Woah, hold on a second. Let’s settle expectations here. I’m not in the support or finance department and neither have the authority, account visibility, nor control of financial resources to issue refunds. If I did, literally every single refund request, etc, would have been approved immediately. I can, however, ping certain people for comment/update, ensure that people’s refund requests are being accounted for and documented appropriately in the issue tracker.
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I think that sounds good and is much better than radio silence I’ve been getting from support now. I’d greatly appreciate it if you could ask for an update on my refund request.
Thanks
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I certainly don’t want anyone’s requests to fall on deaf ears, and I wholeheartedly sympathize with the frustrations of not receiving refunds in a timely manner. I have never requested a refund from Purism, but I’ve been startled to find a couple personal friends on the refund queue, so this topic hits very close to home for me.
I feel that the support team is often placed in an impossible situation here because they can queue up refund requests and ask for the financial resources to execute a refund, but they aren’t given the authorization to do so. Refund requests then get stale and people get increasingly (and understandably) upset. Support then tries to provide customer service while not having any new updates for the customer, which is a no-win-scenario for anyone. Customers eventually hit their limit of patience and threaten (or initiate) legal action. I think this is primarily when people at the company stop talking, because there are numerous reports of specific support contractors being personally belittled, berated and threatened; they do not want to provoke the situation further or provide additional ammunition for any litigation against them or the company, so it’s a matter of risk mitigation.
Let’s also please not vilify the finance department. In asking them about this, they are clearly doing their best given the accounts and priorities they have. I genuinely do not feel that any of this is an intentional swindling of people’s hard-earned money - it’s that there was a huge surge of refund requests within a short time, causing a ripple effect - a delicate financial balancing act that Purism needs to overcome sooner than later.
I know talk is cheap and customers rightfully deserve to see action. Purism is actively working on several initiatives to correct this, hopefully re-earn the community’s trust over time, and resume creating great things. Until then, I do see an open ticket for your order number which includes correspondence of several legal threats and complaints to US agencies. Again, I do not work in the support or finance departments, but I will reach out to finance to investigate options to settle your account.
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JCS,
I sincerely appreciate your balanced response and tone. You’ve captured the sentiment very well. I really look forward to hopefully see a resolution and get closure with your help.
To clarify, I did indeed threaten legal action but have not initiated any specific action except formal complaints, which of course I’ll be happy to withdraw or amend once my account is settled. As you said, I had reached the point of total frustration and was hoping that such formal actions might speed up the refund process.
Thank you again and I look forward to updates on my ticket.
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Great, if there is a more efficient process than simply mentioning your username in a forum post after radio silence from Purism support, I highly suggest clearly explaining it.
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That’s an soul wrenching, incredible slow, and unpredictable way of dealing with this problem. Why don’t you sell the order instead? The forum has a marketplace.
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I wasn’t aware of the marketplace, I will try but I’m not sure how easy it would be to transfer my order.
In any case, I hope @JCS will be able to help with speeding up the refund process.
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I meant finding someone to “buy” the order would be difficult. I rather get the account settled with a refund if possible
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Selling orders have proved to be much more efficient than taking legal action. First poster in the refund thread sold his order and left. Same with the last active user of the tread. First he took the !Legal Action! troll bait and wasted so much energy on nothing until he realized he could just sell the order. And did so in no time. It looks like 50% of the refund seekers sold their orders.
Putting the order up for sale and requesting a refund are not mutual exclusive.
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Legal option in itself is not objective, it was just means for me to get the desired outcome. I’ll take whatever approach that get me the same result (assuming such approach would not add/move the burden to me, I’m that lazy 
).
Thanks again, I’ll definitely consider transferring the order if there’s interested buyer. I appreciate your help and like I said really legal option is not a “goal” here.
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Next step is writing a sales post 
Order date?
Price?
Has Purism offered a 120% coupon?
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Soon will take care of that, thanks again
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I had a flood of notifications and didn’t see your previous @ to me, my apologies. I sent a private message to you regarding an update on your refund request.
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omg. they still can’t serve refunds of 2019!? wow. That’s a bummer.
Somehow it seemed to me, that the refund queue is getting dealt with in the near future. Looks like I was wrong. I wonder how purism can still be in business with such behavior. Collecting money, saying it would be refunded anytime if requested, and than not doing so and even claiming it was a preorder all along, even after this was proven to be a lie, would instantly call powerful government agencies into play here in EU. Especially as getting a refund is just part of the customers right here (and I guess also in the US).
But 2019!? that plays in its own league! Even US authorities can’t oversee something like that. can they?
But aside from legal issues, this opens my eyes right now. I mean: purism must have decided its better to just illegally(!?) keep the money from normal people, who once fell for Purisms promises, than getting a loan from the bank to stay solvent. Or has Purisms business been so obviously doomed already that they didn’t get a loan? Sounds like delayed filling of insolvency to me. For years! Now I see, why they are asking for money from small people for becoming a shareholder or something. Maybe that is the only way to get money, since its likely that at least some of those people don’t look to closely into the future business perspective of the company. Even worse that they are already celebrating to acquire 100k that way. 100k is nothing for a business. just calculate: this is maybe a bit more 100 refunds they would be able to serve. And they are still not even serving refunds for 2019 orders! Nor is there any mention of servicing liabilities in their sketched use of those investments. Looks to me like a bunch of people are right before loosing their money. Just to keep Purisms business alive for maybe two more month.
Oh man! How sad. I was really hoping Purism will succeed and have a bright future.
I was close to order a liberty phone. Just was waiting for crimson to be released first. But with the new look at it. It seems like there hasn’t been any status report from purism in this regard. So I guess any development has been stalled or cancelled. Maybe there is only one bot telling persons there won’t be any refund and one persons writing articles about well known stand-alone understatements of Purism, that no-one reads. So maybe it’s better not to buy a 2000k mobile phone, when its producer will likely be out of business soon and therefore won’t be able to replace batteries or other parts, even if the shipment problems to EU would be solved one day or by extra charge. Sad sad sad to see the only manufacturer of a fully functional linux phone going down. Can take years for an other one to appear.
OMG didn’t want to write that much. Really really wish and hope all the best for Purism’s future! Especially as Purism’s impact for mobile linux is extraordinary! but 2019…
EDIT: I hope reality not as bad as I see it right now. Even it may be look like it: I don’t want to impute illegal business practices to Purism. I just can’t explain or see things ortherwise right now. I am sure people at Purism are good people, trying to do the right thing.
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Why did Cloudfund sue Purism - anyone know?
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Just speaking about the development part (I don’t want to answer about refund stuff): there is still a lot of development going on, payed by Purism. You can check out git pages for activity. And it’s also not the first time Purism asks for investments. I’m sure you can come back in 2 month and see that business is still going on.
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