Need advice Re: Eyetech Order

[eyetech]

I made an order with Eyetech on the 22nd of march and have had no replys to my emails and no sign of any EZkey and SD/FF movement! grrrrrr

A word of explanation is in order I know.

The AmigaOne (and other non-Amiga activities) now take up virtually all our time. By contrast the 'Classic Amiga' stuff produces only a handful of orders a month. That doesn't even support a 'classic Amiga' technician for 1 day a month - so we don't have any dedicated classic Amiga technicians at Eyetech any more. This is also the reason that we only accept orders and queries over the net - and not over the phone - these days.

All the bought-in 'classic Amiga' products that we still have in stock are well out of manufacturers warranty, and so need testing (= technicians time) to make sure that they are worth selling rather than binning, and if so are worth our while taking the risk on a have-to-write-it-off-if-it-breaks warranty.

It is also not viable to build our own stuff any more - towers, keyboard adapters, EZMice, midi interfaces, etc etc. We still have a number of these things left - hence their availability on our webshop - but these all have to be tested before shipping, and that means diverting a technician from profitable activities or bringing in a contract technician specially.

We have recently had a (relatively) big run (nearly 10!) of orders on Ready-to-Use A1200 towers and keyboard adapters, but as the absolute volumes are low and the 'clearance' prices on the website are in most instances below cost, it is just not economic to bring anyone in to build any more units.

We had expected to have some technicians 'slack' time available over the last month to undertake 'classic' testing, but this has simply not materialised for a variety of reasons. Sorry.

We are hopeful of being able to test the last couple of dozen keyboard adapters and EZMice over the next few of weeks, but there is really no economic way that we can produce any more Ready-to-Use EZ/Mk5 Towers at the advertised (clearance) prices. We do however have a number of self-conversion (DIY) towers available for shipping (both Mk5 and Z4).

So I'm really sorry that a dozen or so of you have had to wait a while whilst we worked out whether we could satisfy your orders economically.

We do however have the stuff for Mr Benson's order - its just that it didn't work on switch on and needs another half a day of very scarce technicians time to get it sorted. We will be emailing individuals with their own order status over the next few days.

We are also in discussions with some other dealers - who are better equipped to handle these small orders than we currently are - to take our remaining 'classic' stock. Details will be posted on our web site in due course.

I realise that our current service is not very satisfactory for the few people that actually still want Classic Amiga stuff. But the only other alternatives are to either pull out of this market altogether and to bin the rest of the stock - or put up the prices of the remaining items at least 5 fold to cover the technical support and testing costs. Neither of these really helps the would-be purchaser of Classic amiga products.

Thanks (hopefully) for your understanding


Alan

[eyetech]

The only thing I would suggest is that Eyetech's sales staff should maybe be as comminicative as their company chairman!

No, actually, this is all at my door. I have to be very specific with my Amiga-loving staff not to answer phone calls or emails that aren't going to pay a fraction of their salaries. Thats one of the reasons why we're still in business whilst most of the other Amiga dealers have ceased to be or completely deserted the platform.

It's my job to try to achieve a balance during the current transitionary times which keeps the company in financial health but also helps out past customers where economically possible. I don't always get it right but I keep trying.....

Thanks again for your understanding

Alan

[eyetech]

The only thing I would suggest is that Eyetech's sales staff should maybe be as comminicative as their company chairman!

No, actually, this is all at my door. I have to be very specific with my Amiga-loving staff not to answer phone calls or emails that aren't going to pay a fraction of their salaries. Thats one of the reasons why we're still in business whilst most of the other Amiga dealers have ceased to be or completely deserted the platform.

It's my job to try to achieve a balance during the current transitionary times which keeps the company in financial health but also helps out past customers where economically possible. I don't always get it right but I keep trying.....

Thanks again for your understanding

Alan

[eyetech]

Think yourself lucky then,I went to the order psge on Eyetech only to find it has been canceled by Eyetch.

This isn't really fair Mike. I've looked at the records and your wife, who actually ordered the ready-built EZTower-Z4, was informed by email yesterday that they were no longer in stock but that we did have DIY EZTower-Z4's in stock at ukp20 less. To make sure that there was no confusion with the original order we informed her that the original order was to be cancelled but she could order the DIY version via our website if she wished. You were also copied with this email today out of courtesy.

We do it this way because experience has shown that quite often when an original order is modified by someone by email or phone they also submit a second order for the new goods 'just to make sure'. Sometimes we don't spot this and they get two lots of goods (and charges of course).

If a DIY toer suits you then please feel free to reorder. These and the EZKey-EX adapters are now back in stock (ie tested) and can be shipped quickly. If not your original order - for goods which we can no longer supply - remains cancelled.

Hope this helps explain the process

Alan

[eyetech]

Think yourself lucky then,I went to the order psge on Eyetech only to find it has been canceled by Eyetch.

This isn't really fair Mike. I've looked at the records and your wife, who actually ordered the ready-built EZTower-Z4, was informed by email yesterday that they were no longer in stock but that we did have DIY EZTower-Z4's in stock at ukp20 less. To make sure that there was no confusion with the original order we informed her that the original order was to be cancelled but she could order the DIY version via our website if she wished. You were also copied with this email today out of courtesy.

We do it this way because experience has shown that quite often when an original order is modified by someone by email or phone they also submit a second order for the new goods 'just to make sure'. Sometimes we don't spot this and they get two lots of goods (and charges of course).

If a DIY toer suits you then please feel free to reorder. These and the EZKey-EX adapters are now back in stock (ie tested) and can be shipped quickly. If not your original order - for goods which we can no longer supply - remains cancelled.

Hope this helps explain the process

Alan