July Community Update discussion

[matosys]

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".

I was talking about your expectation of the time it takes to solve your issue is warped. At least, if the goal is to send you parts that work, getting you a working product. I'm not about the 'money back or working product' expectation, but the 'has to be fixed in 39 days'

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.

You are acting like I personally have to know how to do risk analysis. I'm not living in a bubble, I talk to people. And I talked to enough highly skilled people, that have proven to know what they are talking about, about the issues cropping up during the pandemic and how to deal with them - and not just people in our company.

And it doesn't look like pine64 don't have a plan b (changing the factory). changing plans takes time though, that's not a surprise. And in a business where prices are highly dependent on volume to lower parts costs, splitting up manufacturing to two or more factories sounds like a REALLY bad idea.

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.

It's not that simple. Just from a high view, there needs to be a lot of paperwork, if you want to import/export stuff. Filing paperwork for mainland china to hong kong, then hong kong to your country, then a possible hand-off to other delivery networks (llike china post to dhl) and all of that is not directly under pine64's control. apart from that, there's still a pandemic raging, everything takes longer.

to me, it sound's like your frustration kicks in. And you've got all the rights to feel frustrated. But it's not an objective view.