No, not off topic. Wrong topic.
Please let’s not derail this topic. There are many other topics in which you could ask or indeed you can start a new topic and ask your question there.
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+1 I’ve waited for more than 3 years and don’t wait any longer.
Now I bought a (rather new) Sony Xperia 10 III for 230 € and a license of https://sailfishos.org/ for it.
I’m rather happy to have a “daily driver” without a Google-Account, nice linux-based System and furthermore a helpful forum.
Sailfish is sufficient for me in all belongs, even if there are simple things, which could work better.
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Hi @Kyle_Rankin,
your answer here has nothing to do with my question from the topic about the ethical marketing.
My question was not about why it takes so long. My question was also not about the current situation and improvements. So you answered here different questions.
My question was why did Purism used the wording “In Stock” for a product that you don’t have in a ready to be shipped to new customers stock.
I am not criticising the delay itself. I am just perceiving the wording as misleading. I would have been totally satisfied if you used a different wording.
My logical chain is the following.
- When one uses a word in an unconventional sense this is misleading.
- Who is mislead? The potential customers.
- When potential customers are mislead, this could be qualified as unethical marketing, couldn’t it?
=> Hense I think my post was in the correct topic in the first place.
Where do you think I am wrong in my logic?
Why do you defend the wording “In Stock” instead of just using a wording that would be universally understandable and would not lead to misunderstandings.
I am not telling it to be mean. It is about honest constructive feedback from the community.
The second feedback on the topic is about expectations management. I have the subjective feeling that Purism pumps up the expectations of the potential customers a little bit too much which leads to some frustrated customers.
In my opinion PinePhone manages expectations a little bit better because they are very clear that their devices are not for everyone and have limitations.
Great product experience is not only about a great product, but about a fit between expectations and experience. If the expectations are too high, people are not going to value the product even if the product itself is great.
And this topic has in my opinion also something to do with the topic of ethical marketing. Because one could debate if it is not more ethical to do everything possible to not raise unrealistic expectations.
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I assure you we aren’t trying to be confusing or misleading, it’s just that “In Stock” has nuanced meanings in a Just In Time manufacturing world.
In the past when products were fulfilled using “Just in Time” manufacturing, something was “In Stock” if we had it physically in the warehouse at that time and were shipping through the product, and would have a particular customer’s order it in the warehouse to ship, within the lead time for the product (normally 10 business days, but for some products like L5USA we extended that). This allowed us to create a steady fulfillment stream without having to have massive inventory taking up space in our warehouse.
So if for instance, we shipped through the current supply of Minis in the warehouse on a Friday, but we manufactured a new batch and it was going to arrive the following Wednesday, that would fit within our standard 10 business day lead time and we wouldn’t change it from “In Stock” to “Backordered” for the weekend. For products with longer lead times (because of supply chain issues that caused components themselves to have longer lead times for future orders we were manufacturing), but that we have produced and were shipping through, we’d increase the lead time to reflect that, but retain “In Stock”. We moved the server line to “Out of Stock” when we not only ran out of existing stock, but were unable to source new stock for it. One exception to this approach is the L5, which we have listed on backorder just because of the very long lead time, even though we do have L5s we are shipping through each week.
Fast forward to today, and the supply chain crises over the past few years have demonstrated all the problems with Just In Time. As we have written about a few times over the past year, we are moving away from “Just in Time” to a model where we hold much higher inventories, starting with Librem 14 and soon will include the Librem 5 USA as well, as we are about to catch up to all existing orders and hopefully hold enough stock after that (unless we get a giant flood of orders unexpectedly) that we will be able to maintain that stock for some time.
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Respectfully, I can find no evidence (beyond Purism’s own statements) to support this claim.
The closest I can find is one of the free dictionaries idioms for “in stock” to mean “Currently available to purchase (in a store).” And that only works when ignoring the “(in a store)” segment.
All other uses, references, and definitions I have ever found define in stock to be on hand or otherwise in physical possession of and not in transit.
I cannot say whether or not Purisms intent was to be confusing by using a non-standard definition, but I can say that it was a foreseeable consequence and continued use after it has been pointed out on numerous occasions is not evidence in Purisms favor.
This would be transparent to the customer and appears to be deflecting from the criticism by pointing to a completely different scenario to justify the criticized use arguably a straw man.
I would scale this back in that I think “everything possible” is overly restrictive, though I agree with the overall point that expectation management is a part of marketing and should be done ethically as well.
Thank you @Kyle_Rankin now I finally understand what you mean by “In Stock”.
That you have units “In Stock”, but these units could have already been ordered by somebody else so that a new order might need to wait for new units to arrive.
I believe you that it not intentional to confuse people. Still the result is that there are people that got confused.
I would personally view any unit that has already been ordered as “gone” even if the unit is physically still there and not been brought to the post office yet. People are interested in the units that you have available to sell to them and not in the units that have already been sold to someone else.
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I have seen many products listed as “in stock” but that won’t ship from the same country I’m in for something like 2 weeks. It could very well be that they use the same listing logic that is explained here.
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I’ll take that new, to me, information at face value and accept there is one example that may be construed to support the claim.
That could just as easily be explained as in stock in a warehouse in another country and shipping between warehouses takes time. While I would consider this potential equally deceptive if not disclosed to the customer, the experience is not compelling evidence of JIT manufacturing using this definition of in stock.
Its just a guess. It generally happens buying from sellers in marketplaces (amazon, newegg, etc). It wouldn’t surprise me if they were fudging “in stock” a bit, same as what looks to be happening here.
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