My Soul Died A Little Today.


The problem is that things can get very complex from here on. The average Joe might not open the device any more, while I think the average Joe doesn't open it anyway, warranty seal or not. The enthusiastic modder might not purchase a Pandora at all, because he couldn't be entirely sure if manufacturing faults would be covered if he damaged the seal. Personally I like to have full control over the device I purchase and I don't like to buy a closed black box, so to say. Aside from all that, in the EU warranty isn't dependent on a sticker if the manufacturer screws something up. It's the question if a sticker would help at the end of the day at all ;)
 
I see your point, man. I'm proposing that the sticker wouldn't need to be an indicator that you had voided your warranty, it would just show that you had agreed that you were proving that you had opened your device, which would help OP in those cases where they were sure that someone was being dishonest, without impacting the free nature of the community.
 
I work with warranties a lot with my current job (small motor repair) and warranty claims mostly come down to a judgment call. Yes there are things that simply are not covered (normal wear items), but of the things that are covered, many times it's hard to point the finger at the customer so it gets covered. Even if it's obvious that it was the customer's fault and I tell them that the manufacturer isn't going to cover it, they call the manufacturer and piss and moan until they get their way (drives me nuts). I guess its worth it to the manufacturer to keep good customer relations.

So it's really up to you what to do.
If its obvious they opened it but the damage is low or not due to being opened and there is other legit warranty work to do, perhaps its worth it to just fix it.
If it's gonna cost you too much to fix what a customer damaged, then passing along the cost is probably the way to go.
If there is any question who's fault it is, you should probably cover it.
Just remember, the people sending them back right now are the people that have been with this project from day one and helped make the project possible. I'm not saying that means they should be allowed to open and break their pandora and expect it to be fixed no questions asked, but I could easily see someone with hardware experience wanting to fix it their self rather than send it back and be with out their beloved Pandora for weeks/months after waiting so long to get it in the first place. Something to consider.

The stickers would help point the blame but I'm not sure they are the end-all-be-all. People could argue that they got rubbed off during heavy gaming, and if that's possible are you going to tell them "tough shit"?

In the end someone has to make a judgment call on a per case basis. There is no other way.

BTW, yes mine needs return but no, I did not open mine. I'd be to afraid to even try because I wouldn't know the first thing about fixing it and I know I'd end up breaking it worse than it was in the first place. The main problem with mine is the nubs anyway. So I remain fairly objective on the subject. If anything I side with manufactures, being a warranty worker myself and working for a family owned small business I understand both sides.
 
MonkeyChops said:
People could argue that they got rubbed off during heavy gaming

Have you been reading my memoires?!
 
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Neko said:
EvilDragon said:
About slow Wifi: still weird issue, especially since it's only slow for some guys. Mine works perfectly fine at home, was a bit slow at the hotel I spent during vacation... but my mobile phone (XPeria X1) couldn't even load a single website at that hotel, so my Pandora was better than my Sony Ericsson device in that case.
Weird thing, something that needs to be figured out for sure, but as the slowness seems to depend on the access point, so a software thing and no quality control issue.
The wifi doesn't work well with weak signals. It needs to be close to the access point, otherwise it drops packets or just won't connect.

If it would be THAT easy, that would be nice. A LOT of people actually tested it. For the guys where WiFi works without any problems, they can move around freely and it doesn't drop when they get too far away.
My Pandora actually works in areas where my Netbook and my mobile phone can't connect anymore at my home.

Some access points simply won't work properly, regardless how far you go away... but why, that is something we need to find out.

I also got one with only one working SD slot, so you seem to have a QC problem there. The other slot works somewhat but gives random errors.

Well, that has to be the right one, since we use the left one to flash the firmware.

But honestly, you can't test ANY single piece on the board. NO company does that.
It just doesn't make sense - how many broken SD Card slots did we have out of 600 units?
 
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Didn't Craig say there was some light glue or sticky-tape holding the case together that makes it obvious it was opened? I've also seen other devices which say "tamper indicating seal inside" or something like that which I've always assumed is some kind of special sticker they managed to get on the inside of the case that breaks when you open it.
Point being that there are solutions that help OPT without affecting the end user.

craigix said:
Tell me, GP32X, what should we do with such units?
If I make a suggestion, will you accuse me of being an "armchair inventor/engineer/business whatever"? :p
Offer a $50 modders warranty. Current warranty, if you open it, no matter what you do or why, it becomes void; you are under no legal obligation to fix things even if they're unrelated to what the person opening it was doing. The fact that you have been just shows your devotion to the project, but sooner or later something will come along and bite you; most likely someone will have done an obvious mod to the board that resulted in the board itself being fried, and you'll have to say you can't service it "because it was opened" which will run contrary to what you had been doing (ie, servicing them despite them being opened).
Enter the modder warranty. This is an additional warranty that says if the case is opened, it doesn't automatically void the warranty. It is accepted that someone with a modders warranty is going to open it and do something, so those with such a warranty get a little extra scrutiny than just whether it was opened or not. Under the warranty, if a repair is possible, you simply do it. If a repair is not possible, and an exchange must be made, work extra hard to see if there is any chance the mod done could have caused the problem. They've paid $50, that should be worth an hour of your time to investigate the console to the fullest before dismissing their warranty claim completely.
If I were to get a unit with one of these wiggly shoulder buttons, I certainly am not going to open it up to fix it; my warranty is too precious. But, if I could buy a little extra insurance so that if I fix the shoulder button I don't have to worry about whether my nubs go bad or not, I very much would. If I could solder something to the board safe in the knowledge that my extra insurance will replace my battery if it turns out bad, that would make me happy.
Obviously if I'm foolish enough to attempt to desolder the nubs and a few weeks later the nub dies, this is not covered.
As a gesture of good faith to the first 600, those that are at risk of the learning curve in QA, automatically give them this modders warranty, under the belief that they are likely to open the case to tweak the shoulder buttons or reseat the LCD cable, but the future ones should have no such excuse; open the case and your warranty is void.
I would buy such a warranty. I suspect many others would. Anyone that complains about having to pay for such insurance, remind them that you aren't required to do this by law: current warranty is if they open it, it is void, period, and they're certainly allowed to stay with just that if they have no intention of ever opening the case. This warranty is only for those that suspect they might want to tweak things from the inside.
Ideally, only a handful of people will buy it, and of those even fewer will ever actually need to use it. If 1/4 of the people that buy the additional warranty end up using it, and of those 1/2 actually need a replacement (and 1/2 are just a repair), you're still on top.
There's more details to work out, but I think this idea is a good start to solving the problem for everyone: those of us that want to try some modding have a fall back (barring our own mistakes) and you get an easier way to dismiss these obviously open cases as well as a (very small) source of additional revenue.
 
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EvilDragon said:
If it would be THAT easy, that would be nice. A LOT of people actually tested it. For the guys where WiFi works without any problems, they can move around freely and it doesn't drop when they get too far away.
My Pandora actually works in areas where my Netbook and my mobile phone can't connect anymore at my home.

Some access points simply won't work properly, regardless how far you go away... but why, that is something we need to find out.
I did notice that with one access point, it would never see it even when I was right next to it. No idea what was going on there. It wasn't my router, so I never got a chance to investigate it.

EvilDragon said:
I also got one with only one working SD slot, so you seem to have a QC problem there. The other slot works somewhat but gives random errors.

Well, that has to be the right one, since we use the left one to flash the firmware.

But honestly, you can't test ANY single piece on the board. NO company does that.
It just doesn't make sense - how many broken SD Card slots did we have out of 600 units?
It's the left one actually. Sometimes it will work for a few minutes, and I was able to install hotfix 3 from that slot. Other times when I would launch apps, they would crash or not load. It's random. I'm not surprised that a few marginally bad ones made it through the firmware flashing.

A few people on the forum have reported problems, so you might have five or ten bad SD slots out of 600 units.
 
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Neko said:
A few people on the forum have reported problems, so you might have five or ten bad SD slots out of 600 units.
I think this is a mis-interpretation of the problems reported. Both of my SD slots are good, it is only if I copy from either one to the other that I (reliably) get problems (and even then with either of 2 specific cards as destination there is no problem). This is quite likely to be a driver problem, not a hardware QC issue. Similarly, the SC card corruption is more likely to be software.
 
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Neko said:
It's the left one actually. Sometimes it will work for a few minutes, and I was able to install hotfix 3 from that slot. Other times when I would launch apps, they would crash or not load. It's random. I'm not surprised that a few marginally bad ones made it through the firmware flashing.

A few people on the forum have reported problems, so you might have five or ten bad SD slots out of 600 units.

Well, ALL SD Card corruptions (except for copying from one card to the other, that's a driver issue as mentioned above) I've seen so far were broken SD cards... I remember one guy in the I need Help-Section who had trouble with his SD Card and on amazon.com you had 1 star rating for that card with customer reviews that it loses data every once in a while.

As we flashed with SD Card slot one without any problems, I suspect it's your card, too. Sometimes the Panasonic SD Formatter fixes such cards, but it the card itself is bad and loses data, there's nothing that can be done.
Try another card, if you can.
 
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EvilDragon said:
Neko said:
It's the left one actually. Sometimes it will work for a few minutes, and I was able to install hotfix 3 from that slot. Other times when I would launch apps, they would crash or not load. It's random. I'm not surprised that a few marginally bad ones made it through the firmware flashing.

A few people on the forum have reported problems, so you might have five or ten bad SD slots out of 600 units.

Well, ALL SD Card corruptions (except for copying from one card to the other, that's a driver issue as mentioned above) I've seen so far were broken SD cards... I remember one guy in the I need Help-Section who had trouble with his SD Card and on amazon.com you had 1 star rating for that card with customer reviews that it loses data every once in a while.

As we flashed with SD Card slot one without any problems, I suspect it's your card, too. Sometimes the Panasonic SD Formatter fixes such cards, but it the card itself is bad and loses data, there's nothing that can be done.
Try another card, if you can.

Sorry Ed but that's not true. There wasn't anything wrong with my SD cards, but Thunar/Zenity or whatever was causing them to corrupt. I avoided the offending culprit and never had any problems since... so for me it was software.
 
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tsh said:
Neko said:
A few people on the forum have reported problems, so you might have five or ten bad SD slots out of 600 units.
I think this is a mis-interpretation of the problems reported. Both of my SD slots are good, it is only if I copy from either one to the other that I (reliably) get problems (and even then with either of 2 specific cards as destination there is no problem). This is quite likely to be a driver problem, not a hardware QC issue. Similarly, the SC card corruption is more likely to be software.
These may be different problems. On mine it is specifically the left slot that isn't working. Copying files between the right slot and USB works fine.

I haven't seen any filesystem corruption, but that may be simply because I quit using the left slot.
 
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SomeGuy99 said:
Sorry Ed but that's not true. There wasn't anything wrong with my SD cards, but Thunar/Zenity or whatever was causing them to corrupt. I avoided the offending culprit and never had any problems since... so for me it was software.

Hm, while I didn't manage it to break it via software so far, of course, bugs like that could exist, sure.
Still no issue of hardware quality check - and that's what these posts were about.
 
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EvilDragon said:
As we flashed with SD Card slot one without any problems, I suspect it's your card, too. Sometimes the Panasonic SD Formatter fixes such cards, but it the card itself is bad and loses data, there's nothing that can be done.
Try another card, if you can.
I successfully flashed with SD Card slot one also. The slot still gives errors intermittently. All my cards work perfectly in slot two and those same cards fail in slot one.

If you want to personally verify this, then you can ask Craig after I send it back.
 
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@Stan
You can try to do all kinds of funny contracts, but if something contradicts law, it voids its validity :p
I'm fine with the current situation. If someone opens the case and breaks something it's his fault and it shouldn't be covered. If someone opens it and mods something without breaking anything it's fine. If someone tries to get something replaced which he broke himself, he should get a bill and pay for repair. It shouldn't be that hard to prove if a fault is caused by the owner or not. MonkeyChops apparently knows what he is talking about, so I trust in his advice.
 
I know we've gone a bit on to a different topic here but back to breaking plastic being an issue with you opening the pandora. I think that is really unfair to assume anyone with broken plastic has taken apart their pandora.

I did unscrew the screws in my first pandora as it was suggested that I could check the wifi antenna connection. No broken screw holes there (I do know how to screw and unscrew things). But I chickened out when I had taken out one of the screws as I didn't want to break anything.

The first issue with the second pandora was the shoulder buttons being particularly poor. It was suggested that losening the screws may help the shoulder buttons travel a little better. So I gave it a go and this is when I discovered that the right screw hole was faulty. No taking apart or anything had taken place. If everything was faultless to start with I'd not even have attempted it. Some people (like myself) are nevious to open it up and I'd only do it with the help of an experienced person who works with electronics and intricate technology. I'm really nervious now to replace the (faulty) shoulder buttons myself now in fear of more grief down the road (I was trying to make life easier for the team and I wanted to wait so it gave more time to building the new units). But I fear one of my nubs may give up by then so I guess everything will be fixed in one go.

The OP team (sales and devs) have been a great help so far and have made a good effort to keep customers like myself happy. Please don't upset people with generalised comments as it's not right or helpful to those with genuine issues.

I know that only the people with problems ever come to light and it can seem like there are more people with problems than there are with actual fully working devices. Maybe we should start a thread just with people saying "My pandora is perfect.. cheers guys" :) I'd do it myself but I can't.
 
mali said:
If someone opens it and mods something without breaking anything it's fine.
Except it isn't. The Pandora is being sold as a complete unit, and unless I am mistaken, they are under no legal obligation to fix anything if you open that complete unit in any way, even if any changes you make are seemingly unrelated to what you messed with. You open it and a few weeks later the LCD cable snaps; was the LCD cable faulty, or did you weaken it when you opened the case and had to disconnect it? You solder on additional shoulder buttons, and a few weeks later the charging circuit stops function; was it destined for failure, or did you drop a tiny ball of solder that eventually made contact with something on the bottom of the board and toasted it? It can often be very difficult to determine whether something is the result of tampering or not.
They're being generous right now by fixing Pandoras that have been opened. Craig asked how they should handle these obviously opened ones that they are fixing out of good faith but are under no legal requirement to do so. I gave my suggestion.
 
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I like the modders warranty idea, also offering an extended warranty would help generate money. The way extended warranties work in the small motor world is it basically covers all the normal wear items that usually aren't covered and of course extends out the warranty to 2/2.5 times what the original warranty time period was. They typically cost 10-30% of the purchase price. the lower the cost of the item the higher percent for the price of the extended warranty. For a unit around $300-$500, an extended warranty would cost between $75 and $140 depending on the type and cost of the machine. This is for small motor equipment so for electronics it could be way different so take it with a grain of salt.

If you offered a extended warranty at all it would sell better if it included as much as possible. IMO, it should extend the length of the warranty to 2 or 3 years, include "modders warranty", free shipping for repairs, priority repair turnaround time, cover battery replacement and other normal wear item replacements, and maybe even lower the dead pixel replacement policy. An extended warranty like that would probably sell and generate a fair amount of profit and cash flow.
 
WizardStan said:
Craig asked how they should handle these obviously opened ones that they are fixing out of good faith but are under no legal requirement to do so.
That's what you think, but where is the proof? There were huge discussions about those warranty stickers back then, because manufactureres/retailers put them basically on everything, even on top of CPUs :rolleyes:
It might actually be true that it's possible to have a general opening voids warranty policy on things that aren't designed to be user accessible at all, I don't know the details and I don't have the patience to weed through the actual laws to find an answer. The few google results I dug up this afternoon are rather controversial at best.
 
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The trouble with the modders warranty is that you're saying pay £x and we'll fix it even if you've opened it up.

Now the only people who are going to take such a thing are people who are definitely going to open it so the risk of the cover you provide increases therefore the cost of providing the cover is gonna need to be pretty steep. Then you get yourself into a case of where do you draw the line. Opening the bottom? the top? does the warranty still hold if soldering has been done? if parts have been replaced? if the housing has been modified? You get yourself into a whole minefield of litigation that needs to be checked over and over by lawyers and even then will still be up for challenge in court if somebody disputes the exact wording of what your offering.

That is why a simple 'open it and warranty is void' and taking thins on a case by case basis is much simpler that offering something that is open to interpretation and challenge.
 
Pleng said:
That is why a simple 'open it and warranty is void' and taking thins on a case by case basis is much simpler that offering something that is open to interpretation and challenge.
I would definitely support this. The warranty is in addition to any legal obligation (and frequently an empty give-away on this basis). Open at your own risk, and if you still believe you have a valid claim then expect the team to be reasonable. If my screen dies due to the solder blob problem, I don't expect to have my nub-surgery photos held against me, but I certainly don't expect to have any assurances about that. I do expect to be able to buy some shiny new nubs before Christmas though.
 
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