So I just got off the phone with the CEO of Philips Projection, who has asked me to share the following with you guys.
Apparently there was a call between himself and the President of Philips Projection, our Chinese speaking representative in Hong Kong, and the management of the forwarding company. This call was needed as apparently mails were not enough to get our message across, and our Chinese speaking representative had to step in a few times during the call to set some things straight that the forwarder was denying or claiming to have been agreed differently.
All of the issues current and previous were discussed, in what I was told not so friendly manner from our side (to put it very mildly). We have been using our best methods of pressuring them to fix their mistakes and to ship, which was to withhold payment, and they had resorted to withholding our shipments and not answering our requests. This was leading to the stalemate we had seen lately which has affected all the open and pending shipments, leading to delays for you and loss of image for us and the brand.
At the end of the call Philips Projectionâs president gave them one more chance to fix all of these issues, after which we would resume payment. They hung up without agreeing, but after a few minutes called back and agreed to resume their operations for us.
So weâre all a little skeptic yet hopeful that we will now see steps being taken. I canât promise nor guarantee improvement but I can give you this update and express my hope for a change in tides now.
If they do indeed pick things up again we should have movement in shipments that are in limbo in the EU, solutions for the previous EU shipments involving a reused tracking label, and finally have reshipment take place in Returned to Sender cases. Based on the outcome of these we will decide how best to continue / finish our outstanding shipments with this or another forwarder.
Please do have a little patience!
There are people that submitted their contribution last year and havenât received the device yet.
Whomever made another contribution in July 2020 is on a low priority list right now.
Iâm totally relaxed. I already have mine that I ordered in September. Now I have ordered two more for friends and would just like to know how things are for the rest of Europe at the moment.
These issues and the forwarderâs attitude have halted everything basically we do shipping wise, including replacement units, regular shipments, extra orders, AU plugs, shipments returned to sender, forgotten backers needing to be shipped to, shipments on hold by DHL, and shipments to âexoticâ or difficult places like India and South Africa, etc.
We just now got the assurance via email from their manager that the EU shipments waiting in their warehouse in Germany will be picked up by DHL tomorrow and scanning will happen starting tomorrow and Saturday. Letâs see if that will actually happen or not, itâs their last chance to show us they can deliver.
Interestingly enough he pointed out that with 16000 shipments there were only about 200 with real issues. I think theyâre off by a factor of 2 to 3, if we count the ones not shipped at all, returned to sender due to their mistake with reused labels, and other issues on their end. But okay, every issue is one too much.
The issues with the supplier have created such a load/backlog that we canât handle them all at once. Every day Iâm handling tickets, but I canât close them until I have real solutions. Iâm also answering PMâs, forum posts, mentions, Indiegogo questions, Backerkit questions, Facebook Messenger questions, etc etc.
In your case, I saw the ticket, categorized it as one of those that we instructed the forwarder to ship but that he did not yet ship, I added your number to a list to be followed up with him, and weâve been handling these with them. But until I hear back from them what the reason is for not shipping yours when they shipped many others, I have nothing to update the ticket with really, so I donât get back to that ticket or any one such ticket yet, but deal with one where I do have a solution or next step that needs feedback from the backer, like an address change confirmation or such. Iâm sorry for this but I canât do much more than I am already within the time and workload present. Rather than having some macro answer you with just fodder, Iâm working on getting the forwarder to fix the issues.
Is this situation under sufficient control, such that Philips does not require backers to inform them of cases of tracking numbers not working ; supposed dispatched units that have sat at that status for months ; tracking not updating beyond âawaiting collectionâ and so on?
Iâm not sure what is expected and best course of action here ; add to the load on the part time support staff here, or just sit back and be quiet and hope things will be resolved without intervention.
What I absolutely donât want, is to not escalate and then potentially be told that (I, in my case) should have informed Phillips sooner. Etc.
Thank you for any advice and clarity that might be provided.
By all means do not sit back. We can check for many issues, but we canât check for all. For instance, some tracking numbers show âDelivered successfullyâ but the backer says âI never got anythingâ.
So if you donât have a ticket for your case, and you donât see a plausible explanation for your case in any of the news updates Iâve given, then by all means open a ticket. If you have a ticket, and want to have an update, please REPLY to THAT ticket. Mailing us via Backerkit, Indiegogo, or new emails only increases the load, replying to one ticket doesnât. Last thing we want is different people working on basically the same issue in two separate tickets for instance.