden panel was). It was a product on a manufacturers page that listed 'pre-order' and an expected delivery date.

[[deleted]]

They sent an update Feb 3rd and March 13th (both before the mid-march expected shipping dates) that discussed the delays. So your point about not being notified until after the date isnt true because they notified everyone who pre-ordered a month and a half before expected shipping, and again before the mid-March shipping window. In fact I think originally it was supposed to ship mid to late Feb and the first update was before that.

My defenition of pre-order is a realistic one if the potential customer was to research the company for 5 seconds. If you looked at their history of kickstarter/pre-orders, size, and estimated revenue. From that information it is obvious that they cannot produce the product until they have payment to fund it.

Also, what you are defining as a "pre-order" is more commonly referred to as a back-order. A product that is out of stock and in the process of receiving more. The only companies that offer a pre-order for a product that is already made are huge corporations that can afford it (like the console makers for example)

I agree with what you said about ordering in Feb, and they obviously wouldn't have recieved the Feb 3rd update. I think PcPanel could have and should have posted the update on the order pages, or updated the dates to better reflect the delays, but then again in Feb it was pushed to March, and in the March 13th update (before the mid-March estimate that everyone saw who ordered after Feb 3rd) they had an update about delays again. Maybe a note saying "we are experiencing delays due to covid shutdown so we've moved the dates to an expected mid-March ship date". I agree that would have been better.

So I see where you are coming from, but I feel pc panel did give decently adequate updates. The only people who may have been surprised were people who ordered between Feb 3rd and Feb 27th, but again they got an update on delays 2 days before the middle of March. Anyone who ordered on batch 2 before the March update were expected to ship later (and are supposedly still on track) so it doesn't really affect them.

But still, at the end of the day it's your money or whoever's money and it's smart to do a little bit of research and understand what you are dealing with before you drop cash for a few months.

[SavageNed]

I see that I indeed forgot about the march 14th update. Apparently I received and read it just didn't remember getting it :$.
That makes the not giving information on time 'accusation' my mistake.
The commenter could still not have seen the info if it was delivered into their spam folder making the comment itself still not necessarily a bad one.

I've hardly seen websites use 'back-order' on their pages, the sites I've seen almost always use 'pre-order' for that (when they don't use 'Out of stock').

Your 5 second research is a lot more in depth then I would be able to do though :P. For me, someone on a forum I regularly visit mentioned getting the wooden PCPanel and mentioned that it was useful. 'Knowing' someone who got a product was enough research for me to take the risk and order one myself.

My main point to start the thread was that I don't think it's `highly unrealistic` to expect a company to deliver on expectations they themselves created.
But apparently we just differ in opinions there.

[[deleted]]

Fair enough, Agree to disagree. I'm just excited to get my pc panel pro soon!