Well, I have also joined the refund ranks. Like it has been said many times before, the problem has not been fully the delays and waiting. And besides, ease of manufacturing and the aggressive Q3 estimate was one of the primary selling points for a lot of people. Like others have said, the issue was saying that silence = no problems, only to be told on the month the boards were projected to be shipped that production hadn't even started. This was accompanied by a new Q4 'estimate', in order to be 'sure it would be delivered on time'.
2 more months passed, only for it to be announced that the status had not changed and that production hadn't even started. The main obstacle was still the same: plastik didn’t know how to store the keyboards. I understand that the logistics of running a GB are incredibly complicated, but something like this should have been thought out before the GB was run, or at least in the beginning stages post-payments. Not 2 months after boards were expected to be shipped. We all know that this year has been a **** show, and if plastik cited delays due to corona nobody would bat an eye. But, he explicitly stated that this had nothing to do with covid.
As far as the participants were concerned, until the most recent December update the expected shipping was still supposed to be Q4. Of course, most of us saw that this was totally unrealistic. Unsurprisingly, the boards are now expected to be produced by February. With QC and packaging, who knows when they will eventually be shipped - most likely not before April 2021. I have been confused by these aggressive timelines that plastik has set for himself. First 4 months for Q3 and then 3 months for Q4. Surely with his previous GB (which lasted around a year), he must have known that these were not tenable. Many of us have explained that, yes, the delays suck but are understandable. What is frustrating are unrealistically aggressive timelines, with communication gaps, only to be told right before the 'deadline' that no progress has been made and that there will be further delays. This is the process which many have said eroded participant's trust. If in the first delay update he had said that he simply didn't know when boards would be shipped, or even said Q2 2021, most of us would probably understand and be okay with it.
Many people have justifiably complained, and some have done it overtly destructive and negative ways. But instead of recognizing how participants have felt throughout this process, plastik doubled down and increasingly reacted with his own hostility. This included cancelling somebody's order, not being straight-forward about the reasons, and pretending that he would fix the 'mistake'. Only to never do so. I understand where his reaction comes from, but there were many other ways of going about this in a less passive-aggressive manner. Subsequent actions and updates have shown a lack of reflexivity and absolving of guilt on plastik's part. There is a shifting of blame onto participants, without acknowledging how he has contributed to the current dynamic.
Amidst all of this I am grateful to have been given a refund, which is not something Plastik needed to grant. It also seems that there are many participants that are quite happy with how things are progressing. I personally am happy to cut my losses and move on to other pastures. It does seem that with production starting at least there is movement, and there is now a new phase with this GB. I hope plastik's new tactic of minimized updates works out for him, and wish everybody well in the rest of this GB.
