It appears that one of the lawsuits was nearly settled (or moot). The informative post was here: Where’s my refund? - #29 by lolno
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It would be interesting for someone to do more than a 1-2 day test. I don’t know, but I suspect that there will be issues with charging (it will miss tweaks regarding State of Charge [SoC]), modem states, recovery from suspend, camera settings (autofocus), MMS, and SMS reliability. I bet it won’t be too much worse than the current state of affairs … but the difference is that currently people here have some hope that Purism will fix those issues.
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I hope that the existing fixes have been submitted upstream and that upstream incorporates them and fixes things Purism hasn’t fixed. I would much rather have combined efforts on a larger project, but that’s just me.
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That doesn’t work with different design philosophies. What KDE has in mind is something totally different to what GNOME has in mind. Same with PureOS and Mobian and Arch Linux etc.
But specific parts are shared like camera app (which also KDE is using as far as I see). I’m mostly concerned about a) progress and b) hardware specific things (firmware) that get slowed down dramatically or replacement of components - in case Purism would close the doors.
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Just a polite reminder that this discussion is veering off topic. Some customers may actually be seeking a refund on a Librem 14.
If you want to fork a topic i.e. you know that what you want to post will take the discussion away from the OP’s intended topic then please use “Reply as linked topic” (using icon at top left of the reply entry text box).
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Round about a month ago I ordered the Librem 14 for round about $3k, like 200 of which were for the shipping. I went back and forward with the support via email since nothing was shipped after over a month now. After they excused themselves a dozen times I wrote a refund request which went down ignored. I literally tested it out by mailing in regard of another topic from a burner mail and they responded. They specifically ghost the mails about the refund request. I am currently considering to take legal steps but am unsure if this is just a misunderstanding or straight up scam.
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As a happy Purism customer/fanboy I can offer you my advice, but it is up to you whether to take it seriously.
Typically I don’t drink but a friend convinced me to drink in 2019 and while under the influence I ordered a Librem 5 from Purism without reading the fine print that it was a preorder. The device actually arrived in my hand in Spring 2023. That was my first transaction with Purism. But I liked the device. It was an enthusiast device and I only succeeded in using it because of my past Linux experience and excessive use of the command line terminal app, but I was very okay with this. In Fall 2023 a decently big YouTuber made a video saying that Purism is evil scum and the only secure phone on Earth is the Google Pixel. Then he made a second video explaining that someone in a nonofficial capacity related to Purism reached out to him asking him what they would need to do to convince him to take down his first video, which made him hate them more. According to his second video there were something like 600 customers waiting on Librem 5 refunds and the only way for Purism to get through that financially is from more product sales, which are directly hindered by guys like this YouTuber telling everyone that Purism is evil and he knows via inside information “but can’t say why to protect his sources.”
For me, that was when I realized that I liked my Librem 5 so much that it shouldn’t have cost $600 and I didn’t want my device to have been made at someone else’s expense so I wanted to buy more Purism products so that they could funnel my money back into maybe helping the 600 folks waiting on refunds if that rumor is true. So in Fall 2023 then, I ordered a Librem 14 and a Liberty Phone, adding $4000+ hopefully to the liquidity of funds of whatever is going on at Purism. Because my Librem 5 felt like everything I could have asked for it to be, and I do not observe any similarly capable competing projects of the same nature to exist, I was okay with this.
The Librem 14 and Liberty phone that I ordered at that time both arrived. In this sense, Purism is not a scam. But they did not arrive in exactly 2 weeks. They arrived in their own time, whenever everything necessary for the order became available at Purism, I assume. The 2 weeks are some kind of rough estimate, and additional circumstances such as which specs you order and what parts are available probably affect the time until the device ships. (I also asked them to hold one of my orders during a vacation somewhere in there, and further slowed down the order myself.)
So, Purism is not Amazon with a billion dollar bankroll to handle refunds, and they are not Google with a warehouse of infinite Pixels to ship immediately on command. Whatever is going on over there, it happens in a certain kind of “Purism time.” But it does happen. However, there are a lot of users here on the forums that report that once they ask for a refund, “Purism time” slows down for them. Maybe it is similar to the theory of relativity, that the faster you go the more time slows down for you. Maybe the sooner you want product or money back, the more “Purism time” slows down for you.
I’m not saying this to make you upset or curdle your blood or anything, but I’m bringing it up to encourage you to consider your options and what exact outcome you want. What if that YouTuber was right!? What if Purism has 600+ people waiting for refunds and has not the bankroll to immediately help them, but has a lot of Librem 5s and Librem 14s and product that they can ship out after a month or two of setup time, as a means to recoup the money to help those 600 people.
If that’s even roughly accurate, then when you ask for a refund you probably get added into a queue from hell and the time until they can help you increases greatly. Presumably, your $3000 might have been used to help someone else earlier in the queue from hell or something, I don’t know. When I think about it, it sort of makes sense that if I were a small company, having a large number of customers:
(1) buy products from me
(2) wait until I was almost ready to ship the product
(3) ask for a refund
… might be an incredibly painful thing that would be difficult to overcome. Purism is not a bank.
So my advice is: don’t be in that situation and don’t do that to Purism. Instead, avoid that situation by knowing that Purism does ship very real, unique products but it does so in its own time.
It sounds like you have four options:
(1) tell Purism you’re serious about wanting a refund, and join the refund queue from hell
(2) sell your Librem 14 order to someone else on this forum to instantly recoup your $3000
(3) decide that you are okay with Purism taking an extra two months longer than expected to ship your device because they operate on “Purism time” and tell them you changed your mind and dont want a refund (if thats possible?)
(4) become aggressive and pursue legal action against Purism, at which point maybe you can do some damage and hurt someone else if that’s what you want but this process would presumably be even slower than “Purism time”
Of these four options, it seems to me that Option #2 is the quickest way to obtain $3000 and Option #3 is the quickest way to obtain a Librem 14, but you have instead chosen Option #1 and are now considering pursuing Option #4.
So, again this all simply my own personal opinion but would you be interested to consider selling your order to someone else instead of fighting for a refund? There are a lot of horror stories about refunds here on the forums. But there are also users like me with a Liberty Phone in their hand, and a Librem 14 in their lap.
Please consider what end result you want to get the most, and the quickest way to get that end result.
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What you are describing is a snowball-cheme which is illegal. I will give it another 2 weeks, if I don’t got a proper reply from their end Imma get my lawyer to solve this. Idc about $3k, I care about my time willingly being wasted by ghosting my requests.
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Hmm. If I understood the leak from that Fall 2023 YouTube video correctly, Purism only got into that situation by having a ton of users unexpectedly ask for refunds. If what you say is true that it’s illegal to be in a situation where you need more sales to support refunds, wouldn’t the alternative be that every company needs to have all money from all sales sitting in the bank until they ship the product sold? And if so, shouldn’t it be illegal to do crowdfunding such as kickstarter?
My understanding from the outside was that Purism crowdfunded the development of the Librem 5 handset, took the sum of the money from all the orders and invested it in the bizarre and unique production of these handsets, and after a few years found themselves with 600 extra handsets and 600 users all asking for refunds on their money from 2 years before.
If the users now challenge the fundamental premise of the 600 handsets each being worth $600, they could put Purism $360000 in the hole. This would happen to any company who legitimately crowdfunded the development of some obscure or unique technology.
I mean, there was a guy in another thread who said they forgot to reply to him for like a year and a half. If the refund system is not working well, I doubt that either of those two guys named Joao who tend to handle support want to email every affected customer every day and say, “Still not refunding you today,” for however long.
Are you sure you don’t just want to sell your Librem 14 order? I simply find it sad that you’re setting yourself up to go on the offensive against other people who have no intention of hurting you. That seems likely to lead to a future where everyone is forced to use Android and iOS and only buy hardware from major distributors. I appreciate that maybe you don’t care about that, but the thought of it from my perspective just sucks.
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I told them word by word “either ship out my order or refund me” multiple times, I never closed that door. I mailed hq, complaint line and official support. They are specifically not responding to refund related mails which in my opinion is destructive. Hence I see no point in going the most diplomatic but instead for my end most effective way to go.
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Okay, good luck. If you’re not interested in selling your order to some guy like me I probably can’t help you further other than to express my confidence that Librem 14’s do physically exist in this world and are not a scam other than perhaps the possibility of the time between purchase and shipping being longer than what you might expect.
Here’s a photo of my Librem 14 taken from my Liberty Phone (fancy Librem 5):
Also, I think the forum user who said he didn’t see a response for a year and a half was facing a technical issue and not a refund, so I was probably misremembering that. Good luck.
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No clue why you’re defending purism this hard but what I stated in the first post pretty much describes factual ghosting/ ignoring of mails with certain topics whilst on the other hand answering emails with other topics. It’s not an oversight if this applies to all of their different departments.
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You guys sound like bots. I’m addressing their unwillingness to refund customers and to ship out the ordered devices, meanwhile you “proof” that those devices exist (which was never doubted?).
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Can’t you just issue a chargeback? (hopefully you paid with a credit card)
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if you don’t mind, could you please give what reasons make you purchase the librem 14 ?
Also why did you pay this much money for it ?
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I can’t, since I moved out of the US I paid with crypto. This shouldn’t be an issue though since the price of the type of crypto I paid with skyrocketed and is now valued more than the $3k I paid (hence why it should be easy to refund me unless they gambled or smoked the funds lol)…
I requested a refund at like every different department they have and they all ghost/ ignore me whenever I mention a refund. Comically they reply when it’s about a different topic.
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The price was as high due to the configuration I requested. At checkout you can choose the specs and their “size” (1TB RAM for examples), which is how pricing is calculated at checkout.
Obviously I DO NOT RECOMMEND to buy a Librem 14. Don’t even ask me for advice or why to buy it just DON’T. This whole company appears to be the exact Ponzi scheme rip off that was reported on social media many times. It’s insane that something like this can happen within the US.
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Didn’ t you notice the banner in the shop that international shipping is posponed (since Januari) and it is expected to startup again this month (March)?
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I did which is why I contacted support BEFOREHAND to make sure I’m good to go. And the latest update in regard of shipping they gave me was “everything is ready bla bla there is just a small issue with DHL wait a few days”, this was like a month ago.
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