What's the deal with pre-orders?

[Modlerbob]

Over a year ago I pre-ordered a slot car. It was the MrSlotcar Gulf McLaren F1GTR. This was the first item of any type that I have ever pre-ordered. The argument is that pre-ordering gives the shop owner and the manufacturer an idea of how well the item is going to sell and how many of said item to order or make. I have been seeing reports this week that the car is to be released soon and now I am curious about how my order will proceed. It has been so long that I don't remember 100% which online store I ordered it from. I am told that Electric Dreams charges the full amount at the time of the order so I am pretty sure I didn't order from them. 132slotcar.us has a $0.01 price attached to all of it's pre-order cars so I am pretty sure I ordered from them. But it doesn't show up on my purchase history or my shopping cart or my wish list. So how do I know whether they saved the pre-order? Will I have to wait until several weeks have passed after the release and then if there is no notification order one again? I can't afford to pay for two of them. So does anyone know how the pre-order game works for the various online stores?

[chappy]

SCC Canada dosent charge for pre orders, perhaps SCC dosent either , and perhaps you ordered from them. My pre orders show up on my account with the store. Might be worth a look at stores you have an account with.
Bob

[Modlerbob]

I have always had a good relationship with SCC but unfortunately they apparently don't carry the MrSlotcar line. I have never had any trouble with 132 slotcar.us when ordering cars or parts in stock. Later today, when they are open, I will call them to verify whether or not they have my pre-order on record.

[Z-carfan]

I have done a couple pre-orders from 132 slotcar.us, I found that they don't actually charge you that penny, but you are basically making a commitment to by when available.

[Modlerbob]

OK, but if they don't show a record of the pre-order, and the wait is almost two years how are you supposed to know they still have your name on the list?

[Z-carfan]

Tat is a good question. It's has been over a year since I got something i preordered s I don't have a good answer for that other than I recall seeing it in my preorder in my account.
I too got frustrated s they didn't take any money up front so it was indeed hard to know you had reserved one.

[Dangermouse]

Shoot the places you normally deal with an email and see if they have your pre-order - if not then you can order one

DM

[Modlerbob]

Well I called 132slotcar.us and discovered that they didn't have my pre-order on file. Only the black ueno clinic car is being shipped at this time. The Gulf car will come later in the year. So I placed a pre-order for the ueno clinic car which he said should be here within a week or two. The only place left that I could have pre-ordered the Gulf car from is Professor Motor and they don't show pre-orders either.

[JULES]

If you have pre-ordered a model with any reputable online dealer then I would hope that would generate an internal order number on their 'system', whether you have paid in advance or not. Any dealer that takes pre-orders should send you an order confirmation, by email at the very least. You can then print it or save it to a folder for future reference.

If you do make a pre-order and you receive no confirmation within a few days I would assume that your 'order' was not really an order at all.

Incidentally, as far as I am concerned, I have no discussions with any dealers about "only making to order". I base all my production quantities either on a gut feeling or using soft marketing techniques and extrapolate data from that.

The other thing that I now try to encourage is for the dealers not to offer pre-orders on a model that is not even in the factory production queue yet. I now give the dealers an "OK" when it is safe to advertise a forthcoming model.

Jules

[Czar]

I think the reason 132 Slots asks for the penny, is to make sure the credit card is valid and active. That way, you are not charged for the car, but when it arrives they know they have an approved account to charge to. In a slow motion way, it is like when you get the receipt at a restaurant and then add the tip.

[Modlerbob]

I wasn't concerned about the penny. After such a long wait I'm not even sure which online store I tried to pre-order from. Apparently I did something wrong at the end and never actually sealed the deal. As this was my first attempt at pre-ordering I guess my error resulted in no registered order. No email was ever sent verifying my intent and nobody now seems to have a record of the event. This time there was no damage done such as a sell out before the item even hit the shelves. I will try again with another slot car I wish to buy and see how it is supposed to work.

[Czar]

With pre-orders, since long waits are common, I like to call and place the order with a real person. that way I can get feedback and I know my order is in the queue.

[cgingras]

At Slot Car Corner Canada, just like Bob said, I don't charge for pre-orders. I have a section of the website dedicated to pre-orders (http://www.slotcarcorner.ca/pre-orders/) and the note at the top of this section reads like this:



This way, each customer has the order in his account and the car is also removed from the inventory I will add once the cars are in. Just to make sure, I also have another list that I keep updated on the side so I can see in a single list all pre-orders I have. When a car comes in, I just send an email to every customer I have on the pre-order list and then finalize the invoice for the car(s).

As a reseller, dealing with pre-orders is not the most fun part of the job. It's time-consuming and can lead to errors and omissions. For customers, it's frustrating also because the announced release dates are very rarely respected by the manufacturers (for many reasons, good and bad). I would prefer to announce the cars when they're in transit to me or even already in stock. I'm not buying the fact that manufacturers use the pre-order numbers to evaluate how many cars of each release they should produce. Those numbers are way too soft and imprecise to be useful.

That being said, I have to offer pre-orders because everybody else does it. If I don't offer a car on the pre-order list and other sellers do it, some of my customers will think that I won't have that car in stock and will pre-order elsewhere. This sometimes leads to ridiculous waits for pre-ordered cars (more than 12 months, I've seen more than 18 months!).

In addition, for us in Canada, the exchange rate of our dollar vs the US dollar has been moving a lot recently and pricing changes on a regular basis (almost all car purchases are made in US dollars). This leads to another level of frustration when the pricing has to be changed between the pre-order and the release.

That's why I would very much like all dealers, distributors and manufacturers to stop this pre-order nonsense. This would be so much simpler for everyone, customers included. Unfortunately, for this to happen, everyone would have to stop processing pre-orders at the same time. Mission impossible.

[Modlerbob]

OK, I verified my preorder for the MrSlotCar uneo Mclaren with store A. As of today three other stores indicate they have them in stock but not store A. So, do I continue to wait, and for how long, or do I cancel my preorder and buy it from one of the other stores I deal with regularly.

[HomeRacingWorld]

Contact them and ask them when they expect the model before cancelling?

And sometimes models come in to certain stores and they just do not get the site updated that quickly. With some places being ran by one, maybe 2 people, updating the website sometimes is not that important as packing and shipping.