The release of the Trident is ultimately the problem. Neptune has some great products but this particular product release and craziness is just foolish. Seems really strange for a company at their level to create this kind of issue with their customer base.
It definitely has not been the smoothest release ever, but I think really Neptune only had two options. They could do what they did, releasing the Trident as soon as possible even though stock was low or they could spend several months building and stockpiling units so they could release with plenty of stock.
I think the big issue with the second approach and probably the reason Neptune went the way they did was that the Trident was already way late and I think people were starting to give up on it. Especially with other units like the alkatronic and the reefbot being available. Additionally, building and stockpiling thousands or even tens of thousands of units would be a pretty huge cash outlay until they were released and sold.
As much bad press as Neptune is getting for this release they were already getting bad press for promising the Trident more than a year ago and still not delivering. They were in a tough situation either way and I think they wanted to get units into people’s hands as soon as possible
No matter what the product is products need time to be built and they can either be released in short supply as they continue building as fast as possible or they can be built behind the scenes delaying the release. Even Apple who always releases new iPhones in September starts building and stockpiling the new phones in June for the September release. And even after 3 or 4 months of building and stockpiling there is a always shortage of iPhones on release day.
Apple handles the short supply by allowing preorders, though, and at least people know that they are on the list and they have a definite date of when they will receive their phone, even if it’s two weeks or two months out.
Right now people are stuck in the frustrating situation of wanting the Trident but having absolutely no idea when they will be able to get it. They see some people being able to order and get a unit with relative ease while they sit there refreshing webpages all day and waiting for in stock alert emails that show up 10 minutes after the product has sold out.
Some people get close, being able to put a product in their cart and having the stock run out or the transaction fail before they can complete their purchase and some people have jobs where they can’t spend all day refreshing web pages or drop everything when an alert email comes and they get home from work to see that 60 more people got a unit while they were busy working.
All of these are incredibly frustrating experiences and even after going through the frustration people are still left with no idea of when they will actually be able to get a unit.
I think in general people understand that supply is low and demand is high and that it will take time for Neptune to build enough units for everyone, but it’s the waiting and getting close and failing and checking web pages all day or being stuck at work for the 10 minutes that units are available and still not knowing that’s killing everyone.
