I don't have a dog in this fight. But I must say that my opinion of Macrumors as a news site has been seriously damaged. Macrumors, and the author, should be ashamed at presenting this article as news. They are showing extremely poor, actually nonexistent, journalistic standards.
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TextBlade Update: An Inside Look at Production Troubles and New Info on Shipping Estimates
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I agree with that. But, I want to say I'm impressed with MacRumors. No other site has run a story on this with even a tenth of the information. Maybe the story seems slanted in Waytools' favor, but perhaps that is the price of getting an interview. Either way, good job MacRumors - nobody else got this story.
Well folks, we're into August. No TextBlade and not a whisper from WayTools. A more forward-thinking poster would have specified August 2015, because who know when this mess will end.
I haven't cancelled my order because, well, I haven't. Don't feel the loss of $100 at this point and I have a morbid curiosity about how this plays out. Plus I still have skin in the game.
But this is the second time I've been burned by a Kickstarter gadget - the first was the horrendous launch of the horrendously overpriced horrendous Mod-3 Radius case (just don't) - and I'm done. Kickstarter is, by and large, a vehicle for people who don't really know what they're doing to take just enough money to have lots of people irritated that they don't really know what they're doing. Yeah, caveat emptor, yadda yadda yadda. It's still a business they're supposed to be running, not a science lab sinkhole. Good communication and good faith still apply.
I haven't cancelled my order because, well, I haven't. Don't feel the loss of $100 at this point and I have a morbid curiosity about how this plays out. Plus I still have skin in the game.
But this is the second time I've been burned by a Kickstarter gadget - the first was the horrendous launch of the horrendously overpriced horrendous Mod-3 Radius case (just don't) - and I'm done. Kickstarter is, by and large, a vehicle for people who don't really know what they're doing to take just enough money to have lots of people irritated that they don't really know what they're doing. Yeah, caveat emptor, yadda yadda yadda. It's still a business they're supposed to be running, not a science lab sinkhole. Good communication and good faith still apply.
First off this has never been a kickstarter!
Which makes the delay all the more annoying.
But if you check their site and read their forums you'll will have some insight into what's going - albeit I concur that it's really not optimal, really really not.
On the flip side it really seems they will "soon" start pushing them out the door, fingers crossed - as I really want to try this gadget
I'm reading a lot of complaints about Kickstarter, and I agree with them. However, there is one major difference between Kickstarter and this WayTools company. WayTools has to refund your money because it's a pre-order of a product. Kickstarter makes it clear that you are "investing in a startup" and that you could end up empty-handed due to a variety of factors.
There is a reason that laws exist saying you must have at least a million dollars to invest in startup companies. Kickstarter gets around these rules, but to the detriment of many people who lost money they probably couldn't afford to lose.
There is a reason that laws exist saying you must have at least a million dollars to invest in startup companies. Kickstarter gets around these rules, but to the detriment of many people who lost money they probably couldn't afford to lose.
First of all, WayTools clearly spent nearly all their PR money on the website, not expecting such issues. It is clear they have been weak at keeping their customers informed of the months of delays. I was on the edge of telling them to cancel my order recently until I saw some positive changes on the status page and this article. If WayTools emailed their customers Jul 1st or earlier instead of needing to dig on their website for info, it would've looked better on them.
I worked in quality assurance for a couple years as a stop-gap job. This was also a very young startup with much to learn. Granted, they do autonomous robots, but hardware and software are always a work-in-progress. Based on that past experience, WayTools biggest mistake was trying to go into mass production way too early. Every week at my past job consisted of testing experimental software and hardware, which did not always work properly or as expected. I think the company where I used to work would have had the EXACT production problems if they took pre-orders and began mass production like WayTools. Instead, I witnessed an unofficial policy of increasing production overtime, while they built the customer base. There was even a kind of early adopter program for the earliest customers for beta testing purposes. It is not clear if WayTools did anything like that, please correct, but most hardware/software companies have beta testing programs like that. That, too, may have helped resolve WayTools production problems before they caused months of delays.
If we're really lucky, all this stumbling and bumbling WayTools went through will lead to an amazing product that reminds me of the 22nd century tech seen in Star Trek Enterprise.
I worked in quality assurance for a couple years as a stop-gap job. This was also a very young startup with much to learn. Granted, they do autonomous robots, but hardware and software are always a work-in-progress. Based on that past experience, WayTools biggest mistake was trying to go into mass production way too early. Every week at my past job consisted of testing experimental software and hardware, which did not always work properly or as expected. I think the company where I used to work would have had the EXACT production problems if they took pre-orders and began mass production like WayTools. Instead, I witnessed an unofficial policy of increasing production overtime, while they built the customer base. There was even a kind of early adopter program for the earliest customers for beta testing purposes. It is not clear if WayTools did anything like that, please correct, but most hardware/software companies have beta testing programs like that. That, too, may have helped resolve WayTools production problems before they caused months of delays.
If we're really lucky, all this stumbling and bumbling WayTools went through will lead to an amazing product that reminds me of the 22nd century tech seen in Star Trek Enterprise.
First off this has never been a kickstarter!
Which makes the delay all the more annoying.
But if you check their site and read their forums you'll will have some insight into what's going - albeit I concur that it's really not optimal, really really not.
On the flip side it really seems they will "soon" start pushing them out the door, fingers crossed - as I really want to try this gadget
LOL yeah pretty funny how he's hating on Kickstarter big time.
Funny thing is, I ordered my Pebble Time on Kickstarter AFTER this whole Waytools thing and it's sitting on my wrist right now.
IMO this whole thing is a massive fail and I'm glad I didn't get involved. Didn't see much point in the product anyway.
So far, the Star Trek technology it's closest to copying is the holodeck... the product is still a mirage.
Okay true. It just feels like that because I never considered demanding a refund. So for me it doesn't really change anything. It's a chaotic mess of broken promises.
Not that funny. Ask the thousands of "investors" who got burned. And some a campaigners do put "pre-order" on the button. Cool that you got your Pebble thing.
LOL dude... I see what you're saying, but this has nothing to do with kickstarter. Wrong thread!
Now into August. I'd like to see a follow up by the author, since she had the ear of the CEO for this story.
As someone posted, this is not a kickstarter program,and their are laws in place which protect the consumer. The first step would be to go here: https://oag.ca.gov/consumers, California Attorney Generals website.
As someone posted, this is not a kickstarter program,and their are laws in place which protect the consumer. The first step would be to go here: https://oag.ca.gov/consumers, California Attorney Generals website.
Agreed... the author has been silent ever since and sounded a lot like a mouthpiece for the CEO in the first instance.
Who's to say they're not burning all the money in an ill-fated attempt to save some face? If so, maybe they should be stopped before it's all gone?
At best it's a shonky pre-order being run as a kickstarter. At worst, it's a company about to go bust that's burning everybody's cash into the ground because they refuse to admit failure.
The whole 'this is only happening because we are a high quality company' line was BS from the start. If they had amazing quality standards then they wouldn't have stuffed up in the first place! Their complete lack of insight and inability to fix things within a reasonable time shows how amateur the mob are.
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"There was nothing wrong with the feel of the old TextBlade, but the version with the LCP butterfly was simply better - more satisfying to press."
So they were trying to fix a problem that did not exist and created a mountain of problems for themselves while we were sold on the old TextBlade concept itself.. Someone there does not know how to create business opportunity and build progressively better products. Could the LCP butterfly be carried forward as a v2 design instead?
Ordered TextBlade in March... Still waiting..
I just canceled my Mar. 7 order for a Textblade. From time to time I would check in on their forum and wonder what they were up to. I'm now convinced that it is a complete scam. The "hands-on" event that was sold as proof of existence (via video) was, I'm pretty sure, completely bogus. Are any of the identified people known to anyone? One "expert" who was purportedly there announced on Twitter that he thought the Textblade was just terrific has tweeted 78 times since 2009. A real person? Hard to believe. Even the note confirming my refund was beyond strange:
"We've already refunded $99 to your Amex ... . Your refund was immediately sent via our card processor (Authorize.net). Your card company controls the funds now, and usually takes about 7 days to show this on your credit card statement.
"Even before they post it online, your card company can verify the $99 credit by phone. If you need that, call the 800 number on the back of the card, and they can usually confirm it within 24 hours.
"You should be all set now. Need further help? Ask WayTools"
Who confirms refunds like that? I will be very pleased and surprised to see my $99. Something fishy here.
"We've already refunded $99 to your Amex ... . Your refund was immediately sent via our card processor (Authorize.net). Your card company controls the funds now, and usually takes about 7 days to show this on your credit card statement.
"Even before they post it online, your card company can verify the $99 credit by phone. If you need that, call the 800 number on the back of the card, and they can usually confirm it within 24 hours.
"You should be all set now. Need further help? Ask WayTools"
Who confirms refunds like that? I will be very pleased and surprised to see my $99. Something fishy here.
Companies who either have had a lot of cancellations, or expect they might. I think companies that end up in similar long-delay cycles have had trouble with upset customers asking for a refund, and then, say, filing a BBB or legal complaint, when they don't see their refund after the first hour. Which is somewhat understandable for folks who have waited a long time and are really upset by the time they get around to canceling, but it also creates a lot of hassle for the company, who now has to devote additional resources to answering those complaints.
I watched similar stuff go on with the Nomad Apple Watch Stand, seeing angry folks waiting for months after the original ship date, standing around discussing their favorite brands of torches and pitchforks. The stands all eventually shipped (oh, from Hong Kong to the USA by way of Sweden, no less), and are quite nice. But the company fielded a lot of angry complaints and cancellations along the way. And were similarly uncommunicative, BTW.
The Nomad stand was also a thing done by smart enthusiastic people who didn't have enough experience with getting overseas factories to produce parts really 100% to their specifications (oh, hey, fun fact, guess what Tim Cook is REALLY good at?).
I signed up for the TextBlade a long time ago. I'm not holding my breath until it arrives. I figure I'll wait to see how it plays out.
Well it is over a month later, no real progress, a vague update on "firmware" issues and a lot more angry customers. At what point do we as early adopters become investors in a "keyboard startup"? I think given $, time and patience spent we should get some share of the company.....I will continue to wait but as they say on GoT - "Words are Wind."
If the waytools team was perpetrating a fraud they would be doing things exactly the way they're doing things. Nothing rings quite true, does it? From the doubletalk on their blog, to the strange video they put out, to their unwarranted hostility to customer complaints, to their strangely incomplete website and so on. They seem to be playing for time; something is rotten. Things aren't always what they seem, but they usually are.
Yes, not saying it's definitely a 'fraud' but I agree. IMO they genuinely stuffed up by doing their own 'kickstarter' (in the form of a pre-order) and lacked the skills to deliver it. They're now (shonkily) trying to cut their losses.
I blame MR for a lot of this because they used their blog to promote the product (although they'll say 'nah they don't sponsor the ads'... big deal, you guys get sales revenue for referring customers and probably referred most of their customers... were it not for you, nobody would have known about this).
MR is also yet to clarify how they got exclusive access, or why they wrote an article that painted the company in such glowing colours.
It isn't a scam.
They are doing the right thing by not shipping it before it is completely ready. That would sink them as a company.
I totally agree, though, that they should be much, much better at communications. I can find out some things by combing through the forums, but give me a break! Just post some clear, understandable updates. Or, better yet, send out update emails to the pre-orders.
If they didn't have a great product, I'd have jumped ship long ago.
They are doing the right thing by not shipping it before it is completely ready. That would sink them as a company.
I totally agree, though, that they should be much, much better at communications. I can find out some things by combing through the forums, but give me a break! Just post some clear, understandable updates. Or, better yet, send out update emails to the pre-orders.
If they didn't have a great product, I'd have jumped ship long ago.
You may well be right, but I’m a doubter. Who are the principals? Who are the investors? What’s their history? The company claims to have donated $1 million to elementary schools – name one. The “hands-on” video event – why wasn’t anybody identified? All those out-of-the-blue promises of additional benefits for early adopters – umm, we’d rather just have the keyboard, thanks. The hostile and unwarranted responses to customer complaints – that’s just not the way real companies respond. It's not amateurish, it's crazy. Their Web site– some good pages coupled with very odd and clunky forms. Also, never updated. The supposedly real-time typing video in the "Products" section – it sure looks fake to me. You can’t pause it or examine it closely. $99 says it’s animation. Finally, I cancelled my order a while ago and still haven’t received my refund. If it isn’t a scam I’ll be surprised. Still, the MR reporter actually used the product, right? So you may be right.
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I hope you are wrong, but that certainly doesn't make you wrong. I have my suspicions as well, which is why I check into them from time to time (like now).
I don't think they've donated anything to schools yet, because they haven't yet shipped a product.
It is too elaborate (in my view) to be a hoax. I think they've made some mistakes, and I suspect that at least a few of them are in sheer panic mode by now, but that doesn't mean an intent to defraud.
The web site is absolutely horrible. No other way to describe it.
And their last update? Said that another big update was coming Tuesday, so they are buying a little more time.
We will see come Tuesday. Or perhaps we won't.
I may have spoken too soon -- I just received my $99 refund, in full. I think I'll wait a while before I withdraw all my comments, though. I don't want to be an ungracious winner, I still am not at all sure about this company. But I did get my money back after 10 days, I'll give them that.
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