When will the reservation system be declared dead???

[Dunerunner]

Originally Posted by SPDYII

Who says that is not happening with the smartcar. You are not give a vin number when you configure your car. You are not given a vin number till the very very end of the process. Who says that the dealer is not selling your car to someone else. I'm not saying that it is happening, just that it is a possibility. It seems like in the last 30 days of the purchasing process the DDE has changed a lot for a lot of people. Peoples delivery date has moved back 30 day, 60 days, sometimes 90 days and no one can explain it.

I know it's frustrating, my res# is 1556. I have 18 or more months to wait and may have to configure for the '09 and '10 models. I believe delays in production are largely due to increased demand, there is the possibility smartUSA underestimated the popularity of this car, finally there are the French factory issues...Gee! I wish I could have a month off with pay to spend summer at the beach! Without all that, we would be discussing how to trick out the radio antenna.

[dennyrex]

Can we stop the French bashing already?

[Old smart]

You may be happier in the end to have kept a Franco-German smart reservation than a Chinese "bulk" smart.

[Jimbo]

In my opinion, people's frustration wih the reservation system has nothing to do with the French or the Germans or the Chinese. It has everything to do with asking simple questions from Smart customer service and repeatedly getting no answers. Of sending questions to them on eMail and getting back boilerplate-if any response at all! People are frustrated with a dicked up system that causes someone in one part of the country to wait more than an entire fiscal quarter longer than somebody somewhere else who sent in their reservation on the same day.

I don't care Dick if someone's uncle waits 13 years for his Trabant or dies of old age waiting...That's the economic system we were supposed to have beaten down half a generation ago! We're supposed to be better than that! I do care and get upset when it looks like I'm being shut out of the process because of my zip code. I mean it, seriously, I can wrap my brain around a few days, a few weeks, a month at most... how is it that things can move at such a different pace through the system???? Do they want to discourage us in the Hinterlands because they don't want to have to deal with the towing expense for warranty work?

[rawlus®]

when you ask the simple questions you are asking a 3rd party distributor, not the manufacturer.

at this point, perhaps they should stop taking orders altogether for a quarter or two until they get caught up.

the issue at hand is basic economics in action. supply, demand, geography, distribution, manufacturing, retail, profit, loss, cost of goods, operating expenses and so on.

there is room for improvement, but it is important to recognize that there are presently over 30,000 reservations for vehicles which have not yet been made. under those circumstances, most companies would probably not be putting all available resources on potential customer updates, reassurances and other matters. the priority is to make the cars as fast as they can make them, ship them as fast as they can ship them and manage the post-sale customer service at a high level of customer satisfaction.

that's my real-world assessment anyway.

[Fredvon4]

rawlusA

You seem to think this is some grand massive venture

Pay attention...

There are 4 Regions

In those 4 regions are some division of 70 dealers

There are 24~26 thousand cars coming

Each month some are delivered (population of the whole is reduced

Each region has a manger

Each region has assigned dealers

Each dealer is getting 25~75 cars per month

IB has a data base with XX,XXX reserved customers

IB has a data base with XX,XXX invited to configure customers

PAG periodically orders a group of cars from smart Hambach

PAG notifies smartUSA management periodically with order status

Shembri's management notifies each of the 4 regional managers that their next group of customer cars are ordered

Some where in here it falls apart

Some where in here they forget that there is a customer tied to the ORDER that PAG made to Hambach..... READ that again damn it! The car ordered by PAG for Fred von Gortler is NOT a car ordered for Smart Center Round Rock!

I think they (PAG) believe the customer contact should come only from IB or the dealer

And that would make sense if they would just give the dealer the information THEY HAVE!

BUT the interesting thing is YOU seem to want to believe they are juggling 26,000 cars, transportation, logistics, customer communication...THEY ARE NOT! They may ignore the delivered customers and they may ignore the not yet configured customers and they could easily focus on next weeks inbound shipment.... every week!

Each week only about 250 to 300 customers are getting a car, divided down by regions, and dealers.... no one manager, ever has to accommodate more then 25~45 transactions a week

And you make this sound like it is hard.... sheesh! Get real your assesment is not too real world IMO

[rawlus®]

meh. my only thing is, you can't really demand something unless you have leverage.

and with the sharp contrast in demand vs. supply - those waiting do not have the leverage to demand very much right now. you can either sit patiently until it's your turn or vacate your place in line for someone else to move up.

those are really the only two objective choices i see at the moment.

i can only imagine what would happen should PAG release the 30K VINs to awaiting customers. imagine the resources and workload that would be required to settle everyone's impatient nerves! the effort of managing expectations would be insurmountable. it would be a frenzy with every consumer trackign their individual shipment and demanding immediate delivery because they know every step of the process. while that might be informative, it probably wouldn't be very fun. there would probably be more disappointment not less, expectations would soon become unrealistic because every single reservation holder is thinking only of themselves, their car, their own logistics and their own immediate gratification - while the company, any company, has to balance the needs of the individual against the business as a whole.

i believe there is probably sound strategy behind controlling the insider info and release thereof. while frustrating to individual consumers, it may just be more beneficial to the whole.

but who knows. this is all but speculation as a way of killing time until our turn comes up. lol.

[Jimbo]

Great point. Since the cars began showing up until today, a fifth to a fourth of the entire years supply has already been delivered...As fredVon4 put it, this is not a gigantic venture. People with less on the ball than these folks can cook up a spreadsheet to indicate their current progress and chart with some accuracy what their expectations are with respect to what's coming...and then fire off an email to their customer support people to give them information that people like me are asking about. It would have been so simple to have a statement on your reservation saying that "You reserved on X day, you are number xx,xxx in the queue. Heck they could just add a counter in the program in about 12 seconds. Then with 250-300 cars a week coming in and being delivered, at least you could do your own math and figure out when(or if) you'll ever get a car. It's the little things...!

[rawlus®]

some people claim this is simple.
if it were truly that simple, one would have to believe they would have followed that protocol rather than prolong a system where 30K customers are frustrated.
the things that consumers claim are simple for big business to fix, rarely are.
that has been my objective experience when dealing with big business.

[Fredvon4]

rawusA

Or perhaps there are now over 55,000 paid reservations and NOT quite enough attrition....???