Talk:How laptop delivery works

People are going to ask: Where is the box labeled OLPC?

1. orders come in from three sources: Credit cards, paypal orders, phone orders; via two companies: Paypal and Patriot.

This is not consistent with the chart, and not relevant to the donor. The donor *placed* his order through one of two forums: web or phone (or were there others?) The donor paid for their order in one of two ways: credit card or PayPal

The fact that some of the orders came to us from PayPal even though the donor paid using a credit card: that's a relevant (and perhaps critical) fact, but how does it fit in to the story from the donor's point of view?

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The "Patriot" boxes should also be labeled "Greenwood Hall", since that's the name most of the donors missing their XOs have been told the customer service/fullfilment company is operating under.

Questions

> > 1) orders come in from three sources: Credit cards, paypal orders, phone
> > orders; via two companies: Paypal and Patriot

I suspect (please correct if I'm wrong):
Credit Card and PayPal are payment sources.
Phone and Web are order sources.

Phone orders create credit card payments
Web orders create both credit card and paypal payments.

Did Paypal take phone orders?
Did both PayPal and Patriot have separate web-based ordering mechanisms?
Were there other ordering methods I'm not aware of?

> > 2) All orders go through some manipulation and get consolidated at the
> > Patriot database. Patriot has the list of orders, shipping/billing
> > addresses, emails (whenever possible).

What manipulation? Manual or automated? Was an audit trail kept? Are
the operations reversible?

What information was kept? What controls were in place to ensure the
critical information was collected?
What remedial actions were taken once it was determined that there
were cracks in the system?

> > 3) Then the data goes through a second level of manipulation as they are
> > sent to the Brightstar database.

What information is Brightstar managing? What information are they
*not* managing? Does the information Brightstar does *not* have still
exist in a usable form? Can it be re-married to the database they
have, if that becomes necessary?

Same questions apply to Patriot.

> > 4) Brightstar gets laptops from our manufacturing partner, Quanta (China).
> >
> > 5) They have to open them, upgrade them, basic test (which includes using
> > the keyboard and mouse and ensuring the correct version is on the laptop),
> > repackage them, print labels from the data, and ship them.

Does this process apply to both Give One and Get One units?  Canadian units?

What is the velocity of this process? How many units per day?

> > 6) If the laptop is returned as unable to deliver or RMA (replacement
> > request) it goes to Brightstar. Brightstart doesn't have email addresses or
> > the ability to send out messages to donor base. Notifications about shipping
> > have to go back to Patriot to get sent out to donors.

Is the bottleneck in Brightstar or Patriot? Is Brightstar shipping
orders at the same rate they're receiving them?  What is that rate? If
that rate is less than Brightstar can handle we need to find out what
the hold-up is in Patriot.

Is Patriot involved in manipulating physical material or simply
information processing? Are they constrained by other external
organizations whose names we haven'ty heard yet?

> > So the second solution was for Brightstar to open a special account with UPS
> > who will deliver to PO Boxes.

(If I originally gave them a PO box address and then changed it to
a non-PO box address when I heard the news,) Which shipping address
should I be expecting to receive my boxes at, and approximately when?
It'd be a shame if I (or someone else) wait patiently until mid July
and then, when I enquire, am told it was delivered to 'the other'
address 3 months ago and my opportunity to dispute the failed delivery
has long since passed.

> > Let them know that donor services has to handle them.

Is that Brightstar Donor Services or Patriot Donor Services?