Now Craig - for the love of <insert your favorite deity here> can you give us some CLEAR and UNAMBIGUOUS news about when those folks will have to re-order and how long they will have to re-order and what the communication method will be - including back ups (first time around I got lucky and saw the availability on the website - I didn't get the email until 48 hours late and I think there was another newsletter before then that I didn't get at all).
Confused? Clearly. Panicky? Definitely. Demanding? UNAMBIGUOUSLY (see what I did there?).
Craig's posts were perfectly understandable. Their current bank is being difficult, so they're switching banks. The old bank is pulling a Paypal and not honoring some of the credit card deposits, so those will be refunded. When the refunds go out, the people affected will get an email with further instructions. There is nothing more that you need to know. In fact, there is likely nothing more to know, as the details are not fully sorted out. When the details are sorted out, they will be made available to everyone. By "made available", I mean you'll get an email at whatever address you used to order, it will be posted all over these forums, and likely the blog as well. If you remain calm and use basic reasoning skills, you'll have no problem re-ordering.
Alternately, if this whole non-catastrophe has left you with no faith in the project, this refund is a perfect opportunity to take your money back and beat feet. If a minor ordering snafu has you this bent out of shape, how are you going to deal with the real problems when they pop up? This is a 1.0 product from a first-time manufacturer running user-generated software on a brand new platform. Issues and setbacks are going to crop up a lot. There are probably going to be hardware problems of some sort or another. There are definitely going to be software problems for the first several revisions. If you want to get the most out of it, you're going to have to deal with the issues. You're going to have to suffer through a few months of buggy software. You may have to bust out a soldering iron or dremel. You're going to have to RTFM. You're going to have to be patient.
If you can't accept that, then the Pandora is not the device for you. Not right now, anyway. You think I'm condescending now? Wait until I've answered the umpteenth "How do I get program X to run?" post. I'll likely have gone straight through condescension and come out the other side. The thing is, I'll still answer. While users like you are throwing their hands in the air and getting ornery because they bought what basically amounts to a commercially distributed prototype and they're shocked that it isn't plug-and-play, I'll be helping them through it. I'd like to keep it to an reasonable minimum though, so if you're going to be one of those problem users, it's better for everybody if you buy from a later batch when all the rough stuff has been smoothed out.
My worst fear is that the "reasonable minimum" ends up being half the user base.
This is my biggest fear and I see it happening as we speak. I think some people are looking at this as the only thing they have in their lives and have to obsess about it are only going to make things worse. If you couldn't bear waiting it out and couldn't afford the payment, you shouldn't have bought one.
