Thanks Eric! Keep up the great work! It is appreciated.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric Swartz - WA6HHQ, Elecraft Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:53 AM To: G4ILO Cc: Elecraft List Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Shipping status ...ENOUGH ALREADY!!!! Hi Julian, I apologize for the delays getting you (and everyone else) your K3. We are absolutely working as hard as possible to get K3s out the door quickly. Every time I see a complaint here (and elsewhere) about delivery delays, status accuracy etc., I take every posting very personally (especially those criticizing our veracity) and agonize over how we can improve things further. To be totally, and brutally, honest, we were absolutely amazed at the amount of orders we received at introduction of the K3. (We're not a venture capital financed company that can staff up and spend millions of dollars before shipping our first K3.) We certainly underestimated the ongoing response and have been playing catch up as we have added staff and vendors to meet the demand. This has strained not only our own staff, but that of our vendors too. They are doing a great job responding, but we are continually looking for additional resources. My day starts out -very- early with a review of what new issues and problems have to be addressed to keep production rolling and how we can improve our run rate. The term 'fire drill' is now permanently engraved on the back of my head ;-) Fire drills encompass everything from vendors not delivering parts and assembled PCBs on schedule, wrong or faulty parts received, key employees out sick, test and alignment taking longer than expected, pcb assembly errors at a vendor (requiring rework here), customers who personally want to talk with me etc. etc. All of this is a normal part of any product ramp up (I've been there before..), and it is getting better and more predictable daily. But it takes a lot of effort to make sure we increase our output -and- maintain our admittedly high quality standards. As we go forward our shipping estimates will continue to both increase in volume and get more accurate. I'm trying to be as honest and as conservative as possible with my current shipping estimates, and so are Lisa and her crew. But we're human too and will make mistakes or be over optimistic from time to time. It is very hard to accurately estimate delivery out past a 3-4 week window and I'm sure Lisa and crew have been pressured into guessing on some estimates. I'm actually trying to get to the point where we will regularly exceed our posted estimates. If my 'fire drill' threshold is not exceeded this month I think we'll be there soon! :-) Our new order rate is strong (and increasing!) and we have had very few cancellations (I can count them on one hand), which has given us the confidence to spend even more on staffing, inventory and other resources. As K3s have gotten out into the field people are showing their rig to their friends and we're getting a lot of referral orders. We've now been able to increase our daily production rate ahead of the order rate, so my confidence is increasing that we're on the right track to keep everyone happy. As always, we will refund any deposits (and still keep an order active) and/or cancel anyone's order without delay should they feel the need to do so. Lastly, please stop arguing with each other here about what should or should not be said about K3 deliveries. We want the feedback. But also, please tone down the rhetoric and personal criticisms - we are human here too and we lose sleep over these postings. We're doing our best to make the K3 a superb rig and to get it out to you as quickly as possible. As always, please feel free to email me directly if you feel we have done or said anything you take issue with ) or just want to vent! :-) 73, Eric WA6HHQ ------ G4ILO wrote: > Jim-170 wrote: > >> Please give the fine staff at Elecraft a break. They are providing a great >> service to our Amateur Community...... >> >> > And there was me thinking they were advertising products for sale and > entering into contracts with people who placed orders for them! How silly of > me! > > ----- > Julian, G4ILO K2 s/n: 392 K3 s/n: ??? > G4ILO's Shack: www.g4ilo.com > Zerobeat Ham Forums: www.zerobeat.net/smf > _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
