A further update on preorders (18th of November 2012)


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2) Try to cross upgrade at Ed's shop and pay an additional ~$410.89 on top of the ~$762.98 I have already paid (Total cost all in ~$1173.87)
This is what I ended up doing after Craig's recent statements.

I got a voucher code from ED and used it to re-order directly from his shop (the voucher works as a discount on ED's shop). The order shipped pretty much immediately, on last Saturday.
 
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Obviously there is some kind of list somewhere be it hand written or digital. Those upgrade emails asking for more money were so promptly sent I was surprised.
 
Hey Craig....If you care about your credibility you would come clean and just answer the dang questions people have. How many are still on the original pandora pre paid list and how many are on the 1g list? When I hear of people waiting 4 years, it makes me think you guys maybe shipped a handful of units. I would really like to know how many of the orginal orders were fulfilled? C'mon. I don't know how this mess could ever be resolved without some friggin knowledge of just how bad the situation is. Ed seems to be a nice guy who is trying to help, but for the life of me I can't understand how funds were infused into this by Ed to help Craig and yet the 2 companies are separate? Was there ever a signed business plan? Anything other than e-mails and a digital handshake? I smell a planned failure for Craig's side of the business, yet keep Ed separate so the Pandora can live on...and to hell with those pesky pre-order people. I really don't want to offend and I'll apology in advance if I have. I just can't stress enough, that if I had a pandora that I paid for long ago, people would see what I have and want one. It's that simple. I have a bunch of weird hobbies for an old lady with a soldering iron! I mod gaming systems, fix computers and try to push the envelope of every piece of electronics I buy. I even hacked the radio of my new car when I bought it. As such, my kids friends love me. I started my hobby by building my own computer years ago, since I was so disgusted by the expensive computer I bought retail with all the bloatware installed...then to have it not be upgradable due to proprietory design. I then modded our xbox when it failed out of warranty. I then became the go to lady at work, kids friends, hubby's co-workers etc. I just know if I had one in my hand I would be sending a lot of people to your store! Has anyone even attempted to contact a lawyer in the states? A lot of times a lawyer will work for free and then take 1/3 of what is recovered. That is better than nothing. I sort of take offense when I read comments that it's not worth persuing legally because the co is in the USA and because of that you won't win. Even small claims case without an attorney could get you $5000 which again is better than nothing. Someone in the states, preferrably in Texas, could act as your representative. None of this makes sense to me. We need some transparency at this point to regain our trust. Some people are truly gifted in some areas and not so much in others. Communication my not be Craig's strong point and I hate making judgments on people I don't know. At the very least there are a few thousand people here (I think, who knows) who are unhappy and should write to circuitco and let them know we won't buy anything they are involved with until they make good with pandora.
 
I checked this thread a week or so ago but wow, this has blown up.


I was a Craig pre-orderer from November 2009 and received the recent e-mail about the Pandora 2 upgrade offer.


It was the first direct communication I had had about my order in over 3 years. As a customer, that is what's most shocking about this saga. Absolutely unforgivable. There's no excuse for not sending an e-mail to your paying customers every 3-6 months with an update. It's completely basic customer service. Sending an e-mail is basically free* but gives so much re-assurance and avoids so much speculation.


Fortunately I've always scrabbled around forums to dig out this info. For a few years it was left to the community-driven PandoraPress site to do that, for which I am truly thankful! Since openpandora.org has had proper forums of their own, I've subscribed to the RSS of this news forum.


I wonder how many pre-orderers though have been left in limbo though.


Earlier this year I had been toing and froing as to whether to pay the cross upgrade to ED. The ED price in EUR was working out at over 100% the amount I originally paid. I wasn't prepared to spend >£300 to cross-upgrade.


I decided to upgrade to a Pandora 2 with the Craig e-mail discount. It was advertised as being $350 in the e-mail but actually came out as EUR 333, about £50 more than I was expecting. But I went with it anyway as I just wanted to get my pre-order out of there and actually get a unit.


And my upgrade has now arrived from ED, in super-fast time. Awesome. Having now seen all this stuff going down, I am very very glad I upgraded when I did.


* One site I admin has a $5 per month pay-as-you-go VPS, configured as a private postfix relay. We send 30,000 e-mail newsletters through that every day. They're staggered throughout the day but in terms of the total size/bandwidth, the VPS could technically fire them off in about 4 hours. That's an extreme example. But all you need is an IMAP/SMTP account (a Gmail account would work) and you can send to a couple of thousand recipients, batched BCCs, and have that done in less than a day.
 
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@alphatoanant


I think that people that get upgraded preorder to 1Ghz @Craig should be first in list... they paid twice, and this is the most urgent case imho.


Also it is not a big number, so it could be solved.


Also I think it should be managed as a cross upgrade to ED. However, It has to be done with cooperation with Craig, which complicates things a bit ("his hands are tied").


(this short list should be given to ED, obviously)


It is not fair for anybody to pay 3rd time, if it is not pure, unforced donation.


My 2 cents.

That's how the Super Pandora 2.0 thing worked. I cross upgraded via ED's shop and Jacquelyn sent a message to ED to let him know to bump me to the top of the queue. And no, I don't feel guilty because effectively I've paid twice for the unit and am allowing them to wipe out the cost of the initial order.
Why should you feel guilty? You should be proud of. But this is not the case here, alphatoanant already paid twice.

I shouldn't, but I think I may have been bumped ahead of some 1ghz preorderers, I think that queue is still in existence.
 
Can we please stop making claims that craig did something bad (used pandora predorder money on ICP2, used tax refund for girl friends univeristy fees) without proofs? You say he stole money, which is a crime. If you can't prove it, it is called "üble nachrede" (Defamation), which is a crime itself.

I think its up the individual how they spend a tax return. I was just trollin' though.
 
....and still people speculate as to what is going on with Craig and his pre orders because Craig fails to communicate.


It could be he is in such a bad mess that he has to keep quiet or things are actually in a manageable state but silence or very vague posts only fuel negative speculation.


ED and the community (they are donating to help out) need to know the exact position in order to revise or keep with the current plan.
 

In the UK it's Libel if it's written, but Slander if it's spoken. Either way, if someone really believed that, they should file a complaint with an authority, rather than speculate on the boards.
 
....and still people speculate as to what is going on with Craig and his pre orders because Craig fails to communicate.


It could be he is in such a bad mess that he has to keep quiet or things are actually in a manageable state but silence or very vague posts only fuel negative speculation.


ED and the community (they are donating to help out) need to know the exact position in order to revise or keep with the current plan.

The negative speculation will continue whether or not he gives any information. It's just that people will also gripe about things if the information isn't quite correct. I really and trully don't see how he could possibly do something which would win over those folks. Some of whom are just forum trolls or simply impossibly dense.
 
l really and trully don't see how he could possibly do something which would win over those folks.
A single, straight bloody answer would go a long way - something I have seen very rarely from him during my short couple of years here.


"How many pre-orders remain?"


It's not like folks here are asking him to sign over his first born child for crying out loud.


Hell, a part of me wishes I could just wash my hands of the whole frelling Craig situation and move on. I have my Pandoras, so why should I give a damn? But I do give a damn. I can't help but feel guilty to possess two Pandoras while others are still waiting YEARS to receive their own - which is why I'm sending my black Pandy as a gift to a pre-orderer to help tide them over while they wait. It's the least I can do to play my part.


And Craig, I suppose, will keep playing his part as the shoddy car salesman that wants nothing more to do with you once he has your money. (Please prove me wrong as I would be more than happy to eat my words).


I think it's been said a few times already that the Pandora probably would never have been born if not for Craig, and I tip my shiny hat to him for it. But frankly, right now, the way he's treating his loyal customers like mushrooms (feeding 'em shit and keeping 'em in the dark) the Pandora would have died if not for Ed.
 
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"which is why I'm sending my black Pandy as a gift to a pre-orderer to help tide them over while they wait. It's the least I can do to play my part."

That's very very generous of you. In a good way.
 
Thank you. Like I said it is the least I can do. We've gotta look out for each other in this little pond.
 
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Thank you. IMHO you should wait until preorder list becomes valid, and give it to some which is.... most hurt. There are at least few guys who paid, then paid for upgrade, donated by side, supported iCP2... and get nothing in return. (I'm not one of those). Bad luck I suppose.


Thank you very much anyway!
 
I was a Craig pre-orderer from November 2009 and received the recent e-mail about the Pandora 2 upgrade offer.


It was the first direct communication I had had about my order in over 3 years. As a customer, that is what's most shocking about this saga. Absolutely unforgivable. There's no excuse for not sending an e-mail to your paying customers every 3-6 months with an update.

To be fair, both Ed and Craig failed to mass email regular updates on the situation.


Preorderers were effectively investors in a project and as soon as the CC debacle happened, a mass email saying "your original preorder will not cover the increased production costs: if you pay an additional xxx€ to cover the cost of your unit, your queue position will jump ahead of those who did not. We will still honor original preorders but these will only deliver when new sales cover their production costs." This would have given hundreds of preorders the option of a speedy delivery without upgrading all the way to a 1Ghz unit.


Of course, this would have required that the additional money be honestly used towards production of those units, and not disappear into one of Craig's financial black holes.
 
The new pandas are grey now, but what happened to the stock of black ones (the ones we had to wait for so long ?)


edit : I mean, the shells.
 
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[a)]


This isn't what we signed up to.


[ B) ]


But it was obvious pretty quickly Ed isn't able to sell units very well. So I tried to fix this.


But with the current joke that is openpandora.org I don't believe I can sell many units, the website is just too horrible to encourage decent sales,


[c)]


Ed seems to listen to disruptive people like Skeezix, Notaz etc. who like nothing more then to simply encourage Ed to just say 'no' to me, not for the benefit of Ed or the Pandora project, but just because they don't like the existence of me - this is exceptionally disruptive and should not be happening.

a) I'm surprised, do you have a written signed contract with ED?


B) You try to fix what you have broken and which can't be fixed by a shining website. You broke the sales of the rebirth units. Nobody wants a previous unit (ebay offers are down!) if the successor is available and (excluding some dozens of people) nobody would pay 666€ for the actual niche product. As one 1Ghz unit was spoken to fund one remaining preorder, that price is two times the production cost, which adds the load of one complete unit to the shoulders of a new customer. With the rebirth unit it was 1/3 each customer had to pay for the CC desaster. To face the truth, at last it is us, the customers, who have to pay for that. The question is how that load is balanced among our shoulders. Having a high priced unit for voluntary donators which receive a little bit more power worked so far, those units were sold, but the effect to the rebirth units is as described above.


I imagine you knew that, because as far as i remember you wanted to throw the remaining rebirth CPUs away, which is loss of 15K. Thats fine if you pay for that loss, pay now to secure further production of new units. Did i mention that it's at last the customers who have to pay for that?


c) In this situation i like to give the picture: "A ghost driver? Hundreds they are!"


(Point of view of the one ghost driver on the street.)


What have you done wrong that they don't like you? What will you do to make them liking you again?

Well, he gave me an answer via mail. I asked how many 1GHz, how many refunds and how many remaining old preorders are still left.


Only got one number, so I guess it's a total...?
Please do not guess. Please do not accept unclear answers.


As you use different payment systems for rebirth and 1Ghz units they must be counted seperately. As refunds reduce the open preorders, set that the total is all refunds and the queue can be considered empty. As you see this is unlikely the fact but it shows clear that guessing is useless.
 
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According to him, he got many units back with broken LCD Cables, Cases, PCBs, etc.


That's why he got about 700 remaining preorders. The number is high, but it's not an impossible issue.


It's puzzling to me though... he must've gotten over 400 totally broken, unfixable Pandoras back, and that is 10x more I ever got.

Is there any proof anywhere of how many pre-orders he claims he has not fulfilled? Why "about 700" and not a precise number?


And why no explanation why he had so many returns and so on ?


This thing smells fishy from beginning to end. This basically says "the drama will never be over" as we will never know the whole story and there's probably a lot of dirt to uncover (money being used for something else, like we saw for the 1Ghz pre-orders.)
 
l really and trully don't see how he could possibly do something which would win over those folks.
A single, straight bloody answer would go a long way - something I have seen very rarely from him during my short couple of years here.


"How many pre-orders remain?"


It's not like folks here are asking him to sign over his first born child for crying out loud.


Hell, a part of me wishes I could just wash my hands of the whole frelling Craig situation and move on. I have my Pandoras, so why should I give a damn? But I do give a damn. I can't help but feel guilty to possess two Pandoras while others are still waiting YEARS to receive their own - which is why I'm sending my black Pandy as a gift to a pre-orderer to help tide them over while they wait. It's the least I can do to play my part.


And Craig, I suppose, will keep playing his part as the shoddy car salesman that wants nothing more to do with you once he has your money. (Please prove me wrong as I would be more than happy to eat my words).


I think it's been said a few times already that the Pandora probably would never have been born if not for Craig, and I tip my shiny hat to him for it. But frankly, right now, the way he's treating his loyal customers like mushrooms (feeding 'em shit and keeping 'em in the dark) the Pandora would have died if not for Ed.

I recently got my order and I still care. But, the negativity on the site isn't helping anybody and I do think that there were unrealistic expectations from the start. I can't blame Craig for being defensive as the attacks on his character go way further back than when he stopped posting the details that people are demanding. A lot of it is reasonable in terms of complaints, but all the flamewars and baiting Craig isn't helping. He has had his own tantrums on the fora before, so I would like to think that he's biting his tongue a bit, as unlikely as that might seem on the surface. Even if he isn't, baiting him really isn't increasing the likelihood that he's going to share more information.


As far as the whole story goes, that's not really any of our business. Somebody really needed to say it, I'm out the price of the first order and I would like to know why, but realistically, I think we probably already know all that they can legally say. I'm quite frankly shocked that they have been as forthcoming about a lot of this stuff as they have been. No other store I know of would have given us the amount of information they have given us. Most other shops would have declared bankruptcy and canceled the orders.

I was a Craig pre-orderer from November 2009 and received the recent e-mail about the Pandora 2 upgrade offer.


It was the first direct communication I had had about my order in over 3 years. As a customer, that is what's most shocking about this saga. Absolutely unforgivable. There's no excuse for not sending an e-mail to your paying customers every 3-6 months with an update.

To be fair, both Ed and Craig failed to mass email regular updates on the situation.


Preorderers were effectively investors in a project and as soon as the CC debacle happened, a mass email saying "your original preorder will not cover the increased production costs: if you pay an additional xxx€ to cover the cost of your unit, your queue position will jump ahead of those who did not. We will still honor original preorders but these will only deliver when new sales cover their production costs." This would have given hundreds of preorders the option of a speedy delivery without upgrading all the way to a 1Ghz unit.


Of course, this would have required that the additional money be honestly used towards production of those units, and not disappear into one of Craig's financial black holes.

Indeed, I think there was some sort of bug in the software they use to distribute the mass mailings as I remember not receiving them at all, even early on when they were going out more regularly.

According to him, he got many units back with broken LCD Cables, Cases, PCBs, etc.


That's why he got about 700 remaining preorders. The number is high, but it's not an impossible issue.


It's puzzling to me though... he must've gotten over 400 totally broken, unfixable Pandoras back, and that is 10x more I ever got.

Is there any proof anywhere of how many pre-orders he claims he has not fulfilled? Why "about 700" and not a precise number?


And why no explanation why he had so many returns and so on ?


This thing smells fishy from beginning to end. This basically says "the drama will never be over" as we will never know the whole story and there's probably a lot of dirt to uncover (money being used for something else, like we saw for the 1Ghz pre-orders.)

They already explained why there was no exact number, the number changes almost daily between cancellations and new orders. Posting a number like, say, 694 and finding out that 15 minutes later it's now 690 or 700 isn't really any more useful than saying it's about 700. Now, it might be nice to have a confidence interval to give a sense of what the number is, but that's overkill as most folks here probably don't know what it means or ow to read it.


At this stage, I don't believe any amount of information would take the suspicions away. Some of the suspicions are valid, but a lot of it is based upon misinformation and the people repeating the same allegations over and over without having any actual evidence.


I don't see any reason why there needs to be something suspicious for all that money to be taken up. We know there were a lot of order cancellations that they have to pay off, so long as they're still in business, and the various cost overruns on the boards from the CC easly wiped out a quarter million pounds alone, IIRC. Now, they're having to pay for not only the 1ghz units to be made, but the older 600mhz units as well, and the money that I spent on my 600mhz effectively went to CC for boards that were never usable.


Of course, it's probably possible that something suspicious is going on here, but honestly, I'm not personally convinced that they can legally share the information that we would need to make an informed opinion about things.
 
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