Has anyone, at all, managed to get ahold of Craig?

[TrashyMG]

^ I believe he's just selling refurbished units that are pieced together from his pile of defective units.

 

[PokeParadox]

^ I believe he's just selling refurbished units that are pieced together from his pile of defective units.

Yup I don't think we've had seen solid confirmation that an ED CC unit has been sold by Craig...

 

[kasp]

^ I believe he's just selling refurbished units that are pieced together from his pile of defective units.

Yup I don't think we've had seen solid confirmation that an ED CC unit has been sold by Craig...

It's not exactly a far fetched scenario though.


In fact I would go as far to say it is extremely likely given the track record.

 

[EvilDragon]

^ I believe he's just selling refurbished units that are pieced together from his pile of defective units.

Yup I don't think we've had seen solid confirmation that an ED CC unit has been sold by Craig...

Well, he never got CC units from me, but that was the plan

When he wanted to include it into the survey, I let him know that I don't have CC units to ship right away, but if he has working PCBs where only new nubs are needed, I'll replace them for free in that case.

So I got about 50 PCBs, replaced the nubs (didn't test anything else) and sent them back to him.

Then he bought silver cases and LCD Cables from me to build the units.

The ones he's selling have a silver casing, so I'm pretty sure he is assembling these 50 PCBs right now.

 

[EvilDragon]

I still don't understand how he even does this.


If he sells stuff from openpandora ltd. on gbax, he needs to transfer the stuff from one company to the other. So he wold need to buy the Pandoras from Openpandora ltd., pay taxes for that transaction etc. If you think about that with the preordermoney people gave him, he already paied taxes for the income and now needs to pay those again...


Maybe he sells them on ebay to get around those?


Or can he just gift those between his companies. Or are gbax and Openpandora ltd. the same company?


Really, I don't get it.

As far as I know, there is no GBAX company.

The website is registered on his personal account (which would make things even worse for him if this ever will be investigated...)

It might be like the DragonBox shop - that one is run by OpenPandora GmbH (and says so in the legal info).

On his site, Legal Info is missing (another issue :/), so we don't know who runs GBAX.com.

Might be he's doing this in private, might be it's OpenPandora Ltd. running it... 

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Fishy Ltd. is the parent company.

 

[MrConfusion]

^ I believe he's just selling refurbished units that are pieced together from his pile of defective units.

After reading about these recent developments and also reading some of the older posts from various people who were actually involved in creating the Pandora, I definitely feel I have been pretty blind to his faults. Also, I'm realizing I haven't actually even gotten familiar with the situation before forming (and voicing) an opinion. Make of that what you will. I personally feel like an ass myself at this point already...

All the pieces of info we got right now do indicate he is selling the units ED has sent to him to new customers and also trying to keep that operation as "invisible" as possible, which indicates he isn't "comfortable" with that himself either.

Firstly about liquidation:

Already earlier I found it strange that he is publicly saying things like "Money from iCP2 goes to fund Pandora" etc. Which, basically, if you got two companies, is something you as a director of said companies would be careful of saying... it doesn't mean you could not arrange it, but definitely you wouldn't go about "advertising" it, because there is bookkeeping you need to be careful with and also it implies you are fine with the very idea. How acceptable such comments are also depends greatly on the state of the companies.

I already said earlier that compulsory liquidation might turn out bad for his company, and I said this exactly because I have a feeling his books, if submitted under careful scrutinity, would not hold water. So, what would I do if I was him: get voluntary liquidation as soon as possible.

The way I understand it works like this: If I got debts when that happens, I need to give those creditors an explanation of the situation. It is possible that goes badly, but then again you still don't need to call in a third party to investigate at least until someone complains... However, if you somehow manage to raise enough funds to get rid of some of the worst creditors, your chances of successfully explaining the situation might improve?

In compulsory liquidation "someone will come snooping". You generally want to avoid that. Believe it or not I actually originally thought he might have done something questionable either unknowingly or to try and help the preorders or refunds along. Yeah, cue for laughter at my expense...

(Where's that smiley hitting it's head against the wall when you need it... :-( ).

I'm not a lawyer and I might have gotten this terribly wrong plus I have even less idea how things work in the UK, so I shouldn't even be typing any of this, I know.

But I think Craig is trying to raise funds to bail out moderately safely and solely for his own benefit.

And in retrospect I'm starting to think he's been doing that for a while now already...

Well... nothing strictly illegal about that (in fact, almost to the contrary...), but morally and especially for not admitting it after all the trust we've placed in him... *sigh*.

Secondly about units Craig has refurbished:

Does the man even know how? I mean, really?

Myself, after reading older forum posts from here, looking at gbax.com, etc.... Sorry, but I'm just really starting to wonder where exactly his competence in the existence of the Pandora lies...

If it's all about "having a gp2x with keyboard and nubs", well, sorry, that's really not that innovative a thought. I dreamed that up (ok, not the nubs...) when I used Atari Portfolio way back when! I'm sure at least some of you guys have similar experiences. So it's not like when I "found" the Pandora I would have thought: Wow! Something like this exists?! It was more like: OK, finally someone's making something like this.

And then we get to "being the only one who had the guts to go ahead with it"...

Now that's the thing I've really respected the whole Pandora team for, especially Craig.

And really that respect does go a very long way. So far, in fact, that several colleagues (and my wife ) definitely did "not get" my patience with regards to the Pandora during the last 5 or so years.

So... yeah, great work, assuming when you started, you thought: "I'm really going to do this and succeed.", then hooray and applause...

But if your idea, never announced publicly, was: "I'm really going to do this and if it fails I'll just squirm out of the dungheap as usual.", then the significance of the contribution starts to loose it's significance in my eyes quite quickly :angry: .

We don't know what's happening. Unfortunately all speculation always ends up being negative speciation .

 

[kasp]

It's speculation with an awful lot of experience behind it.  I would say about 70% of the speculation turns out true and it is only there because he lies so much and refuses to tell people whats going on.

I have said this before but what turned me sour against Craig was him lying to everyone about me.  Basically when I complained about his lack of tracking information which he promised he would send me he made out publicly like some kind of idiot and said he told me there was no tracking information with the shipping method I decided.  When in fact the very last message he sent to me was that he would send me tracking information.

Now there are several issues with that and lying is just one of them.  First he ignored a customer to the point it was aired publicly.

Second in dealing with that customer he decided to take an aggravating approach.

Third   He decided to lie about his dealings with that customer which was just dumb as the message history made it easy to prove that Craig was the liar.

Fourth he shifted blame on something that was his fault onto the customer which is just stupid.

Now can you imagine working with someone like that?  You want to know why the Pandora has had so many problems and setbacks pretty much all of them can be traced back and land right at Craigs feet.  His constant lying makes it impossible for anyone to actually work out what the current status is.  When something goes wrong usually it's because he has lied so much and targets haven't been met and then he blames everyone else for his mistakes. Thats why he gets the scorn of the community and developers. That's why an awful; lot of people won't work with him anymore.

So sure Craig might have helped get the Pandora started but if it was anyone else but him you can guarantee there wouldn't have been the huge amount of issues with the project and an awful lot less pissed off customers.  

 

[vcoleiro1]

I think after he had that last argument with ED ,he decided to keep clear of these forums.

 

[elwing]

I think after he had that last argument with ED ,he decided to keep clear of these forums.

lately his favorite occupation was to hide under a rock it seems...

 

[comradekingu]

inb4 OP LTD is a fag

http://i.imgur.com/6FLVNDb.png?1

>be craig

>pandoraprivate.html

>(slightly secret)

>things have changed slightly chaps

>refurb pandoras

>undercut market

 

[WizardStan]

He's actually got refurbished units listed on his store page. We now have official confirmation of a major problem.

 

[Mr_Loon]

He's actually got refurbished units listed on his store page. We now have official confirmation of a major problem.

Just had a quick look and can't see any listed as being in stock, did GBAX have Pandoras in stock when you checked?

 

[WizardStan]

Just had a quick look and can't see any listed as being in stock, did GBAX have Pandoras in stock when you checked?

I'm not sure anymore. I thought I saw some left but I could have easily been confused with the battery being sold.I am reasonably certain given the context that there was at least one, however. It says "Today's news and offers first come, first served!" and I know the iffy nub and broken sound were blue when I first checked. The refurbished was probably pink, now that I try to remember, but the fact it exists on that news page at all suggests that there was at least one.

 

[vcoleiro1]

His been selling refurbs on Gbax since at least May. None available at the moment, but , I think from memory he has sold about 20 or so over time

See:  http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/14395-new-email-from-craig-watch-out/?p=279390

 

[Klumpen]

This will go on until there is nothing left, if noone sues him. Just sayin'.

 

[MrConfusion]

This will go on until there is nothing left, if noone sues him. Just sayin'.

I don't think there's much anyone can do. The preorderers' claims are very small/person, so when a single one of them starts causing trouble he can eventually give the refund to that person to shut him up.

Only a mass action might cause trouble, but the group of people is totally scattered and "unaware" of each other.

So, all people can do is learn from this...

Furthermore, if there are bigger creditors (i.e. banks, tax, etc.), then The Real Life hops on board and an individual with a few hundreds worth of claim is a "Mr. Nobody Not Important Enough" in no time. In that case things are not really in Craig's hands anymore anyway...

 

[eazrael]

And that's the problem with sueing. Even if you win, there might be left to pay out your preorder and all your expenses for lawyers, court, etc. Even if it is a quick decision based on files.

 

[levi]

I'd say with a pretty high degree of confidence that even if you don't sue Craig, you still won't ever see the Pandora you ordered or a refund.

 

[comradekingu]

In a british small claims court you pay something like 100 pounds, and then you are refunded that plus whatever damages are incurred, so you would get a refund, or a pandora if you accept it, from craig.