Delivery was supposed to be in January 2021. I missed their ‘confirm your address’ e-mail (went to my junk) so they shopped fo somebody else instead quite hastily (without telling me - my details were up to date BTW).
Requested a refund on 4 August. Got ghosted.
Reached out again and my refund request was finally accepted on 8 September. At this point in time I was told that it would be refunded in ‘several weeks’ because ‘the process is slow’.
A month passed. On 14 October, they advised that my refund date is 20 December.
I’ve advised them that this is ridiculous and that I do not agree with their schedule as they are taking ‘several months’ rather than ‘several weeks’.
While I don’t wanna be an angry dude about this, I’ve noticed two things…
They abandoned their delivery queue back in January. My phone was ready for delivery in January and they made the commercial decision to ship it to somebody else without telling me.
Refunds are taking more than 1/4 of a year to be processed. This is a long time and means that they’re building up a backlog of unpaid debt. Again this was a trick as they’ve processed refunds, sold those phones to other people THEN… only after that… they’ve said ‘actually we’re not gonna process refunds until [after the date we’re expecting to do our next shipment]’.
One thing’s for sure - there’s some creative accounting going on there. Poor form IMO!
You definitely shouldn’t be, as it was you who “missed their ‘confirm your address’ e-mail”. What will you do when you will miss also their refund e-mail? Bring them to trial?
This is something that really bothers me. When I ordered a Librem 5 in 2018, there was absolutely no mention anywhere on any purism site that I would be expected to respond to an email in order to receive the product that I ordered. I wonder how many customers still do not know this.
Imagine a normal person who ordered a Librem 5 because it is not an iPhone or Android phone, and this person was not at all interested in reading about technology articles, blogs, and forum posts. This person maybe still use gmail or another terrible email service and does not pay too much attention to emails about products they ordered, and some of those emails end up in the spam folder anyway.
Would Purism simply not ship the product to this customer because they did not respond to an email?
Here is another hypothetical. Imagine someone that orders a Librem 5 for their daugher, son, or other family member, and then this customer dies a few years later. Purism would not ship the product? That is just really jarring.
I understand that Purism wants to make sure the shipping information is accurate for orders that take several months or years to fulfill, but without confirmation, Purism should assume the existing information is accurate and ship the product.
I think that there should be information about this email response requirement on the product page or the checkout page, and I think that there should be a checkbox option for the customer to opt-out of such a requirement if they so choose.
@Kyle_Rankin, would you or someone else from Purism please respond to this, when you have the time?
I should mention that I am patiently waiting for my Librem 5 and am not considering a refund. I like to read all sorts of posts here, and there are some that make me want to respond.
Address confirmation e-mails still require the customer to consent to some things - in the past they asked whether you want to opt-in for early batches, now they were asking whether you want it now or to wait for FCC certified batch. There’s also still a queue of orders to fulfill and limited supply. I don’t work on shipping and fulfillment, so I’m speaking it with my Purism hat off, but personally I consider it perfectly fair that if you don’t reply to confirmation mail, you won’t get the phone shipped to you right now. To me it would make sense to wait for achieving shipping parity before handling such no-reply orders (but, again, I don’t work on that and I don’t even actually know what’s the current policy, so take it as my personal opinion voiced in the discussion )
Putting my lawyer hat on for a minute… even if that were the case (my address was up to date and I’d confirmed it with you twice already), sending one to an old address is still completion on your behalf.
From a practical perspective, what if the people you re-prioritised to didn’t respond? Then you’ve got an even bigger backlog because you’ve told 2 or 3 people that one phone is ready for them! Since you’ve had no stock for ~10 months, you’d be in a much better position if you’d spent that time chasing those people rather than re-prioritising orders willy nilly without notice (if ‘parity’ was really your major concern… I’ll assume good faith for now so that we don’t sidetrack).
Franky - I don’t think backend loading your refunds and deliveries is ever good practice because you end up with a large bucket of undelivered promises rather than a steady triage system that’s keeping up with the said promises. Todd’s clearly made some internal decisions here to try and keep his company afloat. I respect that you’re gotta do that as an entrepreneur. However, you can only trust people’s shifting promises for so long. Just like he’s made these calls internally, I’ve made my own judgment call about how long that piece of string is… I don’t think I need to justify having done so.
My point was mostly that shipping parity / having stock for new orders is a news that could likely reach at least some of those people who had changed their e-mail addresses or don’t look into their spam folder, who could then start to wonder what’s going on with their old orders and reach out. If even that doesn’t help, then there’s nothing else to do than to just send these orders to originally provided addresses.
So an update on this for you people unfortunate enough to have bought anything from this trash of a company.
After saying they will give me a refund when my turn came to ship the product, they are now REFUSING to refund my order.
Hello xxxxx,
Since your pre-order has reached the shipping queue, we can ship your
phone now, we are happy to provide you with the latest software as well,
which greatly improves the life and capabilities of the Librem 5. All
you have to do is to confirm your address.
We do not offer refunds as the original purchase funded R&D into PureOS
and is built into the phone offering.
Let me know if you have questions.
Kind regards,
João Azevedo
I hope anyone thinking of purchasing anything from this company takes the time to do some research so they know to avoid.
What’s funny is they literally admitted to using my payment for a specific product and said they spent it on something else and are now refusing to refund me after making me wait almost 3 years.
I may just call a lawyer because now this is quite obviously looking like some sort of variation of a ponzi scheme.
Thanks. This means your order got delayed multiple times by Purism, which means you’re entitled to a prompt (seven working day) refund according to the FTC. And even by Purism’s own policy you’re entitled to a refund, as their refund policy said this in Nov 19:
If, for any reason, you want to cancel your order before it was shipped, we will issue a full refund. Source
Maybe start by confronting them with that information and insist on your refund and see how they’ll react.
yeah it doesn’t matter. They don’t care. They just straight up lied to me and said that the return policy stated on their website was for “orders” but my order was a “pre-order” and was subject to crowdfunding policies.
I think that given the long shipping delays, that it is reasonable for Purism to require an address verification before they will ship the phone.
But not giving refunds on non-delivered credit card orders after the elapsed time prescribed by law has passed, puts Purism on the dark side from a legal perspective.
Based on how badly Purism violated our trust this time, I will likely be someone who objects the next time Purism tries to raise money via a new campaign. A third party Trustee needs to control the funds and issue refunds based on the law and the advertising promises. The way to prevent future abuses is to stop the same mistakes from being made again before the campaign reaches its financial goal pre-launch. Complaints to Attorneys General and possibly, private lawsuits can stop questionable fund raising practices before the abuse starts. The financial abuses that took place this time are ample evidence to prove the need for better financial oversight in the future.
Nah. Purism has made it clear (as at one point in time after the Librem 5 experience) that there won’t be a next time in terms of pre-order crowd-funding the development of a product. Instead, they will raise the funds on the debt market (if required), develop the product, announce the product, sell the product (i.e. the more traditional approach) - thereby avoiding all the negative issues with lengthy visible product development delay and also therefore purchasers changing their mind and requesting a refund.
That is what they appear to have done with the Librem 11 tablet and the Librem 16 laptop.
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