Nice, thanks, yeah it did seem like some of the marble wood ones were left at the end when the payment processor crashed... I think I shared the other angles of these two earlier, one of them at least, all tough choices!
all the wenge series is awesome.. can't wait!
Yeah really can't go wrong with any of these, wenge, marble wood, zerbrano, with the color stab wood drum barrel panels... I was tempted, but felt I had to go all out lol
I had to have a talk to my VAS),
I'm proud and jealous of you!
after having a successful payment process in the same day it really sucks seeing all the units that went through for purchase when the transaction I actually was trying to plan for got rejected 2 minutes into the drop and never had another successful attempt.
Yeah, that really sucks, and is so odd, your bank must have flagged the more expensive purchase for some reason even though you made another one earlier? Honestly I'd recommend choosing the bank transfer option, you don't have to actually use a bank transfer when you pay, it just makes it so you don't pay yet to complete your order, you can wait to pay until it is confirmed and you can pay by credit card choosing invoice in the store to add to your cart for the amount of your total order and shipping... I actually paid with the bank transfer this time, and used a bank transfer too, which I had done in the past for Collyland though all of my previous Lamart purchases were by credit card... Even on my phone, where the credit card info can be filled in automatically, I think the bank transfer was quicker, even though everything was slowed down this time, I think that helped mine go through smoother without any issue... Last time in a drop my card had gotten rejected for the first time and I missed out on my first choice then so I didn't want to risk it this time (I didn't test it beforehand foolishly since I even had another item to order but everything worked out since I had switched to a custom then after all and got a bronze mod that way too)
I wonder if something like the Toad waitlist would be easy to implement for the p80. Just a set number of orders per drop and people get to choose their top 3 in order of preference, priority determined by waitlist rank. If none of their choices are available, they have the option to wait until the next drop but with a correspondingly higher waitlist ranking. If any are left unsold, they get released by lottery to the general list.
Certainly not easy, that is much more involved than a regular wait list, for Dan it's pretty easy since the drops are small and he takes his time with every step, everything is involved for him already (but I do love it as a system of purchasing artisan one of the kind units since it is actually very fun to participate in)
Again, Ralph is focused on just building the vapes, and then selling them online with the web store he has already built to operate successfully for many years now (originally you could put in orders for customs and there was regular stock until demand got out of hand with the TP80) so it would be sort of an ordeal for him to switch to a waitlist, and then go through the whole picking process that Dan does with all the emails, Ralph is always doing larger drops building more at a time and he can be more consistent in timing with experience (Dan is going to get much quicker too though soon enough) He also is very good responding to emails working with customers, fantastic customer service, that takes a lot of time too, for him to then spend all the time emailing chasing people down for picking like Dan does, maybe not that much chasing because they are sought after, but Dan does have people who don't respond and then you move down the list which is not a big deal, but it's again a whole operation running a list...
I don't think speculating about how easy it would be for Ralph to do this or that, running a wait list, instead of doing what he's always done of putting them on the website, is productive for this thread at all, worthy of its own thread topic really, because Ralph is going to continue to do whatever works best for him especially since it is working for the most part for him and plenty of customers... There will always be people dissatisfied with it, and you see he is making some improvements like the reservation system this time, entering drop mode so only one item can be bought at a time, etc. but this is the way it is, like at least a third of this thread is just talking about drop protocol here now
