Drone kit nightmare is not even over for me
Two months in since I ordered my and my fellow agents' kits. I STILL have not received what we should have got.
Timeline:
Dec 20th, 2021: Initial order placed for 20, 10 kits (total 30), 2 orders.
Jan 7th, 2022: Sent first inquiry by email on the status of both orders.
Jan 11th, 2022: 2 canned responses from Niantic supply. Sent a reply asking for the tracking number. This email got ignored.
Jan 17th, 2022: Sent another email asking for the IQTech and Susanna Moyer medals.
Jan 17th, 2022: Niantic Supply partially refunds the 20 kit order to 10.
Jan 20th, 2022: Niantic Supply sends the IQTech and Susanna Moyer codes by email.
Jan 21st, 2022: The 10 kit order arrives. The 20 kit order still has no information available, so I sent an email which was also ignored.
Feb 9th, 2022: Sent another email about the 20 kit order, asking its whereabouts.
Feb 10th, 2022: Niantic Supply sent a tracking number that revealed that it was already shipped on Jan 26th.
Feb 14th, 2022: I finally got the 2nd order by international shipping from my warehouse.
Feb 16th, 2022: Mails for the misprinted bio cards arrive in the warehouse.
Feb 19th, 2022: I opened the package to see that I only got 1 kits instead of 10, with an invoice of someone else.
Summary:
- I got 11 kits instead of 20.
- I paid tariffs for items that wasn't even included. I'm sorting this out with customs.
- And this is not still over for 2 months.
A crappy experience to boot. Just sent another email to ask how they'll recover the damage dealt, with expectations very low. And spent a fair amount of time, and money. How will Niantic Supply make up for this, I might never know.
Comments
wow crazy.. thats a long time.. i hope u get it sorted.
Absolute pain.
I still haven't received my kit either.
Niantic need to do MUCH better.
Agent here stateside who was unable to order a kit because of people hoarding kits....
No digital option to purchase medals either. TBH, with that many kits ordered, I'm glad it's a fiasco for those who ordered a ton.
Thanks for contributing to the reason why they sold out so fast.
Thanks @NianticThia @NianticBrian and whomever is in charge of the kits for not letting us buy the digital swag.
I'm a very satisfied non-customer I guess.
Niantic shipping is horrifically slow even when items are in stock.
They really need to get their act together, theres plenty of options out there these days.
@3car getting an invoice for someone else is really sad. Should never, ever, ever happen.
I never got my physical kits. FedEx claims they delivered them, I never saw them. Didn't get the tracking # until after they were supposedly delivered. Lots of canned replies and some "its not our fault after their leave our warehouse c-r-u-d (this is a censored word? really?)". Had to reach out to people at Niantic directly to get something done. Currently I'm supposed to be getting replacements on my two physical packs when they do their 2nd round in April. But I'm not going to hold my breath on this.
I've never had so many issues with ordering swag when it's something run by agents. That includes when we used to do huge group orders for coins back in the day where you would order waaaaaaay ahead of time (months) and get your coins later. And some of those orders even had personal engraving done on them. I shudder to think of the dumpster fire that Niantic Supply orders would be for a coin that had your agent name engraved on the side of it.
Let me add that I ordered 30 kits for 30 agents in the first time. I had to apologize to 10 of them for the partial refund. Now I might need to apologize to 9 more.
Added: I just received an email saying that they will send replacements on April or they will give a refund.
A refund now? Disgusting.
Today I received an extra XM drone medal card, delivered by Australia Post.
Currently I'm supposed to be getting replacements on my two physical packs when they do their 2nd round in April.
I'm surprised they didn't offer digital codes for the items you didn't get in the meantime. Also, this means they're most likely going to do this for April 1st with April Fools like last year with NL-1331
Australia Post?! You may have got mine lol
I have the digital codes via email, but nothing physical. I bought it for the physical stuff. meh
Well I also got 20 codes for 20 kits. Could've asked for a refund, but decided to let them have another chance by shipping directly to me. That already looks depressing, because some agents here still haven't got theirs.
Which, these agents should have performed their own individual orders, giving all agents an equal shot at ordering a kit.
Instead, Niantic allowed single agents to bulk order kits. Should have been a max of two per agent and locked to a certain age/level of account before being released for sale to the general public as bulk orders. The current system allows for your situation (hoarding, regardless of your intent to be a proxy) and worse, scalping. Go check E-bay, the unavailable medals are now up there for a premium.
The digital options should also have been unlimited, instead of tied to physical merch.
While I understand your PoV, it can be expensive getting things like this through customs. It's not unusual for the courier to add a large admin fee on top of the customs due - and if each individual agent is ordering their own kit, customs + admin could be more than the cost of the kit itself.
(On the flip side, under UK regs, buying 2 packs was of low enough value the seller is required to pay the VAT and there are no additional customs duties. Also there was a free shipping deal from Niantic buying 2 instead of 1. No VAT/other duties meant no courier admin fee 😁)
Well, yeah. 2 packs with customs are cheaper than 2*10 orders with delivery and without customs. Which was what we were after. And not the reason to hear about ebay and sorts. We did the economic decision, and did not expect Niantic Supply to stir it up for us.
Some updates.
1st March, 2022: My warehouse sends replacement cards for the 2nd order. They also received the replacement cards for the 1st order to see that I got 8 cards instead of 10.
5th March, 2022: Received 10 cards for the 2nd order.
Good to see you got something!
Mine has been stuck in New Jersey since 13 January with no updates since. Just Niantic stealing money again.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/14/this-nj-post-office-is-a-black-hole-for-lost-packages-nationwide/
Those delays are worse cases then mine :(…