[quote name='GuyLee']Any updates on what's going on with Bing? I still haven't gotten my Zune accessory orders or my Vista Premium from early June.[/QUOTE]
A member on this very forum (A Gamer) has posted his theory on a few other sites, so I'll go ahead a repost it here for those who haven't seen it yet:
First, let me explain how I believe the process is supposed to work:
- CB takes the order;
- 29-30 days pass (may be some exact number, based on business days, whatever);
- CB validates the order by checking to see if the specified address has already received the prize in question (any any other account validation?);
- if everything checks out, they send the fulfillment order to Arvato; if things do not check out, the proceed with the appropriate account actions (refund tickets, flag account, etc).
At that point CB is done with the order. And from this point forward it is Arvato's process:
- they receive the fulfillment order, and fulfill the orders in chronological order, as soon as they can. Currently, the fulfillment requests are relatively low, so they are able to fulfill virtually as soon as the orders arrive.
And this is where the recent oddities come in...
In the event that an item is not available at the fulfillment center, the order gets placed into a 'back-order' file at Arvato.
Once the item comes back in stock, Arvato does NOT start fulfilling the prizes in the back-order file first, rather they resume fulfilling the new inbound orders as usual.
Then, at some later date (obviously I have no idea what triggers this event), they fulfill back-orders for that specific prize, in bulk.
Some examples to support this theory:
- many consoles ordered in April were not shipped on time;
- I had 3 consoles ship right on schedule, one ordered late April, and the other 2 early May.
- although LSC/CB usually ships out under 10 consoles a day, there are a few days in May when none shipped at all;
- on July 21 Arvato shipped out over 100 packages weighing 15 lbs, and many people indicated that they recieved shipping/tracking confirmations on their consoles missing from April.
So, at some point in May, when MS was submitting the April fulfillment requests, Arvato was short on consoles. When they got them back in stock towards the end of the month, they started shipping out the new orders (like mine). They did not fill the backordered consoles until July 21, at which point they shipped out over 100 of them on that one day.
Similarly, on 7/24 they shipped out roughly 50 packages each weighing 0.40 and 0.10 lbs. Both normally ship less than 10 per day, so again unusual shipping 'spike'. I received confirmation from a couple people that they received shipping/tracking for the earbuds (0.40 lb), which were 'late'. I can only assume that at some point the earbuds were back-orders, and they just filled those in-bulk on Friday. I don't know what the 0.10 packages are yet, but again I suspect that those were also some back-ordered item, possibly from April, getting back-filled in bulk.
Additionally, they also fulfilled a bunch of 'late' Vista and Zune orders on 7/20, although because the weight is so close to many other prizes, it is not nearly as evident that there was a 'spike' in those weight categories. However, considering they shipped over 1000 packages on Monday, easily double of their Monday load these days, I can only assume that a lot of those 1000 packages were actually back-ordered prizes...
Now, if you look at it from a recipients side...
- orders Vista in the first week of April;
- orders Zune last week of April;
- neither ships in May, to recipients dismay;
- in the mean time, other people are getting their stuff on time?
- then, on April 7/20 he gets shipping confirmation for both...
To him, it would indeed appear that prizes are shipping out totally random. How else would his prizes ship on the same day, ordered the first week and last week of April? All the while other people that ordered the same prize weeks after he did, already got theirs...
Without seeing the lulls and then delayed 'bursts' of shipping of certain prizes it would indeed appear to be random...
And, yes there were other such shipping spurts... Like 85 consoles shipped 2/23, 152 prizes weighing 0.10 lb shipped on 3/27, and 1500 drills shipped on 4/23. So, it would appear that this week's 'micro-anomolies' are actually part of the normal operating procedure on a macro-level... Just hard do see if you don't have 40 thousand shipping records to 'play' with...
And as long as Arvato fulfills the orders within the designated 8-12 week designation, MS has no reason to interfere with Arvato's back-order procedures. And, there is no reason for MS to even investigate a missing prize until it has passed that designated period. Mostly because I doubt anyone at MS could easily determine what has and has not shipped without contacting someone at Arvato (note that the shipping/tracking emails come from Arvato and not MS). And, thus the canned 'wait 12 weeks' response.
Again, this is
just a theory that seems to explain the shipping spurts from last week, along with the seemingly 'random' shipping behavior of some of the prizes.
ING SHIT NEW CLUB BING PRIZE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
I iz still hearz. ^_^z (just lurkingz in teh shadowz, covert catz for nao z
