I know you must be busy stuffing things into envelopes … but can you give an update on how far through the list you have got so far (my order was at around 07:20 on RPi3 launch day and my fingers are getting itchy) ;)
I ordered my as soon as their live video finished, received it today. Not sure what time that was.
This probably deserves a bit of a fuller explanation as to how we deal with the volume of orders we receive on large launch days to cope with the extra demands on the packing and shop teams.
For Pi 3 we received over a months worth of orders in a single day.
Obviously we can’t scale our team up by 30 times to accommodate that kind of increase so we change our process to maximise throughput instead.
The key aspects of a launch like Pi 3 are:
- Huge order volumes
- Lots of people ordering a single item (just the Pi 3 or just a Pi 3 Essentials Kit)
- Larger demands on our own products (Pibow 3 launched at the same time)
To give us any chance of processing all orders in a reasonable1 timescale we batch them by SKU. This allows the packing team to auto-pilot the picking and packing of these orders as for that batch they’ll all be exactly the same item. We also batch them by destination and shipping method for similar reasons.
This allows us to ship as many parcels in as small amount of time as possible which also helps to reduce the support burden of people asking via our support e-mail or on Twitter “where is my Pi 3”? 2
Our shop team usually consists of three people. During launches like this we do all pitch in to help where we can but specifically with Pi 3 the additional demand for our own products means the packing and production teams are also working pretty much at full capacity which limits our options for moving people around.
That said we will be caught up this week, so we will have processed all orders placed and should be back to normality by Friday - the team are working really hard to get your orders out and we hope you’ll love your Pi 3 when it arrives!
Jon (and by proxy the entire Pirate Crew).
1 We really do understand that everyone is eager to get their hands on the new shiny thing as soon as possible and it pains us that the process is slower than usual!
2 Definitely do reach out to us if you need support or have a question. The reality is that time spent answering support is time not spent shipping though!
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Mine arrived today - thanks very much.
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