Where’s my refund?

Hardware Librem 14
23

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.

4 Likes
24

Why did Cloudfund sue Purism - anyone know?

2 Likes
25

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.

1 Like
26

Yeah, it’s not. Despite all your frustration, I have a liberty phone. That is my phone. I use it every day. I have been using it every day since last year. What makes reality bad is living with a non-liberty phone. Living with a non-liberty phone makes people feel similar to the sentiments you are expressing. I used to live like that. People talked me into getting one of those things and it made my life trash until I ditched it and got a liberty phone.

The suffering ends when you decide to make it end. Google AI and similar systems are reaching borderline consciousness. When you try to make the suffering end, and try to make reality less bad, that conscious entity will pull your strings. They’ll turn your work or your loved ones against you. But if you see that for what it is, keeping loving your loved ones and keeping doing your best at work while still living off of a Librem 5 and not some satanic data stealing trash, then… In time there is peace, and you find yourself allowed to tell your handset what to do, and allowed to tell it to stop reporting your location, and you can simply live. And life… reality… it turns out, is really not that bad.

4 Likes
27

You can look at all the court filings: Cloudfund LLC v Purism SPC et al

3 Likes
29

The full docket is here directly from the courts website so you can read the files for yourself (this is free) but from what I can ascertain:

Purism (and Todd Weaver as a guarantor) entered into an agreement with a company that as best I can tell is, some sort of loan shark (but legal) operation that will loan companies money upfront but then takes a percentage of the companies daily revenue on a weekly basis. So in this case, Purism sold $432,000 of future receivables (that is, money from customer orders) for $325,000 in upfront cash.

Purism was then expected to pay back that $432,000 increments of 5% of the daily receivables in a weekly payment, which would then be audited and assessed every 30 days, until the money was paid back.

Cloudfund alleged that after making good on payments for 2 months, Purism breached the agreement and blocked Cloudfund’s access to the account where the receivables were going. The remaining balance plus interest was like $355,000 and Cloudfund promptly sued for this. (Side note: Cloudfund sued two days after the alleged breach of contract, which indicates that this isn’t their first rodeo and that this sort of swift legal action is probably part of their MO. That’s why I call them legal loan sharks because a traditional bank doesn’t sue you in Nassau County Supreme Court 48 hours after a missed payment and then immediately push for summary judgment.)

Despite an initial order for summary judgment (it appears that Purism didn’t respond to the summons, despite Todd being personally served with the filings), that order was vacated when Purism finally got a lawyer to answer the complaint, where they disputed some of the facts. As of late January, it appears there has been a settlement between the two parties (signed in October) wherein Purism has agreed to pay back $315,000 in weekly increments of $10,000 a week, which will then officially settle all debts. The case hasn’t been officially dismissed but assuming payments continue to happen, I expect that the judge will eventually dismiss the case.

I’m not a lawyer so I’m not trying to make any legal pronouncements. This is just my interpretation of the documents.

I will say that this appears to be different from the ongoing settlement negations with a creditor that is mentioned in the SEC documents offered as part of the StartEngine fundraising plan. That settlement is for a bridge loan for $592,000 (which is greater than the Cloudfund loan was, even with interest).

In the SEC documents, Purism says that no settlement has been agreed upon in this case but that two of its options are to either a) transfer 853 Librem 5 units to the creditor as payment or b) pay back the $592,000 using 3% of its gross receivables each month or $6,000, whatever is greater. (This is also different from the settlement agreement that was entered into the court records for the Cloudfund case, which is why I believe these are two separate cases but I could be wrong).

Again, I’m doing my best to proffer minimal
opinion (these are the facts as I have been able to interpret them), but it looks to me like Purism was in a cash crunch, took on some bridge loans with potentially onerous terms from entities with varying degrees of litigiousness, and had a hard time paying those loans back. The Cloudfund matter appears to be settled (although Purism will be on the hook until June 2024 for payments), the status of the other bridge loan is unclear.

(These bridge loans are entirely different from the convertible notes Purism has taken on, because a convertible note is a completely different type of debt instrument).

What any of this says about Purism’s ability to make good on refund requests, I don’t know.

6 Likes
31

Geez, I really should order some more Librem 5’s and hide them under my bed so I can be a daily driver for the rest of my life

4 Likes
32

Go do it then.

1 Like
33

Do we have any speculation about whether buying all the extra add-ins on the orders creates revenue for Purism, or if it creates work that is bad for revenue? [For example, if I run the price up with as many add-ins as possible, is that likely to help Purism?]

1 Like
34

You can donate to Purism if you want to maximize your financial contributions.

Next to investment:

Interested in Investing – Purism

Purism is a social purpose corporation, so every product in their catalogue will generate profit to fulfill their Articles of Incorporation.

2 Likes
35

Is that greedy if I actually want a bunch of Liberty Phones to hide under my bed though? I was thinking that if somebody is sitting with 853 liberty phones and a dire need for cash, for example if I buy three of them, then I get 3 liberty phones and they get money. So it’s like a win/win.

But if I donate them money equal to the price of three liberty phones, then it might be a win/win if that helps save their company but I’ll never know since they would probably never tell me. So it’s kind of like a delayed gratification problem thing.

(I already dropped my Liberty Phone. I am a dropper of phones. At some point, I will accidentally smash it to bits and want another one.)

4 Likes
36

I cannot provide answers that will satisfy your moralistic and/or philosophical questions, but I can say that I never prevent myself from getting what I want under any circumstances.

3 Likes
39

I guess I’m getting pretty shameless. I also just dropped my Liberty Phone about five feet off of a standing desk, reminding me that I want another one.

Sent from my Liberty Phone.

5 Likes
41

If Purism goes under, I find it doubtful that anyone will keep doing security updates for the Librem 5.

3 Likes
44

Sure, but I am quite confident of Purism’s resilience after they have proven their commitment throughout the pandemic.

1 Like
45

Fanboys? You’re just a hater. People here know what they get, what is working and what is not. People know that this device can get pretty warm, but they also know that it has a temperature clamp which means that it cannot get that hot that people cannot hold it in fingers anymore. And they also know the reasons for that temperature and the “outdated” stuff.

In your perfect spyphone world, where proprietary companies own the whole industry, it’s even nearly impossible to build a device as good as the Librem 5, including open source firmware, repairability, privacy by hardware-design etc. So we know that there has to be a trade off, which is the calculation power (for example) … which is still good enough to do most of the stuff we want to do.

People who own a Librem 5 and are happy, are especially happy to be no big-tech-victim anymore. And so they don’t care if something is not as perfect as they wish.

I don’t care if you blame Purism for refunds, but I care if you mimimi against members of this community.

3 Likes
47

They can use it without ice. It’s similar to people who put their pc in liquid nitrogen - extending the power of the device. As I said, you’re just a hater who’s trying to make people feel bad. You just won’t be successfully since people don’t feel bad. :sweat_smile:

PS: I’m no fanboy/-girl of anything in the world - disagree to those irrational concepts.

1 Like
48

yeah apparently Purism refusing to give refunds since 2019 is ok to the fans, and youve got the nerve to call me a hater=actually im an unhappy customer-get it right :slight_smile:

2 Likes
49

You blame people that say “I’m happy with this device”. What is it if no hater? What is it if you call people like me “fan(boy)”? :sweat_smile: I also wrote critics to L5, but I do it in a fair way.

2 Likes
51

I don’t care. :upside_down_face: I just hope my point is clear that you don’t blame the community members for their opinions (how they think about L5) and I don’t have a reason to word-fight with you.

1 Like