sigh....

[polkunus]

My Father(a huge entrepenuer) is the only person i know who can fund my pandora. He grew up in a "ghetto" neigborhood and deals with scams/ebay/etc. everyday.

First of all my dad was fishy about the fact that the whole gp32x site was a little phony and the paypal method was unofficial. Then a DDOS attack, then a paypal refund. He also got annoying of the "oh just pay us in a different way somehow" was extremely unproffesional. He said that if something goes wrong when someone is selling an item, the company usually gives customery friendly strict orders that are not vague. He is not a tech guy... he hates tech. You have to explain this to him straight forward and tell him facts not technically throw words at him.


So, can someone explain to him to that this is not a scam.

thanks

 

[bartleby]

no need to convince him right now - it's too late for preordering anyway.

hopefully, some pictures of the actual product will be available very soon. and for the next batches, it may not be necessary to preorder at all. you may be able to buy a pandora then just like you would buy any other gadget. (well, as long as you are prepared to buy it online, it won't show up in any retail stores...)

 

[cosam]

no need to convince him right now - it's too late for preordering anyway.

Those who where affected by the whole PayPal fiasco still have the chance to order from the first batch, as long as alternative payment can be arranged.

 

[Warden]

I thought the idea was that he didnt order at all? In which case of course it's now too late to join the trusting preorder wagon. By the time orders open again, there will be a userbase of 4000ish, surely that will convince him.

 

[bartleby]

I thought the idea was that he didnt order at all?

that's how i understood him.

 

[Mqark]

If this was a scam I'm sure those involved would be appearing on a "Worlds dumbest criminals" show pretty soon.

1) They run legitimate companies that have been trading for years, they are very easily reachable and traceable so any authorities would have absolutely no problems tracking them down if they ever needed too.

2) It's been so widely publicized GLOBALLY that there'd be nowhere to hide.

3) The Paypal thing is very unfortunate - but it wasn't a problem of their doing, they had requests for payments to be accepted via Paypal (they were originally only going to accept credit/debit cards) but they bent over to try to be helpful for what transpired to be only 100 people out of 4000. It was Paypal (again) that has let down those 100 users. These guys are keeping the units for you and allowing you to try other forms of payment - lucky Paypal users! the rest of us didn't have a unit kept aside while we got our finances in order, we had to stump up the cash to secure our unit. Think about it, the Paypal users now have (within reason) a little bit more time to get their money in place.

4) Yes, it's very suspicious that an attack was launched on their website - but think about it, they are trying to sell something, why the heck would they intentionally stop people from buying their product. A lot of it was that this product is so great that it literally caused so much interest that the servers melted down. This actually happens a lot when people visit various websites during major news announcements etc. - most people buy a small amount of space/bandwidth from ISP's for their website (even commercial ones) I suppose the ISP's should really have been informed of a big hit being immanent - but hindsight's a great thing isn't it.
There are some people out there that really need to get a life and unfortunately gaming attracts some of these lowlifes that may do something like launch a DOS attack - fan boys of particular platforms etc. Heck it's even been known for big players in the industry to do underhand things but I'm not suggesting anything like that because I have no evidence to support it.

5) They have asked people to be involved in it all the way through - hence this emergency forum we're posting on (the main one is back though).

6) As for the website - yes it may not be as graphically as polished as some - but who the heck cares? It's actually very easy to have a polished website, loads of glossy marketing material and not even have a product and to have HUGE debts - this isn't the case with these guys. Everything they've done has made great financial sense and your dad should realize this. These guys are running with no debts and have secured all the money they need to manufacture the products - they aren't going to end up with surplus stock because they haven't speculated about how many they'd need to make and ended up with 1 million units and only orders for 4000.
They also have a very good idea now of how many they will have to produce for the second batch and they can follow the reaction from the first batch to see how much interest it generates when the press and public get retail units in their hands.

Hmm, probably enough for him to be going on for the moment...

 

[bartleby]

4) Yes, it's very suspicious that an attack was launced on their website

correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think anyone "attacked their website" - or were there any attacks against openpandora.org, gbax.com, or gp2x.de?

afaik, there was only that alleged ddos attack against gp32x.de, which isn't run by the pandora team. and i'm not sure there is any proof of an actual ddos attack. it may still just have been all the traffic caused by the preorder date...

 

[hch]

sorry to be so blunt, but community efforts like the pandora are something that 'business oriented' people will probably never be able to grasp.

if in general you have some enthusiasm about a certain project, then reading through the forums for a few hours will tell you that these are people that try to pull a cool thing off. if on the other hand your mind is business oriented, you might probably smell scam all over the place.

actually, all the points you made - the low-brow web site, the unprofessional handling of the payment methods, the personal and non-strict communication by the actual developers(!) and their open statement, that they didn't understand some terms of contract - all of that is absolutely convincing to me that these are people that try to pull a cool project off and not plan a scam, because i know i would probably act the same way. this is more convincing to me than any sort of customer protection or service pledge by a regular company. ind i guess either you understand this or not.

 

[Mqark]

4) Yes, it's very suspicious that an attack was launced on their website

correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think anyone "attacked their website" - or were there any attacks against openpandora.org, gbax.com, or gp2x.de?

afaik, there was only that alleged ddos attack against gp32x.de, which isn't run by the pandora team. and i'm not sure there is any proof of an actual ddos attack. it may still just have been all the traffic caused by the preorder date...

Well, to be honest I saw people talking about ddos attacks and thought it was a bit presumptuous and that surely it just melted under the immense pressure of at least 4000 people trying to discuss their orders and god only knows how many more just looking to see how it was all going and hammering F5 because it wasn't loading.

I'd hope in my heart of hearts that there was no reason someone would want to do something as callous as launching a ddos attack, but I'm with you. I'm sure all the facts will eventually shake out - but for the meantime I just want more pics, videos and info regarding my pandora and I want it in my hands now!

 

[Tor]

6) As for the website - yes it may not be as graphically as polished as some

Not as polished as some, but it's actually super-polished compared to the websites of some good, well-known, honest Hong Kong shops that I've been buying goods from over the years.

- but who the heck cares? It's actually very easy to have a polished website, loads of glossy marketing material and not even have a product[..]

Indeed. For example, what about those bank scams that were so popular a couple of years back? They had super-professional looking web sites. You could even read the CV of everyone on the board. Everywhere you looked - all the details were there. Good quality pictures, (also of employees), but all was just fake and stolen material.

Judging a company from their web site is not very smart.

 

[joa]

I knew this thread was going to be rediculous the moment I saw...

My Father (a HUGE entrepreneur) - Spelt wrong.

My dad is richer than your dad and my dad thinks the pandora is fake, prove him wrong.

NO!

 

[smr]

4) Yes, it's very suspicious that an attack was launced on their website

correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think anyone "attacked their website" - or were there any attacks against openpandora.org, gbax.com, or gp2x.de?

afaik, there was only that alleged ddos attack against gp32x.de, which isn't run by the pandora team. and i'm not sure there is any proof of an actual ddos attack. it may still just have been all the traffic caused by the preorder date...

The news of the Pandora pre-order made it to the front page of slashdot.org. Anyone heard of the Slashdot effect?

 

[PoisonedV]

If it's too much for you... don't order.

also... ghetto.

 

[bartleby]

Spelt wrong.

also... ghetto.

guys, have some mercy with those of us whose first language isn't english. thanks.

 

[PoisonedV]

Spelt wrong.

also... ghetto.

guys, have some mercy with those of us whose first language isn't english. thanks.

ghetto is just the right word, i never expected to see it on these forums though.

 

[mali]

So many threads drifting through nirvana..
What's that in english? Beating dead horses? I like that proverb
Now I'm guilty of beating dead horses, too. :wink:

 

[sold]

Seriously, if I was gonna try and scam people through the internet, my website would be freakin' beautiful. Nothing helps separate idiots from their cash like shiny things.

 

[MonkeyChops]

The ordering system (http://www.protx.com/) has fraud protection:

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It is also validated by trust wave:

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That should ease his mind.

As far being told to pay a different way other than paypal and that being professional, I'd personally prefer to have my choice on how to pay, not be told how to pay. That's just good salesmanship, keep the customer happy. For Specific questions about your order contact openpandorasales@gmail.com, I'm sure they can give you any information that you require.

 

[VRAndy]

So, can someone explained to him to that this is not a scam.

I think one of the problems here is that Pandora is a large, consumer quality, project being made by a very small company. It's a bit unusual.

It might help to point out to point out to dad that the developers' units shipped out a while back.

There is certainly a possibility that something will go horribly wrong and that the units won't ship out for some crazy reason, Craig and co all go bankrupt, and we're left holding our pre-order receipts and crying in the forums. But I'm pretty confident that it's a very small possibility. Confident enough to put my money down, anyway.

If you dad is worried about an intentional scam, I think you can set his mind at ease. It's far too elaborate. Developers's units have gone out. We've seen video and photographs of prototype components, etc. It would be a extraordinarily elaborate confidence game to fabricate circuit boards and to make rapid prototypes of plastic shells just to cheat some folk on the Internet. With the tech-savy group that frequents these forums he'd never get away with showing us an off-the-shelf circuit board and claiming he'd invented it himself. One of us would have recognized it and spotted where it came from.

So, If this was a scam, not only would he have to design and have fabricated a bunch of new stuff. (Including those nifty D-pads!) And he would have had to fake a whole bunch of videos and forum posts from people who he claimed to have sent dev boards to. On top of all that he would have had to kept this whole thing up for over a year. Heck, I'd almost be proud to contribute to a scam of that magnitude. It'd be like "The Sting", except on the Internet instead of old time Chicago.

Edit : Bah! Reading the other forums for over a year and never noticed the 'i'. It's probably because I'm some sort of idiot. But I'm going to blame Apple Computer Corp. for desensitizing me to the letter 'i'.

 

[PoisonedV]

JESUS CHRIST ITS CRAIGIX