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HTC Vive shipments going out of order
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Tuesday, April 5

The HTC Vive launched.

Daniel O'Brien – HTC VP of VR and HTC Vive Head – had been fielding complaints of out-of-order shipping all day, at one point stating:

@Drehmini we don't choose a region in US to deploy shipments to. We ship in the order which we received.

The @htcvive Twitter account insisted the same:

@magical_trevor Because you ordered after many others did. They are shipping in the order we received orders in. Thank you for your patience

@HTCHelp repeated over and over again:

@ceno666 We stickly implement "First come, First serve". You will receive your HTC Vive once we reach your spot. Hang in there!

I waded in late in the day, tweeting:

@obriend17 I'm an IL :03 preorder. I was charged on 3/31, but my Vive has not shipped. Orders are definitely being filled out of order.

@obriend17 replied, asking for my order number, which I provided along with a link to this page, which included the following content.

Meanwhile:

Wednesday, April 6

@obriend17 went dark. No evidence of Vives being shipped.

Thursday, April 7

HTC put up an FAQ blog post, saying in part:

Are orders processed and shipped in the order received?

We have a first in, first out policy for Vive order fulfillment. There were a small number of orders at the beginning of April that were processed out of sequential order. However, we have corrected the situation and all future shipments will be sent in the order in which they were received.

HTC fixed the glitch, and @obriend17 came back.

Reddit users then reported the following:

I pointed this out on Twitter. @obriend17 responded to someone else:

@taurisince1983 You're referencing the last set of orders that went out of order. Orders as of today are shipped in sequential order. Thanks

This response is consistent with this morning's blog post, which describes the issue in the past tense and says it's been corrected, but it is inconsistent with the above reports of orders which actually shipped today.

Friday, April 8

HTC phone support told a Reddit user that no shipments would go out today. HTC phone support told me that shipments would go out today, and that they're shipping 3000 units per day. Yesterday's blog post included:

Why are there discrepancies between what HTC Care is telling customers and what the HTC Vive channels are telling customers?

We acknowledge there were some inconsistencies in our communication. We have taken the steps to align all messaging moving forward.

Annoyed, I asked on Twitter, receiving no response:

@JulesHTC "Phone support just told me no tracking numbers are going out today." reddit.com/r/Vive/comment… Is this the "align[ed] messaging"?

Like Wednesday, there is no evidence of Vives shipping today. Also like Wednesday, @obriend17 took the day away from Twitter.

Saturday, April 9

@shen, HTC's Europe e-commerce lead, clarified how orders are sorted:

@MA_Kroy @JulesHTC @obriend17 It's actually your card authorisation time. When you submit your pre-order, your card is authorised for £/€/$1

…and that email confirmation times are a suitable proxy:

@shen @MA_Kroy @JulesHTC @obriend17 So is the timestamp on our confirmation emails an accurate representation of when the charge went thru?

@snobaste @MA_Kroy @JulesHTC @obriend17 it should be. You order wouldn't have gone through before the email is send if your card is invalid

@shen had previously stated on Friday:

@neergmit Definitely wasn't. I personally checked the timestamp of every order that went out yesterday. They were all in order

He reiterated today that he's personally checking the order is followed:

@chris_starkey @MA_Kroy @JulesHTC @obriend17 yes. I am personally checking the order is followed before and after the shipments go out.

This information from @shen is contradictory with the information reported by Vive purchasers. He verified the orders that shipped on Thursday, yet many of those have HTC email and Paypal timestamps from :07, while many :01 and :02 orders remain in limbo.

Sunday, April 10

I started building a web app to track Vive preorders.

Monday, April 11

I got it running.

Tuesday, April 12

I launched vive.lol, seeded mostly by data I entered. App goes from information on 1000 users to 1600 users in a matter of hours.

Wednesday, April 13

I added better maps to the vive.lol Charts page. /r/Vive adoption is high; way more survey traffic than expected.

People start presenting vive.lol data to HTC reps on Twitter. @obriend19 snapped back "@hookman1979 is everyone on reddit? I don't think so.". I updated the main page to include a "Significance" section, linking this tweet, and explaining that the Reddit users on vive.lol account for 8.1% of his customers. That number continues to grow.

I rolled out the "salty" feature, e.g. https://vive.lol/salty/willglynn, and tweeted it at @obriend17 among others. No response, as expected.

The mob continued to pile on @obriend19's earlier statement. @obriend19 then declared "Reddit VIVE community is filled with very smart people which is why we're listening & resolving issues & concerns". I replied immediately explaining the thing that's getting Reddit up at arms – which is described in detail by the "salty" page.

Thursday, April 14

We're up to 2351 total preorders. This represents ~9.6% of the Vive population, as estimated by the proportion of first-ten-minutes preorders on vive.lol versus HTC's announced sales figures.

I got confirmation that my Vive shipped late in the evening.

Friday, April 15

vive.lol main page now reads:

HTC sold 15,000 Vives in the first 10 minutes. As tracked here, Reddit users account for 1,596 orders from the first 10 minutes – 10.6% of HTC's figure – and 2,668 orders total.

I reached out on Twitter [1], [2]:

@obriend17 My Vive shipped last night. Still salty – vive.lol/salty/willglynn explains. I would appreciate a conversation.

@obriend17 Also, vive.lol/survey has a Note field. I'd be happy to provide HTC an export of all my data. Now ~10.6% of customers.

I rolled out new charts, letting you filter by later preorder times/dates, isolate reorders, and manipulate ship dates.

Saturday, April 16

I was out all day. Dataset continues to grow:

HTC sold 15,000 Vives in the first 10 minutes. As tracked here, Reddit users account for 1,683 orders from the first 10 minutes – 11.2% of HTC's figure – and 2,939 orders total.

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