Refund for Librem 5

I pre-ordered Librem 5 in October 2018. Few months ago they told me they would be ready to ship the phone. By this time I already had an awful experince with Librem 15 which died only after 2 years of using, so I decided that I don’t want to buy anything from them and to ask for a refund.

I wrote the support and after 5-6 rounds of “bla-bla sorry” I got annoyed.
Obviously my bank can’t cancel the 4 year old transaction. It’s time to go beyond communication with the support.

Is anyone interested in filing a class action?

P.s. Puri.sm, we trusted you. Do you have anything to say besides that you’re sorry?

FWIW this isn’t the correct process for that nor the correct venue.

I’m sorry you had that experience, and have made my opinion on refunds quite clear in other posts already.

You can use the search function to see you’re not alone, what you do with that is your own choice.

Your public profile is hidden, so we can’t easily look at your other posts.

My view/opinion:

  1. If he ordered in Oct 2018, then he was under the old refund policy and should have been given a refund immediately.

  2. If he ordered in Oct 2018, then his place in the queue has been reached and even under the new refund policy, he should be refunded. And, according to the FTC Mail Order Rule, the refund should be prompt.

  3. IMO both of these are fraud (intentionally failing to meet the terms of the sales agreement). IMO it’s a violation of the FTC Mail Order Rule. IMO he should contact the state’s attorney general and/or possibly a lawyer.

  4. @wololo should be aware that somebody was successful with a credit-card chargeback long past the normal time for chargebacks ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/yx5jcm/my_successful_chargeback_story/ )

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No. If you can’t wait for the refund take the phone and sell it. It’s faster and easier than filing a class action. Done.

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Fair play, though they’d still show up during that search I recommend in the next line of the post so I’m not inclined to repeat myself in this thread again :slight_smile:

Suggesting people do something else because it’s faster and easier, only because the company is not doing the right thing, doesn’t really make sense to me. I would much rather we call out any company behaving badly including Purism. And in this case Purism is behaving badly, should be called out (as has happened repeatedly) and should stop. However it does not appear that Purism as a company actually cares to do the right thing when it comes to honoring their own refund policy which really raises the question of what other policies they’ll decide to change and/or no longer honor, privacy policy? There’s precedent set that they will change a policy unilaterally in their favor and then not even honor that changed policy. It’s a really bad precedent they’ve set for themselves.

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A lot of replies, thank you, all!

I’ve got an order confirmation on October 22, 2018. Ordered from Switzerland (no, I’m not rich at all).

@Privacy2

should be aware that somebody was successful with a credit-card chargeback long past the normal time for chargebacks

thank you for (4). I’ll contact my bank again.

@Vertebra

No. If you can’t wait for the refund take the phone and sell it. It’s faster and easier than filing a class action. Done.

Not really. First, I still have to pay import tax (around 200$), so I don’t want to pay for this phone even more. Second, I’ve been monitoring the local amazon for half a year and saw only twice successfully sold phones, but for 600$. And it tooke the sellers couple of months until they could get rid of them. The one with 750$ price tag was not sold. Even if I manage to sell it for 600$, I’d still have to pay a fee to the platform.

And anyway, it’s the It’s a matter of principle now. And I have to trash Librem 15v4 because:

  1. I could not find battery replacement (the old one just got bloated).
  2. Keyboard replacement would cost me 250$ (I spilled some water on it).
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@wololo hat was @Vertebra not me :wink:

True :). Fixed.

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Fastest or easiest path to an acceptable solution are always correct answers. Class action is not the right answer to get refunds. It’s faster to resell the phone. It’s easier to wait for the refund.

Class action is only a viable answer if you want to scorch the earth.

Sell your place in the shipping queue. Done.

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Whole lot of subjectivity going on here. The fastest and easiest path to the store is through several neighbors’ lawns, but I guarandamntee that is not a correct answer.

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Is there a reliable way to do it?

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Yes, you can get familiar about such transfer possibility, based on trust between both sides, here: Estimate your Librem 5 refund đź’¸. Please follow this link as well: Estimate your Librem 5 shipping.

EDIT: Selling my spot in the queue - Librem 5 Evergreen (EU).

I bought a Librem 15v3 on 2018-03-12, the motherboard died under warranty, so Purism replaced it with a Librem 15v4 and I’ve had it since 2019-02-27.

Mladen (Purism Support Manager) told me the Librem 15v4 will run without the battery, which I confirmed when the original battery finally died.

Purism did not have it in stock, so I ordered it directly from China 2021-06-06 for $109.16 at https://www.replacement-laptop-battery.com/batteries-dell-3756.html . It arrived 2021-07-10 and I have been using it ever since. However, it’s starting to fail, so I need a new battery. The battery is out of stock on Purism’s shop and the store in China where I bought it. Fortunately for me, I’m not travelling much with the Librem 15v4, so I use it as a desktop computer. You can use the Librem 15v4 forever without a battery. You just need to plug it in.

I spilled MILK on my Librem 14v1 (not the 15v4) keyboard, but I immediately turned it over and let it drain out. Then I opened the computer, cleaned everything, and let it dry. It has worked fine ever since. You can take out the keyboard from the Librem 15v4 and clean it with alcohol. That might fix it. If a completely new keyboard is only $250, that’s a lot cheaper than a new computer. If I already had not bought the Librem 14v1 as a backup, I would offer to buy your Librem 15v4.

Actually, if you want to sell your Librem 15v4, I might know someone who would buy it.