On the pre-production status

[silversolver 849]

48 minutes ago, theory said:

Sent the following message to support about 5 min ago...

Placed my pre-order on 09MAR2019.

Paid in full on 01AUG2019 when I got the payment request.

Order number 83xx.  Total $698.54 including tax.

On 06NOV2019 I contacted support asking where my phone was as it had been 96 days since my credit card was charged.

In part, the reply was

'The first batch of the Pro1 has now been shipped, and some of our customers will start having their orders delivered in the coming week. As this is a relatively small batch, it doesn't seem like it includes your order. The next batches will follow in mid-November. Please keep an eye on your email for the latest updates.'

It is now the middle of December, 138 days since my card was charged.

Three days ago, my current phone died while traveling.  I was forced to find a cheap, right NOW replacement... an HTC626.

I am now using a 5 year old phone that was pretty low performance when it was new.

By the time you get this, it will be 15DEC2019.

I no longer have any more time to waste.  I need to get a replacement phone now.

So, by 31DEC2019, I either need a tracking number showing that the phone is in the hands of the carrier, (not a 'shipping label generated' message), or a full refund to my credit card.

At that time, you will have had 153 days since payment to have filled my order.

Enough is enough.

If you will be unable to complete my order by 31DEC2019, please refund my payment.

Thank you,

--

I'm using a phone that is rapidly approaching 8 years old, and right now I'm on a laptop which may actually be over 20 years old. I suspect my performance is worse than yours. It all comes down to this: is something worth having worth waiting for it a little longer? Clearly you have already decided it's not. I can't exactly applaud that; the Clack is the phone we've all been awaiting for most of a decade, and now you're willing to throw it away over a potential few weeks? I cannot even understand that. Put up with your old "Mr. Right Now" phone a little longer, and get "Mr. Right," instead of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and taking up with a different "Mr. Right Now" because "Mr. Right" was late to dinner again. Sometimes punctuality is not the most important virtue....

[silversolver 849]

On 12/13/2019 at 8:42 AM, Erik said:

I am not posting this in the main news thread as this is a relatively tiny update.

EU stock arrived in the warehouse today. We are just waiting on the warehouse to ship them out now. Tracking will be sent any minute today, or on Monday if the warehouse is too busy.

I am not sure what's happening with the new stock assigned letters, but we know stock is on the move regardless of this. In the worst case newly assigned orders will be shipped pretty much immediately after they are assigned.

Liangchen is back in the factory and he's inspecting the freshly made units and components personally, as we are now making a lot more devices simultaneously. The factory is not getting time off for Christmas, but I want to warn our logistics partners might be off during the holidays.

A PR-crafted update with more details is being written too I believe, and it should be in your email boxes today or early next week.

Those are some seriously BEAUTIFUL PICTURES! :) I can hardly wait!

[silversolver 849]

@Waxberry I hope you realize that there are a certain percentage of us who have your back 100% on this, no matter how long it takes (within reason.) If a certain poll is accurate, it's about half of the people here. As long as it looks like devices are shipping, I'm totally peaceful that mine will come when the time is right. Speaking for myself, I would happily let you send mine to impatient children who scream loudly so you don't have to hurt your company by refunding them. If you choose to reroute some of batch 3 from their rightful places in the queue to the screamers so you can actually profit as necessary for continued operation, I think most of us would be understanding. For that matter, send me mine last if I'm the only one who isn't screaming. I can wait. I've waited 8 years; what's a few more weeks?

Thanks for making the best phone ever! I can hardly wait to use it (but I will!)

Edited December 15, 2019 by silversolver

[Polaris 423]

5 hours ago, silversolver said:

@Waxberry I hope you realize that there are a certain percentage of us who have your back 100% on this, no matter how long it takes (within reason.) If a certain poll is accurate, it's about half of the people here. As long as it looks like devices are shipping, I'm totally peaceful that mine will come when the time is right. Speaking for myself, I would happily let you send mine to impatient children who scream loudly so you don't have to hurt your company by refunding them. If you choose to reroute some of batch 3 from their rightful places in the queue to the screamers so you can actually profit as necessary for continued operation, I think most of us would be understanding. For that matter, send me mine last if I'm the only one who isn't screaming. I can wait. I've waited 8 years; what's a few more weeks?

Thanks for making the best phone ever! I can hardly wait to use it (but I will!)

Hear, hear!

Edited December 15, 2019 by Polaris
corrected grammar

[michael.bosscha 142]

11 minutes ago, Polaris said:

Here, here!

Hear, hear 😉

[theory 15]

2 hours ago, silversolver said:

I'm using a phone that is rapidly approaching 8 years old, and right now I'm on a laptop which may actually be over 20 years old. I suspect my performance is worse than yours. It all comes down to this: is something worth having worth waiting for it a little longer? Clearly you have already decided it's not. I can't exactly applaud that; the Clack is the phone we've all been awaiting for most of a decade, and now you're willing to throw it away over a potential few weeks? I cannot even understand that. Put up with your old "Mr. Right Now" phone a little longer, and get "Mr. Right," instead of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and taking up with a different "Mr. Right Now" because "Mr. Right" was late to dinner again. Sometimes punctuality is not the most important virtue....

No...  If or when the production and delivery issues are sorted, I'm likely to buy then.

The reason I sent the message to support is to give them the option to fix the issue or issue a refund before I have to request a chargeback...

I'd much rather have the phone, but, on 31DEC, 153 days of my 180 day chargeback time will have passed.   I'm not willing to let that protection go...

I've run my own IT business since the 90's.  Built custom hardware and I've never repeatedly blown deadlines like this.  I will admit I've never done mass production overseas, however, I have contracted small runs stateside... Without these issues.

I've also had to meet construction deadlines for towers and other communication systems...  I've missed by a day or two... Or even a week...  Not by a month or a quarter!

And, being forced back from Android 8 to 5.1 is a major issue as most of my remote network tools won't work on 5.1!

--

[Kabbone 36]

5 hours ago, silversolver said:

@Waxberry I hope you realize that there are a certain percentage of us who have your back 100% on this, no matter how long it takes (within reason.) If a certain poll is accurate, it's about half of the people here. As long as it looks like devices are shipping, I'm totally peaceful that mine will come when the time is right. Speaking for myself, I would happily let you send mine to impatient children who scream loudly so you don't have to hurt your company by refunding them. If you choose to reroute some of batch 3 from their rightful places in the queue to the screamers so you can actually profit as necessary for continued operation, I think most of us would be understanding. For that matter, send me mine last if I'm the only one who isn't screaming. I can wait. I've waited 8 years; what's a few more weeks?

Thanks for making the best phone ever! I can hardly wait to use it (but I will!)

that's very generous of you, but you shouldn't generalize. Just because people will wait calmly for their devices doesn't mean they want to let pass other people in the queue. It could help to calm down some screamers, but I think the effect on the others would lead to a worse feeling, at least if they didn't accept that explicitly.

For example myself nearly never starts to scream, because I think it's worthless and it doesn't make sense to needle someone every week. But if I feel it's enough I just will take actions.

[Zamasu 258]

14 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

but I think that is us interpreting some Chinese signs wrong.

The letters in that line really do not look like Chinese characters to me, it looks like Latin script. They're too "simple" to be Chinese characters. The line above it looks like Chinese characters though. No real opinion on the rest of your comment though, it might just be 100~ pieces (96).

[Zamasu 258]

9 hours ago, silversolver said:

and now you're willing to throw it away over a potential few weeks?

I wish it was only a few weeks, I would've been using the phone for months already then!

[Tim6263 134]

11 hours ago, silversolver said:

is something worth having worth waiting for it a little longer?

What it comes down to - for perhaps the other half of us - is: Having absolutely no idea of how 'little' the longer might be? So, @eric posted a couple of interesting pictures; sorry, but that doesn't tell us anything definite or realistic about shipping time.  I, too, have been in email contact directly with support.  The only genuinely believable thing they replied with was, "We don't know the exact shipping date for each order as batches are coming in varying sizes" So after weeks upon months of production, & multiple different excuses for delay after delay - it's getting to the point, sad to say, where I no longer believe much of what I hear from f(x)tec at all 🙁

[henk.setten 8]

December 15: still heard nothing from F(x)tec about shipping my order.

This was preorder #10***, placed in March, paid in August, for normal QUERTY version, to Netherlands, EU.

I now understand that a new batch is shipped weekly, and that presently we're at batch #3.

So I wonder, is there now finally a way to predict -- based on order number and EU location -- what batch (and thus, what week) my order shipment will be in? 

Or is the shipping procedure still too haphazard to make such guesses?

[Val 75]

13 hours ago, silversolver said:

from their rightful places in the queue to the screamers

I didn't scream, but could you explain to me, like I am a 4 year old, why the promise that the first batches will be for the IGG backers has been broken? I wrote to support and they told me that it was an error. C'moon.

I understood that there were manufacturing and shipping delays, I undestand if they send first to some testers or people like EskeRahn who can give tech feedback and helped the company with the forum, but I don't understand why they didn't respect such a simple promise.

BTW, if I'm not mistaken, I'm #26 IGG backer (+/- 1-2). No stock assignet yet. #26!

[Tim6263 134]

Sorry, but, as per a quote from F(x) support I made on the main thread, No, there's no way for us to know, because they don't 😪 

 

Edited December 15, 2019 by Tim6263
correcting link

[Zamasu 258]

Not unless you have a working crystal ball. Besides, the "weeks" they're talking about seem to be pretty liberal so I wouldn't take that as a plain fact. And the most important details for determining when your order will ship should be the payment date, but even that seems a bit fuzzy.

[matf-kabouik 414]

It's entirely possible that they did not break the promise, but that the few people who got a unit without an IGG coupon (as far as I know we're talking about less than 4 or 5 people so far) were selected testers/developpers/commited community members + the result of limited qwertz units + a few errors as stated.

I have no information whatsoever and I don't know if people were selected and upgraded, so please don't quote me out of context without this second paragraph, but it would not be shocking. Of course it would not hurt to communicate if that is the case, but if this really concerns a handful of people, I don't think this should be considered as a significant deviation from the promised plan. As for errors, they happen, and Fxtec acknowledged them themselves.

The production is slower than initially expected, very true. But it is in part due to suppliers and third-party partners, so however frustrated we may be, I think we need to be careful before concluding Fxtec are being dishonnest. The people managing the regional warehouses and handling shipping labels are probably not even Fxtec employees, but more likely external contractors more or less following their instructions.

I understand your frustration if you actually are IGG backer #26, perhaps it's due to one of those errors. What would help is knowing in advance if they can fix it by putting you in the next batch.

Edited December 15, 2019 by matf

[Zamasu 258]

49 minutes ago, matf said:

The production is slower than initially expected, very true. But it is in part due to suppliers and third-party partners, so however frustrated we may be, I think we need to be careful before concluding Fxtec are being dishonnest. The people managing the regional warehouses and handling shipping labels are probably not even Fxtec employees, but more likely external contractors more or less following their instructions.

I think it's extremely likely that the delays and multiple other issues are caused by third parties, but I don't really care. I'm not doing business with those third parties, I'm buying from F(x)tec. And if they say something that doesn't pan out because of third parties, they still broke a promise. It's up to them then to deal with the third parties however they wish, but that doesn't change the fact that they broke a promise in that situation. It's up to them to use third parties they can trust, if they don't then they're still accountable for errors that those third parties produce.

And a promise that doesn't pan out because of errors is still a broken promise, just so you know.

[matf-kabouik 414]

I don't want to argue on the wording, you are right that they are accountable for the errors or delays of contractors, and as such they broke a promise. What is more important to me is to what extent, and whether they are being dishonnest or not. I believe they are not, even though communication could sometimes be more transparent.

On that topic, however, for all we know they are very few people in the company, and none is 100% focusing on communication (Erik is not there only to post on the forum, and even their Twitter account seems to be partly externalized). Employees are most likely working on multiple tasks, of which communication is the only one we see. With the delays and hold backs obviously indicating issues to improve, maybe it's good to remember communication might be light because they are very busy handling more pressing matters. It's not ideal, but it could certainly be worse if communication were prioritized over logistic tasks. 

Edited December 15, 2019 by matf

[Zamasu 258]

15 minutes ago, matf said:

What is more important to me is to what extent, and whether they are being dishonnest or not. I believe they are not, even though communication could sometimes be more transparent.

That would turn into a discussion into what you'd believe, since the only real way to tell their intent and what they knew when things were said is internal communication would leak out or something indicating they were dishonest, which most likely wouldn't happen. And there's then also the problem that you can't really prove that somebody was honest because being transparent about literally everything could still look you'd hidden some piece of information to somebody that's very paranoid, no amount of information would necessarily mean it's a fact that you had given all information, it's impossible to prove.  So personally I think it's a pointless discussion.

Like I've said in a different thread, I personally do believe they were dishonest about some parts. It seems unlikely to me to find out about certain problems as late as they apparently did. But no proof, so it's merely a belief not based on anything actually factual.

[Polaris 423]

2 hours ago, Zamasu said:

Not unless you have a working crystal ball.

My crystal ball appears to be up and running.  It's showing that all of us who are on this forum, and who don't cancel, should have a phone by the end of July 2020.

[ksal95 227]

3 minutes ago, Polaris said:

My crystal ball appears to be up and running.  It's showing that all of us who are on this forum, and who don't cancel, should have a phone by the end of July 2020.

Mine says it will be worth the wait 😁

[silversolver 849]

I'm done with this thread for good. Certain people feel that the poor communication and missed dates are a big deal. I don't, but it's clear that I'm not going to change the minds of any of the people who do. I am going to focus on the important stuff: the clack exists, mine is coming, and when it gets to me, it will be a good day. Those of you who feel the need to fuss and fume, go ahead without my company.

[Zamasu 258]

3 minutes ago, silversolver said:

I'm done with this thread for good. Certain people feel that the poor communication and missed dates are a big deal.

In a thread about the production status you get contents like this when basically the only source for information is proven to be unreliable.

8 minutes ago, silversolver said:

the clack exists, mine is coming

probably.

[matf-kabouik 414]

I think we need clack videos and gifs to get back to what matters and really interests everyone. Anyone with a Pro1, please, now is the time.

[Zamasu 258]

18 minutes ago, matf said:

I think we need clack videos and gifs to get back to what matters and really interests everyone. Anyone with a Pro1, please, now is the time.

How would that be relevant to the production status? Please post that in a different thread instead of sliding this thread.

[Zamasu 258]

41 minutes ago, silversolver said:

Abuse reported. You should research "libel"

I'd say that "quote" is them rewording your quote to be how they read it. This is identified by them including the quote block as well. Thus it's an opinion.