Gerry's Is Getting An Equinox Delivery Tuesday!

[relicmeister]

It's interesting all the dealer- buyer relationships described here. I prepaid for mine on October 8, and was not told what number I was just that I was close to the top of the list. He expects just a few from the initial shipment and I doubt I'll get one of them. I asked a week before I ordered to go on the list with the money transaction a week later, and the dealer said he couldn't do it.  I'm not a new customer either. 

[Guest Tnsharpshooter]

Dearly beloved,

It is obvious there are not enough units to go around currently to satisfy wants.

So, what was Minelab to do with what they had?

They took preorder numbers and made allocations to dealers.  Sure some dealers got just one unit, some more.  Most I have seen reported is 4 units.  I don't  know how many units units Kellyco got.  It was reported by good source they had approx 200 units preordered.

So a little tip here for folks.

It seems Minelab was/is trying to let all dealers in on some action, albeit it is small right now.

Meaning, if you desire in the future to get a new release early, try to contact a dealer that handles fewer detectors on average.  Try to be number one on their list.  It would have been awfully difficult for example  to have been number 1 on Kellyco's list right?

These allocations likely to continue (my speculation) for a while longer.

I also think any units received by folks on or before Tues next week in USA, I truly  believe these units flown into USA from assembly country.  I don't doubt there are shipments floating headed for USA and other countries.

So perhaps the waves of Equinox will grow with size and come frequent.

[Norm S]

 When they announced on Jan 31st they would begin shipping they were ready. Who knows how many were pre ordered world wide. 10,000 or 100,000 but I feel confident they build at least 200 or 300 per day. At that rate they could have 10,000 built in 50 days. I would guess they can put a 1500 -2000 in a sea container and we know France got them 1st and I would guess the UK gets them right after France. We know they had at least 60 days of pre build. Minelab announced they tweaked the iron bias and gold setting to multi frequency so I am confident they are shipping as fast as they can. 

The detectors don't go to the dealers then shipped to you. They go to a distribution center and shipped direct to you from there. Some dealers are lucky to have a total of 20 detectors of all brands on hand and those are for the walk in sales and demo. 

I have bought 3 Minelab products from one of the top dealers in the USA and everything I bought was shipped from Michigan

Think about it the cost would be to much to ship to a distribution center then to the dealer and then to you. 

[Guest Tnsharpshooter]

20 minutes ago, Norm S said:

 When they announced on Jan 31st they would begin shipping they were ready. Who knows how many were pre ordered world wide. 10,000 or 100,000 but I feel confident they build at least 200 or 300 per day. At that rate they could have 10,000 built in 50 days. I would guess they can put a 1500 -2000 in a sea container and we know France got them 1st and I would guess the UK gets them right after France. We know they had at least 60 days of pre build. Minelab announced they tweaked the iron bias and gold setting to multi frequency so I am confident they are shipping as fast as they can. 

The detectors don't go to the dealers then shipped to you. They go to a distribution center and shipped direct to you from there. Some dealers are lucky to have a total of 20 detectors of all brands on hand and those are for the walk in sales and demo. 

I have bought 3 Minelab products from one of the top dealers in the USA and everything I bought was shipped from Michigan

Think about it the cost would be to much to ship to a distribution center then to the dealer and then to you. 

There is only one problem with your calculations.

What is it?

Seems there was a program update.

So the built units had  to be programmed or reprogrammed.

I don't know exactly what this entails-with Equinox being waterproof

Remember they had to have a place to store units too.

I don't think folks think about how much time it takes to pack a box properly and go thru the QC checks.

Take a lot of space for 5,000 Equinoxes, or 7,500, or 10,000 units.

.Product notice indicating some Equinox units ready to ship dated 2 Feb 2018, although due to time zones, we in USA got to see this late 01 Feb 2018.  It is currently the 08 Feb.

[Ridge Runner]

Well I got the email from my dealer and said it’s on the way.

Sorry guys wrong dealer it was Harbor Freight 

[Wayfarer]

I never said Minelab was "forcing" this on dealers.  Let's try to explain it this way.  Let's say you are Minelab.  Your dealers are reporting a total of 10,000 preorders, yet your first shipment is only going to be 500.  What do you do?   First off, you know that prepaid orders are firm orders that have been placed at one dealer by one customer wanting one detector, so basically a sure thing that the accountants and shipping departments can count on.  Contrast this to an unpaid preorder.  An unpaid preorder only takes a phone call or an email to make, with no commitment of money.  That means it can be cancelled at any time.  This is MUCH less certain, so should carry much less weight when allocating detectors to individual dealers.  The dealer that has 20 prepaid on full orders vs the dealer that 50 unpaid orders, who are you going to allocate more detectors to? 

Additionally, many prospective purchasers have placed multiple unpaid preorders with the intention of seeing which dealer comes through first and then will simply cancel the other orders.  I know this is going on, because many posters on the forums have openly stated that is exactly what they are doing!  And there's nothing wrong with that, it is simply one way to try to game the system, which is perfectly legal in a free market.  So that's many duplicate orders right there.

So back to the dealer that has 20 prepaid orders, which are a sure thing vs 50 unpaid orders at another dealer.  Out of that 50, maybe 10 will actually end up buying from that dealer (just guessing, but I'm just trying to illustrate my point).  Minelab would likely end up shipping twice the number of detectors out of the first batch to the dealer with prepaid orders.  

Finally, this situation of a huge shortage was not known back in September when dealers started taking preorders.  Nobody knew if Minelab would be able to quickly meet initial preorder demand or not.  The demand turned out to be unprecedented, likely catching Minelab behind the curve with production capacity unable to quickly match the huge preorder demand.  So back to what Minelab should do?  They have to decide on a fair allocation among dealers and the dealers that have a large number of prepaid preorders are going to get a higher allocation than dealers who do not.  And we're talking only 1-4 detectors per dealer, so even many of the prepaid preorders aren't going to be filled in this first batch, and the individual dealers are going to have to start at the top of their list and work down.

The dealers that took prepaid preorders were probably just more savvy and had a better idea of how large the demand would be versus the initial supply and wanted to do right by their customers just in case there turned out to be a shortage and knowing how basic supply chain management works.  If these dealers were being overly cautious and it turned out everybody was going to get their preoprders, prepaid or not, in the initial batch, then there would be no harm no foul, everybody would be getting their detectors.  But just in case there was a shortage, these dealers who had their customers prepay, ended up being the smart ones since it was entirely forseable that should their be a shortage, the fair way to allocate would be by looking at the number of actual prepaid hard/confirmed orders.  As it turned out, these dealers were the savvy ones, because when it came time to allocate a tiny number of initial detectors, Minelab did end up taking into consideration how many paid up-front preorders each dealer had.  They may have even asked, but not demanded, that each dealer take care of their fully paid up front customers first, which only seems fair.  

This seems totally logical and reasonable to me.  

[Ridge Runner]

I’m not sure if the Equinox will go the depth I want so I may have to pass it up for this one.

[mn90403]

6 minutes ago, Ridge Runner said:

I’m not sure if the Equinox will go the depth I want so I may have to pass it up for this one.

Did the dealer ask you to preorder?  Or rather Pay at the time of order?  (Everything is a preorder!)

[LukeJ]

All I know is that I placed my pre-order a month or so back.  I trust and support 'my dealer' and if money up front secures my spot in line then that's what I'm going to do.  I'm #9 on his list.  There's a good chance I'll get my 800 in the second round of shipments, possibly the third.  Which means I'll have a new toy in a couple more weeks.  No worries.

[Guest Tnsharpshooter]

My unit showing good tracking # UPS site, with a scheduled delivery date of 12 Feb 2018.