Definitely get your refund before the pre-orders. I’m. going to be waiting until the end of this month before requesting a refund as they told me I’d be getting my phone in January (and I’m giving them this last benefit of the doubt). But it is good to know what their refund policy is in the case I need to request legal counsel. They never delivered the product on time–and to the best of my knowledge there is no timeline for product delivery now that they are 2 years late. If you’d like to wait until the end of the month, I can follow up with you and let you know whether I received my phone or a refund.
waiting for 3 years only to ask for a refund seems like a shame … the L5 is worth a few more months of waiting in line (couple thousand of people ordered before me)
i whish i knew about Purism and L5 sooner … can’t even remember how i got here now after all this time … but maybe at some point in the future an algorithm will make me remember 
NOT …
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Yeah, I don’t understand all the people suddenly deciding, after having a 3 year old pre-order, that they want their money back. I totally understand the frustration with Purisms lack of disclosure and constant delays. But for the first time, I think most of us feel as though we know roughly when we will actually get our phone. I have followed the project since the beginning of crowdfunding, but I didn’t place my order until this October, because of what I stated above. I always believed Purism had good intent and would deliver a product, but I wasn’t going to place my order until I saw the final hardware working. Software I was not concerned with as it is just an adaptation from their current computer line. Had Purisms communication been better over the years I probably would have ordered sooner. If Purism didn’t already have a line of computers, I would have been convinced the L5 was a scam purely due to lack of full disclosure. I still am of firm belief that Purism holds off information for as long as possible because things are almost always not on schedule and it would cause many more people to ask for a refund. I think it’s slimy, but I also can sympathize with the difficulty of the L5 project. At the end of the day, Purism is making (in my mind) the ideal privacy phone and is taking every step needed with no shortcuts to accomplish that. That is why I will continue to support them.
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Several reasons:
- blatent lack of communication (as you mentioned)
- shifting delays (as you mentioned too)
- unexpected (at least by me) tax and custom fees: since it was mentioned that european devices would be shipped from Europe (which won’t happen…), I misread “no custom fees” since there are none within Europe. With the custom fees alone, one can buy a PinePhone…
- disappointing final phone, mainly due to the ridiculous battery autonomy. I for instance intended to use it as my only phone, but I guess I won’t even be able to do that.
So the reasons for a refund are legion.
As of now I have still not made my mind if I want a refund or not but the more I wait the more I consider it.
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No worries. Standby time will increase significantly:
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At least the battery meter will start to reflect reality within a few days, thanks to the coming software update. That will make it easier to use with confidence now that we’ll know when it definitely needs a recharge.
Product delivery was slated for January 2019, it’s January 2021. Again an announcement was made stating that early backers (before October) would receive phones this month, so for early backers who don’t receive phones, if this isn’t a good time to request a refund, then I don’t see when a good time would ever be.
No. The announcement said that early backers (orders through to the end of October 2017) would receive a shipping estimate this month. That is quite a different thing.
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No. The announcement said that early backers (orders through to the end of October 2017) would receive a shipping estimate this month. That is quite a different thing.
Subject: Re: Shipping Information ETA
Hello,
If you backed original campaign, your order should be shipped in January. We will send another round of pre-shipping emails starting next week.
Kind regards,
No, as you can see from the email above, Purism support is explicitly saying delivery in January for early backers. In fact when I followed up and stated that due to it being the end of the month, that such a delivery date seemed impossible I was told it is still possible to receive the phone by the end of this month. The announcement does not contradict this information. Perhaps it’s vaguely worded to allow wiggle room for folks who are willing to wait an indefinite period of time?
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Congratulations! Good for you if it’s January for you.
Still waiting for my mail.
Even though it’s January then for you, this statement is still not accurate.
Well… technically it is, because you didn’t say “all”.
But then again, that wouln’t be news, as early backers received phones in November and December, too 
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You originally wrote “announcement”, I wrote “announcement”, now you are writing “email”.
So have you received your modem selection / shipment address confirmation email ??? If you have then you may well receive your phone in January. If not then I doubt it.
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I agree. I doubt this is possible as I have not received my modem selection / shipping address confirmation email. The employee who has been assisting me said last week that while it was still possible to get my phone this month, they needed to confirm with their operations manager if the January ETA was going to happen, but I haven’t heard from them since. I sent a follow up email this evening, but yeah… I reckon it just is what it is 
Best of luck to everyone else waiting.
This. Patience.
Apparently, delays with the Librem 14 creation process meant that emails relating to the Librem 5 didn’t go out last week. Maybe this week.
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Apparently shipping estimate emails have now gone out for those people who were crowdfunders. If you ever said what your order date is, I can’t see it / remember it. What is your order date?
Nope, they seem to done with September, but October backers (that’s me 
) are still waiting 
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In response to Ochiba’s comment on possibly needing to retain legal council, your legal council will ask for $500 down just to your take your case. That $500 will be gone before Purism is even aware that he or she exists and you still won’t have your phone after paying double for it. We’ve got to be real here. As long as Purism is fulfilling orders at some pace, even the state Attorney’s General will leave them alone. Let’s just wish for Purism’s success and not look back. That is the only path with an avenue of getting what we paid for.
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Maybe you’ve never heard of Hyatt Legal or MetLife legal services, but depending on your company benefit package, services like purchase issues and small claims counselling are free. I got my refund, but initially Purism changed their policy and tried to post-apply it to my order. My lawyer advised me that the fastest course of action would be small claims and she offered to send what is called a 93A to start a 30-day process wherein Purism has to refund/respond. To file small claims is $45 in my city, but it’s faster than an Attorney general which can be a three week to forever process.
Also, Purism knows they are obligated to honour a purchase contract. They just updated their policy to say no refunds going forward, but everyone who purchased earlier is protected. Or maybe it’s state-by-state (my state protects consumers from bad online purchases) Anyway, I got my refund, and Purism was professional and polite throughout the entire correspondence. I still wish them success!
Wow, that is amazing. So it looks like anyone who placed a pre-order for a Librem 5 before the relatively recent rule change in refund policy can still get a refund, even now. You’re proof of that, having recently received your refund. Purism must have cooperated because they knew that you were legally correct, based on the refund policy that was in effect at the time when you placed your pre-order. It wouldn’t have been worth your fighting the matter if Purism hadn’t relented almost right away when you threatened to take legal action. They just needed to know that you really intended to follow through legally. It looks like I was wrong on that. It’s nice to see that Purism had the integrity to recognize your rights, even if it took legal threats to prompt them to do the right thing.
Speaking of honor, no one should participate in crowd funding if they are going to treat it as a preorder. The legal system might not make a distinction, but the whole point of crowd funding is to crowd source the capital that will be going towards the development and manufacturing of a product. If you do not see yourself as an investor bound by a contract to support the crowd effort like everyone else who put up the funds required, then wait until the product can be purchased from stock. I really do not like other people creating legal costs with my investment capital because they want to renege on their part of our crowd funding. It seems like people hear what they want to hear, like imagining that an estimate was a commitment, or that a prototype is the final product. If you have trouble understanding these things, then crowd funding is not for you.
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Some crowd funding IS a pre-order though.
some campaigns are literally, we have this thing ready to go, but we need to sell a thousand to get a production run. those are pre-orders…
It really depends how things are advertised from the start.