For those who care about integrity, integrity matters. Everything in life is not always so clear until one takes a clear and more sober look at it.
Purism is not out robbing banks. They found a way to get money from people without leaving the person with much enforcable recourse when Purism doesn’t keep to the terms of their own agreement. Civil agreements for reletively small amounts of money can be difficult to enforce legally, despite a multitude of consumer protection laws. So were crimes committed? I am not even saying here that any crimes were committed. Were people taken unfair advantage of here? Yeah, they were. Does everyone who finds ways to take unfair advantage of others get arrested and go to jail? Obviously not. When one promotes a noble social purpose and then performs a blatent slight-of-hand (metaphorically) in their business dealings with you, it tends to atteact a lot of attention and harm their reputation and that of their social purpose.
You can break the law without committing crimes. Governments prosecute civil violations all the time. Ever get a civil traffic ticket and have to pay the state or city a fine?
What are you talking about? Is Purism going to be the next Google? Is ThinkPenguin going to be the next IBM? Is Nicola cars going to be the next Toyota? Is the island of Madagascar going to be the next United States?
On a different line of thinking, if sending legal threats to Purism causes them to serve their customers that are otherwise ignored… well, I ordered some stuff on Purism store in last November and some other stuff in February, do you think if I try to sue them that they would send whatever I ordered? I just kind of passively assumed that this would never work and the delay is legitimate, but does anybody know why that wouldn’t be the case? If the delay isn’t legitimate, what are they doing anyway?
I didn’t ever ask for a refund so I didn’t have these bad experiences. You guys worry me that I don’t know how to verify if the claims about people wanting refunds not getting them are real or not. In a lot of ways it all doesn’t make sense, as though it were a campaign from outside forces to destroy Purism. Because something that I do have experience with as a customer, and that I therefore CAN verify, is that Purism is selling a novel phone that many, many companies might have an incentive to destroy.
What You Must Do If You Learn You Cannot Ship on Time
When you learn that you cannot ship on time, you must decide whether you will ever be able to ship the order. If you decide that you cannot, you must promptly cancel the order and make a full refund.
If you decide you can ship the order later, you must seek the customer’s consent to the delay. You may use whatever means you wish to do this – such as the telephone, fax, mail, or email – as long as you notify the customer of the delay reasonably quickly. The customer must have sufficient advance notification to make a meaningful decision to consent to the delay or cancel the order.
Some businesses adopt internal deadlines that are earlier than those set by the Rule to ensure that their delay notices give all customers a meaningful opportunity to consent to the delay. If businesses fail to ship or give delay notifications by their internal deadlines, they automatically cancel the orders and make refunds.
In any event, no notification to the customer can take longer than the time you originally promised or, if no time was promised, 30 days. If you cannot ship the order or provide the notice within this time, you must cancel the order and make a prompt refund.
Do you think Purism has followed the FTC Mail Order Rule?
There are lots of people claiming this and nobody from Purism denying it. IIRC, when Purism finally got to the point of the queue being empty for the Librem 5 … I think JCS or somebody with Purism knowledge indicated on this forum that there were something like 600 people waiting for refunds [Edit: As @leetaur pointed out, it was not JCS, it was this comment Louiss Rossman on Purism - #21 by Poseidon which referred to Louis Rossman’s video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk ) where an unofficial Purism spokesperson (listen to the video) claiming insider knowledge wrote this in an e-mail to Louis. As read by Louis, it is between 16:54 and 17:05 in the video.]. Purism didn’t offer them refunds — only delivery on the phone or store credit. In fact the OP provided screenshots of the same. I also linked to the StartEngine discussion where Todd was denying the refund until the person publicly shamed Todd. What more do you need???
In regard to whether “Purism is going to be the next Google” … I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t trust Purism to be honest. As such I certainly wouldn’t trust Purism with a privacy product. But people can decide for themselves as long as they know the pattern of behavior that Purism has set.
To Purism’s credit, however, they have made good on FOSS and upstreaming promises. That said, Google’s contribution to Open Source has been much larger than Purism’s — of course I don’t really trust Google with my privacy either.
Because I trust Google hardware and Open Source Software (e.g. GrapheneOS which is based on AOSP), but I don’t trust the Google information-collection-for-advertising services (e.g. gmail, google drive, google contacts, …).
I’m not sure I’ll add that to the “Introductions” category. As an aside: I read your Introduction and found the LinnStrument reference very interesting. I went down that road for a few hours just yesterday. Fascinating.
You will probably have to agree to disagree with @Privacy2 on that. It’s the same when anyone is flogging a dead horse years after the event. It can be tedious for those who have to listen - in can be injurious to the person so flogging - but there is no right or wrong answer about getting over it.
I don’t agree. How are people treating Purism as a bank? I just don’t see it.
People are treating Purism as an online hardware company that should adhere to their own policies and sales agreements as well as any regulatory policies (e.g. the FTC Mail Order Rule).
I should note that most online sales companies (e.g. Amazon, Costco, Walmart, …) don’t even charge the credit card until it is in the shipping phase (boxed and ready to mail/ship). Crowdfunding wouldn’t work with such a model, however on non-crowdfunded items (e.g. the Librem 14), there shouldn’t be questions of immediate refunds if it doesn’t ship in a timely manner. At minimum Purism should follow the FTC Mail Order Rule. When a consumer is making a product choice, the delivery time is important.
Noting that there is a dedicated topic for refund, um, discussion regarding Librem 14 and a dedicated topic for refund discussion regarding Librem 5 - and this is the latter.
OK, so a somewhat dubious mechanism and route. That doesn’t mean it’s false but it certainly isn’t supported as true by any source that is in a position to know, as far as I am aware.
As @leetaur pointed out (thanks!), it was not JCS, it was this comment Louiss Rossman on Purism - #21 by Poseidon which referred to Louis Rossman’s video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk ) where an unofficial Purism “spokesperson” (listen to the video to understand) claiming insider knowledge wrote this in an e-mail to Louis. As read by Louis, it is between 16:54 and 17:05 in the video.
And I asked: I don’t agree. How are people treating Purism as a bank? I just don’t see it.
People are treating Purism as an online hardware company that should adhere to their own policies and sales agreements as well as any regulatory policies (e.g. the FTC Mail Order Rule).
You might notice that I asked in the StartEngine thread about how many non-refunded items there were —> it is something that I think should have been disclosed since it should have been relevant to anybody purchasing equity. It was probably mingled in the accounting numbers (as short term debt), but it would be impossible to tease out the exact value from that.
It might be worth you revisiting Louis’ video and to remember, IIRC, that JCS doesn’t work for Purism officially
either. It’s also worth remembering the following statement — clearly some people know the state/number of unprocessed refunds:
I was agreeing to disagree. You might want to argue ad infinitum. I don’t and maybe Dlonk doesn’t either.
Obviously I don’t know but the accountants may have worked out what is consistent with generally accepted accounting principles. Clearly it is some kind of liability whether it’s the inventory that they are holding that is really owned by those who ordered it and paid for it, or the store credit that should be on the books, or the refunds that could get paid.
OK. You seemed to think that “the point made sense and was logical,” but didn’t ever say why. That’s fine, but it’s not an argument/point, … it’s a “vote without discussion”.
Just for the record, I do now work for Purism as a W2 employee.
Also, for the record, I had been informed who submitted the lengthy letter to Rossmann ultimately requesting that the video be removed, and they were not in a position to be labeled as an official public relations correspondent for Purism. I do not have any other information or insider context regarding that situation.