Where’s my refund?

@JCS In case you missed my ping, can you investigate what’s happening with @someday L14 order? The user spoke about “send or refund” and I guess if Purism would send it, problem would be solved for both. And if there’s a delay, please tell why if you can.

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Does JCS work for the company ?

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Up to a point, yes.

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Read this for more information.

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Message sent to kick off an escalation. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ve been brought into significantly more roles and responsibilities lately which fragments my tasks/attention and I truly wish to help everyone as much as possible, so these pings help remind me to follow through.

FWIW, I’m also looking into things on the policy and infrastructure side to try and make these tickets more transparent and convenient for customers in the future, but I’m juggling a lot of responsibilities and expectations right now, so it may take me a little time to execute.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Getting ghosted by support

If Purism were issuing refunds, you’ve got to know that they would tell us that they are issuing refunds. Purism’s biggest reputation hit comes from their initial promise to early Librem 5 purchasers to issue refunds to anyone who requests a refund, followed by no one getting a refund without the help of their state Attorney General. Never forget that your purchase is final as soon as Purism receives your up-front payment. Purism is pathalogical about this, to the point of their accepting the public shame that goes with their backing out of a publicly made promise and accompanying non-delivery on that promise on a large scale, followed by a retro-active change to the refund policy. So it doesn’t matter how much money Purism has in the bank. They will not willingly issue any refunds, nor will they ever apologize for violating their agreements made to early Librem 5 purchasers with respect to denying people of their promised refunds. I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere else. In most other cases, this lack of integrity would have been the end of a business. In my opinion, the long-term viability of the business is at risk because of this on-going unresolved problem and the potential risk that other similar unethical actions may occur again in the future.

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Again as someone who has never requested a refund, I am concerned that your post might be over sensationalized. Anecdotally, the last refund request story that I was reading here on the forums included notes about the Purism support offering profuse apologies about non-ideal conditions or something like that. I struggle to imagine what reason Purism would have for any legitimate malice of any kind towards customers.

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Continuing to have a “refund policy” while knowing that you won’t or can’t follow it is malicious. Companies can be malicious even if most of the employees are not.

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This describes how, not why.

At this stage I doubt we’ll ever know. Purism has had ample opportunity to be transparent on this topic and has chosen not to be. As such imagining different scenarios has minimal value and sharing those hypotheticals even less as there is a very loud group that pounces on those for being “baseless speculation” regardless of the basis for the speculation. Because we’ll very likely never know the why we’re being asked by purism to accept the actions regardless of the why…

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I am not yet a Purism investor, as I opted to buy another Liberty Phone for backup instead of investing (yet?). So you can take my question with a grain of salt. But I was wondering, if the business is profitable by $3 million then why do customers still come to the forums claiming to have been ignored when they ask for a refund on an order?

If Purism is sitting on sufficient assets to build a healthier relationship with customers and refund those who ask, and indeed then if folks on the forums complaining of their refund requests falling into the void are actually trolls and not real customers, is there a future where we might start banning that kind of troll?

I have never requested a refund on a Purism order and was happy with the products I received, so I was never aware of the real circumstances surrounding how a refund request would or would not go.

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:pray: Thanks

Purism | Libre Software | @dos
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There are many ways this could happen, some due to incompetence, some due to malice, all are solveable with the right desire and effort.

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So you are not allowing any other options? Harsh. :wink:

Depends what you mean by that and where you got that number from?

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Or I’m just not itemizing every possible option and sticking to the most probable options.

It may be harsh but the overwhelming majority of feasible scenarios boil down to one of these two at a base level.

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While the events around the refunds are upsetting to me, I hope that Purism will continue to provide transparent updates, and not just having public code accessible, which I think will help rebuilt trust that was lost. The business side of Purism has largely been a black box and this update was refreshing to read.

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I was also surprised but obviously happy that Purism is actually doing quite fine financially :slight_smile:

One thing I never understood, but read everywhere is the whole drama around refunds. People crowdfund a Linux phone, then become disenchanted and think they can get their money back. It doesn’t work like that. You invested money in something that might come to fruition, but you also might not get anything. That’s crowdfunding for you. Get over it.

I do think it has hurt Purism’s reputation, because those people were not timid about spouting their grievances. I still read about it every time Purism or the Librem 5 is mentioned, and for new customers, it doesn’t inspire confidence.

Ah well, here’s to a long and prosperous future for Purism and their Linux devices :beers:

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There’s a lot of people that did not crowdfund but made a purchase of a product then requested a refund when any of a number of circumstances changed including the product not being up to what was marketed.

Accusing them of crowdfunding or otherwise blaming them for Purism overpromising is disingenuous and lumping those two separate groups together does a disservice to both groups.

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I also want to add to this that purism has changed their refund policy twice and applied them retroactively.

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That’s not what happened.

  1. There are examples where people ordered a Librem 14 listed as “in stock”. Delivery was delayed … so they asked for a refund. Purism then goes “no contact” or tries to convince them to accept store credit … only to go “no contact”. There have been multiple examples of this. WTF.

  2. The “crowdfunding period” for the Librem 5 was only until October or November of 2018. After that it was a “pre-order” and Purism made it clear that they would honor their refund policy on those order. They didn’t.

And worse …

Get over it.

Get informed about what went on instead of making incorrect assumptions. When Purism finished delivering (3+ years late), we were told that there were something like 400-600 people who requested refunds instead of deliveries (3 years is a long time) … and are still waiting.

If a company doesn’t honor their own refund policy, I don’t think they are worth dealing with. That’s just my opinion.

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