Wanted: GPS Antennas
By any chance have you seen a few thousand GPS antennas lying around?
After weeks of fruitless pings over the holidays, our GPS antenna vendor informed us that our shipment would be delayed yet another week due to a broken mold in their factory. Extremely frustrating! For three weeks now, we've had enough assembled boards sitting around to cover our entire notification list - but it turns out the GPS antenna is an important component in our product. Sigh.
We've got another vendor working on antennas now as a back-up plan, but in the meantime, all we can do is apologize and thank everyone for their patience and understanding. As soon as we have some antennas in hand, we will post an update. After that, it will be a two day turnaround and the finished product will be on its way to Amazon and eBay.
8 Responses
Patrick Pope
Any availability updates? Can’t wait to get my hands on one!
john
Dave – a fair question. Building this small device has been a bit more complex than we could have imagined when we embarked on the journey. I won’t make excuses for the delays, other than to say that even the big boys in the business experience the same kinds of issues. We’ve made an effort to be more open than we need to be in sharing information. There were some defects in the first batch and we addressed each incident as we would have liked to have been treated ourselves. If you want to know about our warranty and customer service, I invite you to review our feedback on Amazon and eBay.
Andrew Heller
I will wait. you have a product that seems worth waiting for. I have run some of those “big boys” as a CEO or division president and I find your openness refreshing. Getting backup vendors is great and taking the time to test is even better. I still remember when cellphones were taking off in Europe with the current standard that it was the lack of lithium niobate saw filters (a $0.20 part) which stopped all major manufacturers from making Christmas deliveries and ruined the financials of several companies for the year. Just keep making great products and keep tightening up the supply chain issues
patrick
Dear John. I’m a french and prospective customer. You are agree to be transparent in your communication. Yes, we are impatient to have your product but i’m understanding your current problems. For my part, I prrefer to wait and to have a good product with a real quality control; If it was so easy you would have more competitors! All my encouragements Patrick
Jacob
Oh dear… Any ETA? I’m guessing a week? Two weeks? A month?
Been waiting for 1.5 months, sucks to be still waiting…. But I understand, and can’t wait to get my hands on one of these wonderful GPS units!
john
As we said above, we’re very sorry for the delays – and trust me, we’re just as impatient as you are. We are expecting the antennas from the second vendor to arrive next week, but will need to validate them. Last we heard, the original order we were expecting to arrive in December should also arrive next week. So, to answer your question – we are hopeful that we will have them available for sale again by the end of the month. We are working diligently to get ahead of the supply chain issues and not let this happen again. We can’t control everything, but we can work harder at being the squeaky wheel. As soon as we have more news, we will post an update. In the meantime, we’re happy to answer questions and we truly appreciate everyone’s patience, even if you get a little edgy with us for the delays.
Dave
With all these delays, and now a cracked mold, I have to wonder about the quality of the finished product from this vendor. I hope you’re going to have a decent warranty and customer service on this unit!
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patrick
January 21, 2011
sorry for the mistake :
“Dear John. I’m a french and prospective customer. You are right to be transparent in your communication…….”