I know our timezone is different, but the “TODAY” should mean 06/09, which is 3-4 days ago. 3 days passed, but we still got NOTHING. Lots of people in this forum said that you Philips should be more transparent in communication, and this is a good example. Could you kindly (not too emotionally) tell us Taiwan backers:
When did you ask your forwarder about this question? Or not yet?
Did your forwarder reply? if not, you just keep waiting, or when and by what means did you push them answer?
If you have already got the answer, when do you want to tell us? Or the answer was too cruel to tell us? (like we need months waiting for the Emergency Situation Surcharge became cheaper?)
By my acknowledge, in List 2 and List 3 Batch Betty, Amy and Laurent, Taiwan seems to be the only one (except Brazil and Russia) where backers still not receiving their tracking numbers, while others had got and waiting for it being active. Am I misunderstood? If the answer is Yes, please tell us why?
I asked them directly on the 29/5, on 3/6, and on 12/6. This last time I even talked to the manager there directly, and his only reply was to ask his subordinate to update me, which still hasn’t happened. None of the prior times did I get an answer at all from them. On the 9th I asked another colleague if he had gotten any replies, and he also had not.
When do I want to tell you any answer: as soon as I have one and understand it myself. Like this morning when I got the reply from the manager there himself regarding the EU and ROW shipments, I only took some time to edit the reply for grammar and spelling and then posted it right away.
No matter how cruel or not, if it’s pertinent and has no mitigation we do share everything with you guys and girls. The other day I even got attacked for telling someone one of the many possible outcomes of an address change being sent to the forwarder after the fact of first sending them the list. Had I said nothing he wouldn’t have lost his cool, but I would not have been complete either.
Yes, that seems to be the case indeed. I don’t know why and it’s not because we have them and don’t upload them, we simply haven’t gotten them. This either means that the forwarders either have not (generated labels to) shipped them, or simply have neglected to send the labels to us. We keep asking them, but have yet to hear definitively from them. If they also meant to include Taiwan when they said DHL would be picking the goods up in Hong Kong by Monday at the latest, then we could have something by then. But that’s a guesstimate from my part, not a certainty.
Speaking of timezones: have you noticed how often you get replies during my night (CET, which is GMT+1+1 for DST at the moment) and your morning? It’s because I’m often waking up very early or staying up all night just to be able to “catch” the forwarders in their office hours, so I might get a quicker response and questions don’t have to go unanswered for days. Even now it’s 4:15 on a Saturday morning, and I’m here answering questions to the best of my abilities. If anyone is being as transparent and available as they can be it’s me.
Thanks, @IvoGrijt, that’s very clear information about what you had done, how is your progress, and what will be your next step. I think that’s call Expectation Management which is not very good in previous months.
We know all of you were in a difficult situation and being hard-working, but backers in crowdfunding are different from ordinary customers which ordered in an online shop. Ordinary customers just click their mouse and type in some information, and wait patiently for their products. But backers in crowdfunding would like to participant: they want to know what had been done, what is going on, and what will be arranged. That’s why lots of people asking the progress and plan.
Actually, we backers had wait for more than 8 - 10 months, most of us can wait for another 8 - 10 days or even weeks. We just want information given before we ask because, in customer services, things have given after people requested would sound more likely to be an excuse in angry customers…
Again, thanks for your hard-working, @IvoGrijt. I hope there will be good news next week. Have a nice weekend!
Whenever we get information we share it. If we didn’t have this long a delay in the whole campaign we would have less (rightly so) anxious customers asking, and then whenever we got information and shared it we would always be ahead of the demand for information.
But now we’re playing catch up with facts, because the delays and the pandemic’s effects:
affected our suppliers and their supply to us
affected our manufacturing capacity
affected our shipment capacity and speed
all of which affected the time to delivery to our backers
which affected their patience and peace of mind (understandably so)
some backers were hit by lockdowns and other pandemic consequences leading to changes in address or not being at the delivery location for instance
all of which lead to a flurry of mails and messages and other forms of requesting information, address changes, etc.
which lead to even more delays sometimes
more anxiety and loss of patience (understandable)
etc etc etc.
No one in the team planned nor was ready for this new world we live in now. Where they were venturing into a crowdfunding campaign for the first time already inexperienced and understaffed to handle 14K+ backers, they never expected all the extra workload involved caused by the pandemic. So not being able to do expectation management that well might not have been so important before, but it certainly has become so now.
But the times we live in now and will for some time to come only taught me one thing so far: throw away all previously set expectations and learn to not expect anything but cope as well as you can with the unexpected.
I think you might misunderstand me, @IvoGrijt. We all know delays are normal because of COVID-19, but what we talk about is managing the information. For example:
Before I asked, nobody knows you have already asked the forwarder 3 times. So some backers will become anxious because no information received. But if the information was given on time or regular like this:
Issue XXX
05/29 (Fri): We have asked our forwarder today. We will update when we get the answer ASAP.
06/02 (Tue): Our forwarder did not answer us. We will ask them again ASAP.
06/03 (Wed): We have asked again today. We will update when we get the answer ASAP.
06/05 (Fri): No answer today. If still no answer next week, we will ask their manager directly.
06/09 (Tue): Still no answer. We will ask their manager directly in days.
06/12 (Fri): We have asked directly to their manager today. His only reply was to ask his subordinate to update me, which still hasn’t happened.
By regularly updated information, most of people who chasing this issue won’t bother you since they could get the information regularly. They would know you are still making efforts to this issue and facing some difficulty which not contributed to be your or Philips’ fault. That will decrease much anxiety and blame in this forum.
But well, regularly update seems a little difficult to Philips, might be company policy, might be understaffed, I don’t know. Many people in this forum had mentioned this, but we still see no improvement. (In thread “General info about shipment and manufacturing”, formal official information update often took more than 1 week, which is a little too long)
@IvoGrijt Hi can I check, has Amy in List 3 been sent out by 10 June already? As per the list, it was supposed to send out latest 10 June. Because the DHL given to me on 30th May, somehow still doesn’t show any tracking details on DHL.
I have finished reading your updates. So just to understand, the picopix was shipped from Hong Kong to EU on 10 June, and then shipped to Singapore by 15 or 16 June?
No, only shipments to EU based backers go to Germany first, and get picked up by DHL there. For the last shipments sent, this last part will happen one of these days.
The rest of the world (ROW) are picked up by DHL in Hong Kong and then get shipped to their final destinations by DHL. This should happen one of these days as well.
Hey guys! I was wondering what is happening to Batch Jordan shipping to Netherlands? I received a tracking number almost 3 weeks ago, but I’m not getting any information about my package…
I hope everyone in Batch Jordan is in the same situation?
I received my tracking number on 20 May (US address) but in the global DHL site it has continued to state that number is not found. I understand that it can take a couple weeks but we are quickly approaching a month since the number was generated. Any possibility of Philips looking into this?
My IGG number is 15061 (Betty).
I’ve checked on both DHL websites as per the instructions provided and the tracking number is responsive when adding the CR/DE (CR2630222770DE). However, I don’t quite understand why the shipment is going to/from Europe as the delivery address is in Qatar. Wasn’t it supposed to be shipped directly from Hong Kong as part of the ROW batch? It’s rather confusive.
Hello! @IvoGrijt
You seem to be the man to speak with.
My contribution number is 13870 from France. I have checked list 3 and mine is not included even though i received the DHL tracking number (not working yet) a while ago. it goes 13869 directly to 13877 on the list.
maximum frustration
Can you help?
Thanks
If you received a tracking number you’re golden, you don’t need to be on these lists with all the other … backers.
Seriously though, if you have a tracking label it means we not only allocated your unit (which is what these lists say) but actually have a box with your name literally pasted on it waiting to be scanned by a delivery service.
Yours probably is in customs as we speak, waiting to be cleared so DHL Germany can pick it up and scan it, at which point your tracking will start to work.
