Subject:
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Re: Bad Policy #2 (Why all the secrecy, LEGO Direct?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Mon, 7 May 2001 05:07:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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1187 times
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In lugnet.lego.direct, Marc Nelson, Jr. writes:
> In lugnet.lego.direct, Tomas Clark writes:
> > In lugnet.lego.direct, Marc Nelson, Jr. writes:
> > > And another thing...
> > I'll let someone else field your other question about US/Europe Shop at Home
> > because I'm not familiar at all with the feasibility of international
> > shipping. But it's my impression that the US S@H is set up to ship to
> > certain areas, and Europe S@H for other certain areas. The extra old
> > inventory was found in Europe, so they are selling it. Also, I could be
> > mistaken, but I believ the US has had "finds" like this in the past, which
> > have been exclusive for S@H customers on this side of the pond -- fair's
> > fair. Finally, if you read Jake's post yesterday, he did say that they're in
> > the process of sending some service packs from Europe to the US. Thanks,
> > Europe S@H!
>
> How hard is it to get "set up" to ship something outside of your territory?
> You charge the customer extra for shipping and then send it to him wherever.
> It just seems like that would be easier than telling us we can't buy the item
> until it's been shipped from Europe S@H to US S@H. The same goes for European
> AFOL's. If they want something from the US, charge them shipping costs and
> sell it to them.
>
> I worked in a bookstore which shipped returns and purchases all over the
> place. You typed in the address into the UPS program, it told you the
> shipping costs, and that's what the customer got charged. Now if an 4-
> location bookstore in Batimore can handle that, I'm sure a multimillion
> dollar organization like LEGO can.
Simple answer: It breaks the process, and it's unnecessary duplication.
(more complex)
99% of the time, S@H Europe is dealing with Europeans who want things
delivered to Europe. Ditto the other distribution centers. Because they
spend 99% of their time doing (effectively) 1 process, they have worked it
and tweaked it and made it the corporate equivalent of instinct. Doing
things that aren't part of that process slows the entire process down, and
makes that 99% wait on the 1%. Inefficient, costly, and (my next point)
stunningly irrelevent (to them).
S@H USA does everything that S@H Europe does, except for people in North
America instead of Europe. From LEGO's point of view, there is no reason
for S@H Europe to ship to North America. Why set up those distribution
channels, why make those extra modules for your software, those extra cargo
bins in your warehouse, et cetera et cetera - when it's a complete
duplication of something you're already doing with another part of the company?
LEGO finds some old stock in a inventory clean-up, and dumps it to the
nearest place that can get rid of it. If you're going to gripe about that,
then gripe at Wal*mart for not evenly distributing all their clearance stock
while you're at it.
This ended up coming off grouchier than I'd intended when I started, my
apologies for that, but I get grouchy when I see people grumbling about
things LEGO does, without ever appearing to believe that LEGO might have a
good reason for it.
James
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Bad Policy #2 (Why all the secrecy, LEGO Direct?)
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| (...) Well said. I get grouchy too. I wonder how many people who wanted to pay shipping costs would be willing to pay the extra costs of the out of band processing too. Here's a slightly relevant factoid.. the average US company pays well north of (...) (24 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.lego.direct)
| | | Re: Bad Policy #2 (Why all the secrecy, LEGO Direct?)
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| (...) I asked what that reason was (for not shipping outside territories) and got the answer at the top from Tomas Clark, basically, "that's not the way we do things", which is no answer at all as far as I'm concerned. I got a more detailed answer (...) (24 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.lego.direct)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Bad Policy #2 (Why all the secrecy, LEGO Direct?)
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| (...) I guess I still don't get it. I'm trying to think of an example of how LEGO letting us know about something would hurt you. I mean, LEGO really doesn't have any competition (MegaBloks can only compete on price), so it's not like somebody would (...) (24 years ago, 5-May-01, to lugnet.lego.direct)
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