November 1 and we got a new update! As usual, I’m sadly not part of the team and don’t have any additional information, but I’ll include my own thoughts and opinions. This update comes via the Kickstarter.
They apologize for the inconsistent communication and thank those who repost and share their updates on the forum. To the team: you’re welcome! If you guys ever need a social media/community manager person, hit me up!
Shipping issues popped up late last month and early this month, which delayed testing. Since then, Quickstart Guide design has been finalized and patching cheatsheeets were designed. These should be published to the MicroRack website soon (ish). Before anyone tries, the Kickstarter update does have a picture of these and there’s a QR code, but the code is so mangled that it’s impossible to determine where it goes.
Manual tests were completed and a few issues were discovered:
The button orientation on the compressor was wrong
The speaker cable for the 3.5mm output module was too short, so replacements were ordered
on one of the keyboards, there was an accidental solder placement
They’re currently re-sourcing breadboards since the previous supplier had about 1/3 the required amount on hand. A few minor tweaks were needed, but everything looks, feels, and plays better than previous iterations.
A set of modules was sent to Levan Shanshiashvili (plantlovers.ge) and his son for testing in a live setting and it was well received.
Nearly 20% of kickstarter rewards haven’t been claimed yet and this negatively impacts the team’s budget for actually sending the kits. It shouldn’t impact things much. What will, however, are VAT and Tariffs. Once things are rounded up, they’ll be reaching out to the community to see how everyone wants to proceed.
Middle to end of this month, they’re planning on final automated QA inspection.
They should be keeping us updated as information regarding logistics becomes available, hopefully sometime this week.
My thoughts on the tariff issue particularly - they set a price, we agreed on that price (which if you are like me, and added something on top of your kickstarter order, includes 45$ of shipping cost, which I consider a bit high) and then we paid the total, in good faith (and good while ago, at that). That's a done deal, and we have been waiting patiently for months since then. We have been very cool and quite understanding about the delays and about the lack of communication between us and the people who have already accepted our payments. The seller now adding additional cost to the order is not ok- it's bad business. The total is the total and having already paid that total, it's not acceptable for that deal to change. The next thing that needs to happen is for us to receive our orders, the orders which we paid for and have been waiting for.
We paid long before any of this tariff shenanigans was happening, I get that. But as far as I am concerned, the seller should 'charge it to the game', consider it part of the cost of doing business, and take it out of the already somewhat high shipping costs we have already paid. That or find some way to ship from someplace other than China. Honestly, I don't think they should even have brought it up, its like a big red flag.
Think about it - you go to the store and buy a loaf of bread, let's say it's 5 dollars, you pay for it and go on your way. The next time you go back to the store, they hand you an invoice for $2.50, for the bread you bought last week....? Who would accept this? What kind of business would embrace such a tactic?
@SKYNET_23 – I can get where you’re coming from. The shipping was pretty rough, and we did lock in early on. I get that. The issue isn’t where it’s shipping from; it’s where it’s manufactured. Initially it was based on where it was shipped from. It’s made worse by the fact that, as they mentioned, a significant portion of people aren’t claiming their order, which is preventing some payment, thus increasing the per-order burden.
Again, not only see where you’re coming from, but am in the same boat and agree with you. My concern is that issues like this where the company just sucks it up collapses under the combined burden of all of the orders because of things outside of their control. Yeah, it’ll be cool to get our systems, but if that costs them the business, means that module availability dives.
Honestly, a micro-loan type thing… maybe offering incentives to the community to contribute to that loan would help. It’s hard to know without having an actual number.
@oracledude – Yeah. I imagine that that’s placeholder images, not a finalized draft. That said, I hope they see this and double-check. If it’s an online thing, like a website or printable document, they can edit it. If it’s an image, that’ll be a bit more work.
I’ve edited this post because I felt a bit harsh after considering how insane shipping and tariffs are right now.
But I’m still curious, with the issues they found, maybe I’m not understanding how the manufacturing process works which, to be clear, is definitely entirely possible, but um… how are they being assembled?
If they were supposed to be shipped assembled and it’s a small test batch, it’s surprising that those issues wouldn’t have been noticed, in which case I’d be skeptical to trust the supplier. But on the other hand, if MR is doing the assembly themselves (which is what it would seem like as they said “during assembly” regarding the speaker cable issue, not to mention the DIY kits I didn’t think would even be assembled to begin with), then solder placement and button orientation would be part of the assembly process, right? What would they be assembling if not soldering components to the boards? It’s a bit confusing, but maybe I missed something.
If I absolutely MUST pay a fee for tariffs upon import, but I know FOR SURE I’ll be getting a package (like there’s a tracking number), then I honestly will likely go ahead and pay it. But otherwise I’d rather donate or something AFTER they’re shipped if they need to recoup costs.
From what I’ve been able to gather, they’re being assembled by a manufacturing facility in Southern China.
They’re being shipped assembled and yeah, I probably would have tried to source a different manufacturer after the second build error.
They went to China to handle certain things themselves and test builds were sent back to Georgia. It’s automated assembly in China, so the issue of the button orientation is as much of an issue as a rotation command. The solder on the key was more of a build error and seems to have been a one-off. They likely got sent these modules as “pre-production samples” for testing before going full-run.
I don’t understand how “20% of people haven’t claimed their orders” effects their cash flow. These 20% pledged on the Kickstarter right? MR got the money from the Kickstarter right? Did they have some projection based on their upselling and shipping cost gauging that predicted they would have more income?
Two quotes from the actual article may shed some light on that part:
Surprisingly, almost 20% of Kickstarter rewards haven’t been claimed yet.
We are preparing yet another reminder letter, but because delivery payments are collected during claim confirmation, that means we’ve gathered less than planned for the first shipping wave which increases our overall expenses.
This doesn’t stop us at all, but it changes how we budget and sequence the shipments.
and
While full production is in progress, we started integration with our fulfillment partner NextSmartShip — one of the few services with warehouses in China, the US, and EU.
I don’t know the specifics, but I’d bet that it impacts the size/number of bins in distribution warehouses and where distribution is going to be coming from, which impacts their cost to ship to distribution.
