+LTS/SOPINE Never got what I ordered (caveat emptor)
#1
I ordered some hardware almost 5 months ago from pine64.org store planning to do some development for Linux kernel for PinePhone.

Never got any of the stuff I ordered: couple of sopine boards, wifi/bluetooth dongles, lcd touchscreen and some small knickknacks, USD $170 total.

I did receive my PinePhone in February, (I think it was about that time) and had to go through some back and forth with customs because it was declared as a "gift" (really?) but I did get it. When I ordered sopine boards the only option for shipping I could select was "Standard Flat Rate". There was "Express something or the other" option available but whenever I selected it, it would go back to Standard Flat Rate. I would have gladly paid FedEx or UPS just because of the accurate tracking but that was not available.

Anyhow, it turned out that this "Standard Flat Rate" is just a regular parcel shipping from China which, because of international trade treaties, Canada Post does not get paid for at all, so they put that kind of parcels in their backlog (or whatever it is called) and tend to it when they have free slots in their regular (paid) shipment processing queues. Thanks to the COVID, those slots are non existent now.

So, I paid USD $11.99 "Standard Flat Rate" for a service that is of the lowest grade possible and, as far as Canada Post is concerned, should be free.

How did I get all this info? A lot of phone calls, emails, chats and other sh1t, trying to figure out did I get scr3wd or if it's just postal service issue...

I did have some contact with Pine64 either sales or technical or whoever was on the other side of the message exchange (I think they were a bit confused as to what should they do about my queries) but didn't get anything useful back other than "we sent it, here is the proof (a tracking number that is expired and has 'status unknown' status) and we can't do anything about it, have a nice life".

I'm writing this for some future buyer: caveat emptor. I'm not saying Pine64 store is trying to scr3w you (I did get my PinePhone after all) I'm just saying you will get lowest possible service from them and, depending in which part of the world you are in, probably never get what you order.

As for me, I'll never buy anything from Pine64 again, fortunately there are a lot of other manufacturers and providers out there I can buy embedded hardware from (I think it's called competition or something like that).

Peace,
Flying Duck.


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)