Gerry's Is Getting An Equinox Delivery Tuesday!

[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.

[Ridge Runner]

No this cost me one pint of blood and to be sure I’d get it on time I gave him a hot check. You call that a five finger discount. I was told it was good to two hundred feet but I need a brave guy to test the depth for me.

Chuck

[Ridge Runner]

I don’t want anyone to say I don’t support my dealer. Don’t get me wrong I’m not doing anything to help him but just don’t say it.

My dealer did post his order is on the way but said he couldn’t say how many he was getting.

I still don’t know if my name is on one. So you wag is good as my wag.

Chuck

[mn90403]

14 minutes ago, Ridge Runner said:

I don’t want anyone to say I don’t support my dealer. Don’t get me wrong I’m not doing anything to help him but just don’t say it.

My dealer did post his order is on the way but said he couldn’t say how many he was getting.

I still don’t know if my name is on one. So you wag is good as my wag.

Chuck

If you notice, there are no dealers on this thread.  You also got the same answer from your dealer as I did from mine.  He can't say how many he will be getting or how many anyone else will be getting. (Minelab controls that info)  Also, some dealers have their allocation sent directly to the dealership and then they send it to the customer.  Some are sent by the distributor (middleman) or Minelab but they need to have the customer list in order to do this.

[Chase Goldman]

20 minutes ago, Wayfarer said:

I never said Minelab was "forcing" this on dealers.

If the presumption was that Minelab distributed more units to dealers who had more pre-pays vs. based purely on preorders, prepaid or not, then that in effect is forcing this on dealers.  It would logically follow that the dealers might feel obligated to distribute detectors in preference to prepaid customers because that was the condition under which they got "more" detectors.

Regardless of whatever Minelab or the Dealers did or did not do with respect to prepays, what is important is finding the dealer whose pre-order conditions you are most comfortable with and pragmatically realize what that may mean in terms of when you will actually get the detector.  I personally favor trust, transparency, and an even playing field over expediency that comes at a price.  The great thing is we all have great dealer choices and you can choose what suits you best in a dealer-customer relationship.  Just hoping many get their detectors soon so we can start seeing some varied user feedback.  I can live vicariously through that.