And the Orderers on the next place in the line? I know whit this money the produktion is speed up to douple speed, but i dont know..
Instant Pandora with a premium?
- Thread starter craigix
- Start date
BaDToaD
"Very" Old Timer
So. Will I get my position ~2300 Pandora in time for my birthday on Feb "29th"?
That will make me grin like a loon
If you don't get it before your birthday I'll buy you a pint and let you have a play with my Pandora. It went in for repair a couple of weeks ago so I'm hoping to get it back soon. Certainly before Feb 29
You are in Norwich aren't you? I work in Norwich.
craigix
Mega GP Mania
Did you even read this thread?
Yes but my English isnt that good for 12 pages..
If i Understand Corektly: There are some Pandoras, from refunds
there new, and they get sell to get some mony for a faster assempley of the Pandorai, and then, Craigix team can assemple 500 instet of 250...
If i Understand Corektly: There are some Pandoras, from refunds
there new, and they get sell to get some mony for a faster assempley of the Pandorai, and then, Craigix team can assemple 500 instet of 250...
Last edited by a moderator:
Wrath Of Khan
Soul soother...
From now on pandoras wont be preordered they will be available to buy with a 7 day delivery promise.Your current preorder is not affected.You can upgrade by paying more though.
Openpandora need to make a profit so that they can survive to release a third batch and more.
Craig, have you had some sleep yet?
this, plus the original preorder queue will run faster than without this - these units are NOT slowing down your preorder from coming in
tsh
Active Member
Troll. Try using Google translate and read the first page before prolonging the confusion.
Sugar_Kane
Could crush a grape
I just wish I had the endless bags of cash some of you fellas seem to have! Sadly I can't afford even to pay the extra $170 or so. Even if I had that much I think the Mrs would actually take a pair of tin snips to my plums in the night. Back to waiting and watching while you bastards cavort your nubs in front of me
So. Will I get my position ~2300 Pandora in time for my birthday on Feb "29th"?
That will make me grin like a loon
If you don't get it before your birthday I'll buy you a pint and let you have a play with my Pandora. It went in for repair a couple of weeks ago so I'm hoping to get it back soon. Certainly before Feb 29
You are in Norwich aren't you? I work in Norwich.
Indeed. I'll have to hold you to that! Where do you work? I'm in a church-become-offices near the station, a good place for regular attendance of the Coach and Horses.
BaDToaD
"Very" Old Timer
Could someone who's been following this thread since page one post a plot summary?
I'm not illiterate or anything, but 14 pages is a bit much. I mean, I do have a life and all. Well, not really, but these TV shows I downloaded aren't going to watch themselves. I'm not even sure how that'd work.
I'm not illiterate or anything, but 14 pages is a bit much. I mean, I do have a life and all. Well, not really, but these TV shows I downloaded aren't going to watch themselves. I'm not even sure how that'd work.
Blue Protoman
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2010
- Messages
- 4,117
OP undercharges for the Pandora, so they're barely breaking even with it. As a result, they're upping the price so they can hire more workers, get more parts, etc. This might delay some preorders in the short run (at least for a little bit), but afterwards things will fly. The decision was officially made today, and already money is pouring in. Craig claims that we'll start to see results on Monday.
Well, I gathered that much from the OP and the first couple of pages of discussion. I was referring more to the response to the idea, and the pro and con arguments made.
I had decided to just stay out of all this after Fib-gate with the board company, but I guess I don't have that kind of will power.
Wrath Of Khan
Soul soother...
The majority of people thought it was a good idea.One or two people disagreed.The pandora is now available to purchase,no preorders.
SNESFAN
Retro game fanatic
I've read most of this entire thread. I feel strangely about this. My number one concern is that my 2+ year order be satisfied before more are sold in front of mine. I did not agree to front money to this company, I don't really care about the community behind this nor do I actually care that much about the project. 2 years ago I gave money for a handheld and wanted it in the fastest way possible. I didn't get charged enough from jump street? Not my problem, others paid the same amount and got theirs as they were built. The rules can't change halfway through this game because it's inconvenient to you guys. I didn't sign up for this goat rope and I'm willing to sympathisize with all the delays because they are out of your control, but this decision to even alter the first come first serve policy is inexcusable. I can respect the refurbs, one nub and what have you as they are flawed but this is new exactly the same as what I ordered pandoras possibly being fulfilled before my own. I didn't sign something that said a pandora at the old price to be filled when they get the time. The wait was excusable because this is a startup company. If my pandora takes even 1 second longer because you have changed the rules midgame I think I will lose my shit.
I've kept my mouth shut until this point because this is a very Craig sentric plan and Ed should be unaffected by this goat rope correct? He still gets his "every 4th pandora" regardless of what crazy stuff is being concocted right? I hope op gets their stuff sorted out and to ask anymore than what has already been asked from the original day one people is too much. The batch two or future batch people need their own version of the 2 year string along. I can respect trying to find a plan to keep this project going in the future but that should have been sorted a long time ago, not " oh by the way, we found people will pay more so we are charging more" but anyway best of luck to you.
I've kept my mouth shut until this point because this is a very Craig sentric plan and Ed should be unaffected by this goat rope correct? He still gets his "every 4th pandora" regardless of what crazy stuff is being concocted right? I hope op gets their stuff sorted out and to ask anymore than what has already been asked from the original day one people is too much. The batch two or future batch people need their own version of the 2 year string along. I can respect trying to find a plan to keep this project going in the future but that should have been sorted a long time ago, not " oh by the way, we found people will pay more so we are charging more" but anyway best of luck to you.
benji_stein
Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2007
- Messages
- 278
Ok. So I know even as I start to write this, it's going to be another longish analysis. But I feel the need to get it out, and I still think it's important to consider. I read all the pages to the end, (Craig hadn't given a link yet), and then went away to mull it over and write. I come back, and now there's all this, so even more to reflect on. There's some duplication, but I did read it all. And so here goes.
For starters, ED says that you guys ran out of boards to build, so shipped some sooner. Sounds like CC is still the bottleneck, and not the number of guys you have doing assembly.
Craig claims that CC can build them faster. I've yet to see evidence of it, see myearlier analysis of rates. If they can do it, why haven't they? They get paid sooner for the boards they've made, and I'm sure they want OPT out of their hair. Maybe production will start up at a separate place to augment, but that takes money and time, neither of which work well for those 7-day orders.
Anyway. More about the meat of these new orders. I hereby dub them "7-dayers"
I think the big problem in interpretation of this premise is in limits and extremes. For purposes of examples, let's go on the assumption that OPT can create a round 200 pandoras a week, with 3 people working on it. They can do more than double as many with 5 people. So let's call it a generous 500. (That's a lot more than just double). Consider the following scenarios:
1) 5000 people buy 7-dayers. You don't have enough parts, cases, or anything. Preorder-ers are delayed terribly. On the plus side, you do have more money, which is good.
2) 500 people buy 7-dayers. On the first day. Oops. It takes you the whole week to build the 500, so the last 70 or so don't get theirs in time. Because you said you'll get them in 7 days.
Edit: I see your gbax page says ships in 7 days. Carry on.
3) 750 people sbuy 7-dayers. Oops. You can only make 500. You fail your promise on 250 of them, not to mention the preordered units.
4) 500 people buy 7-dayers. They all get theirs, which is great for them, but it does mean that none of the preordered units get shipped. There goes the promise that doing these orders will speed up the rate of preorders shipped out. What happens if this continues for several weeks?
5) 400 people buy 7-dayers. It's like #2, except 100 preorders go out, too. You still miss on that promise, because it's slower than 200. But at least it's progressing faster than none.
6) 300 people buy 7-dayers. They all get theirs, and 200 preorders go out, too. That's faster than before, and (mostly) everyone is happy.
The moral of the story? You need to cap how many $500 orders you take at a time. You have to see how many you can build each way - presumably you know how many can be done with 3 people - and then not sell more than the difference.
Speeding up the overall rate is all fine and good, but the people who've been waiting the longest (the ones just about to recieve theirs) want to be sure that their Pandora won't get to them later than if you hadn't done this. It's completely understandable, and I feel this way as well. The fact that the overall rate of Pandoras speeds up, and the guys at the end of Batch 2 will get theirs sooner is moot - it's clear that doing this would help them. But you need to remain true to the customers who've stood by you the longest - some of whom ordered way back on day one.
But what happens when somewhere in the supply line slows down briefly? 7-dayers will get their pandoras first, if there happen to be enough parts to build them. And the preorder queue will slow to a trickle. That's bad on both counts. But turns out there's a solution. You build as many as you can, the first week, and ship those 200. You now have 300 in supply of "spares" for the 7-dayers. You can only ever sell as many as you have in that supply. If you ever have less, you take the extras from that 200/week to replenish the supply. If the supply goes over some amount, you ship off those extras to preorders. If the boards/parts supply ever goes below the 200/week, preorders slow down (as they would have), and you temporarily stop the sale of the 7-dayers, because you can't be sure you can promise them. Everyone wins again.
To me, it would seem to make sense to put these $500 7-dayers on ebay, possibly with some as an auction, with many as a buy-it-now. But gbax works fine, too.
Now on to custom parts. It seems hard to make a special color of cases as you only have so many - heck, you're still limited in only having 1000 extra cases for these (making more? limiting 7-dayers to 1000? What happens to batch 2?). Doing different things to them seems hard right now since you've already put up ordering for 7-dayers. Battery tags are cute, but what happens if my battery goes, and I want a replacement? My Pandora no longer has the mark of being from the first batch. Perhaps not the end of the world, but it would be nice to have better. And if you're only designing them today, as you say, how long will it take to produce them? Short enough that you can still send off those 7-dayers? Not an issue if you'd waited.
It's also interesting to notice that the sample is very skewed here. All of the very early orders (they have theirs already) and the late orders (batch 2) will of course be benefited (well, probably). It's the ones in the middle that have the most concern, and rightfully so. Which brings me to my next big issue:
I think another major problem here is that of the treatment of the longest supporters. They've been patiently waiting for their Pandoras, standing in line, and now someone with more money can come up and get it sooner. I understand it completely. I was grumpy enough at the one-nubbers jumping in line, and then even more when it was revealed it was actually 200 of them that had done it. At least it was because they weren't fully functioning. Same thing with the refurbished units - which I was disappointed by because US buyers were effectively forced to pay VAT. Now it's purely $$ to time for delivery. Am I happy about that? No. Do I think OPT's treating those faithful customers poorly? Yes. I have to agree with johnsongrantr that OPT promised that we wouldn't be providing financing for their company, just for the parts. Telling us "hold on, someone else paid more, so they should get served first" is doing exactly that, because otherwise OPT can just get us to hold on indefinitely.
Personally, I understand the decision, and I'm willing to live with it, in a concession so OPT doesn't go under. But only if (that's a big if) OPT can show me, with hard, numerical proof, that doing this will (and while it happens, *does*) speed up the shipment of the pre-ordered Pandoras. And I mean in the short term, not in the long term, after they've sold a large number of 7-dayers. In other words, I want to see case #6. Not 1-5. And not just be told to believe them that it's better.
Some questions I'm left with, and other thoughts:
A long time ago, you had community members come over to help building for a day. Would this help?
Would investing help solve this problem? More donations from community members? Many people have expressed willingness to pay more, if you need it. Have you considered trying that first, possibly with a record of it, to count it for a potential sale of 7-dayers?
As mentioned, I still see CC as the limiting factor, not assembly. Will money really help there? Because I've personally seen no evidence that they can go as fast as you'd like.
While a $500 dollar choice is understandable, given that they're going on ebay for that, it's also a supply and demand issue. There aren't enough of them around, and people who really want one are willing to pay the premium. But I can't help but wonder how long that will hold up, once enough are in the wild. I'd really hate to see the project fail, because it couldn't sustain enough orders when the price was high enough. On the other hand, an extra premium for the 7-dayer guarantee (if you can keep it) isn't unreasonable.
Prices are too low? Fine. I'm sad to see it go up again, but if you need to, you need to. On the other hand, I remember your telling us way long ago that your original price was still more than the cost of all the parts and assembly. The *first batch* would be at a loss, but that's when you consider all the research/startup (cases, nubs developement, whatever). You told us the second batch would start to be at a profit, and recoup your loss. Prices get higher than you expected (parts should go down), and assembly more? Fine. Raise it. But an extra $150 in profit is a hefty chunk there (42%).
Is there still some way to order for less then $500 (with a longer wait, clearly)? Once you've recouped more funds, will the cost go down again? Or has the price gone up to $500 forevermore, with no need to ever wait, except for those of us grandfathered in? Once you've Part of the big appeal to me was the price point. As some people have pointed out, once you get to the $500 range, customers are going to expect a lot in terms of a device - near perfection. I know the Pandora is not this. It was advertised as still being a work in progress, and two years ago you told us how it would be rough around the edges, and not a whole lot's changed there, particularly in hardware. I'm still fine with that, for the lower price, but I wonder how many still will be, who weren't already part of the community.
If you're truly going to do this, which you seem to have committed to do, asBladesman points out (/me blushes), you're really going to have to start being better about indicating how many of each kind you've shipped. A queue, tallies, progress bars, who knows. Because otherwise you're going to have a lot of skeptical people around. Past experience hasn't put OPT in a positive light on deliveries. There are a lot of people who aren't happy with this decision already (as indicated in the thread), and they're going to want to see true progress in the queue, as a sign that they haven't been abandonded after two years.
Yep, another long one. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.
For starters, ED says that you guys ran out of boards to build, so shipped some sooner. Sounds like CC is still the bottleneck, and not the number of guys you have doing assembly.
Craig claims that CC can build them faster. I've yet to see evidence of it, see myearlier analysis of rates. If they can do it, why haven't they? They get paid sooner for the boards they've made, and I'm sure they want OPT out of their hair. Maybe production will start up at a separate place to augment, but that takes money and time, neither of which work well for those 7-day orders.
Anyway. More about the meat of these new orders. I hereby dub them "7-dayers"
I think the big problem in interpretation of this premise is in limits and extremes. For purposes of examples, let's go on the assumption that OPT can create a round 200 pandoras a week, with 3 people working on it. They can do more than double as many with 5 people. So let's call it a generous 500. (That's a lot more than just double). Consider the following scenarios:
1) 5000 people buy 7-dayers. You don't have enough parts, cases, or anything. Preorder-ers are delayed terribly. On the plus side, you do have more money, which is good.
2) 500 people buy 7-dayers. On the first day. Oops. It takes you the whole week to build the 500, so the last 70 or so don't get theirs in time. Because you said you'll get them in 7 days.
Edit: I see your gbax page says ships in 7 days. Carry on.
3) 750 people sbuy 7-dayers. Oops. You can only make 500. You fail your promise on 250 of them, not to mention the preordered units.
4) 500 people buy 7-dayers. They all get theirs, which is great for them, but it does mean that none of the preordered units get shipped. There goes the promise that doing these orders will speed up the rate of preorders shipped out. What happens if this continues for several weeks?
5) 400 people buy 7-dayers. It's like #2, except 100 preorders go out, too. You still miss on that promise, because it's slower than 200. But at least it's progressing faster than none.
6) 300 people buy 7-dayers. They all get theirs, and 200 preorders go out, too. That's faster than before, and (mostly) everyone is happy.
The moral of the story? You need to cap how many $500 orders you take at a time. You have to see how many you can build each way - presumably you know how many can be done with 3 people - and then not sell more than the difference.
Speeding up the overall rate is all fine and good, but the people who've been waiting the longest (the ones just about to recieve theirs) want to be sure that their Pandora won't get to them later than if you hadn't done this. It's completely understandable, and I feel this way as well. The fact that the overall rate of Pandoras speeds up, and the guys at the end of Batch 2 will get theirs sooner is moot - it's clear that doing this would help them. But you need to remain true to the customers who've stood by you the longest - some of whom ordered way back on day one.
But what happens when somewhere in the supply line slows down briefly? 7-dayers will get their pandoras first, if there happen to be enough parts to build them. And the preorder queue will slow to a trickle. That's bad on both counts. But turns out there's a solution. You build as many as you can, the first week, and ship those 200. You now have 300 in supply of "spares" for the 7-dayers. You can only ever sell as many as you have in that supply. If you ever have less, you take the extras from that 200/week to replenish the supply. If the supply goes over some amount, you ship off those extras to preorders. If the boards/parts supply ever goes below the 200/week, preorders slow down (as they would have), and you temporarily stop the sale of the 7-dayers, because you can't be sure you can promise them. Everyone wins again.
To me, it would seem to make sense to put these $500 7-dayers on ebay, possibly with some as an auction, with many as a buy-it-now. But gbax works fine, too.
Now on to custom parts. It seems hard to make a special color of cases as you only have so many - heck, you're still limited in only having 1000 extra cases for these (making more? limiting 7-dayers to 1000? What happens to batch 2?). Doing different things to them seems hard right now since you've already put up ordering for 7-dayers. Battery tags are cute, but what happens if my battery goes, and I want a replacement? My Pandora no longer has the mark of being from the first batch. Perhaps not the end of the world, but it would be nice to have better. And if you're only designing them today, as you say, how long will it take to produce them? Short enough that you can still send off those 7-dayers? Not an issue if you'd waited.
It's also interesting to notice that the sample is very skewed here. All of the very early orders (they have theirs already) and the late orders (batch 2) will of course be benefited (well, probably). It's the ones in the middle that have the most concern, and rightfully so. Which brings me to my next big issue:
I think another major problem here is that of the treatment of the longest supporters. They've been patiently waiting for their Pandoras, standing in line, and now someone with more money can come up and get it sooner. I understand it completely. I was grumpy enough at the one-nubbers jumping in line, and then even more when it was revealed it was actually 200 of them that had done it. At least it was because they weren't fully functioning. Same thing with the refurbished units - which I was disappointed by because US buyers were effectively forced to pay VAT. Now it's purely $$ to time for delivery. Am I happy about that? No. Do I think OPT's treating those faithful customers poorly? Yes. I have to agree with johnsongrantr that OPT promised that we wouldn't be providing financing for their company, just for the parts. Telling us "hold on, someone else paid more, so they should get served first" is doing exactly that, because otherwise OPT can just get us to hold on indefinitely.
Personally, I understand the decision, and I'm willing to live with it, in a concession so OPT doesn't go under. But only if (that's a big if) OPT can show me, with hard, numerical proof, that doing this will (and while it happens, *does*) speed up the shipment of the pre-ordered Pandoras. And I mean in the short term, not in the long term, after they've sold a large number of 7-dayers. In other words, I want to see case #6. Not 1-5. And not just be told to believe them that it's better.
Some questions I'm left with, and other thoughts:
A long time ago, you had community members come over to help building for a day. Would this help?
Would investing help solve this problem? More donations from community members? Many people have expressed willingness to pay more, if you need it. Have you considered trying that first, possibly with a record of it, to count it for a potential sale of 7-dayers?
As mentioned, I still see CC as the limiting factor, not assembly. Will money really help there? Because I've personally seen no evidence that they can go as fast as you'd like.
While a $500 dollar choice is understandable, given that they're going on ebay for that, it's also a supply and demand issue. There aren't enough of them around, and people who really want one are willing to pay the premium. But I can't help but wonder how long that will hold up, once enough are in the wild. I'd really hate to see the project fail, because it couldn't sustain enough orders when the price was high enough. On the other hand, an extra premium for the 7-dayer guarantee (if you can keep it) isn't unreasonable.
Prices are too low? Fine. I'm sad to see it go up again, but if you need to, you need to. On the other hand, I remember your telling us way long ago that your original price was still more than the cost of all the parts and assembly. The *first batch* would be at a loss, but that's when you consider all the research/startup (cases, nubs developement, whatever). You told us the second batch would start to be at a profit, and recoup your loss. Prices get higher than you expected (parts should go down), and assembly more? Fine. Raise it. But an extra $150 in profit is a hefty chunk there (42%).
Is there still some way to order for less then $500 (with a longer wait, clearly)? Once you've recouped more funds, will the cost go down again? Or has the price gone up to $500 forevermore, with no need to ever wait, except for those of us grandfathered in? Once you've Part of the big appeal to me was the price point. As some people have pointed out, once you get to the $500 range, customers are going to expect a lot in terms of a device - near perfection. I know the Pandora is not this. It was advertised as still being a work in progress, and two years ago you told us how it would be rough around the edges, and not a whole lot's changed there, particularly in hardware. I'm still fine with that, for the lower price, but I wonder how many still will be, who weren't already part of the community.
If you're truly going to do this, which you seem to have committed to do, asBladesman points out (/me blushes), you're really going to have to start being better about indicating how many of each kind you've shipped. A queue, tallies, progress bars, who knows. Because otherwise you're going to have a lot of skeptical people around. Past experience hasn't put OPT in a positive light on deliveries. There are a lot of people who aren't happy with this decision already (as indicated in the thread), and they're going to want to see true progress in the queue, as a sign that they haven't been abandonded after two years.
Yep, another long one. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.
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slaeshjag
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's what I did, haven't gotten the refund yet, but hopefully, I will soon... Also, remember that the price specified is without VAT, so if you live in EU, add another 20% to the price.
