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As an "Invertebrate Amazon Abuser.." or at least this is what my partner says, although she often omits the river - I understand just how spoiled we have become by their apparently obsessive attention to service and delivery - which from the consumer's view is often pretty unbeatable.
But, they are a VERY different entity than Massdrop - do not forget, that for Amazon, we are a digitally productized income stream of significant value. Yeah - you, your eyeballs, your clicks, and your purchases are a bulk commodity in the marketing data stream that they sell for profit.
This isn't a Bad Thing, Amazon does reinvest this income into warehousing, shipping, and cataloging a staggering number of products - some of which I am delighted to greedily snarf up.
So why waste your time with Massdrop?
Because they are VERY different from Amazon - Massdrop is crowd-sourced, not Big Data Driven - we, the individual user/consumers determine what products are offered and at what price they end up being sold for. Essentially, this site is acting as our buying agent, customs/shipping factor, and order fulfilment center - but we users are actually creating Massdrop's catalog on the fly.
The good news is that this model can dig out some extremely interesting and esoteric stuff - things that fall way below the Amazon Radar or don't fit into their business ecology - as evidenced by the very passionate and active Audiophile, Keyboard, and Quilting (Quilting?? !!) communities on this site who've apparently really like this business collective.
The bad news is that all 'drops' are basically done 'Ad Hoc' - on the fly, unscheduled, and created from whole cloth - so, when the structure works, it's pretty damn cool - but when there's a fart in Customs, or the supplier poohs up, or God drops a trillion gallons of water on your state & your ark doesn't start - it all goes pear-shaped until things can be individually sorted out.
So, the moral is - if you want what Amazon has, go there - they're awfully good at what they do.
If you like Massdrop's stuff, and can deal with some irregular funkiness - stick around - but remember, you are part of the crowd - the cool stuff that comes out is directly proportional to the energy that you put in ...
Cheers
Jim
Look at how many people who have left Massdrop over this one buying experience. I only stayed b/c I told my brother who this was a gift for that a replacement wallet would now be just as late (and gee, it felt great not having anything to give him at his party).
If at ANY TIME, Massdrop would have stepped up and offered to make this experience better I would have given then a second chance. But like a lot of other folks, this is my first and last time dealing with them. More importantly, when I first registered with Massdrop I told 5 of my friends/family about them. Now I've gone back and let them know their customer service and order processes are garbage so they should stay away. Word of mouth and customer referrals cut both ways.
Let's face it, a better name for this company is Massdrop[ped the Ball]
That was a well phrased defense of Massdrop that totally misses the point. Their stated goal is to responsive to customer needs. Traditionally the advantage the small vendor has over the big retailers is customer service. Here the situation is inverted.
Granting everything you said, it's not relevant. The problem is twofold. Effectiveness: We all signed up for a delay from the time of joining the drop to delivery. There was a target ship date. Massdrop was totally ineffective at meeting it. This means that either didn't know it was going to be late or they did. If they knew and didn't take action to fix it, or even tell us when they first found out, that is a massive customer service fail. If they didn't know, then they weren't doing a good job on monitoring their supply chain, another fail.
Responsiveness: After the delay became clear, they have been many complaint. Some expressed a desire for expedited shipping or refunds or both. These are not unreasonable. Many vendors do this in the interest of good will. Massdrop has said nothing. Others have left the drop often vowing to never use Massdrop again. Again, Massdrop has said nothing. No matter how you view it, it said Massdrop doesn't care about its customers.
So the proble isn't with Massdrop conceptually. It is that they are ineffective and unresponsive when things go wrong and leave their customers unsupported and angry.