I hope this is delayed until next year , the last month or so has been brutal with figure releases/ pre orders and records , also Christmas has set me back about £800 already ...hate this time of year money wise 

 

So, are we sure it was a mistake? I’m sure it was but has Brandon at TCP said so?

 

Uh, the system's purpose is to inform customers who pre-ordered that it is incoming, which allows them to pay in full to get it ASAP if they wish. When it is incoming, it means The Chosen Prime has been notified that their shipment is on its way; it's not really an estimate at that point which allows allows them to confidently inform their customers. It's a nice feature and quite useful when it works. It's basically the same as if Show.Z sent out notifications for their "Incoming" status (which they don't do).

That said, when it doesn't work right, it obviously becomes less useful. It is pretty silly that it happens so often and that they've still not fixed it. But I will note that false alerts are less harmful than the opposite, which would be no alerts in which case you could miss out on a figure because you didn't pay.

 

Sorry guys, it was a glitch, I accidently added a January 2021 date to it not 2022.

 

They fall for it because you never know what is coming or when. So even when these "glitches" happen every single month im sure there are still people who panic then proceed to pay for the po bc they dont want to miss the deadline. Then finally someone will come around from tcp and say "oops sorry we cant afford good cart service or it was an accident". Getting pretty old tbh. Guess it needs to be asked of tcp also....are they reliable?

 

It's based on whatever they have as the release date, so no its not really based on what's actually incoming.

This happens on a regular basis, and probably only gets mentioned when it's a major anticipated release.

I didnt say it didn't serve a helpful purpose, but the function of the current automated system results in a significant number of false alerts.

 

From what I see, they are pretty reliable in sending false alerts from time to time.

 

I'm pretty sure that's not true. I've pre-ordered dozens of items from them (about 5 are outstanding right now). All of them have estimated release dates, but the only ones that I get "PRE-ORDER 3 DAY NOTIFICATION" emails for are the ones that are actually incoming (unless it's an error as this one very obviously is). In other words, when it works, the notifications only occur when they know for a fact that stock is inbound. If what you say is true, I would have arbitrarily received those alerts on all of my pre-ordered items since they all have estimated release dates, which I have not.

As a customer, I would absolutely testify that it is helpful when it works and also that it is worth fixing. But even if they didn't fix it, it is still helpful and the false alerts are mostly harmless other than getting people excited for no good reason.

 

Database errors are very common. My accounting system at work is full of them. But we are not paying $10000+ to upgrade a system that may or may not solve the problems, when it only costs a few hundred dollars a year in remote tech charges to fix the bugs that do happen.

I suspect the notification errors TCP has are something similar. Bigger stores like EE and BBTS can likely afford more polished (read that as more expensive) database systems to power their websites.

 

Agreed. TCP can't even afford to provide CS/aftersales. No way in hell are they gunna pay for database improvements!

 

It also depends on the alert. The email I received said that it was in stock, which jives with what Brandon said of putting in Jan 2021 vs 2022, so the system thought it was in stock. This is different than the “coming in 3 days” alerts, which are helpful when they come. I’ve personally only had 2-3 alerts that were accidentally fired off when an item wasn’t incoming, and this is the first of this kind. No harm, more just confusion and wanting to ensure I didn’t miss anything.

 

Yep, TCP are reliable. My preferred go-to store, never done me wrong. These occasional glitches don’t really impact me in a negative way. And I’ve always had good customer service with them, taken care of several issues I’ve had over the last 5-6 years.

 

I am not even sure why I want Rig. I already have two really good MP representations of him.

 

They're reliable in terms of sending figures AND they're dependable in terms of ignoring my aftersales requests! It's a mixed bag of good reliability and negative dependability there unfortunately.

 

TCP has always been dependable for me. There are times it has taken several months to get the needed parts but they have always come through. The delay is likely more a problem with manufacturer not sending the parts to TCP. What problems have you had?

 

TCP completely ghosted me in one instance. I got my part from the manufacturer instead.

In another instance I received a bot with a missasrmbled core. TCP told me they'd get me parts. There's no way for parts to help in that case though. I asked to return the bot. They told me that I could return the bot for the cost of shipping both ways (including reimbursing them for the cost of the "free" shipping over $150 on the way out. Wow!) . TCP said that I would also need to pay a restocking fee for the pleasure of dealing with their CS.

TCP is a terrible store.

Let's get back to FT Rig though. That's a happier topic.

 

To explain things further on the emails, this is something we have to do manually via a database upload each month as the email notices are triggered by the release date that is scheduled for the item. So as items get pushed back we have to continue to push them back in our database or the emails will get triggered. In this particular case. I accidentally put January 2021 as the release date rather than moving it to January of 2022. This was my fault for not checking it thoroughly before uploading it. Sorry for the confusion guys.

And just to touch on the database upgrade idea, we can probably get some upgrades for a few hundred thousand if you guys want to chip in!  

 

No matter what happened, now I want Rig a lot more! November is almost over

 

Ive already "chipped in" plenty 

 

So, naturally you'll be sending out emails to buyers or making a post on your various social media accounts to let buyers know what's going on with their orders after they received arrival notice emails, right? Because it'd be pretty unfortunate for anyone who doesn't frequent these boards to have to go digging to find out what's happening with their orders.