Quoted from flynnibus:Frankly this is more on the distros then stern. But stern has created the situation . distros know the situation with stern is not a committed order with fixed price. yet they are often communicating to customers that they have a full sale closed… instead of a reservation or simple deposit to secure a spot.
It’s the mismatch in what is being ’sold’ that leads to to customer grief.
Yes, stern could lock prices when they collect the dealer commits… but they don’t and that is a known behavior. It does pass the buck to distros who are put in the hard spot about trying to lock in orders so yhey don’t get caught holding the bag as they are the ones making the commitment to stern for requested units.
At the end of the day, stern is muddying forecasting with orders… and it puts distributors in a hard spot when the forecast is across many quarters.
It wasn’t nearly as much a problem when there were less outstanding titles being committed to. But now soliciting over such a long future window just begs to span pricing changes.
Yes, that is the thing that causes confusion. I’m pretty sure Stern does lock the prices for “dealer commits” but those commits only happen when they get their allocation I think which is when it’s about to go on the line. With high demand and short supply the distros can try to lock people in way ahead of time to keep themselves from the expense of holding inventory, if demand goes down then things will be sold from inventory or right before manufacture and there’d be no confusion. It’s like putting a deposit on a 2025 z06 with a car dealer right now… what will the price be and will that model even be manufactured in two years, who knows.