Transfers... Tranzfers..

[Racemaniac]

@Racemaniac:
I think you are confusing Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) with bank transfer which is actually direct deposit. Direct deposit usually isnt instant where as EFT is.

ehh, care to explain the difference?


Let me know if its different for you guys in Europe.

In Australia a bank transfer or direct deposit is when you go to your banks webpage, log in and send money to another account. Or go into the branch of the person you want to give money to, fill out a deposit slip and deposit cash directly into someones account.

An Electronic Funds Transfer is done by a third party and tied into the reciept of the item you buy with a detailed record of what was bought, when and from who. The third party then fetches the money from your account, usually instantly.

nope, we don't use eft here, it's all bank transfer, it's a system more or less based on thrust, but as you know the account of the one you send it to, if something goes wrong, you can easily press charges against them. the system works perfectly here.
with cheques there has been massive abuse in fake cheques (most often given to delivery persons with cash on delivery sendings, and with payments in stores), so they're no longer used
and i've heard of eft systems, but they don't really get used here, it's all bank transfer, you pay first, once they recieved it, they send the goods

 

[Iorgy77]

Here banks dont even check the name of the account just the number for direct deposit/bank transfer so if you send money to the wrong account and that account number happens to exist you can kiss that money good bye. Also if you contact a bank and ask who an account number belongs to they wont tell you.

You guys do use eft cards for buying things in real shops though right? Debit cards with pin numbers etc?

 

[Perky_Goth]

If they do that, I promise you that if this thing is actually manufactured and sold eventually, and it comes up on slashdot/digg/engadget/whatever, there will be tens or hundreds of people who will explain to potential customers, what kind of thieving bastards are trying to steal their money by pretending to sell a product. I will surely be one of them.

No there won't because you got your money back. They have to sell to those who are willing to pay up, otherwise they won't sell it to anyone.
I'm fucking tired of you people. There are no miracles here. Either get in line and pay up or get out of the way, because noone's going to see a Pandora otherwise. Wishing things were different isn't really going to help.
If you're going to come up with a good idea, fine, if you're going to complain that money doesn't come out of thin air and that the Pandora's assemble themselves tomorrow, you're not helping.
Sure, they screwed up, how observant of you to notice. Do you want to help them or bury them right now?

 

[fusion_power]

but I guess it's not the case in western Europe

Hi, neighbor I've got an online shop in Germany, roughly 60% of the customers pay by bank transfers, 40% by Paypal.

Yupp, and people (like me) who payed via bank transfer (I had not even payed fee because ED's Shop uses the same bank like me ) can just relax and wait for the Pandora. I really wonder, why in other Countries people so mad about Credit Cards. These Cards are one of the reasons, why the World economy is in trouble these days.

 

[DCillusion]

I feel like I must apologize for all the people living in the futuristic metropolises of the UK & US; where we all use space-money. This will blow your mind!!! I'm typing this response....on my portable telephone!!

How about we send the Pandora team a piece of paper, promising to pay for a Pandora. Then trust can go both ways.

 

[darkblu]

It's too bad they have a volunteer PR guy, and they don't use him.

Someone wanted a FAQ. That's a great idea. Here's a start. If anyone wants the source BB-code to edit it up, send me a PM.

• I'm an AMEX cardholder, and I've paid, but I have not received a refund. What's my situation?
  You're good to go. OpenPandora has decided to take the hit since it's unlikely at this stage either you or OpenPandora will see that money.

• I've been refunded, and I want to re-order by credit card. How do I do that?
  As it stands, you can't. The only viable solution mentioned at the moment is to wait until the Pandoras are ready to ship, and then receive credit card orders (vs. pre-orders), if that's even possible right now. However, that solution was presented by the community and we've yet to hear any official reply. The best option right now is to do a bank transfer.
  
  
• I've decided to do a bank transfer. What are my options?
  There's two: transferz.com and your bank. If you're not willing to trust an online company, but are taken aback by the large fees of an international bank transfer through your bank, OpenPandora has kindly offered to discount the re-order price to pay for some of the fees.
  
  
• Aren't bank transfers insecure?
  Relative to credit cards? Yes. Relative to sending cash by mail? No. Is trust involved? Yes. If you're to make it through this entire situation unscathed by any future credit-card issues, you must re-order by bank transfer.
  
  
• I don't trust them! I think they're a fraud/scam!
  Whether or not you plan to trust OpenPandora with your money is your choice. Screaming that a company who's done business for 10 years, has spent all kinds of money to develop prototypes, development boards, and software for the Pandora, and has refunded everyone's money (nearly) at least once, is a fraud or a scam is not going to be met with agreement by the older members of this forum. We've heard the arguments before - some of them are valid, and some of them are not - and what it comes down to is each individual's personal decision.
  
  
• I've sent my money, but I decided I want a refund. What do I do?
  E-mail the company you pre-ordered from. They'll refund the amount of your re-order. You can find the e-mail address you should use by looking at the "From" header in the order confirmation e-mail you received.

Any more questions that need to belong in there?



*applauds*

and yes, i know quoting it in full was not really necessary, but reading some of the mind-boggling stupidities posted in this thread, i believe quoting a sane post is a way to decrease the noise ratio and make this thread slightly more useful.

@TaG:

i don't believe anybody argued that credit card payments were not the most convenient, piece-of-mind way - they are, at least in north america.

present situation is damn simple, though: you either pay in a debit manner, effectively giving the pandora team your cash, or your first-batch unit will remain unpaid for. and by 'your' i don't necessarily mean the one you'd get, but the unit you're supposed to support with your money. you know, the whole 'community project' thing.

yes, international bank transfers (in their vanilla IBAN form) have fixed surcharge fees, often considerable, but not necessarily that high (for instance, my IBAN transfer costed me 30 cad), but for small amounts it may be expensive to go that way. so you may want to search for other means for debit overseas transactions. but again, as reality sits today, there is no viable way to pay overseas with a real debit transaction while preserving the credit card money-back option - it's all up to the merchant to refund you somehow if the deal goes down. and the sooner people realize that, the sooner they will be at clear with the open pandora project status quo.

i, for one, stepped in with an investor's view to this project - i paid for something i was perfectly aware did not exist at the moment of payment, and that needed to go through all the hurdles of a start-up production to even get to the point of being called a product. but guess what - i thought (and nothing has changed there) that the risk was worth it. heck i think that at 200GBP the device is a steal - in my eyes it's worth way more than that. and that exactly is the investor's mentality - you pay at the prospect of getting something of notably higher value down the lane, at the risk of losing some/all of your investment. OTOH, if i just wanted to shop for a similar linux gadget, i'd have shelled $400 for a n8x0 and would have had the device on the next day. the n8x0 does not cut it for me, though, and i'm not willing to wait till Q3/4 for a nokia device i'd be interested in.

edited for typos.

 

[aq21]

No there won't because you got your money back. They have to sell to those who are willing to pay up, otherwise they won't sell it to anyone.
I'm fucking tired of you people. There are no miracles here. Either get in line and pay up or get out of the way, because noone's going to see a Pandora otherwise. Wishing things were different isn't really going to help.
If you're going to come up with a good idea, fine, if you're going to complain that money doesn't come out of thin air and that the Pandora's assemble themselves tomorrow, you're not helping.
Sure, they screwed up, how observant of you to notice. Do you want to help them or bury them right now?

I did not get my money back. I got part of my money back.

At the end of September I made a deal with the open pandora people: I give you 330$ by credit card now, you send to me a Pandora when it is ready. I did my part. If they intend to not do their part (I hope not, meanwhile it is only on the level of suggestions from some silly sycophants. Open pandora still claim they intend to do their part), then they are nothing but thieves.

The following is not doing their part:

1. Giving me back part of my money - I did not sign up for investing in foreign exchange markets. I bought a product.

2. Telling me - "now you have to give us 50$ more". If they said from the start that bank transfer is the only way to pay, that would be fair. Now it is not.

 

[kloplop321]

No there won't because you got your money back. They have to sell to those who are willing to pay up, otherwise they won't sell it to anyone.
I'm fucking tired of you people. There are no miracles here. Either get in line and pay up or get out of the way, because noone's going to see a Pandora otherwise. Wishing things were different isn't really going to help.
If you're going to come up with a good idea, fine, if you're going to complain that money doesn't come out of thin air and that the Pandora's assemble themselves tomorrow, you're not helping.
Sure, they screwed up, how observant of you to notice. Do you want to help them or bury them right now?

I did not get my money back. I got part of my money back.

At the end of September I made a deal with the open pandora people: I give you 330$ by credit card now, you send to me a Pandora when it is ready. I did my part. If they intend to not do their part (I hope not, meanwhile it is only on the level of suggestions from some silly sycophants. Open pandora still claim they intend to do their part), then they are nothing but thieves.

The following is not doing their part:

1. Giving me back part of my money - I did not sign up for investing in foreign exchange markets. I bought a product.

2. Telling me - "now you have to give us 50$ more". If they said from the start that bank transfer is the only way to pay, that would be fair. Now it is not.

you are so retarded, they refunded you completely in their currency that the bank had it in, learn to read!
They are working on a solution as I have been refunded as well and a bank transfer would cost me $42, also, they found this system which does only a $5 fee instead.
and you got your money back, just not in the same currency, pay them back and you get a pandora.

 

[Racemaniac]

Here banks dont even check the name of the account just the number for direct deposit/bank transfer so if you send money to the wrong account and that account number happens to exist you can kiss that money good bye. Also if you contact a bank and ask who an account number belongs to they wont tell you.

You guys do use eft cards for buying things in real shops though right? Debit cards with pin numbers etc?

do we have to keep repeating ourselves?
no we don't use eft cards or debit cards or whatever

we just transfer the asked amount of money to the account of the shop/person we buy from, and they send us the item
that's it.
if it goes wrong, we can press charges, we have got the account number, and the justice system can figure out who it belongs to, and make sure we get our money back.

is it that hard to believe this system can work since every account is attached to a person. you can't just make an account with no identification, so giving your account number is saying who you are, so anonymously ripping of people (like with fake cheques) is not possible

 

[DCillusion]

Okay, so my response wasn't very helpful, but my country is cooler than your country because we haven't learned how do a "bank-transfer-scam" yet isn't helpful either.

I got my money refunded to my Capital One account. Being a "Platinum-Business" account, I have a consultant. She told me I couldn't use the account for this purchase because she, (Capital One), couldn't verify that I was buying anything. Fine.

So in Europe, people pay by bank transfer, fine, in the U.S. & UK that isn't secure at all. We have been told to stop whining about security, & just do it, but then it was suggested that we send a paper check. This is very secure in the U.S, but we were told this wouldn't work because sending a paper check isn't secure at all, (apparently, in the same parts of Europe that do bank transfers).

You can't have it both ways, people!

 

[Zeno Arrow]

@all
Maybe I'm missing something here, but the only reason these payment issues can't be resolved more cleanly is to do with holding on to this ideal of everyone who pre-ordered keeping their place in the cue. If we agree to drop this pre-order cue idea then we can all have our cake and eat it. Let me explain...

The Pandoras are being produced in batches of 400. I'm guessing more than 400 people have already paid for their Pandora. Let those who have paid for their Pandoras get theirs first. Once the production process has started the CC re-order page is opened. Let's say there are a couple of weeks to re-order by CC (due to the reduced timetable), which should be enough time if people are kept informed about when the re-order page is due to go live. Problem solved.

So, would people be willing to give up on the pre-order order if it meant making this financial situation easier to deal with? I know I would.

 

[---_Won_---]

OK OK,
Craig was good enough to be on the level with us and try an involve the community with a business decision. And instead of working together to come up with some sensible solution we have given him 14 pages of madness. There have been some good ideas but for the most part It has been unproductive.

But Craig if you wanted us to try and help come up with a solution then you should have given all the info you could, the main one being how many more people still need to pay for there pre-order. Because if it was say just 10 then the CD idea would be doable, but I'm guessing it's a lot more, so it makes that an unrealistic option. The alternative to the CD idea would be to send and electronic product rather than a physical one, for example instead of a CD you send an email with the "product" attached, what ever that may be. But again with out knowing how many people are left to pay it's very hard to make a sort of suggestions.

So I would say if you want us to come up with some idea/solution we need to know how many are left to pay! I know I still need to so thats 1 right there.

 

[conso]

why not just sell gift-certificates for the gp2x-shop in the price-range of the pandora? :huh:

People can back out that way anytime or just use it to get... a wiz + some extras, if they loose their faith in the pandora.

 

[DCillusion]

What is wrong with the gift certificate idea? Once it's purchased, you can preorder a pandora in the shop.

 

[conso]

i didn't want to say it's a bad idea. I was just irritated over the cd-idea and thought it would be way simpler to sell gift-certificates. Giving costumers the opportunitiy to jump out and buy something different would even be entrusting, I think.

 

[DCillusion]

No, it's a great idea. Gift Certificates are traceable, & standardized pieces of merchandise designed for future purchases. Craig wouldn't have to deal with anybody, & he could accept any GC for anything he wants at his own shop. Hell, you could probably even buy it with a credit card.

 

[Kayday]

Amex card user here :
Heck I'll buy 4 or 5 Pandoras all paid through bank transfer just to get the ball rolling and I'll sell off the rest to anyone who needs one. I just want this problem resolve ASAP.

If your really want to do this, this would help a lot of people (in your case 4 to 5 ).
IF you have to pay $50 for the bank transfer you can charge $50 / 5 from your five "customers".

I hope you or orthers will do things like this to help their fellow overseas.


And I won't be using paypal as payment as I have my own merchant account at my business so I'll be using that to run the transactions. I can then fax or email a copy of the invoice to the customer along with tracking numbers. I have a fedex account also and rather use that since it has a real tracking system compared to USPS.

I would only be doing this for USA customers. Sorry Canada but I'm having my issues with your postal service right now.

 

[mali]

why not just sell gift-certificates for the gp2x-shop in the price-range of the pandora? :huh:

Good idea IMO

 

[restless1]

Gift certificates tracked by number to a Que in line which just happens to match your existing Que in line

 

[DCillusion]

Almost. Gift Certificates have to be just sold; to avoid any confusion. Open Pandora could issue "promo-codes" that would reflect your place in the que. When you preorder the Pandora, at the shop - with the gift certificate, you key in your promo-code.

Pandora, purchased. Place in line, reserved.