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Speculation on the 12th April/Free Shipping Email

Anonymous
Not applicable
There seem to be a number of people talking about this in various different threads, so I thought I'd start a new one and hopefully the talk about it will gravitate here and be a bit easier to find 🙂

There seem to be two main topics of conversation:-

Firstly, the wording of the email...

Oculus have given us a date of 12th April for updates. I'll be amazed if they don't meet this date or even give updates before then. Whether it's the fault of Oculus or not, there's been a major screw up on the launch. They've lost a lot of goodwill, and some (nobody knows how much, but I'll bet it's thousands) of orders because of it. They've appeased (most of) us by explaining, apologising and offering free shipping.

The email may seem slightly ambiguous, but you can guarantee it's been through umpteen Facebook lawyers before release. It's been very carefully thought through. Oculus aren't daft. They know how many people are annoyed at the delays. They've bought themselves some breathing space with this announcement and they know they have to use it. If they drop the ball again, the cancellations will flood in, especially as by April 12th, it'll be public knowledge how well the Vive launch is going. If they weren't totally confident they could meet this date and get things back on track by then, they wouldn't have given a timescale.

Secondly, the 'component' shortage...

Nobody knows what this component is. Personally, I think it's one of the items that's added into the box at the last minute, i.e. the remote. They were expecting a shipment of xx thousand of these to arrive so that they could get them into the boxes, but for whatever reason, there was a delay. If it IS a last minute item such as this, it would account for them not knowing until soon before launch that there was going to be a problem. Assuming this is the problem, it's simply a matter of getting these items in the boxes and firing the boxes out, which is why they're in a position to announce that shipping will hopefully be back on track very soon.

If it's an internal component, say a PCB, that's a bit more serious. I doubt it, as if it was, they'd have known a lot sooner that there were going to be major delays and would presumably have made an announcement before things got so out of hand. If this is the situation, then even when the components arrive, they still have to assemble the thing before they can get it into the box and send it out. I'm not sure ten days is enough time to do that in the quantities they need to ship, especially as they've announced via VR-Researcher (commonly thought to be either Palmer Luckey under an alias or someone else pretty high up at Oculus) on Reddit  that they'll hopefully be back up to speed 'next week'.

It could even be the box that Rift ships in. If you watch the vid of Palmer delivering the first Rift, the controller falls out when the box is opened. Ok, the box was opened upside down, but the controller still shouldn't fall out that easily. They may be simply putting extra padding in the box to ensure the controller doesn't fall out during transit and cause damage.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the matter. Hopefully, all will become clearer soon! 🙂
53 REPLIES 53

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
The lens post on reddit was updated to say it was an April Fools joke.
It was a good one.  I thought it was plausible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

Lucky_D
Heroic Explorer
I think the OP has it right, it must be a rather trivial component, anything on the PCB would have been identified much sooner than this.  So a chip on the main board is probably not the issue, I would suspect the remote or a shortage of XBOX One controllers, or one of the inserts.  Something easily sourced from a different vendor.  Odds are they are allowing the original vendor the opportunity to correct the shortage and by the 12th Oculus will know if they will be able to provide the needed component.  If not I am sure Oculus has a few alternate sources lined and if they have to go thru one of them, also have an estimate for shipping.

Zandil
Rising Star
Don't give a crap what it was, i'm getting it 130 USD bucks cheaper now due to it being late,

COME TO DADDY  😉 

ZachSny
Expert Protege
Do you think orders will still be shipped this Monday, or are all orders at a stand still? The email did say that: "you should expect to see your order status updated on oculus.com by Tuesday, April 12." So by my understanding the email states that we will receive order information "by" not on, which could mean that things may happen before then - not to mention EVERYONE got this email, not just the 1-3 weeks people.

Note: Sorry if someone already asked this, I didn't have time to read over the tread.

Zandil
Rising Star

ZachSny said:

Do you think orders will still be shipped this Monday, or are all orders at a stand still? The email did say that: "you should expect to see your order status updated on oculus.com by Tuesday, April 12." So by my understanding the email states that we will receive order information "by" not on, which could mean that things may happen before then - not to mention EVERYONE got this email, not just the 1-3 weeks people.

Note: Sorry if someone already asked this, I didn't have time to read over the tread.


They stated shipping will be at full steam by Monday, Once shipping resumes and it smooths out they will have a better grasp of dates for the rest of us and that's when they will probably update our orders.  

ZachSny
Expert Protege

Zandil said:


ZachSny said:

Do you think orders will still be shipped this Monday, or are all orders at a stand still? The email did say that: "you should expect to see your order status updated on oculus.com by Tuesday, April 12." So by my understanding the email states that we will receive order information "by" not on, which could mean that things may happen before then - not to mention EVERYONE got this email, not just the 1-3 weeks people.

Note: Sorry if someone already asked this, I didn't have time to read over the tread.


They stated shipping will be at full steam by Monday, Once shipping resumes and it smooths out they will have a better grasp of dates for the rest of us and that's when they will probably update our orders.  


Awesome news! I read earlier that the 1-3 weeks people were the "first batch", so maybe I might see a Rift on my doorstep this week.. Although I won't get too anxious after what happened last week.. Haha.

Jokergod2000
Adventurer
I'm traveling for work and will be back home on Thursday. Come on Mon or Tues shipping email! Would be awesome if it was there when I got home 🙂

greeneblitz
Expert Protege
I would bet it's the Xbox controllers as well, its the only competent that makes sense that would be out of Occulus' hands and would be the only component that could force Oculus not to disclose details of its failure to deliver, it's also a component that could conceivable be put in as the "'last step" of retail packaging.

If hats true, then I really wish that they would have sped up development and launched with the Touch controllers that would have saved them and most importantly, us fans, from many hours of reading through garbage on here and Reddit.

Zandil
Rising Star


I would bet it's the Xbox controllers as well, its the only competent that makes sense that would be out of Occulus' hands and would be the only component that could force Oculus not to disclose details of its failure to deliver, it's also a component that could conceivable be put in as the "'last step" of retail packaging.


It could well be the controller but it's not the only component that could have done it, All of the material in the Rift comes from somewhere and some other company and  a delay from any one piece could have caused the delay 

Anonymous
Not applicable
I got an email this morning  :).... my rift is being processed! Checked order history and it's showing as being shipped. 
UK 5mins and 49secs xxxx25xxxx order here..,things are moving again.