July Community Update discussion

[Jazzband]

• I'll post the reported issue rate for the first sub-batch of PBPs when I get the numbers. I already requested this data, but because of the situation with shipping of the PinePhone I haven't received a response from support re. the figures.
  
• I think that my post made it clear what we're doing for the next batch of PBPs, but let me reiterate for the record that we have changed the factory we work with. This is because the previous factory betrayed our trust. Besides, as I've already explained, the only reason this situation occurred was because we couldn't perform independent QA (which are always done) during the pandemic. The team unpacked and performed independent QA after the initial problem reports, hence there were no unusual reports on the remaining sub-batches from the previous factory.
  
• As for planning future batches ... yes, of course, as majority of users have had a great experience with the PBP ever since it began shipping ~1 year ago.
  
• Lastly, if I understood correctly, you have been serviced / helped out - just not at the pace you expected. Is this correct? Well, swift operation is not something we can guarantee under heavy workload unfortunately. Simply put, there are limitations to our capacity.
  

Ah, right, you have yet another ongoing situation, and still, you're taking more preorders for yet another product line. It seems you're always going to have this as an excuse, doesn't it?

Have I been serviced/helped out? Let's see, what have you guys done in those 39 days?
Do I have a fully functional PBP? No.
Have I gotten my money back? No.
Pretty sure I wasn't helped.

Finally, to actually get things straight:
When you announced preorders for the last batch of PBPs and Pinephones, you knew about the pandemic. Yet you decided to proceed.
You knew about border closures and quarantine. And you still decided to proceed.
You knew your capacity & limitations. Yet you kept preorders open for months and taken on more orders than you can handle.
Knowing all this you still decided to proceed with shipping two batches of different products at the same time.
You've never worked with the last laptop factory before and you knew you wouldn't be able to perform independent QA. Yet you still decided to proceed.
Before you or anyone else mentions that you're selling your products "at a price", you've set the prices yourself. And still decided to proceed.
And then, when things predictably went wrong, you blamed pandemic, factory, shipping companies, lack of staff, heavy workloads and... customers for being impatient?

And now your plan is... what, to just step on the same set of rakes all over again and let your customers absorb all your risks?
And after all that you're the ones to talk about betrayed trust?

[matosys]

-- snip --

Have I been serviced/helped out? Let's see, what have you guys done in those 39 days?
Do I have a fully functional PBP? No.
Have I gotten my money back? No.
Pretty sure I wasn't helped.

Finally, to actually get things straight:
When you announced preorders for the last batch of PBPs and Pinephones, you knew about the pandemic. Yet you decided to proceed.
You knew about border closures and quarantine. And you still decided to proceed.
You knew your capacity & limitations. Yet you kept preorders open for months and taken on more orders than you can handle.
Knowing all this you still decided to proceed with shipping two batches of different products at the same time.
You've never worked with the last laptop factory before and you knew you wouldn't be able to perform independent QA. Yet you still decided to proceed.
Before you or anyone else mentions that you're selling your products "at a price", you've set the prices yourself. And still decided to proceed.
And then, when things predictably went wrong, you blamed pandemic, factory, shipping companies, lack of staff, heavy workloads and... customers for being impatient?

And now your plan is... what, to just step on the same set of rakes all over again and let your customers absorb all your risks?
And after all that you're the ones to talk about betrayed trust?

So you consider yourself being helped if one of those 2 scenarios come true? The shipping part in itself for parts is like 2 weeks, in an express package and more like 3 in a regular one. If there's any delay in your ticket getting served to begin with, 39 days are nothing. This is something you opt into, pretty much. If your expectations are different, your expectations are out of line, to be honest.

The same goes for your expectation that things like boarders closing and quarantines should be taken into account. The situation changes pretty rapidly. You can't take things into account, that are out of your control. The only thing one can do, is trying to do business as usual and do one's best.

And the same goes for the setting of a price. This is not the first product and pricing has been fine until now. The factors to be taken into account are known, and one of these factors is the price quote from the factory. Part of doing business is putting trust into your business partners. It does not work any other way.


I do feel your frustration and you feeling betrayed but try to keep your calm, this looks - to me at leaast - neither like an issue with Pine64, nor the support.


I hope you get your problem solved soon though, best wishes for that.

[SpoofyKid]

Finally, to actually get things straight:

When you announced preorders for the last batch of PBPs and Pinephones, you knew about the pandemic. Yet you decided to proceed.
You knew about border closures and quarantine. And you still decided to proceed.
You knew your capacity & limitations. Yet you kept preorders open for months and taken on more orders than you can handle.
Knowing all this you still decided to proceed with shipping two batches of different products at the same time.
You've never worked with the last laptop factory before and you knew you wouldn't be able to perform independent QA. Yet you still decided to proceed.
Before you or anyone else mentions that you're selling your products "at a price", you've set the prices yourself. And still decided to proceed.
And then, when things predictably went wrong, you blamed pandemic, factory, shipping companies, lack of staff, heavy workloads and... customers for being impatient?

It's probably worth mentioning Pine64 is a company whose focus is to support the community by making the hardware products it does (https://www.pine64.org/philosophy/). This is probably something they need to state on their store page, as to why things operate differently to companies whose goal it is to make money, so people know what to expect when making purchases. The community is generally happy to forego the delays and mishaps here and there, as they know Pine64 is only working within their means, trying their best, are not profit driven, and will support the devices as much as they can. They're very open and honest; much more than other hardware suppliers.

You're almost better off looking at it like Pine64 is a mate of yours trying to do a favour by organise a heap of hardware for everyone, at as close to cost price as possible. When you realise that's all that's happening, it's easier to forgive them for what happens every now and again.

I can understand your frustration, when all you want to do is be able to enjoy your device, so all the best! I hope it all gets resolved.

[natasha]

• I'll post the reported issue rate for the first sub-batch of PBPs when I get the numbers. I already requested this data, but because of the situation with shipping of the PinePhone I haven't received a response from support re. the figures.
  
• I think that my post made it clear what we're doing for the next batch of PBPs, but let me reiterate for the record that we have changed the factory we work with. This is because the previous factory betrayed our trust. Besides, as I've already explained, the only reason this situation occurred was because we couldn't perform independent QA (which are always done) during the pandemic. The team unpacked and performed independent QA after the initial problem reports, hence there were no unusual reports on the remaining sub-batches from the previous factory.
  
• As for planning future batches ... yes, of course, as majority of users have had a great experience with the PBP ever since it began shipping ~1 year ago.
  
• Lastly, if I understood correctly, you have been serviced / helped out - just not at the pace you expected. Is this correct? Well, swift operation is not something we can guarantee under heavy workload unfortunately. Simply put, there are limitations to our capacity.
  

Ah, right, you have yet another ongoing situation, and still, you're taking more preorders for yet another product line. It seems you're always going to have this as an excuse, doesn't it?

Have I been serviced/helped out? Let's see, what have you guys done in those 39 days?
Do I have a fully functional PBP? No.
Have I gotten my money back? No.
Pretty sure I wasn't helped.

Finally, to actually get things straight:
When you announced preorders for the last batch of PBPs and Pinephones, you knew about the pandemic. Yet you decided to proceed.
You knew about border closures and quarantine. And you still decided to proceed.
You knew your capacity & limitations. Yet you kept preorders open for months and taken on more orders than you can handle.
Knowing all this you still decided to proceed with shipping two batches of different products at the same time.
You've never worked with the last laptop factory before and you knew you wouldn't be able to perform independent QA. Yet you still decided to proceed.
Before you or anyone else mentions that you're selling your products "at a price", you've set the prices yourself. And still decided to proceed.
And then, when things predictably went wrong, you blamed pandemic, factory, shipping companies, lack of staff, heavy workloads and... customers for being impatient?

And now your plan is... what, to just step on the same set of rakes all over again and let your customers absorb all your risks?
And after all that you're the ones to talk about betrayed trust?

Guys, guys, please take it easy.

Many of us can feel the frustration of the long wait to get the product or even worse, to get it defective. The situation will not improve when complaints are not answered as quickly as we wish.

However, let's consider:
-There is a real pandemic situation. Even some people can complain that during the 'braveheart' phone there were delays, the fact is that NOW there is a pandemic, and there is a huge reason that explains why phones are not arriving. So, for that let's be extra patient

- Complaints are not answered as quickly as we would like. True, very annoying.  However, besides the pandemic, Pine64 is not a big corp, and Pine64 told us many times that they are overwhelmed. I think no one gets tricked for the slow capacity of the reaction of Pine64.

-They open the store for new batches of phones when many people haven't get theirs. This is frustrating, right. But what should they do? wait until DHL delivers all the phones to open again? this makes non -sense

- They did not cancel the shipping besides the uncertain times they had in March. Some people got the phone, others haven't yet. I think this is better than cancel the whole thing because of the pandemic.

- etc

We could go complaint by complaint. All the complaints are right. We must be upset and keep complaining to Pine64.

However, we have to complain so they know that something is not working, and they can take action.

We shouldn't attack them.

Everyone buying from Pine64 should know where are they buying. Things are not going to be smooth because they are more focused on developing and probably they do not have as many resources in sales. People buy this not because of necessity but for development, dreaming on a Linux phone, etc

Be part of this, don't be against this

Ok Luke, now you can rate me up haha

[nicolai]

Hi, I was wondering if the dock is going to be open hardware the same way your others products are ?

[bcnaz]

Gosh  I hope these recent complaints are not the reason that Luke announced today the store is closed  ?

I know dealing across global distances can take longer than going to the neighborhood stores.

I can only speak for myself,  but I think a major majority of the Pine64 customers accept the terms of service,
                                                                          and are glad to do business with them.

I hope they do reopen soon

BC

[rocket2nfinity]

Gosh  I hope these recent complaints are not the reason that Luke announced today the store is closed  ?

I know dealing across global distances can take longer than going to the neighborhood stores.

I can only speak for myself,  but I think a major majority of the Pine64 customers accept the terms of service,
                                                                          and are glad to do business with them.

I hope they do reopen soon

BC

Where does he say it's closed? I just put an order in this morning and it went through.

[bcnaz]

If you purchase a 2020 year vehicle,        and then discover that you like the new 2021 year vehicle much better.

Is it reasonable to complain to the salesperson about your 2020 year vehicle ?

---

@rocket2nfinity
  just posted 2 - 3 hours ago  under news

---

I was looking forward to this months update to discuss the products, so many new products and what is coming.

Can we PLEASE,  put rants and stuff on a different thread ?

     (Times are rough enough here at home,  Lets not bring the screaming into the forum.)

BC

[erock22]

There are some of use who were really hoping for something in the community update about the bad batch of PBP. It was acknowledge last month in the update that there were QA issues with the PBP. It seems there are at least a few of us where these issues have not been resolved yet. Even though you don't have a solution currently to the problems, it would have been nice to acknowledge that you are working at resolving QA problems. The way it came out (nothing being said) it feels like the situation is being ignored. 

@Luke, I appreciate you fielding some tough questions about it. Please look into your support. Right now it feels like I am being led on a wild goose chase. I am having to troubleshoot the troubleshooting advice they are giving me. It is painful to wait 48 hours between emails to get advise that there are know problems with preforming. I just want a fully functional PBP.

Thanks

[Jazzband]

So you consider yourself being helped if one of those 2 scenarios come true? The shipping part in itself for parts is like 2 weeks, in an express package and more like 3 in a regular one. If there's any delay in your ticket getting served to begin with, 39 days are nothing. This is something you opt into, pretty much. If your expectations are different, your expectations are out of line, to be honest.

Yes, in any other scenario you still have a broken laptop and are $200 short. I mean, what else would you consider "helped" or "resolved"? You can't buy another laptop or fix the broken one with "Good thoughts and prayers".

The same goes for your expectation that things like boarders closing and quarantines should be taken into account. The situation changes pretty rapidly. You can't take things into account, that are out of your control. The only thing one can do, is trying to do business as usual and do one's best.

Things like this are called "risks" and as far as I know, risk analysis is a standard part of any business plan. You don't need a BA in Business or an MBA to conduct at least a rudimentary risk analysis. I mean, I don't know what your day job is, but you just did this analysis yourself when you correctly identified the rapidly changing situation as a risk. I would, however, disagree with your conclusion - as a business, you can and should take risks like the unpredictable situation with border closures into account. You can't influence the closures, but knowing the situation you should have at least a "Plan B" in case things do go wrong.

And the same goes for the setting of a price. This is not the first product and pricing has been fine until now. The factors to be taken into account are known, and one of these factors is the price quote from the factory. Part of doing business is putting trust into your business partners. It does not work any other way.

I'll clarify what I meant here: if having higher prices meant Pine could hire more people to deal with a higher volume of orders and issues, I'd rather they upped the prices. Having a bit of profit from each device sold could cover more/better support and sales agents, R&D, factories with a better track history, additional QA... Hope you get the picture.

---

We could go complaint by complaint. All the complaints are right. We must be upset and keep complaining to Pine64.

However, we have to complain so they know that something is not working, and they can take action.

Well, that's the problem, all of Luke's responses so far are saying they aren't planning to take any action.
No plan to hire additional support agents, no plan for preventing the same hardware issues from cropping up again in the next batch... Instead, they are going to repeat all those mistakes again, and offload all of the risks on their customers... Again. Because it worked for them before, when there was no pandemic, they weren't shipping multiple devices at the same time and they were producing devices on an entirely different scale (much smaller production runs).