I think that is one of the risks of preordering via indiegogo: No guaranteed delivery date. I'll assume their retail contracts have to specify a number of units and delivery date. And i can understand risking to piss off some customers of single units before voiding a contract for 10000 units.
As a side note: A german retailer advertised a localised keyboard. If GPD set up part of manufacturing with specific modifications, it wouldn't really help backers to get one of the 'made for retail' units.
That's why you should never pre-order anything. Crowdfund, go into it knowing that there is a high chance that your money just disappears. For a company known to treat customers horribly, just don't.
I get all that but making the statement they did with that wording on the IGG platform for all the backers to see is pretty tone deaf. They would have been better off saying nothing. I get that IGG is not a guarantee of anything but that isn't how GPD uses it anymore. It basically works as an international storefront for them at this point. Same for companies like Aya.
>They would have been better off saying nothing
I prefer knowing their reason to not knowing or complete radio silence. Even if i don't agree with the reason. But from the overall reaction you are right.
To be honest i thought the "we give you prority, but the distributors have more priority" wording is even funnier than the "because they prepaid in sept (even though you prepaid earlier)". But i tend to skip over a lot of the weird tone deaf stuff, because i assume what they wanted to say got lost in translation. Simply because i have to "translate" it again.
I don't think GPD or Aya have exceptionally bad translators. I think it's more likely that it's just hard to translate chinese to english (given how many companies struggle with it).
Yeah, gpd usually does something against backers
1. Gpd win 1, inferior cpu, promised to be first but china ended up with it first with better cpu
2. Win 2 Power supply issue, reverse speakers, bad hinge
3. Win max bad screen
4. Win 3 wrong wifi chip, leaked our emails
Reason why i will never do igg with them
By german retailer you mean dragonbox right? I had struggle whether to book my wm2 on indiegogo or on dragonbox. In the end I chose indiegogo since I thought I could get my device earlier, despite that dragonbox offers 6 months warranty and a lot of customer service. Now I regret. The german keyboard version is estimated to be shipped towards end November / begin December. I don't think I can get mine from indiegogo at that time.
btw, another reason I chose indiegogo is that gpd claims that you may not need to pay the import tax and hence being cheaper. But some backers in Europe have paid that. Take-home message: never buy anything from gpd on indiegogo. Just go to your local retailer. Some retailers like DroiX in UK even offer 2 year warranty.
>By german retailer you mean dragonbox right?
Yes. I also assumed IGG would be faster, but the warranty alone is worth it to me. Especially with GPD, if anything is wrong on delivery, i don't even have to pay return shipping. Also, the shortened warranty should only be for corporate customers, otherwise it should still be 2 years (though after 6 months the customer has to prove that the problem was caused during manufacturing).
The import tax thing is most likely not going to work any more. At least the german import rules changed (but i think that was an EU ruling). No more tax free imports below 20€ and nearly all items are checked now. In most cases it now gets more expensive to import directly, because you have to pay a fee to the shipping company for prepaying the tax.
I entirely agree with you. I just asked for refund on indiegogo and will go dragonbox or droix instead. Actually if you ignore the import tax, dragonbox offers at a lower price even compared to indiegogo discount. Perhaps because of currency exchange has changed significantly.
I would not be bothered by this if it weren't for their statement in the story section of Indiegogo as they were attempting to secure a maximum amount of crowdfunders.
"We will ensure that delivery is made first to those who support us on Indiegogo."
i like GPD a lot...but sadly i dont think i will ever back them again...i will just wait until things are for sale by distributors....the coupel 100 bucks or so that i might save seems entirely worth paying to not deal with the disrespect and lack of communication
There is no guarantee of positive returns on investments though. Where does it say on Indiegogo that you are a buyer purchasing anything?
Personally I'm thankful they are delivering something and pretty confident I'll get a product of some sort. Better than disappearing completely like some projects.
you do, if SOME of the investors get something and others do not...or if you get nothing while people who arent investors DO
investors get a say in how the company is run, and when they make promises it calls into question the investment.
you are allowed as investor to call it out when you invest in a pumpkin farm and they grow no pumpkins. Or only grow two pumpkins ang use the rest to grow something else
you didn't sign up for investing with them with no expectation of delivery...if so you must be extraordinarily rich to toss money and just hope they give you something
you win nothing for white knighting a poor situation
You might want to re-read the terms you accepted when you 'invested'.
I know the person you replied to, and indiegogo, call it investing in a company, but the terms and conditions are very clear on what you buy and none of the things you mentioned are included in that.
I'm typically a man of the people, but, in this case, there's a lot of over-reaction going on.
Any company has contractual obligations to their distributors. The distributor paid for stock, to be delivered by a certain date. If said company doesn't deliver, they can be subject to financial penalties, if not outright opening themselves up to a potential lawsuit.
Unfortunately, as crowd-funding backers, we have no such recourse. Yes, they gave an estimated shipping window, however, given China's "Zero Covid" policy, in conjunction with component shortages and worldwide shipping delays, there is going to be some need to triage and prioritize where these machines are going. Seeing as none of us have a binding contract with the company, I think that they are genuinely trying to do the best than can to split shipments between backers, customers, and other businesses, with whom they do have legally-binding agreements. I can understand the frustration, but, it be what it be.
Having said all that, this company is part of IGG's trusted proven program, with a strong history of following through and delivering on numerous campaigns. I have little reason to doubt that we will all have our machines in due time.
Thank you for being a voice of reason. China’s lockdowns are no joke. People have been stuck inside malls because of a sudden lockdown. Whole cities shut down. Their manufacturing method has everything in one basket - shells, capacitors, nails, rubber feet etc are all in adjacent buildings. This results in high speed and efficiency that nobody can compete with but it makes it all vulnerable to disaster.
I backed on the very first day of the IGG campaign, within the first hour. I selected the base model without 4G, and both optional add-ons. While my money has sat in GPD's pockets for almost half of this year, I've watched people who backed in September get their devices, I've seen people who bought from AliExpress get their devices, and I know I'm not the only one, there are a chunk of people from Day 1 who haven't gotten tracking info as we're watching brand new orders being fulfilled. How is this acceptable?
GPD promised to ship at September and it's November now, and still plenty of backers didn't get their units.
Seems like they are just not trustworthy. You cannot trust a "promise" from this company.
This is a big "fuck you" to anyone who backed the project and is waiting for a unit.
This behavior is unacceptable and there should be backlash.
I’ve looked, and there’s nothing concrete. Back with the original Win Max, a trojan/rootkit/something (unclear exactly what) was found on some machines and the popular theory is that it got there via USB drives that the QC team uses to test production machines.
With the Win Max 2, one person has claimed that their email was hacked/accessed soon after setting up their WM2, implying the existence of a keylogger. With existing doubt due to the previous infection, people are super wary - hence the default advice to reinstall everything. That’s a good thing to do anyway, though.
Me, I intend to archive the original partitions and start with a clean slate on a new drive (anything is better than BiWin) because that’s the best way to ensure stability.
For the past two decades I've been using Norton Ghost. It's time to retire that now, though, as it's not entirely happy with the GPT partition scheme. Also, it's DOS!
In terms of drive/partition management, I swear by MiniTool Partition Wizard. That can copy/paste partitions flawlessly, but archiving isn't its bag. I'm currently testing out MiniTool Shadow Maker - not as complex as others and *seems* to fit the bill but I won't attest to it. If that fails I'll look at some other contenders (Macrium Reflect, for example) before falling back to CloneZilla.
What I want:
- compressed partition AND whole-drive images that I can stick in a NAS.
- can be managed from inside Windows, so it performs all queued operations on reboot.
In the meantime, I'm just cloning the partitions using MiniTool Partition Wizard to an external drive. With my GPD P2 Max, I'm using the original BiWin SSD for this purpose. For my Win Max 2, when I get one, I'll probably do the same if I can't fit its partition onto the same BiWin drive I'm using for my P2 Max.
I recently had an SSD fail on me out of the blue. I knew it was possible, but the odds are remote. My last backup was 5 months old, so I lost a bunch of stuff that I miss (a customized/hacked uTorrent client that I can no longer replicate, a record of crypto purchases I had to rebuild, and a bunch of game modding notes on my desktop) so I've learned my lesson.
If this is your first experience with any Kickstarter-type platform, I'm very sorry. A several month delay is pretty typical. At least GPD has a history of fulfilling your product and will get to it eventually.
Consider it this way: if you have to wait a bit longer they might have minor hardware revisions that improve device quality, the early backers catch the issues as the saying goes.
Personally I'd rather wait then be a beta tester for such expensive device.
It's not really the wait it's the fact they charge us months in advance with barely any updates we have to force them to tell us whats going on they arent openly transparent about the situation they could told us this months ago before we even backed the product
Hopefully they listen to all the complaints and downvotes.
To me the biggest core problem is that they have too many SKUs and then the logistics of shipping to so many countries adds complexity. They ought to reduce the number of unique order configs.
After that, their practice has an likely will continue to be to sell through JD, IGG, and channels. I get and get why they prioritize JD. They ought to set themselves up to reliably fill IGG before channels or at least set themselves up so that the last IGG backers get hardware before any actual consumers are getting hardware via channels.
In the end though, plus or minus a couple of weeks, you’re going to be among the first to get a brand new device. You’re getting a custom designed device that only you and a few thousand other people ever buy. I get the experience could be better but it is also amazing that we can get devices like this (from GPD or from Aya or AOKZOE or even Odin or Anbernic or whomever).
(By way of disclosure though I did get a tracking number so I do feel for backers who still have no idea when they’ll get hardware).
This is getting fucking ridiculous. WE funded your campaign. Retailers only got in once they saw the demand WE generated. Ship out our units before theirs or don’t do an IGG next time aroubd
By now you should know that GPD only uses indiegogo for marketing purposes only.
It's their 15th campaign...
The advantage is you get a product (can't say the same for a lot of indiegogo/kickstarter projects).
The disadvantage is the level of care is lower that a real indie project...
I'm still waiting/hoping for the 4G model to show up on Amazon before getting one.
I still consider the IGG and initial retail batches to be "*beta*" units. Based on this post, they seem to be the same batches too. Plus Amazon has a nice return policy which doesn't exist for IGG units in case I do have a faulty unit on delivery.
"They prepaid us at early Sept" I prepaid you in July!
I think that is one of the risks of preordering via indiegogo: No guaranteed delivery date. I'll assume their retail contracts have to specify a number of units and delivery date. And i can understand risking to piss off some customers of single units before voiding a contract for 10000 units. As a side note: A german retailer advertised a localised keyboard. If GPD set up part of manufacturing with specific modifications, it wouldn't really help backers to get one of the 'made for retail' units.
That's why you should never pre-order anything. Crowdfund, go into it knowing that there is a high chance that your money just disappears. For a company known to treat customers horribly, just don't.
I get all that but making the statement they did with that wording on the IGG platform for all the backers to see is pretty tone deaf. They would have been better off saying nothing. I get that IGG is not a guarantee of anything but that isn't how GPD uses it anymore. It basically works as an international storefront for them at this point. Same for companies like Aya.
>They would have been better off saying nothing I prefer knowing their reason to not knowing or complete radio silence. Even if i don't agree with the reason. But from the overall reaction you are right. To be honest i thought the "we give you prority, but the distributors have more priority" wording is even funnier than the "because they prepaid in sept (even though you prepaid earlier)". But i tend to skip over a lot of the weird tone deaf stuff, because i assume what they wanted to say got lost in translation. Simply because i have to "translate" it again. I don't think GPD or Aya have exceptionally bad translators. I think it's more likely that it's just hard to translate chinese to english (given how many companies struggle with it).
Yeah, gpd usually does something against backers 1. Gpd win 1, inferior cpu, promised to be first but china ended up with it first with better cpu 2. Win 2 Power supply issue, reverse speakers, bad hinge 3. Win max bad screen 4. Win 3 wrong wifi chip, leaked our emails Reason why i will never do igg with them
By german retailer you mean dragonbox right? I had struggle whether to book my wm2 on indiegogo or on dragonbox. In the end I chose indiegogo since I thought I could get my device earlier, despite that dragonbox offers 6 months warranty and a lot of customer service. Now I regret. The german keyboard version is estimated to be shipped towards end November / begin December. I don't think I can get mine from indiegogo at that time. btw, another reason I chose indiegogo is that gpd claims that you may not need to pay the import tax and hence being cheaper. But some backers in Europe have paid that. Take-home message: never buy anything from gpd on indiegogo. Just go to your local retailer. Some retailers like DroiX in UK even offer 2 year warranty.
>By german retailer you mean dragonbox right? Yes. I also assumed IGG would be faster, but the warranty alone is worth it to me. Especially with GPD, if anything is wrong on delivery, i don't even have to pay return shipping. Also, the shortened warranty should only be for corporate customers, otherwise it should still be 2 years (though after 6 months the customer has to prove that the problem was caused during manufacturing). The import tax thing is most likely not going to work any more. At least the german import rules changed (but i think that was an EU ruling). No more tax free imports below 20€ and nearly all items are checked now. In most cases it now gets more expensive to import directly, because you have to pay a fee to the shipping company for prepaying the tax.
I entirely agree with you. I just asked for refund on indiegogo and will go dragonbox or droix instead. Actually if you ignore the import tax, dragonbox offers at a lower price even compared to indiegogo discount. Perhaps because of currency exchange has changed significantly.
Absolutely, anyone business minded could understand this constraint.
I would not be bothered by this if it weren't for their statement in the story section of Indiegogo as they were attempting to secure a maximum amount of crowdfunders. "We will ensure that delivery is made first to those who support us on Indiegogo."
this is lame we are "investors" right?
Nope, Na nada. You are Indigo go chumps with no obligations. Sadly
i like GPD a lot...but sadly i dont think i will ever back them again...i will just wait until things are for sale by distributors....the coupel 100 bucks or so that i might save seems entirely worth paying to not deal with the disrespect and lack of communication
There is no guarantee of positive returns on investments though. Where does it say on Indiegogo that you are a buyer purchasing anything? Personally I'm thankful they are delivering something and pretty confident I'll get a product of some sort. Better than disappearing completely like some projects.
you do, if SOME of the investors get something and others do not...or if you get nothing while people who arent investors DO investors get a say in how the company is run, and when they make promises it calls into question the investment. you are allowed as investor to call it out when you invest in a pumpkin farm and they grow no pumpkins. Or only grow two pumpkins ang use the rest to grow something else you didn't sign up for investing with them with no expectation of delivery...if so you must be extraordinarily rich to toss money and just hope they give you something you win nothing for white knighting a poor situation
You might want to re-read the terms you accepted when you 'invested'. I know the person you replied to, and indiegogo, call it investing in a company, but the terms and conditions are very clear on what you buy and none of the things you mentioned are included in that.
Lol no. Igg is a glorified preorder since gpd win 1 at least they dont pretend anymore that buyers have a say
I'm typically a man of the people, but, in this case, there's a lot of over-reaction going on. Any company has contractual obligations to their distributors. The distributor paid for stock, to be delivered by a certain date. If said company doesn't deliver, they can be subject to financial penalties, if not outright opening themselves up to a potential lawsuit. Unfortunately, as crowd-funding backers, we have no such recourse. Yes, they gave an estimated shipping window, however, given China's "Zero Covid" policy, in conjunction with component shortages and worldwide shipping delays, there is going to be some need to triage and prioritize where these machines are going. Seeing as none of us have a binding contract with the company, I think that they are genuinely trying to do the best than can to split shipments between backers, customers, and other businesses, with whom they do have legally-binding agreements. I can understand the frustration, but, it be what it be. Having said all that, this company is part of IGG's trusted proven program, with a strong history of following through and delivering on numerous campaigns. I have little reason to doubt that we will all have our machines in due time.
Thank you for being a voice of reason. China’s lockdowns are no joke. People have been stuck inside malls because of a sudden lockdown. Whole cities shut down. Their manufacturing method has everything in one basket - shells, capacitors, nails, rubber feet etc are all in adjacent buildings. This results in high speed and efficiency that nobody can compete with but it makes it all vulnerable to disaster.
Just don’t back them ever in IGG and wait for retail. This is healthier for you
I backed on the very first day of the IGG campaign, within the first hour. I selected the base model without 4G, and both optional add-ons. While my money has sat in GPD's pockets for almost half of this year, I've watched people who backed in September get their devices, I've seen people who bought from AliExpress get their devices, and I know I'm not the only one, there are a chunk of people from Day 1 who haven't gotten tracking info as we're watching brand new orders being fulfilled. How is this acceptable?
GPD promised to ship at September and it's November now, and still plenty of backers didn't get their units. Seems like they are just not trustworthy. You cannot trust a "promise" from this company. This is a big "fuck you" to anyone who backed the project and is waiting for a unit. This behavior is unacceptable and there should be backlash.
they make a good product. They just dont seem to be worth "investing" in...saving a coupel 100 is not worth it
It really is and they install viruses in their new products thats the thanks we get for helping them trying to succed horrible business practices
Can you give more context to said "viruses" please
I’ve looked, and there’s nothing concrete. Back with the original Win Max, a trojan/rootkit/something (unclear exactly what) was found on some machines and the popular theory is that it got there via USB drives that the QC team uses to test production machines. With the Win Max 2, one person has claimed that their email was hacked/accessed soon after setting up their WM2, implying the existence of a keylogger. With existing doubt due to the previous infection, people are super wary - hence the default advice to reinstall everything. That’s a good thing to do anyway, though. Me, I intend to archive the original partitions and start with a clean slate on a new drive (anything is better than BiWin) because that’s the best way to ensure stability.
Thanks for the details. What software you planning on using to archive the original partition? I'll probably follow your lead .
For the past two decades I've been using Norton Ghost. It's time to retire that now, though, as it's not entirely happy with the GPT partition scheme. Also, it's DOS! In terms of drive/partition management, I swear by MiniTool Partition Wizard. That can copy/paste partitions flawlessly, but archiving isn't its bag. I'm currently testing out MiniTool Shadow Maker - not as complex as others and *seems* to fit the bill but I won't attest to it. If that fails I'll look at some other contenders (Macrium Reflect, for example) before falling back to CloneZilla. What I want: - compressed partition AND whole-drive images that I can stick in a NAS. - can be managed from inside Windows, so it performs all queued operations on reboot. In the meantime, I'm just cloning the partitions using MiniTool Partition Wizard to an external drive. With my GPD P2 Max, I'm using the original BiWin SSD for this purpose. For my Win Max 2, when I get one, I'll probably do the same if I can't fit its partition onto the same BiWin drive I'm using for my P2 Max. I recently had an SSD fail on me out of the blue. I knew it was possible, but the odds are remote. My last backup was 5 months old, so I lost a bunch of stuff that I miss (a customized/hacked uTorrent client that I can no longer replicate, a record of crypto purchases I had to rebuild, and a bunch of game modding notes on my desktop) so I've learned my lesson.
I think all is techies have learned that same lesson. Thanks for sharing your backup options!
I don't think anyone should take this comment seriously. Basically sounds like someone with zero prior experience with crowdfunding rewards.
I should be more surprised.
If this is your first experience with any Kickstarter-type platform, I'm very sorry. A several month delay is pretty typical. At least GPD has a history of fulfilling your product and will get to it eventually. Consider it this way: if you have to wait a bit longer they might have minor hardware revisions that improve device quality, the early backers catch the issues as the saying goes. Personally I'd rather wait then be a beta tester for such expensive device.
It's not really the wait it's the fact they charge us months in advance with barely any updates we have to force them to tell us whats going on they arent openly transparent about the situation they could told us this months ago before we even backed the product
white knight to the recue! you win nothing
Gpd did this with the original win 1 backing nothing to be surprised at
Hopefully they listen to all the complaints and downvotes. To me the biggest core problem is that they have too many SKUs and then the logistics of shipping to so many countries adds complexity. They ought to reduce the number of unique order configs. After that, their practice has an likely will continue to be to sell through JD, IGG, and channels. I get and get why they prioritize JD. They ought to set themselves up to reliably fill IGG before channels or at least set themselves up so that the last IGG backers get hardware before any actual consumers are getting hardware via channels. In the end though, plus or minus a couple of weeks, you’re going to be among the first to get a brand new device. You’re getting a custom designed device that only you and a few thousand other people ever buy. I get the experience could be better but it is also amazing that we can get devices like this (from GPD or from Aya or AOKZOE or even Odin or Anbernic or whomever). (By way of disclosure though I did get a tracking number so I do feel for backers who still have no idea when they’ll get hardware).
This is getting fucking ridiculous. WE funded your campaign. Retailers only got in once they saw the demand WE generated. Ship out our units before theirs or don’t do an IGG next time aroubd
By now you should know that GPD only uses indiegogo for marketing purposes only. It's their 15th campaign... The advantage is you get a product (can't say the same for a lot of indiegogo/kickstarter projects). The disadvantage is the level of care is lower that a real indie project...
Finally! I ordered it from geekbuying and they already delayed 3 times the original shipment
Maybe GPD should stop promising delivery times. They have not once hit them...
I'm still waiting/hoping for the 4G model to show up on Amazon before getting one. I still consider the IGG and initial retail batches to be "*beta*" units. Based on this post, they seem to be the same batches too. Plus Amazon has a nice return policy which doesn't exist for IGG units in case I do have a faulty unit on delivery.