Tuesday January 29, 2008 Disappointed In The OLPC So Far
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This is going to sound like one of those Amazon reviewers that gives a product a one star rating because they haven't received their order yet. |
At the end of last year, we went to the One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One! site and ordered an XO for Duncan (and presumably some child in a third world country would get another one given to them). At the time we placed the order, we were told that we would be getting it in January.
Last week, as their Track your order web site was a tad vague in its message, I phoned up the number given, and waited 45 minutes on hold, to speak to somebody. She assured me that she had just put my order on high priority. I asked her when she thought it might ship and she said she had just overheard her supervisor saying that there should be a shipment within a week.
I thanked her and hung up. Now, a week later, I went to check the status again. I see that it now says:
Your donation is ready to be shipped and is in our shipping queue. Unfortunately, we are awaiting new laptop inventory to fulfill your donation. We expect additional inventory to reach our warehouse from the last week in February through the end of March, and we intend to ship all remaining laptops to donors at that time. We will keep you posted as shipments are scheduled, and will send you an email when your laptop ships, with your tracking number.
I see that the phone number is gone from the web site too. This is very disappointing. It's hard to tell a nine year old child that they will have to wait at least another month.
I suppose it could have been worst. I could have been one of those people that ordered an Amazon Kindle just before Christmas and found that the product was:
Temporarily out of stock. Order now and we'll deliver when available.
I see that over a month later it's still the same.
Thanks for reading this far. Venting is cathartic.
( Jan 29 2008, 04:37:16 PM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [9]
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I am in the same boat. Being patient coz its a good cause but they are now over a month behind...and counting...
Posted by Ashesh Badani on January 29, 2008 at 05:41 PM PST #
Oh, well. Maybe you'll get a newer revision of the machine, with less bug, more capabilities and improved software. Maybe.
Posted by Myzelf_78 on January 29, 2008 at 05:48 PM PST #
You see this article?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141790/article.html
Posted by joanie on January 29, 2008 at 06:06 PM PST #
Interesting. Thanks. No I hadn't seen that article
but it bears out everything I've experienced.
Oh well, maybe crisis management will kick in.
Maybe somebody with more influence than us
petty consumers will force something good to happen.
Maybe I'll just go out an buy an Asus Eee and let
Duncan play with that...
Posted by Rich Burridge on January 29, 2008 at 06:36 PM PST #
Ironically (or coincidentally):
http://www.digitimes.com/bits_chips/a20080128PD200.html
Whatever it is, it seems to be catching. At least that delay is in terms of weeks rather than months....
I've been considering an Eee PC as I could use a purse-sized computer (hey, these things are important! ;-) ), and the price is right.
Posted by joanie on January 29, 2008 at 07:37 PM PST #
Sadly that you have experience like this. It seems that distribution has been plagued by overdemand, manufacturers weren't ready for this; also lot of XOs seems to be stolen during distribution at FedEx (check out formum.laptop.org and OLPC News forum), lot of misdeliveries happened (box dropped few hundred meters from address, etc.), etc.
Also add confusion from fact that OLPC wasn't simply ready for this mess, as they trusted distributors (in any such situation you need to keep backup plan in reserve), and of course unmanaged communication.
However, I hope they will deal with this, because I like project and I don't want to go down in flames just because they wanted to give people something new.
Posted by Peteris Krisjanis on January 30, 2008 at 12:50 AM PST #
We have one waiting on back order as well. Since the real purpose was for the child elsewhere that NEEDS it, and we got more gadgets than we have time to play, we can patiently wait.
Posted by Maxo on January 30, 2008 at 06:32 AM PST #
At least you were allowed to be part of the Give One Get One program, to my knowledge us Europeans were completely excluded and the OLPC Foundation have indicated a lack of intention to to such program again.
Posted by Jon Pritchard on January 30, 2008 at 09:27 AM PST #
I think the success of the give one get one was a more than they thought. The overburden of having to ship individual units by the thousands to individual residences is killing their ability to meet demand.
It is my guess that a program like this will not be reinstated until they are able to step up production and feel confident they can actually ship the laptops to the donors.
Posted by Maxo on January 30, 2008 at 05:37 PM PST #