I ordered it at the beginning of October, and according to the email I received, the shipments for this date should be scheduled for late April early May.
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This may just be a canned response. I got similar information despite pre-ordering in July.
it was the support manager after having writing them (this is what I had written)
I thought @Kyle_Rankin stated there would be another email update last week concerning the shipper issue? I haven’t received anything.
oh wait…
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There is an expression “once bitten, twice shy.” Well after having been bitten 5 or 6 times, I’m approaching communications about shipping with a bit of skepticism. We got shipping arranged last week and then today got a notification that they got bumped a few days to a different flight. International shipping is pretty crazy (and frustrating) right now.
At this point instead of notifying people when I get shipping confirmation that could change (as just happened) I’m going to wait until we have the actual laptops in our fulfillment center. That way if there is some unexpected customs delay, some flight delay, or anything else crops up I won’t have to post yet another correction.
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Understandable, as we are about as patient as 8 year olds Christmas Eve LOL with the additional ability of criticizing Santa and his reindeer on his forum as to why he can’t be at their house at one minute past midnight!
So may I ask, once you actually receive the pallet of laptops, how soon they will actually ship back out the door? Within a week the first batch should go out I imagine? I get the impression there isn’t much more to assemble once you receive them, RAM, HD’s, etc?
Also, might as well go ahead and get shipping address confirmations from the next batch or three of customers while you wait? I can’t imagine too many folks that can’t confirm, and the few that can’t, be handled accordingly?
It typically doesn’t take too long but I’m reluctant to make an estimate right now (beyond the above reasons) because this is a brand new design, first generation. It might take a bit longer than usual to flash and test (especially with this new EC firmware we want to do extra testing), and as it’s the first batch there’s extra testing I imagine that will be done. And I’m not clued into how long that might take. But barring any major issues that come up in final testing I don’t suspect it would take too long after they arrive before they start shipping.
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Ok, then I will content myself with thinking shipping will begin in first week of May, and I should have mine by the end of May, with zero reasons or evidence to support such a prediction, but it makes me feel good. 
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Seems @FreeRangeHuman might have been onto something with their constructive criticism here.
The one thing I wish had been done differently here is that you didn’t pass that bite onto the customer. You set the expectation of an update during a time period then didn’t provide it until after someone asked about that time period passing. Also the update you have provided is a post in a thread not related to where you set that expectation nor in the location people expecting you to meet the expectation you set for yourself would be looking (the blog).
The big things that are different between making this as a post in this thread vs a blog post/the thread where you set the expectation is visibility. And as a forum moderator you do have the option of unlocking said thread, posting that same post, and re-locking the thread if you don’t want to have the conversation continue in that thread.
This isn’t meant to be an attack, just my feedback in a hopefully constructive way to hopefully improve things for all parties.
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It’s challenging to satisfy everyone when you get conflicting requests. Some people want transparency and immediate updates and immediate feedback to questions in the forum, and if I don’t reply, then people read into it or then say I’m not being transparent. Yet being transparent sometimes ends up meaning sharing pretty raw info that I have, and that info sometimes changes.
On the other hand, other people only want information when it’s 100% known not to change. That used to be how we approached sharing information up until fall 2019, but then the majority of folks in the community encouraged us to err on the side of disclosing more information, more often, even if that information might change, because to quote some of the folks “We are adults, we understand information might change.”
So reconciling those conflicting demands, along with the continual demands we get from folks to estimate when things will ship, estimate when the next update will come out, etc. means walking this tightrope of sharing information that could change.
Regardless of how we walk that tightrope, there will be some information we don’t share for whatever reason (like we feel it’s too unreliable, or we just don’t know the answer) and will be criticized for lack of transparency. On the other hand there will be other information that we have some degree of confidence in, and share, that changes, and we will be criticized for being wrong.
It’s certainly easier to go back to the old way of doing it. I’d personally prefer it as it’s definitely easier on me. But being easier on me isn’t enough of a reason to do something. Each time I suggest that in the forum (based on similar conversations to what we are having now) the feedback I get is that people would still prefer the current approach to communication, even if it means we share information that might change.
At this point my plan (a plan is not a promise, it’s something that is subject to change if the situation changes) is to post a blog update when the laptops hit the fulfillment center and also email that blog update out to Librem 14 pre-orders.
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I understand and agree with the core challenge. I do think there is a middle ground in some scenarios where sharing that you don’t have reliable information (preferably referencing why the information isn’t reliable enough to share when feasible) may be better than sharing unreliable information as well as better than sharing nothing at all.
A plan may not be a promise but it does set an expectation/goal. This particular plan, seems like one that doesn’t set an expectation beyond “once we have the devices we’ll update you that we have them” which I do think is better than “we’ll update you in X days”.
I do think that (especially earlier on in this process) an update like “I’ll update you when the shipments arrive OR in X days (10 as an example)” with that following update being the “touch” to let people know they haven’t been forgotten and that you’re still waiting for the laptops to arrive.
I think this approach sets an expectation of what milestone we’re willing to share that we’re waiting on (transparency) as well as when we’ll update even if the milestone isn’t reached by that date which let’s the more moderate people know that they haven’t been forgotten/ignored (rebuilding some of the trust that’s been damaged from not meeting self imposed expectations).
No, not everyone will be happy; but I do think that this middle ground would please more people (granted I only have the visibility of the forums not any emailscalls/etc you receive) and be easier on you.
I do greatly appreciate the change from pre-2019 and while I have opinions on how things could continue to improve I do see that improvement has been made.
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How many batches are there going to be? Like once shipping starts will they all go pretty fast or will there be big delays? Like if you were a later pre-order are you still months out or are the differences fairly minor?
another way of saying this: roughly how long between the first pre-ordered laptop going and the last?
That’s what we term “shipping parity” – the moment that we are caught up with backlog on a product and new orders ship from current inventory within our standard 10-business-day window. We very much want to reach shipping parity as soon as possible.
You can see our current estimate for that on the shop page for the Librem 14 where we estimate when an order placed today would ship. Currently it says “ships in May” and based on current order backlog, even with the delays, I still think this is feasible.
We keep an eye on those estimates and try our best to update them based on the calendar and based on new orders. As April progresses we might have to update that eventually for new orders depending on how many new orders come in. In the past we’ve seen spikes in orders once we announce we are shipping something that was previously a pre-order–some people wait for that threshold before ordering–so if we see something similar here it might end up being early June before we reach shipping parity as that surge in new orders would of course increase the backlog. If that happens we’ll update the shop.
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OK right I understand that but I only meant within the context of pre-orders?
Are orders still considered pre-orders?
At the moment our estimate is that an order placed today would still ship within May, which means orders placed before today would have been shipped beforehand.
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right, right OK fair
thanks!
Ah, yes, the challenges of public communications. For what it’s worth - I appreciate the communications. And I believe I am not alone in that regard. So thanks. It’s a thankless job there’s at least one.
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