Given that the roll out of the V5 has been less than stellar, and the way the trade in program works it has created a big dilemma for many organizations and a nightmare for others, I think it would be a great step in the right direction if Vex were to extend the deadline for trading in the cortex bundle until after worlds.
For many teams who have already traded in systems, Vex is way behind in fulfilling the orders with no date in sight for getting caught up. For teams who have not sent their trade in to Vex, it is a very high risk proposition to do so now. At this time, you would end up missing a substantial portion of the season without the cortex and waiting on the V5.
People can argue over whose fault it is that there is such a delay in the pipeline but at this point, fault finding and blame do not solve problems. We know it is not the fault of the teams and organizations who have teams. We know a problem exists. The solution, at this point would be for Vex to simply acknowledge the problem and offer the solution of extending the trade in deadline. They could even prioritize shipments after march to teams who have qualified for worlds.
Those are my thoughts. Anybody else have suggestions for solutions?
I agree. Or at least allow teams to get a discount voucher but not have to turn in their cortexes until right before their V5s ship.
That being said, i have no insight into the business side of this. I have no idea how many trade ins they were expecting and the number of trade ins that would put them at a substantial loss. I don’t know what their margins are.
Here’s an idea: Simply pause the trade-in program until VEX has filled backorders and accrued a decent stock of V5 at their warehouse. Once that happens, resume the trade-in. That way teams are looking at only a few weeks without electronics rather than an indefinite number of months.
[full disclosure]
I took a risk, it could have gone either way. In our case, the real risk was not having gear for a pilot we were running. It worked out - literally last Friday the V5 bundles that were needed arrived. Our competition teams would have done ok regardless.
[end disclosure]
This is not to say I was not frustrated, but not as much as others who did not have a backup plan in place, either for classroom use or competition.
Yes, that’s the point. Teams won’t need to be worrying about the lose-lose situation of spend a ton of extra money for V5 outside of the trade-in or do the trade-in now and likely be left without an electronics system for months.
On second thought, forget my original proposition. I have a much better idea that will go in a new post.