Nexus 4 stock shortage down to 'huge demand', LG explains

Sidenote: Google's customer service is absolutely horrible. I was reading the horror stories, but now that I have experienced it personally, it seems worse than I imagined.<p>Basically, my unit is about to be shipped on Dec 19, and I have been trying to cancel it since last week; but they refuse to cancel it on the grounds that it is <i>only</i> possible to cancel it within 1 hour of purchase.<p>I am leaving US on Dec 12, and this means the unit is going to get shipped to an address I no longer have access to, and I will have to ask the landlord to do a delivery refusal when the UPS guy appears at the door. I have emailed and called them about 10 times to cancel the order, or change the shipping date or address; and they won't bother to do any of that.<p>If you have been reading about Google not treating its customers properly on the net, rest assured that the situation is not exaggerated at all; they are very unprofessional.<p>Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?

This doesn't cut the mustard and should not excuse LG and Google for the purchasing chaos. People who ordered just a few days ago have already received their phones, while others have been waiting for weeks. Some people are even ordering a second phone just to see if they get a shipping notification, and if they do, cancelling their original order. It's a bit of a farce.<p><a href="http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1962514&#38;page=3614" rel="nofollow">http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1962514&#38...</a>

My experience ordering a Nexus 4 was a bit of a farce: Google managed to trigger the anti-fraud block on both of my credit cards, each with different UK banks. It looks like they put through a small value transaction (£1) first to test whether the card works &#38; only then put through the full purchase transaction.<p>Why they can't just put the transaction through in the first place &#38; just report back if it fails I've no idea, but thanks to Google I had to phone up the respective banks to get the cards unblocked. Not the best use of anyone's time...

I wonder how many phones LG is capable of making at a given time? I know that Samsung can put out 5 million a month (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung-idUSBRE84H00X20120518" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung-idUSBRE...</a>), but I would imagine LG cannot come anywhere as close as them, given the size differences in their mobile divisions.

I have a theory :)<p>Nexus 4 was built with a "defective" qualcomm LTE chip that LG was able to pick up for a bargain. hence the great nexus 4 rock bottom price.<p>Now LG have exhausted their "defective" chip supply, they need to negotiate a new deal with qualcomm/google.<p>This is based on a random comment i read fsck knows where explaining how high spec, short run, chinese phones come in to being.

Back in November after the first batch sold out within half an hour, I wanted to get a Nexus 4 to give Android another go and check out Google Now and other new features of 4.2, as iOS6 felt a bit stale despite being a big fan of the black &#38; slate iPhone 5's industrial design. But I got tired of checking the Google Play link everyday which always read "Out of stock". So I got the iPhone 5 instead.<p>When the second batch became available, I ordered one for a friend, still waiting for it to ship. (it said 1-2 weeks so it should ship this coming week)<p>From everything I've read so far, the Nexus 4 seems like a great phone at an unbelievable price, but Google and LG are really shooting themselves in the foot with customer service, shipping on a frustrating not-on-first-come-first-ordered basis and repeated delays.<p>I think a lot of customers would've been happier if they sold it through Amazon instead.

I wonder what part LG actually plays in this shortage. When you are producing a device for somebody else that is strikingly similar (as in sharing the exact same hardware platform) to one of your own devices, which you are selling for way more (with of course small but nonetheless important differences)...well, something just screams conflict of interest to me. I am in no way accusing LG of doing so, I'm sure they have had their contract with Google on this and followed it to the point, but still, something just doesn't feal right.<p>Uhm, well, maybe just my paranoia distortion field kicking in, I for one hope I am completely astray on this one.

They likely ran through their stock of replacement units for warranty issues, too. I reported mine defective and have an RMA to send it back, but it's been a week and they still haven't shipped the replacement.

mm, I ordered one and it was pretty easy. Things just worked. Am I the only one with such a good experience?<p>I am guessing the ones for whom the ordering process failed rant the most :)

I wonder how many they have sold. Does anyone have any concrete numbers?