
Nexus 4 stock shortage down to 'huge demand', LG explains - fam
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/nexus-4-stock-shortage-down-to-huge-demand-lg-explains-50009924/
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ludwigvan
Sidenote: Google's customer service is absolutely horrible. I was reading the
horror stories, but now that I have experienced it personally, it seems worse
than I imagined.

Basically, my unit is about to be shipped on Dec 19, and I have been trying to
cancel it since last week; but they refuse to cancel it on the grounds that it
is _only_ possible to cancel it within 1 hour of purchase.

I am leaving US on Dec 12, and this means the unit is going to get shipped to
an address I no longer have access to, and I will have to ask the landlord to
do a delivery refusal when the UPS guy appears at the door. I have emailed and
called them about 10 times to cancel the order, or change the shipping date or
address; and they won't bother to do any of that.

If you have been reading about Google not treating its customers properly on
the net, rest assured that the situation is not exaggerated at all; they are
very unprofessional.

Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?

~~~
subsection1h

        Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?
    

Might your landlord allow you to post a sheet a paper to your front door
stating that you refuse delivery? This is what I did to refuse delivery of a
16GB Nexus 7 (I found a 32GB Nexus 7 for a little over $200), and it worked. I
didn't need to interact with a UPS driver.

That being said, the 16GB Nexus 7 I ordered was delivered to Google on Nov 29
and I still haven't received a refund or been contacted by Google regarding my
order.

~~~
ludwigvan
Thank you, this is what I am going to do, although in my case, the situation
is a bit more complex.

The apartment complex I live in receives packages from UPS en masse, and then
classifies it according to apartment numbers, so there is a possibility that
they might not detect my package before accepting it, but I will ask them to
keep an eye on it.

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bitcartel
This doesn't cut the mustard and should not excuse LG and Google for the
purchasing chaos. People who ordered just a few days ago have already received
their phones, while others have been waiting for weeks. Some people are even
ordering a second phone just to see if they get a shipping notification, and
if they do, cancelling their original order. It's a bit of a farce.

[http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showthread.php?t=1962514&...](http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showthread.php?t=1962514&page=3614)

~~~
thibauts
_> Some people are even ordering a second phone just to see if they get a
shipping notification_

I got mine _before_ the shipping notification

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pja
My experience ordering a Nexus 4 was a bit of a farce: Google managed to
trigger the anti-fraud block on both of my credit cards, each with different
UK banks. It looks like they put through a small value transaction (£1) first
to test whether the card works & only then put through the full purchase
transaction.

Why they can't just put the transaction through in the first place & just
report back if it fails I've no idea, but thanks to Google I had to phone up
the respective banks to get the cards unblocked. Not the best use of anyone's
time...

~~~
ig1
(entirely speculative)

They may be doing it precisely for that purpose.

Risk systems generally working on scoring mechanism, if the £1 transaction was
enough to push you over the threshold then your cards may well be on the
borderline for "this card might be stolen".

Google might be using it to test if the card is a borderline "stolen card"
case because they want to be extra cautious about who they ship phones to.

~~~
pja
Yeah, that would make a twisted kind of sense.

I never have this kind of trouble with other vendors though.

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yareally
I wonder how many phones LG is capable of making at a given time? I know that
Samsung can put out 5 million a month
([http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung-
idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung-
idUSBRE84H00X20120518)), but I would imagine LG cannot come anywhere as close
as them, given the size differences in their mobile divisions.

------
fungi
I have a theory :)

Nexus 4 was built with a "defective" qualcomm LTE chip that LG was able to
pick up for a bargain. hence the great nexus 4 rock bottom price.

Now LG have exhausted their "defective" chip supply, they need to negotiate a
new deal with qualcomm/google.

This is based on a random comment i read fsck knows where explaining how high
spec, short run, chinese phones come in to being.

~~~
Raphael
Perhaps the LTE radio was defective, but the rest was fine.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
From a hardware perspective, the Nexus 4 uses the same SoC as the LG Optimus
G, it just lacks amplifiers and antennas designed for LTE frequencies (one LTE
frequency is in the UTMS band, so it can function in most phones
unofficially). So you could be right, although I'm not sure if LG puts
together the final SoC.

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nQuo
Back in November after the first batch sold out within half an hour, I wanted
to get a Nexus 4 to give Android another go and check out Google Now and other
new features of 4.2, as iOS6 felt a bit stale despite being a big fan of the
black & slate iPhone 5's industrial design. But I got tired of checking the
Google Play link everyday which always read "Out of stock". So I got the
iPhone 5 instead.

When the second batch became available, I ordered one for a friend, still
waiting for it to ship. (it said 1-2 weeks so it should ship this coming week)

From everything I've read so far, the Nexus 4 seems like a great phone at an
unbelievable price, but Google and LG are really shooting themselves in the
foot with customer service, shipping on a frustrating not-on-first-come-first-
ordered basis and repeated delays.

I think a lot of customers would've been happier if they sold it through
Amazon instead.

------
linhat
I wonder what part LG actually plays in this shortage. When you are producing
a device for somebody else that is strikingly similar (as in sharing the exact
same hardware platform) to one of your own devices, which you are selling for
way more (with of course small but nonetheless important differences)...well,
something just screams conflict of interest to me. I am in no way accusing LG
of doing so, I'm sure they have had their contract with Google on this and
followed it to the point, but still, something just doesn't feal right.

Uhm, well, maybe just my paranoia distortion field kicking in, I for one hope
I am completely astray on this one.

~~~
tadfisher
LG isn't selling their device directly to consumers, they are selling them to
carriers and retail channels. For your statement to be accurate, you'd need to
compare the cost to the reseller to purchase either device.

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dangrossman
They likely ran through their stock of replacement units for warranty issues,
too. I reported mine defective and have an RMA to send it back, but it's been
a week and they still haven't shipped the replacement.

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general_failure
mm, I ordered one and it was pretty easy. Things just worked. Am I the only
one with such a good experience?

I am guessing the ones for whom the ordering process failed rant the most :)

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Alaskan005
I wonder how many they have sold. Does anyone have any concrete numbers?

~~~
jarcoal
Nope, Google doesn't give them out. If you're an investor, don't worry,
they're "huge" -_-

~~~
Alaskan005
Nah, I was trying to see if it's really a f-up, a marketing scheme or a mix of
the two. Maybe demand is really unexpectedly high.

