Speaking of “little known old games”, I have a (necessarily old) retail copy of WFF 'n Proof ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WFF_'N_PROOF ). The WFF stands for Well-Formed Formula and is one of the rare early-60’s games of modern logic. Should we port it to the phone?
Apple came close though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#1990–1997:_Decline_and_restructuring
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A friend of mine appears to also have a refund issue. Purism said he was one of many and had to wait. When asked how many, the muffled answer was it is in the 4 digits. Could that be true? Or have I just misunderstood? Grateful for any pointers or even better if someone could share their success to get a refund quickly. So far I am only hearing of people struggling to get their promised refunds.
It would be helpful if someone from Purism could reach out here and confirm that all refunds will be processed promptly.
Could be the agent’s misunderstanding of the refund serial numbers. If they start at 1000, there will always be four digits until it exceeds 9999. (This is data humor.)
There is obviously a selection bias there though i.e. customers who got what they wanted (particularly if backing out of the transaction and consequently not owning a Purism product) have no reason to hang around like bad smells. 
So it is only the dissatisfied customers complaining in this forum about refunds.
Assuming that at least someone here is telling the truth then clearly it is not the case that “all refunds will be processed promptly”, so it would not be appropriate to post such a statement in this forum.
Here’s the bottom line: We are at post 94 in this topic and no-one in authority has ever posted in this topic. A couple of developers have unwisely stuck their heads above the parapet.
It seems likely that any official statement from Purism regarding the status of your refund will only come via the official support channel. So you will have to keep badgering Support with a sensible frequency.
It doesn’t sound true to me. It’s possible that anybody who asked for a refund (for a laptop or phone) after a certain date (? 2019 ?) is still waiting for a refund. Evidence suggests that Purism isn’t providing refunds even when they have reached their spot in the queue. My guess, though, is that we’re talking fewer than 100 requested refunds (I would seriously doubt if it’s more than 500) and they are intending to ignore the requests until they have cash on hand (having already spent the money provided by the clients).
There is a separate thread in this forum that is trying to track how long of a wait it is to get a refund. Estimate your Librem 5 refund 💸 . If you see others, direct them to that thread. Information is power and that thread will give you all more information about the size of the issue. You’ll note that some have gotten refunds and they list what actions they have take (whether 2 [Demand Letter], 3 [FTC], or 4 [AG].
In terms of what you can do:
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If you live in California, you can take them to small claims court. You can’t bring a lawyer. But simply a printout of their refund policy with documentation that they aren’t following it should be sufficient.
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If you have access to a lawyer or, for example, if you’re a college student, the ombudsman office (generally a free service for students). I have heard anecdotally (maybe about 2 years ago on reddit or on these forums) that the threat of a lawsuit has worked. And, if it doesn’t, the lawyer/ombudsman can advise you as to the pros and cons of filing a suit.
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In either case, you could file a complaint with the FTC. Many people can file for Purism violating the Mail Order Rule (the number of complaints against a specific seller matters — it’s very expensive to Purism if the FTC decides to take up a case). The FTC also handles issues of no refunds for defective products.
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If you are a US citizen you could file a complaint with the CA attorney general or your state’s attorney general.
In both of these last two cases you need to be clear about the issue. You should look up and provide Purism’s corporate ID and details (the CA Secretary of State has a free online lookup). [ https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/business and search on “Purism SPC” ].
Make noise here and on reddit. There are people here even on this thread who don’t like this complaining because they would rather just have everyone like Purism — they seem to want to ignore that customers are having these issues. Your noise/warnings here might help others understand that they should not assume that the refund policy will be honored.
Hi ShimmeringLight,
you know. If you buy Parts… and combine them to a new product. Let make it simple and do a birthday Cake. You buy Ingredients for 35 Dollar, invest Work like 3 hours and Energy like 20 Dollar and have to pay insures, advertising and Sell the cake for 100 Dollar.
You see, that you have insert time and 58 Dollar to refound 100 Dollar. And if you finsihed the cake or orderd the 58 Dolarar in the first place.
Thats fine if you just had minior Phones to refound. And thats why i speak of a spam-Attack some places before. When Purism make a Deal with the Chip-Manufacturer for 1000 CPUs and later call 25% a refound they still have to deal with that 25% more CPUs and have less income for the 250 Phones like 1000 Dollar, even if the phones just have a margin of 10 Dollar per phone like 2500 Dollars. but if you subtract the Coasts for the 100 Dollar costs per phone you end up in 25.000 Dollar owes for that. Just why purism try to make a fair phone with less profit for each phone to be fair to everyone. Just to push the Linux Market.
In the End and after inflation about so many years they have to increase the Phone price… you know. All that’s not cheap.
On my site its just about speculation. I think they just think about some interest rate and to refund it later. Like i said before nobody want to lost money and everyone have an interest if the sell phones and god done with the refunds.
To have that phone would be cheaper in any case…
Regards
Christal
That is not a new excuse for businesses taking advantage of the cliche’. I think people have caught on to that on by now. Looking back through the post, I’d say Puri has been having ‘supply chain’ issues long before there were supply chain issues.
Next
~f
Please don’t do partial quotes and frame it like I condone holding back refunds. My point is that the supply chain issues are risks the financial team can’t choose to ignore.
Purism is now shipping Q32019 orders and only miss one batch delivery from the Chinese assembly plant. Risk levels are clearly going down.
Today I received a full refund.
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Great to hear! Did you do anything special to get it?
While we wait on news on the E5 batch production. Purism is now shipping Q42019 orders and also increased the Core Team.
While we wait on news on the E5 batch production. Purism is now shipping Q1 2020 orders and will soon announce investor-funded laptop and tablet products.
The reports of Purism’s insolvency are greatly exaggerated.
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My case is similar: I’ve ordered Librem 5 over 4 years ago and finally I got it on February. After couple of checks, I decided to return it as for me it’s on too early stage of development. I got information from Purism that they need max 3-4 weeks after receiving phone to check it and return my money. What was quite surprising for me they return only 90% of the price. Now I’m waiting over 8 weeks and I have no information from Purism despite it is in finance department and they don’t know when it will be processed. I see that there are people who are waiting over 1 year… that’s unbelievable 
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This shouldn’t be a surprise. The return policy is 90% for used products.
If they do have the money for refunds at hand, why do they violate their refund policies and FTC rules? Are they just immoral and rather keep the money for themselves for as long as they can (e.g. to invest it)? To me that’s even worse, because if they were on the edge of (or well within) insolvency I could at least somehow understand their situation and why they’d risk large fines by the FTC – after all the company is at stake.
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Federal rules prevailing consumer protection rules. You can’t pay out old obligations with new obligations. Obviously Purism can’t do that.
I think it is important to understand that Purism intent to meet all their obligations when legally and financially possible. Purism never denied any refunds or shipments. In my opinion their current actions are the most fair and least risky approach to meet those intentions.
The easy way out would be FIFO refunds until bankruptcy back during the early COVID days. Purism decided to stay in the long game and ship all phones and honor all refunds. Such commitment is rare.
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Of course not. If you can’t meet your obligations you’re insolvent. Which you said is an exaggeration.
That’s irrelevant. If I sold you a trip to the moon within the next year for 1 million bucks (with an option for a refund if I can’t provide it in time) and later found out that I can’t do that because I’m shitty at math and doing business, it’s completely irrelevant that I actually intended to get you to the moon when “legally and financially possible”. You’re either entitled to get your money back or to get a trip to the moon.
Refunds must be provided within a reasonable amount of time. The FTC says “seven working days”. By your logic I could delay your refund for your trip to the moon for as long as I wanted, and that be fine, because I “never denied” it.
Purism decided to stay in the long game and ship all phones and honor all refunds. Such commitment is rare.
Such commitment is rare because it’s illegal in most places. My moon trip business is also going to play the long game and you’ll eventually get your trip or money back, if only I can find some inventors or sell more trips to the moon.
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We are done here. See you in a few months time as Purism intent to meet all obligations actually happens.
If you don’t want to argue fine, then say so. But don’t pretend that using a hyperbole is what made my argument invalid.
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