Monk said:
Why does it REQUIRE any more commitment from the customer than is put in black and white? An offer of goods is made, a tentative delivery estiamte of within the next two months at most is given, and money changes hands. [ ... ] However, I don't feel there is any "requirement" for me or any other customer to be anything like as committed as I have been - that's a personal choice, there's not a hint of it in the sales order or anything like that.
I think your conception of this purchase was based on false impression for which the OP team is responsible. The black on white was probably as amateurish as rest of the project.
Monk said:
fiori_musicali said:
What if everyone starts pulling out their money halfway the process and the OP team is left alone with massive pre-paid orders and components with the money already scattered around the world and transformed into half-complete parts.
Then the OP team are up shit creek without a paddle. They're taking a big risk. I believe their insurance supposedly covers the customers, and if that's true then only the OP team are taking the risk. I don't envy it them, but to be blunter than I ever intended in one of MY missives, it IS their risk - and if the damn things sells gangbusters like the device we're promised OUGHT to, then it's they that will reap the financial rewards. That's how it works - the people who take the risks get the rewards if it works out, and the penalties if it doesn't. It OUGHT to work out. If they lose their customers for whatever reason then, well, they lost their customers and their gamble. That would be bad, but there it is. No-one wins. That happens, sometimes.
True, but I don't think of the OP team as a company at this point (they won't even profit from the first batch), but rather a proxy. They do all the hard work (which I couldn't do any better) for me, and I contribute my small share financially, hoping to benefit from it in form of a Pandora. When they have made back all the money they've lost, actually have a positive balance and start making profit and thereby acting more like a real company (who can offer
professional services), then I'll start treating them like such knowing who I'm dealing with and what conditions and circumstances apply.
Monk said:
That's distinctly clearer-cut than I'd generally hoped to phrase things, but I feel the need for knife-sharp accuracy in the face of this rather wooly "we owe it to them" type of attitude. We don't owe them anything - they owe us. Literally. Having the INTENTION of wanting to help them, or of wanting the project to succeed, or (and so on) is a different matter, and I think it's important from OPs POV that we're "on side" and I feel everyone should want them to succeed. But it's not our business to keep them afloat regardless of much much they get wrong, or to leave our money with them until they don't need it any more. That would be ludicrous.
I thought due to me bring the matter to a head to more clearly illustrate my point some people would think I'm pissing on their toes. You're doing the same in insinuating that I claimed the customers
owe something to the OP team, as that's not what this is all about.
As I said I presented a point of view that isn't often contemplated on when these issues pop up again and again. You can make your own exaggerations and interpretations of what the nature of transaction between you and the OP team was, but they're not any closer to reality if you ignore other aspects of the project and how it is carried out. In other words you seem to simplify the matter to better suit your own interests which are getting a Pandora and having your investment secured, whereas the reality of the situation doesn't conform to that as it obviously never was a trip to the grocery store. Was the OP team's communication and description of the nature of the project insufficient for the Job Public? Sure. At least we're getting more specific in what the actual controversy is.
Monk said:
OpenPandora have never called it an investment, nor us investors, that I am aware of. They have called it a purchase, from day one. It's already a purchase. I agree there are ways to use the term "investment" accurately, but as an alternative to a purchase isn't one of those ways for this project. That's using the term in a way which winds up one of our member no end, last time I saw him post on the topic, because it's simply not accurate.
It isn't an investment per se because first of all your money is secured (on paper anyway, if the project went down then have fun waiting for your money instead of your Pandora as the OP team is knee-deep in debts) and you as the customer are not expecting to financially profit from it. It still isn't a simple purchase either because every single person who preordered is tied to getting the whole mass-produced first batch of complete units out and so the OP team (the proxy) is dependent on preorderers who give them enough time to complete the whole project, and not just 50% of it.
Monk said:
To even suggest calling getting a refund at ANY stage a sin has me floored. My mouth has hit the floor. It's not a pretty picture, but you have completely stunned me. That is just so outrageous I don't even have a comeback for it
You can get stuck in my choice of wording all you want, the words themselves don't matter as much as grasping the ideas they're meant to express.
Maybe the difference
is in commitment that for me has roots in more than just getting my Pandora, as it represents to me a more open, community-powered and creative process of
designing, building and producing high-quality technology without the usual involvement of marketing whose purpose is to manipulate the consumers into thinking they absolutely need something they could well do without, and the whole underlying strategy of designing products that can be sold to "anyone" even at the cost of general quality and feature sets of the products and no direct input from the consumer base which instead is used to being told from above what they want and settling for that. A future with more of OP's and Pandora's kind is also what I'm investing in.
