Please send Kickstarter Backers their base stations?

Pimax 8K Series
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I am the one who doesn’t understand. You are against a company being honest, and for a company taking peoples money by lying about what, when, and how they are going to deliver something. Delays are fine, expected even, with Kickstarters. But, once you are able to fulfill something you promised, you should do it, don’t you think?

There is a difference between, we can’t send this to you, because we don’t have it, to, we do have it, but we are going to delay sending it to you, like we promised, because it suits Pimax, even if it goes against what we promised you, which is to send it while it comes in…

In March PimaxUSA has announced in an ITW with Sebastian from MRTV the issue with the v2 LH supply was now resolved, with the LH being produced in large quantities and he promised Pimax will very soon be able to ship them to the backers and pre-orders. That soon that they would be available before Pimax is ready with their controller, an PimaxUSA promised an announcement very soon with a solid date when the LH shipments will start.

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Yes, that poll has been deleted unfortunately…

It seems “someone” at Pimax doesn’t want to let backers vote in a poll asking them if they agree to have their LHs delayed even more to have them meet the release of a downgraded version of Pimax controller…

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That is the Chinese censorship :smiley:

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Not exactly. We have always had absolute free speech when we were only discussing with people from China within Pimax, and it is someone from NA who starts forbidding free debates here on some subjects.

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So, I have just spent an our writting a full transcript of what Kevin had said about the lighthouses supply and deliveries back on March 17th in this ITW with Sebastian from MRTV:

Please forgive me if there are some transcript (minor) errors, that’s not my native language and even youtube subtitle had sometime difficulties to follow.

But I guess the global idea about how LHs deliveries (and how it should have been discussed with us) was made very clear by Kevin in this ITW 2 months ago. It is not like I/we would have interpreted things from in between the lines. No, he has made very clear statements showing Pimax would leave us the final word about if LHs should be shipped without waiting the controllers are ready.

Here is the transcript:

Kevin (PimaxUSA):
(March 17th 2019)

"We have other scoop.

Lot of people have been asking about when things are going to be released, some of the accessories and other things.

I can announce that the production on the lighthouses is now begun. There was some shortages on supply and some other things that you got to work through on this kind of things but we do have all that resolved and we are gonna be taking care of the backers and the pre-orders that have lighthouse that are part of it.

The only debate is, and this is something that we might ask people what they want to do, it is very likely the lighthouses will beat the controllers to market.

So, we are running through new versions of the controllers literally every day, they look different than they did even at the CES, but I think the lighthouses are going to beat the controllers to market.

So therefore our debate is right now should we go ahead and deliver the lighthouses, or, or, should we wait ? and ship the lighthouses and the controllers together ?

You know, if there was gonna be say, for example, a month between them and the controllers, would you like to wait a month and get them together or just get them (LHs) right away ?

You know, not right away like we gonna ship next week or anything, but we are close, very close on those. Close as “not in next week or two”, you know, but sometime after that.

I think we are going to make an announcement that will have some good very solid date information on the lighthouses. It won’t be this “maybe, kind of sort of, possibly, at certain date”.

They (LHs) are actually being made, they are actually being built, right now. They are coming off the -insert smart acronym here- line. They are coming off the line, there is some aspects to them as well what you bundle with them, what kind of power supply, different regions have different plugs and different power supplies, and instructions that come with them, but we are doing all that right now, so it gonna get squirted away rather quickly.

We have got a production schedule just like for the headsets, it will be available, moving forward. Backers again first, then pre-orders will get them. We have made arrangements to provide, you know, those, with the backers, the ones that have been planned, those are the ones that are going to get them very rapidly.

But like I say, it comes down to, you know, for a lot of people it may be that they get the lighthouses at their door when they don’t have the controllers in their hands, and then they will have to wait a little bit.

You know, we think about that, but we are where we could break up the deliveries and give them that part. But this is something to talk about and debate about and, you know, if people think that’s the way it has to be then I think we have to agree with the customer, you know.

–skipping some talk about v1/v2 compatibility–

So it is something to debate, maybe we open it up so people can talk about that to us, we have some process for that, or you get them away, but we will have to figure out how this can happen now, now we are at the endgame on that.

But yeah, and then there is of course the controllers and those will be, you know, this is something we are working on everyday and, clearly, our goal is to get that out as soon as possible. We are going to put out some videos showing the functions of them and showing people how they work and what they look like and all of that, but, it’s gonna be, you know, before we start showing under that degree, I don’t want to step on the headlines on those but that’s one of the things we are going to be wanting to talk about very soon.

MRTV: so I think the discussion about if you should bundle them (LHs) with controllers will start in the forum right now, that’s going to be… interesting.

Kevin: Yeah."

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LOL…

Double LOL…

We are already 2 months after that.

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I created a poll asking if backers would like their Lighthouse base stations as they became available, or to wait for them bundled with the controllers.

And Pimax has deleted the post. Why can’t we have a poll asking what backers prefer? It’s what was told to us on the Kickstarter. That we would have a choice.

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I would guess there isn’t too many of us that would prefer getting basestations asap rather then waiting for a complete shipment with the Sense controllers which I assume are going to be much further behind.

IF I had basestations already I would say Pimax could wait on my shipment to save shipping costs because I would have no use for additional basestations. Makes sense right?

At least shipping basestations now would give us (users without anything) the best experience for sims while we wait for the Sense controllers. And you know, less toxicity around the web against Pimax which is always a good thing.

The ball is in their court and whatever happens, happens, at least in my mind.

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Personally I don’t mind waiting, it became clear early on that this whole thing was going to take considerably longer than expected and I accepted that. As long as progress is being made and my money isn’t wasted, I’m fine with delaying my lighthouses to ease the logistical challenges.

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How do you measure the “progress” when Pimax gives nothing but generlizations and snippits of what they know we want to hear in “updates”?..it’s all just blind faith.

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I feel bad for the pre order people. Was unclear to a lot of them that the base stations and controllers would take this long and we still do not have any firm dates. Now with base stations and controllers being available for purchase from valve with delivery dates they must feel burned

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Because with the supply terms and other considerations it’s simply not an option. We did estimate the number of people who wanted to do it with the supplier and provide them with that number. We also dramatically increased that value but shipments below the moq weren’t an option they were willing to offer (even though this would benefit everyone) but it boils down to syncing with the controllers. Even then the number is quite large. But so far more units are already produced within our allotment than is required for the current requirement.

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The poll raised about two days ago showed that 79% of the 34 want base station ASAP.

Then someone deleted it. LOL.

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What does that means? When you have thousands of backers and whatever number of pre-orders how would a Minimum Order be an issue?
Also how do those who have added bases to pledges but not controllers benefit from awaiting controllers not pledged for?

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Because they won’t deliver any number less than the moq as a baseline delivery. FYI the original delay to the base stations had nothing at all to do with Pimax, in fact originally there was no moq at all. When manufacturing began our allotment has been included in that but the first minimum delivery is much larger than you might think.

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So Pimax isn’t responsible for the delay or the appearance of a moq sometime after they made a license agreement with Valve to use lighthouse. This suggests Valve has changed the game. Not a very nice way to treat a customer.

Sounds like another staff position Pimax needs to fill is Contract Lawyer.

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Supplier ran into a series of events that effected the types of deals they could provide as well. I don’t think there is or was any bad intentions. I imagine somebody will write about it someday as it’s an interesting story.

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No doubt a book on the entire project someday would be fascinating.
I look forward to your publishing it

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The thing is, pimax have already taken the money to fulfill these orders, they aren’t shipping the base stations to people who have only ordered base stations because they have other orders for controllers and an MOQ from the supplier on the base stations… But at some point they are going to have to pony up for that MOQ, the fact that some of those base stations will sit in storage for a couple of months is a pretty piss poor excuse to those that ordered bases but no controllers and are only being held up because pimax is holding on to money they’ve already taken instead of ordering the components people have already paid for - the controllers have already been paid for, the base stations to go with those controllers have already been paid for, the base stations on their own have already been paid for by customers, so it really is just Pimax that have made this unilateral decision to not supply parts that have already been paid for.

I didn’t order any bases, but I totally get why people are getting so frustrated that the parts are available and it is just pimax deciding to withold people’s money and goods.

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So Pimax and the Kickstarter are literally in paralysis. What good is it getting the controllers out if you have no base stations to track them?

Just a theory on my part but HTC must also be under the same minimum order quantity clause. I bet Valve are using the moq to restrict HTC supplies while they get the Index out.

What is the Moq? 10k 20k? 50k?

The other thing to mention is the price. Valve sell these Base Stations to third parties for what, $60 each? That’s a lot of money to lose if their are 3000 backers who have orders 2 bases each.

So what are Pimax going to do? What’s the plan?

I bet Pimax are working on an inside out tracking solution to bypass base station supply and offer that as replacement for base stations. But that would mean adding LEDs to the controllers. Just a thought.