I ordered October 2 2008 at 7:21:39 PM CEST, so it's been 4 years 15 days and 10 hoursI wonder who the longest person to wait will be. I'm 4 years and 12 days so far, I know there are people a little longer though at the moment.
OK. Ed would you please start a few official idea threads? We need to copy and paste the ideas there so they don't get lost. We could have a generic brainstorm thread and then ideas from that thread copied over to idea threads that have specific tasks some of which haven't been determined yet but the necessity for them might manifest in the general idea thread. Thanks! Keep the ideas coming gang!
Sent 14 October 2012 - 11:22 AM
Hi,
I don't really need ideas - I've got so much to do already
I'd need help to manage all the work
Sent 15 October 2012 - 11:08 PM
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... providing me videos recorded from TV Out.
... by letting me know which games or emulated games would be great to show.
... by providing me with the most important keywords that we need for the Pandora.
As mentioned above, I could really help with doing more videos.
Some advertising (Banner, Flyer, etc.) would also help. Are there any graphic designers here that could create these?
I will provide you with everything you need.
Maybe some of you know some blogs, magazines, websites we should approach for a Pandora Review?
Could it be that anyone here knows someone who has a lot of money and tends to support small projects like this one? Please let me know - and I'll approach him.
I was merely suggesting a means with which the community could provide you with the help you requested in an organized fashion. People interested in doing x would go to x thread, people interested in y would go to y thread. Once consensus is reached (or close to being reached), those ideas get posted to an update/approval thread. That way you'd only look at the end results of those threads and offer direction as needed.
To lessen your work load the community needs the means and tools to do so in an efficient fashion. You could ask for volunteers to be community leads for each area and it would be their job to create/foster/monitor the environment and report results back to you directly or via the update thread I mentioned earlier. (edit: Maybe if they do a good job they could just manage it on their own.)
I have the sense that many would help if they knew of an organized or direct means to do so. In short the forum idea was to help manage the work. Thanks for considering it and offering your thoughts.
Posted 16 October 2012 - 03:59 PM
As I mentioned, I am currently working on new videos, showing the different uses and things you can do with the Pandora more thoroughly.
I will also create one video summarizing what the Pandora can do soon, but for users more interested in one special area, these single videos might be interesting as well.
You can share them as much as you like and direct any interested users to this thread here.
I'll try to add more different videos as fast as possible.
Not to step on any toes, but are you also taking user submitted videos? Or should we not worry about that now. Since everybody asked for my opinion I'm now obliged to give it.
The beginning was epic. E-P-I-C! My only suggestion would be to shorten the length of each game snippet so a larger amount and variety of games could be shown for the same length of time. Maybe the ending fast forwards through a crap ton of games in 20 seconds or so.
Let's look at some timing about certain changes that popped up in the last week.
I said that customers should be contacted directly without having to dreg through forums for info. In the event preorders can't be met in a timely fashion, the customers order should be cancelled with an offer to renew. There should also be announcements from the team sent directly.
Hello Alex,
You will be getting an email soon, actually everyone who has a preorder will be getting an email within the next 7 days.
It will give details of how to get a refund, as well as an update on the Pandora.
Thanks,
Craig
I said we need banners,flyers,kickstarter donations,tshirts,press kits, preloaded SD cards, cross promotions, contests, ads, help from the community.
The infuriating fact in all of this is that there is an obvious issue and those affected are left with the perception that very little thought, planning or effort went into solving the problem other than using new sales to release old pre-orders. This is a fine plan so how about we start selling the hell out of these Pandoras by any means necessary to keep and fill the obligation to the original investors in a timely fashion.
Flyers, newspaper ads, hacker conventions, conventions in general, youtube, twitter, facebook, forum sig ads, direct emails to the original investors, suggested ideas on how to advertise, requested ideas on how to advertise, ebay auctions. Any number of ideas could have been used to shorten the wait. Instead the best I hear is get a refund or would you rather we went bankrupt? Like those are the only options. Now people don't even want us to get a refund!
Now if everyone is getting updated to the 1ghz model (which is great!) find a way to communicate that better than just adding another forum post to the almost 5k you have. Is email now broken? It worked fine when I made my original purchase. Also sending emails is not the same as answering them, so although Ed's inbox is blowing up doesn't mean an official notification can't be sent from the Pandora team.
For instance the front page has zero announcements.I'm not sure how you came to the belief that I thought if Craig went bankrupt we'd still be getting a Pandora or our money back. It's part of the reason why I said that obviously Craig going bankrupt was not what I wanted to happen. Saying that at least this way, you can actually get something even if it is late is insufficient. How about we get things in a timely fashion by promoting the hell out of the product to generate sales. How about some transparency and clarification? How many classic preorders are left? Say the number is 700. What is the plan to get these out of the door? Are there any time frame estimates. Is there a method to openly communicate the status of these orders without having to dig through forums? Is there more than one plan of attack to address the issue? Are there any non-forum specific official statements on the matter. Does a faq exist that addresses most of these issues?
If communication where more open and direct by design certain email inboxes wouldn't be so full. Can you tell me what has been done in any of these regards to fix the problem? As far as I know there is merely some ratio of new sales versus old and now a kickstarter project. That's it! Is it your claim that that is all that needs to be done? No official statements. No direct emails keeping everyone appraised etc. Further to expect anything more than what has been given us is declared irrational and unrealistic.
Here's where you blame the customer again. And my response.
If this were true and people had such expectations during the initial preorder don't you think this point would have been argued more often and successfully? Why isn't this the case? It's because no one had any idea back then that they would be waiting 3 years for a unit while at the same time see new buyers getting their units in less than a month. That wouldn't be so bad if more was communicated to the classic preorder folks directly and a more robust plan of attack developed to address the issue other than telling us to just wait it's coming.
Then going over the CC issue and how Craigx could have gone bankrupt etc. Instead of outfront saying these crappy things happened but we made a promise to you and this is how we plan to keep it. We're going to have to use the funds of new purchases to release old preorders. I know. I know that seems unfair but the reality of the situation is that the funds really aren't there. To expedite the process where going to x, y and z and we invite the community to provide us with ideas. We've even created a Pandora ad image that you can print and display in your home town and are working on forum signatures that link to our advertisement website and videos. We're even going to send some of our older refurbished units to game blogs for reviews and we have a secret bomb that we haven't released yet so stay tuned for more info.
Craigx said:
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This was actually working really well, we managed to clear some debts and ship about 100 units quickly, but then we had some large preorders cancelled unexpectedly. The people who cancelled these were not being nasty or awkward, they just needed the money back and I can understand this in the current climate. It amounted to ~100 units.(I then go onto to post all the rude forum members telling people to cancel etc)I claim that the fact so many people cancelled is why we are having this discussion and why the update was posted in the first place. Now if you read the boards, you'll see that those that have cancelled due to delays or other related issues are marginalized as if their input or money is no longer required. Allow me to illustrate.
This appears to be an atypical event with some rarity associated with it. That's why we're talking about it. Because it's a big deal. So what is the root cause(s) of the issue? People have been told to cancel for a long time here and obviously some did just that well within acceptable or expected limits. Do you understand how tiresome it is to be a founder and lurker and when another founder asks questions or expresses displeasure to see over and over again how they are often met with a lack of empathy or even curtesy? Everyone is happy with their results and can't grasp why someone else might not be happy with theirs. Instead of helping to solve the problem these people just tell them to cancel. That's is far as their thought goes. They give the impression "I'm happy and if you're not happy you should wait. If you can't wait you should cancel (you can see how that is working out)."
The problem is that waiting and canceling aren't the only options for customer satisfaction. For instance if you show someone a roadmap with milestones and you consistently meet those milestones it's much much easier to wait to get to the end of the road instead of hearing "Hey you back seat driver! Hush up there or get out!" Another hypothesis of mine is that since the founders have not en masse requested a refund a sense of security arose in that old pre-orders are in the bag. Why worry over them or prioritize them? They get their stuff when they get their stuff! This shows directly the value of the founders held by most on this board and the team itself.
How can I say this? Look at the discussion. What are we talking about? Everything we're talking about prioritizes everything other than the founding customers. When this is brought up people seem to think that addressing this issue somehow removes the ability to sell new units or gain profitability. Frankly I think 1ghz units are cool. I'm a little incensed however that directly after the announcement was made for these units an equally large announcement was not made for founding investors. Why? My guess is because we're just considered old customers anyway and they already have our money with little fear of cancellation, because historically speaking we don't cancel. We don't cancel because we love the idea of the Pandora that much.
So now we're just second and third class gaming citizens that occasionally pipe up every once and awhile but if you ignore them, they'll settle down just fine. Man up. Think on it a bit. Address us. Address the issue. So you don't have people like me speculating on how communication, forum activity, email activity etc etc is leading to an increase in cancellations. This whole thread is a response to cancellations! Cancellation is a bad thing. If we tried to figure out how to stop them instead of telling people to do them I think we would be on the way to a good thing.
Posted Imagestardroid, on 19 September 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:
Also keep in mind its a HUGE logistc task they have to deal with and its not even their main job! They're doing this in their free time.No doubt. Why not let volunteers help with the trivial stuff so that they can concentrate on the non-trivial stuff? Ask the community for ideas. Why waste time answering the same questions over and over, when you can answer it once and post it as a document? Someone around here has photoshop skills. Why not have a Pandora ad contest with cheap but decent prizes. Or set up a set it and forget it Pandora store that sells mousepads, t-shirts, mugs or whatever? Ask for community help in designing those too. There's many solutions to the problem. Some better than others, but we've got to at least think about it.
So instead of addressing better solutions to the problem the boards concentrate on what caused the problem. But a really good excuse is just that. An excuse. Above someone posted 6 points on making the experience better yet few are interested. It is this disinterest, the constant suggestion to cancel, the reactive instead of the preactive or proactive board behavior and the sucks to be you mentality that is the reason why people are canceling in droves. Ed and Craigx have frankly too much on their plate.
Well, the only quotes you had there which affect my shop or me was the one from www.dragonbox.de (Where is my Pandora???) where the issue was not a missing shipment or refund, but simply a missing tracking eMail from DHL.
While I've got a huge email backlog, I check them regularly for any urgent stuff, so I usually refund right away.
All the other quotes were from Craigs customers, not mine. While we work together on the Pandora, our companies, eMails and shops don't have anything to do with each other.
Agreed. I just included that as a data point that not everything is bad and that you guys work to solve the problems. I had considered posting more background info on the matter from the thread, but instead I appear to have confused matters by trying not to confuse matters. In any case the fact that the companies are separate entities with respective shops, emails and such might not be immediately apparent to board lurkers or future investors.It is my belief that board culture needs to change from wait or cancel as the only options. The longer the wait without suitable communication or plans of attack will cause a certain amount of people to cancel. The more people are told to cancel as the definitive answer to their questions, the more people will cancel. In the long run we want less cancellations which is obvious by now. What's not so obvious is the path or solution required to slow down or abolish altogether these cancellations.I'm not sure why people are confused about what I'm saying frankly. I want this to be a success and am offering my opinionated supposition on what factors may or may not be hindering such success. From my limited viewpoint it appears that there is a problem that no one is seriously and fervently trying to solve. Prove me wrong and I would be ecstatic. I want to be proved wrong because that means there is a plan in affect that guarantees that the 2 pandoras I ordered so very long ago will be arriving, maybe not tomorrow or even soon but in a planned and determined fashion.
First off, some facts:
Production is running fine now, even for the 1GHz units. Once we got the parts, we can theoretically produce 250 per week.
Every order placed at my shop (www.dragonbox.de) will ship out RIGHT AWAY, also the 1GHz units!
Only 1GHz orders from Craigs shop (OpenPandora Ltd., UK) have a backlog right now - and I'll do anything to help to clear this backlog.
So no worries - if you want a 1GHz unit NOW, you can order and get it!
My shop is not broke, nor have I run out of funds. Nothing to worry here, production will continue as planned.
Okay, now here are some thoughts I had.
The most important thing is that we increase the sales of the Pandora - as these sales fund the remaining preorders and therefore also ensure the future of the Pandora.
There are various ways of increasing the sales...
1. Get new customers!
The Pandora right now is a bit pricey - but there are probably a lot more interested customers out there who have the money and would like to buy it and support the idea of a niche device.
However, right now, every customer has to KNOW about the Pandora in order to buy it. Therefore, without news on websites (like the one at Eurogamer), we won't get new customers.
We need to increase the Google Rankings for more common keywords (like Emulator, Playstation, etc.) so that we also get customers NOT searching specifically for the Pandora.
Luckily, I've got an online marketing expert in my company who knows how to improve these rankings - and we want to do that with new videos.
I'm already working on new videos - and you can help me, if you want...
... providing me videos recorded from TV Out.
... by letting me know which games or emulated games would be great to show.
... by providing me with the most important keywords that we need for the Pandora.
These Videos will surely help get some more interest - and sell more units. More sold units mean a faster clearing of all remaining queues.
2. Get additional funds
I've seen the idea of a donation fund on the other thread - and the idea is great. Right now, we've got 22,000 users who subscribed to the Pandora newsletter. While not all of them are probably still interested in the Pandora, if every single one of them donated only 8 EUR, I could immediately produce and ship out ALL preorders!
Of course, not everyone will donate - but every EUR is helping, so there might be some who'll help us out. Maybe I can even find some bigger supporters - I don't think so, but it sure is worth trying.
If YOU want to support classic preorders, check out this donation website
I WILL let you know over time how many units I was able to sponsor.
And I will use that money to also fund Craigs 1GHz queue as well as both classic preorder queues.
3. Cross-Upgrade your preorder to an instant-delivery 1GHz Pandora!
So you ordered a classic Pandora from Craig, have some more money ready and would gladly pay for an update to a 1GHz unit which will be delivered right away?
That's possible now! All you need to know is your order number and head over to my shop.
As long as there are units in stock, you can upgrade it and get it right away - promised
4. Lower the price
While many of you here agree that the Pandora is worth its price, it's still a bit high for a lot of interested users.
I'd like everyone to be able to afford the Pandora - however, right now we urgently need the money to be able to also fund old preorders, so I can't really lower the price until we have all preorders cleared.
When we've got all preorders delivered, a lower price should be possible - and attract more customers.
So the faster we can get the above things going, the better for EVERYONE in the community!
Okay, and here is my call for help!
While I'm working hard to keep everything going, I am only one person and have my limits.
We're a community - and we probably have a lot of talented members here. So if you'd like to help us out, it would be awesome.
As mentioned above, I could really help with doing more videos.
Some advertising (Banner, Flyer, etc.) would also help. Are there any graphic designers here that could create these?
I will provide you with everything you need.
Maybe some of you know some blogs, magazines, websites we should approach for a Pandora Review?
Could it be that anyone here knows someone who has a lot of money and tends to support small projects like this one? Please let me know - and I'll approach him.
And as you know, I'm way behind with my emails... I will set up a ticket system soon, and there should also be a section where community members could help out answering these questions.
Interested in helping out here? Let me know.
That's it for today - thanks a lot for your huge support - let's keep things going
Hello Alex,
You will be getting an email soon, actually everyone who has a preorder will be getting an email within the next 7 days.
It will give details of how to get a refund, as well as an update on the Pandora.
Thanks,
Craig
Ah, well. I'm "not aware of the situation", apparently. Thank you for knowing more about what I know and don't know than what I do myself. And what you're writing apparently doesn't mean what it looks like. Good. I'm certain that it is just me who is an outlier, and that the difference in reactions when you post a thread and when ED posts a thread (as you mentioned yourself) is only down to ED being an Official Person. We're very much in awe of Official Persons here. That's why nobody has dared criticize ED or Craig before you came along. We're happy to have you. Never mind me.
Ah, well. At least I tried.