Fulfilling preorders without EvilDragon.... Here be dragons!

[ShleeDragon]

Hi,
 
There has been an amazing amount of discussion over the 500 remaining preorders and the onus always seems to fall to ED and this is horrible.. so Id love to see some discussion about the idea of peoples ideas and options for preorders without ED ever factoring into this... As ED has said, his original plans (which he offered to the investors) was for 100~ units.... so let's imagine ED stops serving these customers and people stop acting entitled to EvilDragons goodwill (ED is a saint).

Does anybody know what the last thing Craig has said regarding the Preorders? Unless he's publicly announced bankruptcy or something similar.. He still has customers he's completely and utterly responsibly for Today.. So what is he doing to help his customers.. Does anybody know or have we ALL just decided to ignore him and let him get away with everything?
 

My little rant.

Some people brought up the attitude of how Craig's pre-orderers are treated as some sort of "lesser people".

 
If EvilDragon decided to never help Craig's Preorders.... what kind of conversation would we be having?
 
Everybody wants a Pandora for the preorders (Don't bring up this second class citizen tripe).... but everybody is focused on "ways to get the preorders their units that don't include Craig"... Craig is NEVER factored into the conversation.
 
Every single person in this thread including myself is working on the factor of... how can we do this without craig..... and that is sad and covered in some seriously selfish reasoning.. A psychologist could write a PHD on how quickly people have forgotten and almost forgiven Craig.
 
Where is the outrage at the source of the problem? Because I don't see any... Is that because people KNOW craig will never help them? or they are looking for somebody elses throat to place their hands?

 

[ShleeDragon]

Donations will continue... ED could calculate the cost and throw the total into the donation bar.. instead of 1200euro here and 1200 euro there.. throw up 60,000euro and we can work towards that as a group and remove the onus on evil dragon... Who could easily help throw money into the kitty if he wanted... 

Craig: We could try to get Craig to throw in money and as the community tell him we'll match 1:1 every cent.

EvilDragon has been sending Craig refurbed units and he's been selling things on his webpage... http://gbax.com

Are those units and the profit from those units going towards the preorder queue? even if it's 2-10 units here and there.. what is he doing?

 

[ekianjo]

EvilDragon has been sending Craig refurbed units and he's been selling things on his webpage... http://gbax.com

Btw has Craig ever paid for the 1Ghz ED delivered for free to his customers ?

I guess I already know the answer. 

 

[Nagelfar]

No, he hasn't. I think the last status was that ED just deducted those units from the total units he would receive.

 

[Binky]

How about a two-pronged approach to this?:

1. Big discounts for old preorderers on new pandoras at dragonbox.de
2. A donation fund for shipping units to customers let down by Craig, contributed to by the community and money from dragonbox profits

 

[pmprog]

How about a two-pronged approach to this?:

• Big discounts for old preorderers on new pandoras at dragonbox.de
• A donation fund for shipping units to customers let down by Craig, contributed to by the community and money from dragonbox profits

How is that different from what's happening right now?

 

[sporkbox]

Why not a sort of survey or invitation for preorderers who can't afford to upgrade create a topic in a dedicated board where they try to appeal to get donations and/or sponsorship for their Pandora? Some of us (myself included) intend on contributing to the repository with code, assisting in certain projects, building games, etc... If potential donators know what the preorderers will do with their devices, maybe they'll be more inclined to give so these people can help strengthen the community.

I agree that the grand total needed for preorder fulfillment needs to be put up in plain sight so there's a long-term goal to shoot for.

 

[ekianjo]

Some of us (myself included) intend on contributing to the repository with code, assisting in certain projects, building games, etc... If potential donators know what the preorderers will do with their devices,

I'm with you there. If we have to donate money FOR FREE to someone, then I'd rather give money to someone who would be active in the community than someone who would just be a "consumer".  Nothing wrong with being a consumer itself, but since we're talking about SPONSORING, I would only want to sponsor developers. 

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Some of us (myself included) intend on contributing to the repository with code, assisting in certain projects, building games, etc... If potential donators know what the preorderers will do with their devices,

I'm with you there. If we have to donate money FOR FREE to someone, then I'd rather give money to someone who would be active in the community than someone who would just be a "consumer".  Nothing wrong with being a consumer itself, but since we're talking about SPONSORING, I would only want to sponsor developers. 

Hmm... all preorders should be treated equally.  Devs or not, they're all humans and paid the same amount......

 

[ekianjo]

Devs or not, they're all humans and paid the same amount......

It's not about that. This is pure donation, not just supporting the pre-orders anymore. If possible I want to have the choice on who to support. Of course not everyone has equal value in a community, that's so obvious I should not even have to state that. You would prefer to have 2 more notaz or two more people who just play with the Pandora a few days and let it gather dust ?

And that goes in the same logic as putting priority on developers for all new systems coming out - because they make tools, they work on the OS, etc... and it benefits everyone else. That's actually common practice.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Devs or not, they're all humans and paid the same amount......

It's not about that. This is pure donation, not just supporting the pre-orders anymore. If possible I want to have the choice on who to support. Of course not everyone has equal value in a community, that's so obvious I should not even have to state that. You would prefer to have 2 more notaz or two more people who just play with the Pandora a few days and let it gather dust ?

And that goes in the same logic as putting priority on developers for all new systems coming out - because they make tools, they work on the OS, etc... and it benefits everyone else. That's actually common practice.

You have good point.  But then if Ed would like to increase/promote the development activities on the Pandora, he should get a list of well-known and commited devs and send them Pandoras for free or like $100/unit or something like that, and this should not be part of the donation money, like Sony and Microsoft send dev kits to known developers...

It's not true now because Pandora now has strong user base, but theoretically what's the use of devs if no users or very few users supporting/using the device?  So, if you want to be fair,  be fair to everyone...

 

[double7]

I want to have the choice on who to support.

 You already have. The Repo supports donation directly to apps, respecive their authors. Devs who accepts donations have a donation button. And i don't like this community splitting value discussion. Without that silent pandora buyers there would have never been a pandora. Even devs should remember that from time to time and listen to the community. (none in mind)

instead of 1200euro here and 1200 euro there.. throw up 60,000euro and we can work

I don't think thats a good idea. Psycologically people will go more likely with easily reachable goals. The small 1200 euro goals will be reached faster, the donators get their positive feedback earlier. Seeing a light in the tunnel makes you run faster.

 

[Grench]

We don't know what happened to the money that Craig received for the 1Ghz Pandoras he sold.  We only know where it did not go - towards actually paying the wholesale costs of them.

We don't know what happened to the money that Craig received for the initial pre-order queue.  We assume a large chunk of it went to development costs and hardware.

We don't know how many unfulfilled orders Craig still has on the books - or if he even has books to keep them on.

We don't know how many unfulfilled refund requests Craig still has on the books - or if he even has books to keep them on.

We are very unlikely to ever know any details of any of the above.  

Most of the remaining pre-orders are from other countries - they can't simply knock on Craig's door and request a refund.

Flying to England to knock on Craig's door isn't a viable option.

A solicitor could theoretically be hired by a collection of people pending refunds - but the collection of people would need to self-organize and find a solicitor in England who will work for a percentage of payment (likely 50% or more) and then authorize him/her to settle for something less than full value of the pre-orders (likely 50% or less) which would net the people who are pending refunds around 25% or less of their order value.

That gives me an idea.  I wonder if people in the refund queue would be willing to settle out directly with Craig's company for 30% or even 50% of their refund due - just to be done with it.

Then there is the idea of giving existing pre-orders a choice between paying production costs to ED to get a Pandora OR settling out for a 50% (or so) refund from Craig's company.

Either of those ideas would require Craig to be involved and to have actual funds to finance the (even partial) refunds - neither is apparent.

That leaves the underlying real choice.  Craig's existing Pandora pre-orders can either take ED up on his very generous discount offer or simply write it off.

 

[ekianjo]

So, if you want to be fair, be fair to everyone...

You can't be fair to everyone, we already know there's not enough money and the table and never will be. This calls for choices.

The Repo supports donation directly to apps, respecive their authors.

That's for current devs. I may want to support new comers. Did you even read my post?

 

[ShleeDragon]

I don't think thats a good idea. Psycologically people will go more likely with easily reachable goals. The small 1200 euro goals will be reached faster, the donators get their positive feedback earlier. Seeing a light in the tunnel makes you run faste

Part of me believes that.. but I think the transparency is more important.. also imagine this. Right now.. there are 500 preorders who think getting a cheap Pandora is the best option due to confusion. 

If the Donation queue was a perfect representation of the preorder queue... the donations will eat the bar from the left and the people taking EDs sweetheart deal works will shrink the bar from the right.

If the people in the preorder queue realise that ED needs to find $80,000us... It might have the effect of giving EVERYBODY a better idea of the truth and make people see how boned and helpful ED has been.

People will see progress when the bar grows and the target shrinking slowly.. people might jump queue and grab from ED instead of waiting. Just an idea.

 

[_wb_]

Some of us (myself included) intend on contributing to the repository with code, assisting in certain projects, building games, etc... If potential donators know what the preorderers will do with their devices,

I'm with you there. If we have to donate money FOR FREE to someone, then I'd rather give money to someone who would be active in the community than someone who would just be a "consumer".  Nothing wrong with being a consumer itself, but since we're talking about SPONSORING, I would only want to sponsor developers. 

It's a bit hard to tell in advance who will become a dev and who won't.

I mean, it is easy to claim that you will develop stuff once you get your Pandora (and if that's the way to get one faster, why not make that claim?), but how do we know that that will really happen and/or that the developed stuff is not unusable crap?

Also the other way around: someone may have ordered a Pandora intending to use it for gaming, but discovers after a while the joys of coding and over time becomes a guru hacker...

Of course you could ask people for their CV, check if maybe they already did cool stuff on other platforms, or maybe already released stuff for the Pandora without having one. But if you're going to go through that much trouble, you can just as well donate money directly to the suitable persons so they can buy their unit themselves.

 

[ekianjo]

Of course you could ask people for their CV, check if maybe they already did cool stuff on other platforms,

It doesn't take more than 5 minutes to find out if a person is full of bullshit or not by claiming to be a developer. Ask for their github account reference. You'll see very quickly how active and collaborative they are.

 

[iprice]

It doesn't take more than 5 minutes to find out if a person is full of bullshit or not by claiming to be a developer. Ask for their github account reference. You'll see very quickly how active and collaborative they are.

I don't have a github account. Does that mean that I'm not a developer or that I haven't supported Pandora or other platforms (open and closed) over the years?

You can't just ask for one specific factor/site like that. While it's true that developers will likely have evidence of their work, they may not have it in just one place or a place that you necessarily approve of (and it doesn'r even indicate that they were really responsible for the code/app/game). And even when you gain proof of product development it doesn't follow that they will actually contribute to the Pandora software line-up once they receive their device.

It's a sad and shit situation for absolutely everyone that pre-ordered. None are more entitled than any other - developer or not. They all paid. They should all be entitled to a machine. Unfortunately the person they paid fecked them over in one way or another (I count myself as part of that number, as my order was in the latter 3000s). Luckily for me, my history with developing games and apps for pc, GP2X, Wiz etc. was recognised (and not via github) and I was rewarded with a developer Pandora (which I did not get for free).

If we can only continue to support the Pandora in any way we can, by donating our time, money, knowledge and services then we can all help to make a bad situation better. However, we have to accept that no matter what, some will never receive the Pandora that they paid for. And that leaves a really, nasty taste in the mouth.

 

[ekianjo]

None are more entitled than any other - developer or not.

Again, I'm not talking about entitlement. You are mistaking what I am saying. On paper everyone who preordered is entitled to have one. Period. But they won't, anyway.

My point is that since it will be impossible to pay for all the ones who pre-ordered, we need to make choices as to who gets one if we donate.

Or if you are fine to just give your money randomly, well so be it, but I won't donate in that way.

 

[_wb_]

None are more entitled than any other - developer or not.

Again, I'm not talking about entitlement. You are mistaking what I am saying. On paper everyone who preordered is entitled to have one. Period. But they won't, anyway.

My point is that since it will be impossible to pay for all the ones who pre-ordered, we need to make choices as to who gets one if we donate.

Or if you are fine to just give your money randomly, well so be it, but I won't donate in that way.

I agree: if you want to donate your own money, you get to choose who to donate it to. Maybe you should start a thread for devs who are still in the queue (and don't have a unit yet, because some of them might already have bought one from ED without leaving Craig's queue), to introduce themselves. We could then make a separate donation goal for the people that show up in that thread.

If I were in this situation myself, I would probably not show up in such a thread though - I wouldn't like to have the pressure of people expecting you to contribute stuff before you even get the unit, and everything I would do, would be done to "pay my debt", which doesn't sound fun to me.