Quotations, Production speed and the future (2011-09-01)

[DaMummy]

imho, OPT Ltd and Gmbh should take care of the legal problems, if any, with CC before asking people for investments, this could either be huge for OPT, or a huge setback for them and should be taken care of promptly, and with info given to investors

 

[neko]

imho, OPT Ltd and Gmbh should take care of the legal problems, if any, with CC before asking people for investments, this could either be huge for OPT, or a huge setback for them and should be taken care of promptly, and with info given to investors

Yeah, let's put everything on hold for a few months while that gets straightened out.  I'm sure people wouldn't mind waiting a little longer to get a pandora.

 

[WizardStan]

Please correct me if I am mistaken: The way I understood it is that the boards suffered from corrosion because production was delayed in order to wait for the cases from China.

The boards suffered from corrosion because the nubs had to be re-worked.


CC was told to continue populating the boards as the nub are soldered on last anyway.


CC chose to ignore their customers (OpenPandora) instructions and left the boards unpopulated until the nubs arrived, a few months later.

Close. CC wasn't told to continue production, CC themselves said that they would populate the rest of the board so that the nubs would be a quick job. CC actually said this was done, that all boards had been populate. Come December and the new nubs they said "Oh, we were mistaken somehow, oops, we'll get right on those. 500 a week, promise!"


The boards suffered corrosion because CC made a decision to not solder anything to them, which in itself would not be a major complaint: they had no way of knowing that OPT would in fact get the nubs, and they didn't want to be stuck with 3000 half populated boards and a bill that couldn't be paid.


But they lied about it, said the boards were done and waiting. If they had been upfront about it, that they weren't going to risk all the time and money on OPT possibly getting the new nubs, I'm sure ED could have diplomatically worked something out.

 

[EvilDragon]

The boards suffered from corrosion because the nubs had to be re-worked.


CC was told to continue populating the boards as the nub are soldered on last anyway.


CC chose to ignore their customers (OpenPandora) instructions and left the boards unpopulated until the nubs arrived, a few months later.

Not exactly. They confirmed they will do this and even confirmed they are currently producing the boards when we asked how it goes.


They even told us "thousands of boards" are finished - which was not true.

CC had may have had their reasons for this but it wasn't really their choice to make and now they have to clean every board before population.

I could understand the reasons, but I can't understand why they didn't simply tell us but instead lie about the production.

I don't really understand the investing part. What will an investor be getting from investing in the product? Expected ROI?

Every potential investor will get a business plan which will tell exactly he can expect.


Once the next 3000 units are shipped, all the preorders are fullfilled and there's enough money to continue production.


From then on, profit is being made, and that is where the investors will get their share from.

imho, OPT Ltd and Gmbh should take care of the legal problems, if any, with CC before asking people for investments, this could either be huge for OPT, or a huge setback for them and should be taken care of promptly, and with info given to investors

I don't know what it's like in USA, but in Germany, such cases can take half a year until a year.


So should we put everything on hold until then?


And we also don't even know how much we can get from them.


What if they don't have any money?


Then we'd need investors anyways.


So the only proper way to do it right now is: Start production in Germany from scratch, create a proper business plan to show investors the potential, continue production without caring about CC.


Every Pandora CC delivers is a bonus then, every dollar we can get from them via legal action is a bonus as well.


Expect the worst, hope for the best

 

[EvilDragon]

But they lied about it, said the boards were done and waiting. If they had been upfront about it, that they weren't going to risk all the time and money on OPT possibly getting the new nubs, I'm sure ED could have diplomatically worked something out.

Yes, probably.


The bad thing is that they continued to produce the boards when they were corrodated.


They mentioned they need to clean them to make them work properly - but every other company would've probably just told us that the bare PCBs need to be thrown away and produced a new.


Then these issues also wouldn't have occured.


We were hoping for their professional advise. We told them multiple times we've never done something like that before, so they should know more about production than us.


If they'd said these boards will never work, we need to buy new ones then we'd probably have done that.


However, they just said that's an issue and they need to clean all the boards, so production on these boards continued.


2000 new PCBs would've cost us approx. 16.000 USD which would've been okay.

 

[hakmanplayer]

But they lied about it, said the boards were done and waiting. If they had been upfront about it, that they weren't going to risk all the time and money on OPT possibly getting the new nubs, I'm sure ED could have diplomatically worked something out.

Yes, probably.


The bad thing is that they continued to produce the boards when they were corrodated.


They mentioned they need to clean them to make them work properly - but every other company would've probably just told us that the bare PCBs need to be thrown away and produced a new.


Then these issues also wouldn't have occured.


We were hoping for their professional advise. We told them multiple times we've never done something like that before, so they should know more about production than us.


If they'd said these boards will never work, we need to buy new ones then we'd probably have done that.


However, they just said that's an issue and they need to clean all the boards, so production on these boards continued.


2000 new PCBs would've cost us approx. 16.000 USD which would've been okay.

I don't think I will be answered but...are there any legal actions taking place? Is anybody suing here?


I certainly hope not. These legal issues can be very long and drawn out sometimes. = $$$$$


I know some good but unethical jewish lawyers j/k.

 

[EvilDragon]

I don't think I will be answered but...are there any legal actions taking place? Is anybody suing here?


I certainly hope not. These legal issues can be very long and drawn out sometimes. = $$$$$


I know some good but unethical jewish lawyers j/k.

Nothing happened yet, but we're at least preparing and checking that it makes sense.


If CC delivers us more working boards without any issues now (even though it might be slow), we would be happy to NOT have to take any legal action and just move away to the new company.


However, if we don't get many more boards, we'll have to do something.

 

[Poem58]

Here's an odd question. Would it be worth it (If WiFi was the only issue) to just tell them to send you all the populated boards ASAP and just either add the USB wifi module discussed in the past or whatever and just get it out and be done with them? I for one would not mind a Wifi adapter just to finally get my Pandora. Waiting months on end for something that could be replaced externally, unless there are other issues to consider, doesn't seem worth it to me. If it were something that couldn't be remedied as easily as this, I would understand having to wait Circuit Co out, but if we can get the rest of the boards out of them now, I'd do it. If there are other issues, then the new company could be used to fix them maybe? Just some thoughts, probably no good.

 

[JackTheKnife]

Sooo... CircuitCo is crawling along at 100 a month (current rates) with 1000 to go (and doling out what is half-a-step up from refurbished units), and the very best Germany will be able to manage it November/December if things go to plan (and how often does that happen around here?), so being near the end of Batch One...


I'm not going to see my Pandora before 2012, am I?

So Ed no answer for that question? We are "investors" from Batch1 and expect to hear report.

While I'm browsing these boards quite often, I'm not her 24/7 and therefore do not reply to each question within a few hours.


Besides, what should I tell you?


You know very well that no one knows how fast CC will deliver the remaining units, so what do you want to hear?

So what I hear now is that a statement from http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/4391-a-fresh-new-start-part-1-2011-07-12/page__view__findpost__p__77831 is no longer valid and we are going to wait till CC will finish missing boards. Am I right or you can correct me?

 

[EvilDragon]

So what I hear now is that a statement from http://boards.openpa...dpost__p__77831 is no longer valid and we are going to wait till CC will finish missing boards. Am I right or you can correct me?

Any reason why that statement shouldn't be correct anymore?


Delivery of the remaining prepaid units goes according to the queue, regardless which company provides the PCBs.

 

[ahahah]

So what I hear now is that a statement from http://boards.openpa...dpost__p__77831 is no longer valid and we are going to wait till CC will finish missing boards. Am I right or you can correct me?

no problem here.


if the next boards come from germany they will be shipped for you (in the batch 1 queue before the batch 2 queue people) if the next boards come from cc they will be shipped for you again (before the batch 2 queue).


in all cases you'll get your unit before batch 2 people get their.


but after the premium orders of course.

 

[JackTheKnife]

So what I hear now is that a statement from http://boards.openpa...dpost__p__77831 is no longer valid and we are going to wait till CC will finish missing boards. Am I right or you can correct me?

Any reason why that statement shouldn't be correct anymore?


Delivery of the remaining prepaid units goes according to the queue, regardless which company provides the PCBs.

So if I pre-ordered from Craig I will receive Pandora from you if German company will kick faster than CC?

 

[WizardStan]

So if I pre-ordered from Craig I will receive Pandora from you if German company will kick faster than CC?

That doesn't make sense. If you pre-ordered from Craig, why would you receive from ED?

 

[BeefJerky]

It's really not looking good for the first batchers among us who still haven't got our Pandoras. All a bit disheartening. Really hope you get it all sorted, ED. Good luck.


Got to love the Dragon's Den suggestion. That would be hilarious to watch. For entertainment value alone, you should do it. Send Craig!

 

[JackTheKnife]

So if I pre-ordered from Craig I will receive Pandora from you if German company will kick faster than CC?

That doesn't make sense. If you pre-ordered from Craig, why would you receive from ED?

So how Craig will get PCBs from Germany?

 

[WizardStan]

So if I pre-ordered from Craig I will receive Pandora from you if German company will kick faster than CC?

That doesn't make sense. If you pre-ordered from Craig, why would you receive from ED?

So how Craig will get PCBs from Germany?

The same way he gets them from the United States right now.

 

[JackTheKnife]

So if I pre-ordered from Craig I will receive Pandora from you if German company will kick faster than CC?

That doesn't make sense. If you pre-ordered from Craig, why would you receive from ED?

So how Craig will get PCBs from Germany?

The same way he gets them from the United States right now.

But with German manufacturer will sign ED's company not Craig's...

 

[WizardStan]

But with German manufacturer will sign ED's company not Craig's...

The way it currently works is CC in the US populates the boards, those are sent to the UK for Craig who has a shop and workers who put those boards into cases along with the keyboard, battery, and LCD. Evil Dragon's share are then shipped to Germany while Craig sends out to his customers.


I don't see any reason why that would change just because boards are being populated in Germany.

 

[JackTheKnife]

But with German manufacturer will sign ED's company not Craig's...

The way it currently works is CC in the US populates the boards, those are sent to the UK for Craig who has a shop and workers who put those boards into cases along with the keyboard, battery, and LCD. Evil Dragon's share are then shipped to Germany while Craig sends out to his customers.


I don't see any reason why that would change just because boards are being populated in Germany.

Confusion comes from those words "Craig uses most of his time to take care about the iControlPad, while I am fully working on the Pandora right now."

 

[WizardStan]

At a rate of 50 per week at best, there's not a lot for Craig to assemble. Meanwhile, there are angry customers, repairs, operating system, etc... all needing someone to work on them, and ED is that man.