Some Clarifications On Pre-Orders

[stustaff]

I guess this is true for OP AND GBAX. Do you actually think they did not take the gbax option into account?

im not 100% confident no! they have been asking for suggestions and heres one that makes sense doesnt it!?
They havent given any reason as to why they cant take them through GBAx! thay have for OP thats why its not the same.

OP is a new company, new bank with no trading history and they(the bank) got concerned about the amounts coming in etc

almost none of that except the preordering of a non existent product apply to GBAX!

Pre ordering a non existent WIZ through GBAX is fine so why not a pandora?

 

[RajTakhar]

Craig has a right to operate x2 companies

For all intense purposes they are both seperate financial and legal entities.

Would you really want to throw both GBAX and OpenPandora into one basket - I doubt any of you would actually be so stupid.

GBAX is an established business which Craig has been trading in for years, selling a whole heap of stuff.

OpenPandora is a new start up business which he has in essence formed with the other Devs, which is logical - hey you would not want to split up the successful GBAX would you.

Craig simply did what all of out there would have done which is create a new business entity with him and the other devs.

The unfortunate thing is, it is a new entity which in the current financial climate will be subject to alot more rigors than for any other new start up

GIVE THE GUY A BREAK - HE HAS PROBABLY HAD MORE ISSUES WITH THIS START-UP THAN WITH GBAX - ALL YOU HATERS OUT THERE - CHILL

Craig has stated you have a variety of options to pay and if you wish to wait till you see the second batch then wait till then and pay by credit card then ......

 

[johnjtaylor]

Jeez folks - this is getting a lot crazy. Let me try to explain in small words: doing business is about taking and managing risks. GBAX and OP are different companies because they have different members - Craigix doesn't want to mix the two ideas up so that one isn't absolutely dependent on the other. This is normal business practice - Jaguar and volvo cars are owned by Ford, but they are separate companies to ensure that they don't interfere with each other's running.
The credit card thing is simple - the banks won't take the risk of all the potential back-charges for a product that doesn't yet exist. If you want to share in the joy of being one of the first to own a Pandora then you have to share a little faith with the developers and put your money up front. If you haven't got the courage to do so, then fine - but you might not get one from the first batch.
First law of capitalism - NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED

Keep smiling Craig and Co - nearly there!

 

[calzone]

Pre ordering a non existent WIZ through GBAX is fine so why not a pandora?

Exactly! Why not? Is it can't or won't ?

 

[stustaff]

Craig has a right to operate x2 companies

For all intense purposes they are both seperate financial and legal entities.

Would you really want to throw both GBAX and OpenPandora into one basket - I doubt any of you would actually be so stupid.

GBAX is an established business which Craig has been trading in for years, selling a whole heap of stuff.

OpenPandora is a new start up business which he has in essence formed with the other Devs, which is logical - hey you would not want to split up the successful GBAX would you.

Craig simply did what all of out there would have done which is create a new business entity with him and the other devs.

The unfortunate thing is, it is a new entity which in the current financial climate will be subject to alot more rigors than for any other new start up

GIVE THE GUY A BREAK - HE HAS PROBABLY HAD MORE ISSUES WITH THIS START-UP THAN WITH GBAX - ALL YOU HATERS OUT THERE - CHILL

Craig has stated you have a variety of options to pay and if you wish to wait till you see the second batch then wait till then and pay by credit card then ......

All of that is fine and I completely agree its his choice!

But if his own company(GBAX) IS happy to accept preorders for the WIZ but not the Pandora what message does that give to someone thinking of sending £200 to them(OP) for a Pandora?

GBAX is a distributor of consoles but are not willing to take orders for the pandora, Why? we dont know, is it becase their is more risk around Pandora than Wiz?

 

[BeefJerky]

It is a very good question. Even if the two companies are completely separate, which I wouldn't have imagined them to be anything but, GBAX seems to be a reseller and, as pointed out, have sold preorders and still do. So I can't quite see why they can't sell preorders for the product coming from the OpenPandora company.

 

[WizardStan]

Pre ordering a non existent WIZ through GBAX is fine so why not a pandora?

Exactly! Why not? Is it can't or won't ?

Three possibilities come to mind
1) GPH is an established company with a previous product. The bank may be OK with this.
2) GPH have stated it will ship in February. A more definitive shipping date that's less than 30 days away allows them to accept credit card orders.
3) Significantly fewer orders for the Wiz have been made, or at least been made at GBAX. If almost 4000 Pandoras were pre-sold entirely through GBAX, I can only imagine that the Wiz is listed in the hundreds at most on the same account. An order of magnitude less money for the bank to get all tizzied about.
And yes, like I said, when a million dollars lands in your bank account the bank WILL ask where it came from, and reserves the right to refuse to accept the payment.

 

[a.tom]

im not 100% confident no! they have been asking for suggestions and heres one that makes sense doesnt it!?

I'm pretty sure they thought about this... but even if it would be possible they probably decided not to do that for reasons johnny_gadget pointed out.
But these are again speculations and i don't feel like participating in this any longer. We have been given the possible payment options and that's how the situation is at the moment - even if it's certainly not satisfying for everyone.

 

[calzone]

OK I can see why they would want to keep OP separate from GBAX of course, but he needs to explain that this is a decision they have made, and that they are not WILLING to use GBAX to accept credit card orders, rather than just carefully say OP cannot accept CC orders.


The bottom line is that with Craig's 'experience' at running GBAX.com for many years, it is a surprise that he was so naive when setting up the OP credit card pre-orders. He's been there before and he SURELY suspected his new company would have a little trouble banking £800,000 within a week! Yes folks that's US$1.2MILLION at todays rate. er excuse me but... DUR!

I still can't remember ever being made aware that OpenPandora NEEDED our pre-order cash to actually manufacture and assemble the units, and assumed like most businesses they had finance in place for this. Surely a vital part of any business plan to the banks.

I genuinely thought I was BUYING a product as opposed to merely INVESTING in a 'community' project?!

Why is no-one talking about the fact that without enough bank transfer money that they are now effectively scaling DOWN production as they can't afford to produce all 4000 now! Not exactly a positive state of affairs is it?

All I can see is that pre-ordering started on the 30th September 2008, and the monthly blog entry of 2nd October 2008 said "..we must start production next week." . It's now just about FOUR MONTHS later and still no actual release date or even a final prototype. NOT EVEN A PROTOTYPE!

Running a business where you sell products to consumers is all about managing expectations and not leading us on. If they had said in September that the launch of Pandora is scheduled to be April 2009, then I guess no-one would have pre-ordered as it was too far away, and hence they wouldn't get enough money to build. To drag this on for 4-5 months from the end September (if it does even launch in February?!) and give people the impression all along that things are moving and that it's not long now....

Then keep delaying and delaying, various cockups and naive banking problems, all along knowing they simply didn't have ENOUGH money to actually manufacture the 4000 units?! Jeesh.

The plain naivety of the business side of things and the lack of full disclose right from september 08 is why I feel I HAVE been deceived and I'm bowing out.

One more pre-order slot available, if you are feeling brave.

 

[gruso]

Bye.

 

[hells_dark]

Ok. So i will try to make a transfer. I wil call my bank.
I would like to know how many time do i have to make the transfer to not delay the shipping.
Because i'd like to hear(/see) some good news about the final product before.

 

[Hotcooler]

Actually I bet most users knew they were paying to produce units for them. As far as I seen this when I was preordering I was paying for the service to assemble me a pandora. Much like you pay for the suit to be made for you.

Sorry for my bad english, but I cant make this sentence more understandable

 

[stustaff]

Actually I bet most users knew they were paying to produce units for them. As far as I seen this when I was preordering I was paying for the service to assemble me a pandora. Much like you pay for the suit to be made for you.

Sorry for my bad english, but I cant make this sentence more understandable

I actually thought this was the case too, but I also thought when we had pre ordered they would start building and then send them within a month or so. not that at that point they had never seen a completed battery, didnt have a final board design, no final case design or prototype no keyboard prototype etc

I dont see how they knowing all of the above was missing ever expected to hit the shipping date they gave me when taking my money.
I just wish they were more transparent with their communinty.

However even now knowing all of the above I WILL still be backing this team and buying a Pandora via BT for a couple of reasons.


I 100% believe the team are genuine and want to get this created
I think the device is still miles ahead of any other similiar device
I think sometimes its worth backing the type of people who try to run small businesses projects that compete against the established order

 

[tds48]

Actually I bet most users knew they were paying to produce units for them. As far as I seen this when I was preordering I was paying for the service to assemble me a pandora. Much like you pay for the suit to be made for you.

Sorry for my bad english, but I cant make this sentence more understandable

I 100% believe the team are genuine and want to get this created
I think the device is still miles ahead of any other similiar device
I think sometimes its worth backing the type of people who try to run small businesses projects that compete against the established order


I agree BUT now we have a new issue. In order to produce Craig needs a critical mass of orders. If everyone holds out waiting for the finished units, a) How will they produce - they need the money b] At what point does the project loose its viability?

 

[BaDToaD]

Those of you new to the forums. i.e those that joined as a result of hearing about the Pandora will notice that some of us have been kicking around on these forums for years and have had many trouble free dealings with Craig and ED. You don't see us fretting about supporting the project simply because we do trust the team behind the Pandora.

Stop worrying. All the problems are a result of many things all out of Craig and the teams hands. Either accept there will be problems with a project like this and don't pre order or accept them and pre order but for god sake stop bleating like a bunch of frightened sheep. No one is forcing you to get a Pandora from the first batch!

 

[aq21]

Guess I'm still wondering why the GBAX affiliation wasn't considered, or if it was, why it wasn't a viable option? Heck it took them (GBAX) 22 days to get my GP2X F200 to me when that was launched and they charged my credit card on the day of order !!! (ie a definite PRE-order!)

It is wrong to say the GBAX affiliation wasn't considered. The credit card payments did go to GBAX, not Open Pandora.

The situtation is clear: Craig does not want credit card payments. Claiming he can't accept them (while accepting them in his other hat) is a lie.

 

[RajTakhar]

Guess I'm still wondering why the GBAX affiliation wasn't considered, or if it was, why it wasn't a viable option? Heck it took them (GBAX) 22 days to get my GP2X F200 to me when that was launched and they charged my credit card on the day of order !!! (ie a definite PRE-order!)

It is wrong to say the GBAX affiliation wasn't considered. The credit card payments did go to GBAX, not Open Pandora.

The situtation is clear: Craig does not want credit card payments. Claiming he can't accept them (while accepting them in his other hat) is a lie.


Affiliation applies differently to businesses located in different parts of the world

In the UK if it was used then the profits/income of GBAX would have been taxed as well as those of OpenPandora - its a no-go situation and illegal in the UK - as it would have been seen by the tax man as something akin to insider trading.

Making these daft notions is fine if they work in your location, but in the UK as business is a legal entity in its own rights and the income for OpenPandora would need to be derived from OpenPandora. If it were to come from GBAX then at the very least Craig would have had to pay GBAX a nominal fee for every transaction - in the end reducing any profit margins he and the Devs had on the Pandora.

This argument now seems devoid of any logic - either accept that you can pay in the suggested manner, or accept that your credit card transaction will be accepted and your order will be prioritized in the second batch of orders.

If you do cancel your orders, then on your heads be it, as there will almost certainley be others out there with faith in the Pandora.

At then of the day - pay now and wait, or wait for second batch and pay by Credit Card - christ i think this thread will beat the transfers one heads down

 

[BaDToaD]

The situtation is clear: Craig does not want credit card payments. Claiming he can't accept them (while accepting them in his other hat) is a lie.

So Craig accepted a couple of thousand credit card pre orders and then refunded the majority just for something to do?

Someone ban aq21 before he hurts his brain!

 

[calzone]

In the UK if it was used then the profits/income of GBAX would have been taxed as well as those of OpenPandora - its a no-go situation and illegal in the UK - as it would have been seen by the tax man as something akin to insider trading.

If it were to come from GBAX then at the very least Craig would have had to pay GBAX a nominal fee for every transaction - in the end reducing any profit margins he and the Devs had on the Pandora.

What absolute twaddle! Craig would have a co-owned manufacturing business supplying his reseller business. Er inside trading.? illegal? What utter nonsense! Without the GBAX business, it's network and its previous customers, Pandora wouldn't even have a chance in the first place!

Yes OP/Craig could have paid GBAX a small profit for reselling the Pandoras, and all this is financially straight forward in accounting terms. You again confuse the issue of "can't" and "don't want to" ! I understand why they don't want to!

Hey this topic of conversation is indeed irrelevant as he's not willing to do it anyway. Hey maybe he has considered it but again hasn't told us.

I think my problem is that I'm not a fanboy lapping up everything I am told. I have the common sense to question things if they either sound odd or ask further questions if I only get half an answer to something.

Ultimately we are all wasting our time posting here anyway, as unless it's positive it just gets ignored. OpenPandora will do what it wants, when it wants.

 

[DCillusion]

I think Credit Card people, like myself, should be a little more honest than we have been.
Maybe Craig understands this already, but he's not an American; so maybe not.

It's too expensive to live in the US. Housing, 30k for a cheap car, etc. Without credit, or the ability to pay over time, we wouldn't be able to afford anything. We're not proud of it, but there it is. The worry is, a great many people here, simply can not afford to pay outright for the Pandora. People can say, "Fine, you don't get one", but it's beginning to sound like if you don't get enough money, the Pandora won't be produced at all, or in a quantity so limited as to make it irrelavent. So everyone's beating their heads against the wall trying to find a way to make it work. People would be less worried if they truly believed that the Pandora could continue without them.

Just like you, it's not so much "won't" as can't; & just like you, people are accusing them to the contrary. Sorry.