Grey Hulk Poll about Price/Es 179

[Bodie The Cursed]

Free Green Hulk I might have considered it.

 

[Khev]

I'd probably give mine up for $424 worth of credit on SS merchandise.

1. The overbooking was their mistake.
2. Selling 29 more Grey Hulks increases their profits as a result of the mistake.
3. Collectors who pre-ordered end up w/a less exclusive collectible.
4. Some collectors can feel somewhat relaxed about not having their Hulk cancelled

And that's where it stands now. I'm not demanding that SS do anything, but it'd be nice if they were the ones that paid the price for the error. Its really nice that 29 people won't need to be upset about a cancelled Hulk. But there are still *150* of us (whether I was one of them, who knows), who are coming out with the short end of the stick. Not "I'm going to cancel my pre-order" short end, or "SS sucks" short end, but the short end nonetheless.

Offering the bump system tells customers "Hey, NO ONE but us will pay for our mistakes" and THAT would be a cool gesture.

If not, hey, I'm primarily a SW/LOTR guy and 179 is still a pretty low number. Figure still looks great, not the end of the world. But how cool it would be if SS stepped up to the plate....

And given their history of great customer service its just the type of thing I could see SS doing.

 

[SolidLiquidFox]

Khev,

The airline seats analogy you used sounds like too much trouble. People getting bumped off a product that gets oversold is a public relations nightmare. Ask Gentle Giant after their Blackhole bust fiasco.

The proper way to handle this was: not sell the preorder at SDCC...fair is fair. If somebody doesn't live in California (they could drive to the show) or can't fly to San Diego I guess they are not that deserving of the special treatment of advance PPO. The other thing which makes this situation worse than the GrayVs diorama is the announcement of the low edition size beforehand (let those who seek out the product on PPO day find out). The only ones that win are the fans (and flippers) with fast internet connections.

I understand, as a business, Sideshow needs these low edition items to create excitement for their line of products. Most collectors love to own a low edition item. Still, not many like to say at what price that excitement comes: leaving some of your hardcore fans out even after the entire thing has already been mishandled and you decide to increase the edition size. Some people are getting turned off by all of this. We don't mind seeing the business side of Sideshow from time to time. However, the really poor execution and the extra $100 leaves a bad taste in a lot of mouths.

After a few days of all this drama these are some of my thoughts.

 

[Bodie The Cursed]

WELL STATED SLF...

 

[RichPG]

Totally agree that the Grey Hulk should never have been available to pre-order at the comicon.

What would've happened if they got 150 (or 179!) orders at San Diego and sold out? That would've made a total mockery of the PPO.

If you are going to offer limited editions so small, you have to give people an even chance of getting one - it's only fair. It's not as though Grey Hulk was a Comicon exclusive is it?

The issue of demand on the servers could be addressed by not setting the edition size so damn low! It was obvious at 150 that more people would be disappointed by not getting one maybe 250/300 would've been nearer the mark (and they could've lowered the price by $50 also).

 

[Khev]

Khev,

The airline seats analogy you used sounds like too much trouble. People getting bumped off a product that gets oversold is a public relations nightmare.

We're talking 29 people here. 29 coupons for $424 that SS says "call in if you want to cancel your Grey Hulk and accept the credit." People call in, customer service verifies that they really do have one pre-ordered, add $424 worth of merchandise to their account at no charge and cancel their Hulk. Done.

It happens all the time at airports on a much larger scale and its kind of a "win if you do, win if you don't" situation for the customers.

Like I said, raising the ES by 29 isn't the end of the world and I'm still cool with SS but the "bump" option would be an incredibly nice gesture on their part that already has precedent in similar situations.

 

[lcummins]

Totally agree that the Grey Hulk should never have been available to pre-order at the comicon.

What would've happened if they got 150 (or 179!) orders at San Diego and sold out? That would've made a total mockery of the PPO.

If you are going to offer limited editions so small, you have to give people an even chance of getting one - it's only fair. It's not as though Grey Hulk was a Comicon exclusive is it?

The issue of demand on the servers could be addressed by not setting the edition size so damn low! It was obvious at 150 that more people would be disappointed by not getting one maybe 250/300 would've been nearer the mark (and they could've lowered the price by $50 also).

Actually, there is no real difference between offering the Grey Hulk at the Con and offering the Bib or Leia 12" figures, all of which were PPOs after the Con. Since Sideshow had already stated that no edition sizes would be set until after the Con on anything pre-ordered there, just to avoid another Dr. Doom Exclusive fiasco, it shouldn't have mattered how many were sold there. They just take that number, decide the edition size based on the pre-sales, and make it large enough to satisfy the Con orders and their projected PPO orders! Should have been easy...

 

[occulum]

from what i can tell the orders just shouldnt have been taken by hand. They shouldve been taken on site thru the website by the SS reps who had access to an order area not available to the public.
That way if SS shouldnt have been taking orders for the Grey at the booth in the first place, the ordering process wouldnt have been activated for it to happen at all.

Then this wouldve happened:
SS Rep: I cant get in to order the Grey Hulk for this customer. Whats going on?
SS Manager: Cause we arent taking orders for that yet.
SS Rep: Im sorry sir/miss, we arent taking orders for that piece currently.

= ES still 150.


".. lack of .... communication" sing along .... :chew :chew

we all make mistakes. good "how could this go wrong" planning helps out

 

[lcummins]

from what i can tell the orders just shouldnt have been taken by hand. They shouldve been taken on site thru the website by the SS reps who had access to an order area not available to the public.
That way if SS shouldnt have been taking orders for the Grey at the booth in the first place, the ordering process wouldnt have been activated for it to happen at all.

Then this wouldve happened:
SS Rep: I cant get in to order the Grey Hulk for this customer. Whats going on?
SS Manager: Cause we arent taking orders for that yet.
SS Rep: Im sorry sir/miss, we arent taking orders for that piece currently.

= ES still 150.


".. lack of .... communication" sing along .... :chew :chew

we all make mistakes. good "how could this go wrong" planning helps out

Bear in mind that the "official" reason for the increased edition size was a glitch during the PPO and had nothing to do with orders taken at SDCC!

 

[Khev]

Bear in mind that the "official" reason for the increased edition size was a glitch during the PPO and had nothing to do with orders taken at SDCC!

Its funny that when Sith Anakin went up for pre-order their servers literally burst into flames and several news channels captured footage of SS employees running screaming into the street, their hair and clothes ablaze*, yet the system had no ES "glitches" of any kind....

*possibly a slight exaggeration

 

[RichPG]

Actually, there is no real difference between offering the Grey Hulk at the Con and offering the Bib or Leia 12" figures, all of which were PPOs after the Con. Since Sideshow had already stated that no edition sizes would be set until after the Con on anything pre-ordered there, just to avoid another Dr. Doom Exclusive fiasco, it shouldn't have mattered how many were sold there. They just take that number, decide the edition size based on the pre-sales, and make it large enough to satisfy the Con orders and their projected PPO orders! Should have been easy...

The real difference between Grey Hulk & Bib / Leia was that the edition size on the Grey Hulk *had* been set & leaked at 150. Not a problem if they had TBA edition sizes set by demand. This was a seriously limited edition peice & should have been handled better by SS.

 

[occulum]

Bear in mind that the "official" reason for the increased edition size was a glitch during the PPO and had nothing to do with orders taken at SDCC!

haha. so very true my friend

I think it was Azog who said he got the wierd-eye when he asked about ordering it. So it seems somebody there mustve been aware it shouldnt have been sold on the show floor

 

[RichPG]

Its funny that when Sith Anakin went up for pre-order their servers literally burst into flames and several news channels captured footage of SS employees running screaming into the street, their hair and clothes ablaze*, yet the system had no ES "glitches" of any kind....

*possibly a slight exaggeration

Nice One Khev, You may have something there!

 

[Fritz]

I'm not really sure where I stand on the issue. Hypothetically speaking, If I were one of the original 150 to get an order then "You Suck Sideshow". If I were one of the last 29 to get an order placed. then "OMG, Sideshow you are awesome!".

 

[Darth Loki]

I'm not really sure where I stand on the issue. Hypothetically speaking, If I were one of the original 150 to get an order then "You Suck Sideshow". If I were one of the last 29 to get an order placed. then "OMG, Sideshow you are awesome!".

But those 29 will never know. We all know that SN#'s 151-179 won't go out to the last 29 people to get an order in.

 

[SolidLiquidFox]

We're talking 29 people here. 29 coupons for $424 that SS says "call in if you want to cancel your Grey Hulk and accept the credit." People call in, customer service verifies that they really do have one pre-ordered, add $424 worth of merchandise to their account at no charge and cancel their Hulk. Done.

You mean to tell me Sideshow would just give out about $12,296 just to defend an edition size?

There is already precedent with Doom PF exclusive that they are not going to do that. They rather make more. The smart business choice for them is to increase the edition size, make more money and still charge you a $100 bucks more per Gray Hulk.

My point here is that since you already screwed up and bumped the edition size, just round it off to an edition size like the lowest SW PF exclusive: Han Solo at 250. It's a good round number and some Wait List will come through that way.

Why would they do this? they should do it because nobody is buying the website glitch excuse. We all know the 29 came from the SDCC orders. At least this way you take the focus from that questionable excuse and turn it into more threads of "Thank You Sideshow for the Wait List Conversion!". 179 or 250 is nowhere near to the low ES of the 50 Gray Hulk dioramas which is what really sets the precedent here.

 

[lcummins]

The real difference between Grey Hulk & Bib / Leia was that the edition size on the Grey Hulk *had* been set & leaked at 150. Not a problem if they had TBA edition sizes set by demand. This was a seriously limited edition peice & should have been handled better by SS.

No, the edition size was not set during Comic Con! Actually, the rumor I had during the Con was going to be 500. The first time we saw 150 Edition Size officially announced, was the newsletter the Thursday before the PPO happened. Even the product pages still had the TBD showing as the edition size during the PPO because the pages had been created a few days earlier and the edition size hadn't been determined at that point! There was no difference between Hulk, Bib and Leia!

 

[RichPG]

250 is nowhere near to the low ES of the 50 Gray Hulk dioramas which is what really sets the precedent here.

Don't even get me started on that 50 Grey Hulk Dioramas with no official announcement & (leaked via sideshow radio to people in the know ) in the middle of the night over hear in the UK.

That totally sucked.

 

[oxbeard]

The real difference between Grey Hulk & Bib / Leia was that the edition size on the Grey Hulk *had* been set & leaked at 150. Not a problem if they had TBA edition sizes set by demand. This was a seriously limited edition peice & should have been handled better by SS.

Where was this information leaked??

It is my understanding that the ES was not set until after the con and the first news of the ES was in the newsletter where it stated the ES was set at 150. Heck, even one person stated that when they asked about the ES at the con they were told 350, which was obviously wrong so I"m inclined to believe that it had not been set yet.

While I don't think PPO items should be offered for preorder at the con, I still can't believe folks are actually freaking out about the increase ES especially an increase of only 29.

And like Lonnie pointed out the official reason for the oversell is a computer glitch. That means that even if it had not been sold at SDCC the glitch could have still happened and we would have still seen the same outcome. It might have been even worse since the folks who did order at the con would have been in the mix as well.

I know many of you think the computer glitch thing is just a cover story, but I don't have a problem believing it. Look at the threads about order times and look at how many orders have the exact same order time. When I first saw that I was amazed they were able to keep track of everything without a mistake, that was my thought before this story came to life.

As far as the Sith Anakin preorder going through without a glitch. You're talking about a significantly larger ES and I have to think that would decrease the chances of a major problem since you have a larger quantity spread out over a longer sellout period. Just my thoughts though.


I've noticed that many of those complaining aren't in any hurry to cancel their orders, so my question is why complain?? Sure things could have been done differently and maybe should have been, but the fact is mistakes do happen even with the best laid plans. Sideshow is not infallible and do make mistakes just like the rest of us.

 

[RichPG]

No, the edition size was not set during Comic Con! Actually, the rumor I had during the Con was going to be 500. The first time we saw 150 Edition Size officially announced, was the newsletter the Thursday before the PPO happened. Even the product pages still had the TBD showing as the edition size during the PPO because the pages had been created a few days earlier and the edition size hadn't been determined at that point! There was no difference between Hulk, Bib and Leia!

Okaay Lonnie, but are Bib / Leia exclusives 150 ES? Were they planning ultra exclusive Bib / Leias?

If they were, then they shouldn't have allowed those orders at the con either!