Subject:
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Re: Does anybody actually know Mr Justus?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Wed, 21 Jun 2000 19:26:47 GMT
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Viewed:
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1224 times
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In lugnet.lego.direct, Eric Kingsley writes:
> I think I would have a differance of oppinion with you on the degree of slope
> in the peek. First it is the wrong part if what they are shipping is the low
> slope peek and 2 I would say for me the medium slope peek can NOT be used in
> most cases as a replacement for the 45 degree peek. Thats mostly because I
> usually have at least 1 90 degree turn in my roofs and that can only be done
> with the 45 degree slopes.
I think we're in agreement. We (the people of lugnet) would argue that it's a
different piece. But the people at lego may see it differently. Obviously,
this piece wouldn't work with the other pieces designed for use with the
medium slope bricks. But most children wouldn't build roofs (rooves?) that
way. And if you don't have and right angle turns in the roof, you can just
put the low slope bricks on top to finish it off. We wouldn't tolerate it,
but my eight year old would. And depending on their mind-set, they may not
see it as a huge error, even though it would cause nearly every AFOL to
complain.
> My guess is yes although that would mean they didn't do their homework very
> well. For someone that only got into train recently I have known what a train
> window is for a much longer time and would have never suspected that it could
> be confused for a 1x4x3 thin wall.
Agreed. Maybe Lego should have a look at Todd's previous auctions to get a
feel for what pieces should be named. You could also argue that from their
point of view, the naming is irrelevant. You could call a piece fred and as
long as it was the only fred in the catalog, it would be enough information to
distinguish that piece from the others to a phone rep. And it may make sense
to call the thin walls train windows for this purpose since a kid calling in
to order them probably remembers them from the newer blue train and doesn't
remember the correct train windows from the good old days. Maybe they're
still stuck on this only being for kids. Or maybe they just screwed up. :-)
> > I bet there are several powers at work. Obviously, they know about making
> > complex roof designs. Just look at the models lego builds! I bet this was • an
> > IT issue. The two pages with brick pictures were ASP pages. Why? Why not
> > simple html that could be cooked up in 10 minutes? I suspect that we're
> > seeing part of a larger IIS/ASP site. And that would make sense. For now,
> > it's silly to use ASP, but when you're changing the available parts by the
> > hundreds on a monthly basis, it makes much more sense to fill a table in sql
> > server with parts and have the site generate automatically. Then you could
> > tie the online ordering piece in with this table showing the available
> > quantities and whether or not the agregate quantity had been reached. And if
> > this were truly beta, the data could be shaky. Maybe the left hand didn't
> > know what the right hand was doing. We're all on the same page with the
> > nomenclature, but maybe they're not. Non AFOL IT people may have a hard time
> > telling the difference between a medium slope apex brick and a low slope apex
> > brick. Also, if the site is still under development, they may not just be
> > able to fix the problems. Maybe they're nearing completion on the next
> > revision of this system and they're not ready to move to production yet. Why
> > work on fixing those problems when you're moving to production in a couple
> > days? It may be cheaper to accept the occaisional return than to apply a
> > short term fix. This is a lot of supposition, but they probably have good
> > reasons for doing what they're doing.
>
> First I agree with the ASP vs. HTML argument but I would say that if this was
> Beta then they should have said so.
Does it really matter? Customer service matters, but there may be political
issues in subjecting customers to an official beta test. It's like peewee
herman falling down and saying, "I meant to do that." By calling it a beta
test, they're admiting that they're giving us something that may not work
100%. "Only the best is good enough" may be counter to the idea of an
official beta test program.
> Also I don't by the argument that it was
> an IT issue. I am a software developer myself and nothing goes into • production
> until a business person who is responsible for the system being developed • tests
> it and signs off. If no one from LD looked at this before it was put up I
> would be very disappointed. But then the LD people should have noticed the
> errors.
I've seen both kinds of clients. I've seen clients who want to approve
everything before it goes into production and I've seen clients want to wash
their hands and walk away. It's an acountability thing. If they approve
everything and there's a problem, it's their hide. But if they don't approve
everything, they can blame the consultants, fire them, and save face in the
process. I've seen a lot of messed up client sites. I was once asked by one
client to be a strolling carroller around christmas. That's an awfully
expensive baritone (sp?). It was probably more than just an IT issue, but
using ASP for such a simple purpose raises an eyebrow.
> Well either way the pic's on the web are wrong so if they were trying to get a
> reaction they should have gotten it through the picture not through unhappy
> customers receiving something other than what they thought they ordered.
Agreed.
> Well like I said I do software development for one of the larger
> hardware/software developers in the world and to me that just isn't an excuse.
> If it wasn't ready for prime time then it shouldn't have been released to the
> public at all.
Ideally, that's the way it should be. But I've seen companies roll out
systems that are complete garbage. One retail client I worked for (I don't
want to name any names, but their initials are wal and greens) rolled out a
system done by a consulting firm (also don't want to name names, but they were
very proactive in achieving synergy with their fault redirection matrix) that
just plain didn't work. Two of my non-android friends, alone, saved the $15M
project. So if this were looked upon as a low priority project, maybe the
upper management just didn't care. After all, they didn't do a huge media
roll-out which would indicate that they didn't think it was ready for prime
time. Otherwise, they would have done everything they could to maximize
sales. Maybe this was just a tool to guage customer interest so that they
could now how much stock of evergreen bricks to build up before hand.
> > We're a particularly vocal segment. I bet we were the beta testers.
>
> Like I said if thats true they should have told us.
Well, vocal among ourselves. We live here and complain here. Now if we sent
out a circular with the same coverage as the catalogs, maybe they would think
twice before alienating some or all of us. But I think it was a calculated
risk. And, in their place, I would have assumed that the AFOLs would have
been eager to get bulk ordering in any form and very forgiving of initial ramp-
up problems.
> BTW, I am still very happy we have the service. It's just disappointing when
> there are so many errors in such a small startup.
Yeah, they should have gotten it right. I think Mr Justus mentioned that this
service would start in the fall. Maybe this was hurried out the door to help
gather market data and test the waters.
brian
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Does anybody actually know Mr Justus?
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| (...) I think I would have a differance of oppinion with you on the degree of slope in the peek. First it is the wrong part if what they are shipping is the low slope peek and 2 I would say for me the medium slope peek can NOT be used in most cases (...) (24 years ago, 21-Jun-00, to lugnet.lego.direct)
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