l really and trully don't see how he could possibly do something which would win over those folks.
A single, straight bloody answer would go a long way - something I have seen very rarely from him during my short couple of years here.
"How many pre-orders remain?"
It's not like folks here are asking him to sign over his first born child for crying out loud.
Hell, a part of me wishes I could just wash my hands of the whole frelling Craig situation and move on. I have my Pandoras, so why should I give a damn? But I do give a damn. I can't help but feel guilty to possess two Pandoras while others are still waiting YEARS to receive their own - which is why I'm sending my black Pandy as a gift to a pre-orderer to help tide them over while they wait. It's the least I can do to play my part.
And Craig, I suppose, will keep playing his part as the shoddy car salesman that wants nothing more to do with you once he has your money. (Please prove me wrong as I would be more than happy to eat my words).
I think it's been said a few times already that the Pandora probably would never have been born if not for Craig, and I tip my shiny hat to him for it. But frankly, right now, the way he's treating his loyal customers like mushrooms (feeding 'em shit and keeping 'em in the dark) the Pandora would have died if not for Ed.
I recently got my order and I still care. But, the negativity on the site isn't helping anybody and I do think that there were unrealistic expectations from the start. I can't blame Craig for being defensive as the attacks on his character go way further back than when he stopped posting the details that people are demanding. A lot of it is reasonable in terms of complaints, but all the flamewars and baiting Craig isn't helping. He has had his own tantrums on the fora before, so I would like to think that he's biting his tongue a bit, as unlikely as that might seem on the surface. Even if he isn't, baiting him really isn't increasing the likelihood that he's going to share more information.
As far as the whole story goes, that's not really any of our business. Somebody really needed to say it, I'm out the price of the first order and I would like to know why, but realistically, I think we probably already know all that they can legally say. I'm quite frankly shocked that they have been as forthcoming about a lot of this stuff as they have been. No other store I know of would have given us the amount of information they have given us. Most other shops would have declared bankruptcy and canceled the orders.
I was a Craig pre-orderer from November 2009 and received the recent e-mail about the Pandora 2 upgrade offer.
It was the first direct communication I had had about my order in over 3 years. As a customer, that is what's most shocking about this saga. Absolutely unforgivable. There's no excuse for not sending an e-mail to your paying customers every 3-6 months with an update.
To be fair, both Ed and Craig failed to mass email regular updates on the situation.
Preorderers were effectively investors in a project and as soon as the CC debacle happened, a mass email saying "your original preorder will not cover the increased production costs: if you pay an additional xxx€ to cover the cost of your unit, your queue position will jump ahead of those who did not. We will still honor original preorders but these will only deliver when new sales cover their production costs." This would have given hundreds of preorders the option of a speedy delivery without upgrading all the way to a 1Ghz unit.
Of course, this would have required that the additional money be honestly used towards production of those units, and not disappear into one of Craig's financial black holes.
Indeed, I think there was some sort of bug in the software they use to distribute the mass mailings as I remember not receiving them at all, even early on when they were going out more regularly.
According to him, he got many units back with broken LCD Cables, Cases, PCBs, etc.
That's why he got about 700 remaining preorders. The number is high, but it's not an impossible issue.
It's puzzling to me though... he must've gotten over 400 totally broken, unfixable Pandoras back, and that is 10x more I ever got.
Is there any proof anywhere of how many pre-orders he claims he has not fulfilled? Why "about 700" and not a precise number?
And why no explanation why he had so many returns and so on ?
This thing smells fishy from beginning to end. This basically says "the drama will never be over" as we will never know the whole story and there's probably a lot of dirt to uncover (money being used for something else, like we saw for the 1Ghz pre-orders.)
They already explained why there was no exact number, the number changes almost daily between cancellations and new orders. Posting a number like, say, 694 and finding out that 15 minutes later it's now 690 or 700 isn't really any more useful than saying it's about 700. Now, it might be nice to have a confidence interval to give a sense of what the number is, but that's overkill as most folks here probably don't know what it means or ow to read it.
At this stage, I don't believe any amount of information would take the suspicions away. Some of the suspicions are valid, but a lot of it is based upon misinformation and the people repeating the same allegations over and over without having any actual evidence.
I don't see any reason why there needs to be something suspicious for all that money to be taken up. We know there were a lot of order cancellations that they have to pay off, so long as they're still in business, and the various cost overruns on the boards from the CC easly wiped out a quarter million pounds alone, IIRC. Now, they're having to pay for not only the 1ghz units to be made, but the older 600mhz units as well, and the money that I spent on my 600mhz effectively went to CC for boards that were never usable.
Of course, it's probably possible that something suspicious is going on here, but honestly, I'm not personally convinced that they can legally share the information that we would need to make an informed opinion about things.
