Yes, and Purism does not share those numbers.
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And, in a bankruptcy, the debt owed to clients (e.g. cash refunds) has priority over bond holders and most other forms of debt (e.g. investment debt).
The notion that Purism would prioritize investors over clients that has me upset. It is fundamentally unfair.
For 3 years or more now, I’ve let people know my opinion. If Purism doesn’t have the money to honor refunds, they should declare Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy. This provides a fair and orderly way to deal with debts.
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And most importantly, if Purism were to file for any form of bankruptcy, that act would restore honesty to their operations. That’s a really big concept. Right now, several different conflicting stories exist at the same time. One story is that Purism is a successful company. Another story is that Purism is in financial trouble. Forget about the cat, this is about Shrodinger’s definition of success. One of these stories is true and one of these stories is not true. Those who feel like they were taken advantage of want to open the box. To reconsile this conflict would require that Todd and company admit to the truth. But the truth comes with consequences that Todd and company are not willing to accept. Any bankruptcy would allow a Judge and a Trustee to override some of Todd’s business decisions and would prevent further lieing by Purism. Another act of honesty would be to admit to all liabilities (without going bankrupt), such as unfulfilled refunds and bad reputation in the marketplace over the refund issue. Admitting to ownership of these liabilities might force Todd in to directions that he does not want Purism to go. If all refunds have already been made, then people wouldn’t be complaining here on this forum about having their refund (their money) completely stolen by Purism. Purism is trying to force people to accept Purism Store credit plus twenty percent, likely because they are cash poor or that they place Purism’s social purpose above exercising basic honesty toward their customers. Some people appear to be saying “no, I want my refund and not store credit because I place no value in any Purism products, for ethical reasons. I just want what I was promised”. But Purism controls their money and therefore, has all of the control in this situation. So Purism just dismisses the people and pretends like they don’t exist. If Todd thinks that this method of running his business is not going to catch up with him, he is wrong. He needs to be proven wrong if that is the case. The need for honesty in business operations is more important in the big scheme of things, than Purism’s stated social purpose. What good is intellectual freedom and privacy if you have to outright steal from others to obtain it? At some point in a just world, the house of cards has to collapse.
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@JCS I have not yet been contacted by accounting to issue the refund. This causing a distress for my family as we are in need of the money. Please, escalate.
Thanks
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@JCS I have not yet received any update on this refund request… Any chance you can please help with this?
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I don’t have any resources to work with until 26 April, but I will reach out to finance to request your refund be processed by the end of the month. I cannot make any promises, but I will try my best. I apologize for the delay and for missing your previous request in this thread.
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There is something here that I just don’t understand. This is not an attack on JCS. JCS appears to be an under funded employee of Purism who wants to help as much as he can help. He can’t issue something that he doesn’t have the authority to issue. He has to wait until April 26th in this case to ask the finance department to issue this one refund. Fair enough where JCS personally is concerned.
But this information really tells us something of importance about Purism. Even with investors putting money in to the company, Purism is either just barely able to meet its past and current financial commits, with only some constrained amount of extra money available to go toward the backlog of refunds. Or, Purism does have larger amounts of money available from which they could issue more refunds right away, but they choose to not issue those refunds because they want the money to go other places. Either way, the budget is tight during what could be called an IPO or early-investment phase and something else right now ranks higher to Purism than their own public image of having at least some integrity on the refund issue. The money they’re holding hostage right now does not belong to them and the un-willing lender never intended to make a long-term loan to Purism. What happens when Purism has to survive on their own sales revenues in an environment where people know about these integrity issues in-advance?
If I were Purism, I would want to put this chapter of broken promises behind me as soon as possible, by paying out every last refund as quickly as is possible and then announcing to everyone that all backlog of refunds has been paid to the current time. But Purism just does what they want to do with other people’s money that they were trusted with. It’s really amazing as time goes by that anyone buys anything from Purism anymore, or invests any money in Purism. I might rather choose to take a trip to Las Vegas and put my money on the roulette table instead as a safer investment.
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I have yet to receive cash compensation from Purism since starting in October. This is largely my decision as I’ve been deferring cash invoices to accelerate paying off AP, but of course this has limitations since I have rent to pay and a landlord unwilling to accept convertible notes as payment. Landlords are so picky. 
I wish I could discuss finances here which would greatly improve understanding and alleviate some of the assumptions seen scattered around the forum, but I will say this:
True, this has been a particularly challenging period in Purism’s financial and PR timeline, but things are turning around for the better. The investments are truly making a huge impact on Purism’s ability to breathe and catalyzing the ability to live within its means (i.e. purely from sales revenue).
This is done by clearing oppressively-termed debts, enabling policy and infrastructure (i.e. IT, ERP, etc) improvements for streamlined operations, and fueling some very exciting R&D that has massive potential within the realm of PureOS security features and enterprise sales partnerships. “I don’t care about enterprise sales - I just want my refund.” Yes, totally understood. However, do keep in mind that an entire refund backlog can quickly be reconciled with even a single enterprise deal.
Purism is acutely aware of all outstanding refund requests and is fully committed to process them as soon as financially possible. In fact, I received a copy of the spreadsheet of all outstanding requests today and am working with leadership, finance, and support to discover and evaluate operational efficiencies to increase allocations toward refund disbursement.
It is one of my personal goals to accomplish exactly what you are saying. I am working hard to help Purism get to the point where they can confidently announce that 100% of all refunds have been processed, that they can guarantee a shipping window, and that there are policies in place for consistent operations and customer engagement such that they are never in this predicament again.
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I want to note that “can be” is far far different than “will be”. I’m not aware of anyone from Purism asserting the latter.
While that’s good to hear, I wonder why Purism hasn’t made any official announcement saying that.
[Edit: You say that Purism is “acutely aware” of all outstanding refund requests. Explain, then, why Todd pretended not to understand the nature of the refund requests. See the discussion between Todd and Joe Johnson on the discussion tab of https://www.startengine.com/offering/purism . Personally, I read that and my opinion of Todd goes way down. Any comment @JCS ? What do you tell others in Joe Johnson’s position who are left without a refund while Joe got one? ]
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Because Lawyers.
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Do you know what they have communicated to someone who is actually waiting for refund?
It isn’t my business or your business.
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I do know – the thread of “Purism has stopped replying to me” is the gist. I’ve collected lots of stories. It’s on forums (here, reddit, mastodon) and is in the press (e.g. Louis Rossman, …). It is everyone’s business how a FOSS company treats its customers.
It seems hypocritical that when one discusses FOSS, everyone here emphasizes that “sunlight is the best disinfectant”. But when one discusses issues with a FOSS company, they say “it’s not anyone’s business”.
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The reality is that you and I are not a party to the communication, recent or ancient, between Purism and anyone who is actually waiting for a refund.
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This omits a very important half of the picture. Purism is aiming to put into the hands of its customers tools that will protect the privacy of the customer. Privacy is more important to Purism and to Purism’s customers than to the average person.
A private conversation between two parties should not be made public without the consent of both parties. In that sense it is not my business and it is not your business.
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It is not private when one (or more) of the participants makes it public.
If you are acquainted with a couple and it becomes apparent that one is beating/abusing the other, do you look the other way and say “it’s not my business”? When others try to bring up that situation, do you have the gall to tell them “it’s not your business?”
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You may be making an assumption about the timing of when a company receives the funds in an IPO.
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I received the order now and would like to know how I could sell it on here to another user as you described.
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To be clear, do you mean that you have physically received the device, or that you received an update that the device was ready to ship?
I doubt it makes a difference. You could probably make a forum topic to sell it either way. But I was just curious.
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Unshipped orders are better. They include free shipping, can be traded for a 120% purism store credits etc.
Also for international orders you only pay VAT on value (early phones were $599)
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I received it physically after paying $500 in taxes.
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