Hey, I just bought a terminal for 300 bucks from a friend! (300 includes shipping.)
Good old fashioned tube, with DB25 serial and parallel ports. Green screen, 132 colunms by 24 rows.
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Any word on the delivery time on that? 
Of course it’s speculation, that’s why I wrote “My best guess” instead of “Here come’s the truth”.
So sure there are other possibilities why Purism is violating federal rules, for example maybe they just don’t care about consumer rights? But IMHO that would be even worse, so I went with the least unethical scenario I could think of. But either way, there’s no excuse for violating federal rules for customer protection and quite frankly I don’t care why Purism is violating them, I just want them to get their shit together and spread awareness about this issue.
Edit: Per request, here’s (again) the proof that Purism is violating the FTC’s Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule:
- When you have to delay an order this comes into play:
When you learn that you cannot ship on time, you must decide whether you will ever be able to ship the order. If you decide that you cannot, you must promptly cancel the order and make a full refund.
If you decide you can ship the order later, you must seek the customer’s consent to the delay. You may use whatever means you wish to do this – such as the telephone, fax, mail, or email – as long as you notify the customer of the delay reasonably quickly. The customer must have sufficient advance notification to make a meaningful decision to consent to the delay or cancel the order.
- So if a customer requests a refund after a delay it means the following rules comes in to play:
When you must make a Rule-required refund, the following applies:
- If the customer paid by cash, check, money order, or by credit where a third party is the creditor, or by any other method except credit where you are a creditor, you must refund the correct amount within seven working days after the order is cancelled.
- If the customer paid by credit where you are a creditor, you must credit the customter’s account or notify the customer that the account will not be charged within one billing cycle after the order is cancelled.
So to summarize:
- Purism delayed the shipment of pretty much every Librem 5 order multiple times
- Multiple customers reported that they requested refunds due to the delays
- Purism in some cases denied the refunds. That’s a violation.
- In other cases Purism delayed the refunds (by weeks, months or sometimes even years). That’s a violation.
- Purism also didn’t seek the customers consent in every case after every delay and explicitly told them about their option for the right for a prompt refund due to the delay. That’s also a violation.
If you want me to also dig up the reports of users with denied and delayed refunds as proof, just let me know.
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Still, you call it your ‘best’ guess. (Implying there is at least some truth to it.)
Yes, the stories of holding back requested refunds are neither morally OK nor lawful (for the ones funded before the request policy has been changed).
But that is not true. The phone I funded in June 19 is here. It works and indeed better than I expected.
According to the estimate your shipment thread this seems unusual or your phone just got there in the last few days, because the last reports indicate that the newest orders which were shipped were from March 19.
About a week. It is used, not like it is waiting for components, unlike new 4 year old products.
(There’s a slider for the green background, but that’s camera exposure at 60Hz.) Also a “hard-kill” switch for power on the front Labeled “I/O”, a feature rarely found these days, unless hidden in the back.
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Wow! An impressive piece of kit! Only slightly less pocketable than the L5.
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That’s not what best guess means. It’s a guess and I here’s why it’s my best guess:
It’s a fact that Purism is violating the FTC rule. Proof above.
So there are two possible scenarios:
- Purism has enough money to pay for all their obligations (including refunds)
If that’s true than it would be highly unethical to violate the FTC rule and delay or deny refunds. Because if you have the money, you can just give it to your customers as the rule says. I don’t think that Purism is so unethical, that’s why this isn’t my best guess.
- Purism doesn’t have enough money
This explains why they don’t provide prompt refunds, because they need the money for salaries, production runs, etc. Of course that’s still unlawful and unethical, but it’s not as bad as option 1. That’s why this is my best guess.
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Alright then, I guess time will tell…
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The very thread you linked to has the last reported delivered phone being pre-ordered on 2019-04-29. A few posts above that are phones from May and even June.
The exact order of shipment depends on multiple factors (how fast someone replied to address confirmation e-mail, whether there were accessories requested, what region does it ship to, etc…), so it’s mostly, but not strictly monotonic.
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Also, not everyone posts their delivery information thus making that thread only somewhat accurate.
It’s been consistently pretty accurate though and provides more information than Purism themselves provide so it is still a valuable resource, but it isn’t always the most up to date nor is it the most sequentially accurate.
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Anyone thinking the market effects of the pandemic are over should go try to find a cheap, new Raspberry Pi.
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They are not lost. You can and will get the Librem 5 if you still wanted to. Or after requesting refund and not getting it, use one of the often mentioned possibilities to create some pressure.
Just keep in mind that the Purism staff is working really hard to deliver this phone hard- and software-wise. Many of them are working on this forum on free-will and even give support and create enormously helping posts on this forum within their free time.
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I removed the post to which this is a reply. When I wrote
I meant it.
I process a detailed report to the justice department to notify them of the facts and the status of the requests.
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Sure you do… but yo did not answer the community question. When did you placed your Order?
Before Pandemic it was a +4 Years time Scale… and now we are in time at 2023-03 instead of 2023-06. And the Process got faster and faster. However it will have some more delays when all parts are gone, and we have to wait for a US replacement or another China delivery.
Right now china is on fire. Still the pandemic status over there is unknown, and the economy is still chipped from the times before.
Month before i thought i will get my phone in December 2023 or January 2024. I am looking forward for a delivery before August this year (as a personal estimate).
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When you look at chip order lead times right now March 2023 on automotive chip supplier websites i think they are still about at 28-52 weeks lead times, or at least half a year to get your chips (might be a continuing and significant attributing factor to making the phones).
My Librem 5 arrived after 3 years and 10 months of waiting. While I was waiting I was very frustrated. I was also concerned that I would never receive my L5 and I would have been ‘scammed’ by Purism. I think this is a normal human reaction when waiting almost 4 years for your device to show up. Being frustrated and even angry, in my opinion, is understandable.
All I can say, beyond I felt your pain for several years, is that my phone did eventually arrive and is pretty cool. I hope you get yours soon!
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ditto that, i have used many incarnations of closed software phones including Sailfish based phones and Phones that use Android with something strapped on to them (volla OS et.al) and Version 0.0 of the open source Librem 5 phone is better in many ways that matter to me, like reliably connect to Open VPN, or simply recognizing your phone as a device when plugged into a desktop computer (Android does not allow that- conveniently for them since Android 4?), and to add flashing your phone isn’t such a pain and you can simply restore from .img file using your build in OS disk manager (i mean compared to android…)
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