The expectation was already reset to acknowledge the first shipments may not go out until the first couple days of April… So if nothing left the purism warehouse in March that doesn’t counter the latest information provided by purism… It was also spelled out quite clearly that the delay in getting devices shipped from Purism is caused by the delay of the shipper getting devices to Purism.
This article shows another bottleneck causing shipping delays. I don’t know if this one affected Purism or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Looking forward to the Librem 14. I don’t think it will be too long now 
This September lol.
So… I’m guessing we’ll get an update next week then?..
sigh…
It looks like now there is some issue with the original shipper we had set up so we’ve had to scramble to arrange something else. I don’t have many more details than that to share but instead of just doing updates in a forum thread, which doesn’t benefit the customers who don’t lurk in the forum, I think it would be better for me to do a proper update over email to everyone, early next week when I have more details. I’m literally passing along information to you folks right as I got it.
Not surprised at all anymore…
“ So far things are going according to plan.”
“ As I said last week, as of right now everything is going according to plan, which is to start shipping in March. ”
“Shipping” means shipping to customers.”
“ So at this point we will probably slip a couple days and may not ship the first laptops out until a day or two into April. ”
“ sigh …
Look, whatever, I will wait for the product, not the end of the world, but you must see when people talking about “transparency” etc. It’s coming down to having little belief that the estimates can be trusted as they seem to be based on the happiest of happy paths and consistently off. I mean one week out you cannot predict shipment and double down all the way to the very last days that it will be met then it turns out you were actually still waiting for a shipment that did not arrive? At this point people asking for the detailed inventory info to do the estimation themselves, but I understand you won’t share that, that’s fine. I’d simply suggest to go back look at the various estimates up until this point, see how much they were off and take that into account in the future, don’t set expectations based on everything working out perfectly they don’t.
@Kyle_Rankin i am sorry, but somebody need to tell this to you.
That is a b*shit comm.
Like politics:
Wa are almost there, next month we will ship.
Nothing to worry, we are following the plan.
month pass: please confirm address we will ship
week pass: sorry we are shipping but shipping company causing a problem.
Just admit that you still not have production units ready.
Well those are difficult time for the industry, and quite acceptable for most people , but you need to learn how to make clients calm. manage expectations. (and probably how to plan as, this project shows how bad planned it was from the beginning - we are talking about more 6 month delay, from initial estimates…)
simple tactics: show assembled unit, then point missing component and inform people: “dear clients , we are doing our best, but one of suppliers f*ck up. here is chip missing and we are waiting for it. (or thing like that)
we don’t know if it will take week or two but please wait, remain calm.
btw here is how finally assembled unit will look like. we hope you enjoy it …”
a little P.R. , admitting to delay with clear message is better than b*shit you are replying over and over again.
psychological aspect of showing “almost ready” unit will do it’s job once. (not twice so think about com strategy" because political bullshit will not work here.
this is real device, not idea. political bullshit works with ideas and software, but with hardware…
And to be clear. i’ll wait for mine unit i ordered it because idea you are following is right and match my approach to hardware.
your refund policy makes difficult to cancel order and take refund, face as a company you lose already… so you can effort to be honest, you have nothing more to lose…
And we are still here , waiting.
The sad thing about this is that he will answer that he is already doing what you ask… be more transparent. He doesn’t seem to have the same conception of transparency as most people here who feel they are being played for fools. I want to order a librem 14, for sure, I would not be here. But I’m going to wait for this whole charade to end. I don’t want to be softened and comforted with empty promises again in 6 months. Shouldn’t a company whose goal is the common good be more explicit about these activities? I’m just asking
Probably slowed down by external events such as agents refusing to allow such hard-to-trace products to be shipped. right?
What i am addressing here is different approach to communication.
Promises are good for politics. While this is small business.
What i trying to advise is to show proof of progress, and proof of delay.
Delay is acceptable, and Librem 14 is worth waiting.
but what @Kyle_Rankin is presenting is not transparency, it’s Anti-pattern of PR in this context.
Taking for count that most of clients are: (i am sorry if i will offend someone)
- Geeks
- People concerned about privacy
- Paranoiacs (i am one of them)
- Linux Lovers whom searching hardware for linux to work
Transparency here need to have different level, and even more need to be put on the table in “manage expectations” concept.
What should be put here is:
we produced N units and those will be shipped to the clients in X weeks, expect tracking numbers between day Y and Z , Next batch , arround V units will hit delivery in V weeks.
even provide system - you can queue clients and plan batches acordingly , sho client can take order number hit the form and see: your order is in XXX batch planed shipping is: XX-XX month 2021
as most of those are preorders, parts should already be backordered. so those can be projected easyly.
hint: add some “delay in initial estimate” , better is to suprise client with message : hey we did this faster …
ti’s simple.
that is “good wish”
technically librem laptops are same difficult to track as any other laptop…
it’s a matter of software installed. which you can achieve by installing pureos on your own device.
except that there is not only pureOS I imagine
I don’t think we have the same definition of transparency. Kyle gives us the information he has. That’s what I call transparency. That doesn’t mean that things will go according to plan.
Let’s say I order an item from you. You plan is to order parts A and B, assemble them together and ship the assembly (the item I ordered) to me.
On Monday I ask you when you can ship the item. Supplier of part A promised you that you would have it by Tuesday and supplier of part B promised you that you would have it by Wednesday. So you say you expect to be able to ship my item on Thursday.
On Tuesday you receive part A. But on Wednesday you don’t receive part B. The supplier informs you there was a problem and you will only receive it on Friday.
On Thursday i ask you if you have shipped my item. You say no and I complain and accuse you of not being transparent.
How would you handle the situation better?
Ok so to answer the hypothetical, by telling me all these. Tell me the parts that you are waiting for, the assumptions you are working with, better yet understand what a conservative estimate is so I don’t have to care about any of this. What is the chance of a one week delay from suppliers? The practice of calculating that at zero percent then be surprised every week that it isn’t clearly not working out.
Dear Purism staff,
I am also waiting for my Librem 14. I understand that you cannot share more information than you have and also not all information about the total sales and so on, but what I would love to see is something like a short video where you can see Librems running around in the production hall, similar to AstraZeneca and BioNTech has done it with the Coronavirus vaccine. That would make us customers see that there is some progress while you would not share exact details about your sales.
Based on what Kyle has provided they are waiting for the fully assembled laptops. They did point to the missing component (the laptop) and did say the shipper is where the delay is at. So the information was provided. Not in the most timely manner and not with the more conservative estimates, but that horse is pretty well beaten.
Provide an update on Wednesday when the product didn’t arrive instead of waiting for the customer to ask me about it the next day.
Also, I’d be having some very frank conversations with my supplier about the delay. If the delay is that they’re on one of the container ships at anchor waiting for a spot at the port I’d say that and that I can’t give an accurate estimate of when the ship will be allowed at the port because the port authority doesn’t know.
Transparency is already at another level. I get wanting more, and I do think purism should arrive for more, but they are already in the top % of their competition. The way your message reads to me implies a lack of transparency instead of room for improvement.
N units will not be provided and has been addressed. You can want it for more transparency, but that decision has been made for the time being.
In X weeks was originally provided, not sure what more your ask is here.
I can see the desire for the tracking information, but that is a moving target and unless you tie that into your erp system this is just not practical as more orders come in to keep updating.
V will also not be provided for the same reason as N.
To me the actual ask is more akin to what I have pointed to in the past. Be more conservative with the estimates, set expectations you can meet.
In this case it does sound as if there’s a communication issue between Purism and their supplier. If purism is taking their shippers date at face value and passing that along with minimal to no buffer, that is not a conservative estimate. Though it is quite possible that even a reasonably conservative estimate would be missed if the ship sits anchored for a month waiting for the port authority to let them unload (this has and can happen with minimal information the shipper can provide beyond “we’re waiting our turn”). And it is on this front that I think Purism could improve the transparency. This far we’re guessing at shipping method, but pallets can be air dropped as well.
This however reads as if the shipper was delayed picking up the shipment and that a new shipper is being contracted. If that is the case then the previous delay of a couple of days into April was lacking some detail that was available to Purism.
All of that said, Purism should be applauded for the progress in communication over the last 2 years. Purism also has room for improvement, but that does not negate the progress made. I look forward to continued growth from Purism.