We will start off with a bit of history. I have been purchasing Nexus devices since the Galaxy Nexus. Each experience has been different, but none as painful or stressful as the experience I had yesterday when ordering the Nexus 6p. Last year I was at work when the Nexus 6 went live so I had to do my best to reload the order page until it went live. I ended up getting tied up on a job and the Nexus 6 through Google was out of stock about 30 minutes after going live. I ended up grabbing a Nexus 6 from Motorola the next day and all was well. As far as I can remember I got my device when everyone else did.
Yesterday I was able to score a day off work! I decided to sit back and watch the entire Google event. Once the event was over I mosied on over to the Google Store to do the whole F5 page refresh thing until the devices went live. I didn't want a repeat of the stress of thinking the device was sold out like last year. As soon as the Nexus 6p went live i was able to easily choose my device, and checkout. Painless. I was so at ease with the whole process that I went to lunch with my wife. As we sat there eating lunch i was skimming through email and noticed my order confirmation was there. I opened it and realized THE SHIP TO ADDRESS WAS WRONG!
My heart skipped a beat, how could they have auto populated an address that I had not lived at for 3 years!!! Why not just make each person confirm their address. Maybe they did, and I was so rushed that I didn't even check trying to make sure I secured a device. "No worries, Ill just call and they can change the address", I reasoned. About 30 minutes later, 2 hours after the purchase, I called Google. They answered promptly and after about 1 hour of going around in circles the guy determined that the only thing I could do at this point is notify the current residence at my old address that a package with my name was coming and to tell them to sign for it??!!! Due to security concerns they could not change the address more than an hour after the initial purchase.
During the conversation they had mentioned that I should cancel the first order and reorder. I decided to give that a try. I decided not to cancel my first order right away which ended up being a good idea. Upon completing the second order I was given a ship date of TWO weeks later than the first order's ship date! I immediately canceled that order since I was not willing to wait 2 extra weeks. I called back and let them know what I did which is when they said that I could try to coordinate with my mail courier once I had received the tracking number. Meanwhile both of my debit card charges are on hold for up to two weeks.
I ended up having to call the bank and burn another hour with them to get them to relinquish the cash from the canceled transaction. I would love to just be done with this whole experience, but my order is still being shipped to the wrong address. At this point I will probably just order directly through Huawei and cancel my remaining order through Google.
Yesterday's pre-order experience was pretty much a breeze for everyone else I talked to. I seemed to be the only one having such a hard time. One change that Google could make going forward is to not pre-populate the address. I would be willing to bet that atleast 10% of customers ordering do not live at the address they lived at the last time they ordered a Nexus. Another change that would save some heartache is a slight adjustment in the security policy. If I the customer can answer all of the security questions (ie last four digits of credit card number, address shipped too, ect) I should be able to change the order past the 1 hour deadline.
How was your pre-order experience? Did you run into any issues or was your experience a breeze?
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