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 05:50:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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1226 times
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In lugnet.lego.direct, James Brown writes:
> 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.
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 50 dollars in
administrative overhead to collect for and ship something to someone when it
isn't free and isn't routed through their normal fulfillment channels. All
that paperwork and out of band processing costs big bucks. Would you pay 50
bucks extra per order to get those parts sent to you in the US from the UK?
Even *that* might be a loss for TLC.
Wanna bet it's worse in Europe than it is in the US? No bet from me. We're
more efficient than they are and we ain't all that efficent *here* at
unusual things.
People ought to be happy that the people on the phone are thinking out of
box enough to suggest coming here and looking for a UK factor to help!!!
That means that the phone staff are aware of their customers and how they do
stuff, at least a little.
People ought to be ecstatic that LD is arranging for some stock to be sent
over here, after how poorly those Fort Legoredos that they found did, it's a
wonder they'd bother.
Instead we get grumbling. And that makes ME grumpy.
++Lar
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bad Policy #2 (Why all the secrecy, LEGO Direct?)
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| (...) 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 (...) (23 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.lego.direct)
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