A Timeline of the Panc40 R2 Group Buy
January 4th, 2021Group buy closes officially.
Even now, the estimated shipping date is advertised as
Q2 2021. It is now Q2 2022.
January 5th, 2021The first update email goes out to group buy participants. Alex claims that the orders should be in the manufacturers' queue before Chinese New Year starts (February 12th, 2021). He also says that updates will be given on Geekhack and email, and he will be available on Discord.
January 22nd, 2021On Geekhack, Alex says that everything has been ordered and is either actively shipping to him or being worked on. So nothing should be pending a manufacturer starting work on it.
April 13th, 2021Alex sends out email update #02 to GB participants. Apparently we're waiting on a production sample to ship to him before starting machining of the full group buy order. He links to the Geekhack picture showing plates and brass midlayers.
This will be the last time Alex updates the Geekhack GB thread.
May 22nd, 2021Alex says we're looking at shipping to buyers around
June 14th - 28th.
July 1st - 7th, 2021Apparently MCU shortages have pushed shipping back to
end of July. On Discord, he says that the issue is now resolved, but it's caused delay. To my knowledge, this is the first time he's said anything about PCBs being stuck in manufacturing.
August 2nd, 2021Alex says something abourt working hard to finish PCBs quickly. Not sure if this means that he ordered them without components pre-soldered or what, this is the first time any "work" on the PCBs has been mentioned. No pictures of the PCBs are shown anywhere.
September 13th, 2021Alex has been absolutely absent on all platforms for the last five weeks. This is one of the weirdest, most bizarre, incomprehensible GB updates I've ever received in my life. For some reason, all participants are cc'd instead of bcc'd. Here's the email sent out, in full:
I don't know where to begin with this. The fact that this is the first anyone's heard about this, the fact that he allegedly made drastic changes to the GB without informing its participants... there are a litany of questionable ethical business decisions on display here. And finally, he says that we should all receive our orders on
October 14th. Also
this is the last time he posts at all in the 40% server.
October 19th, 2021October 14th, the promised shipping date, comes and goes with no news on any platform. On October 19th, an email goes out to GB participants that QC is taking longer than expected, and the new shipping date is
November 2nd. No pictures or proof have been shared to demonstrate that any of this is true.
November 6th - 17th 2021This update is deja vu from the previous month. Shipping deadline comes and goes with no messages, a few days later we're told QC and packing are taking longer than expected. We will get an update on Nov. 14th and expect shipping around
December 16th.
The update on the 14th comes in on the 17th and once again blames QC with absolutely no additional pictures or information.
Requests for pictures go ignored.
December 28th - 31st, 2021Mid-December passes with no shipping, no updates from Alex. Yet again, on the 28th he blames QC again and says shipping will happen
end of January to beginning of February. At this point QC for a ~20 board GB has taken two months and is anticipated to take 1-2 more months.
On December 31st, after multiple participants request refunds or else they will be calling their banks for chargebacks, he finally shares pictures. He ignores the requests to include timestamps in them. You can see those pictures
here.
February 22nd, 2022Of course, beginning of February passes with no news, no shipping. People start discussing chargebacks in Discord again, I believe a few have started the process. Alex sends out an email very specifically saying that everything is ready to go and we will have tracking by 9:00 PM on February 23rd.
From this point, some people get tracking numbers, but not everyone. Those that did receive tracking numbers either see that the tracking number is invalid or that the item is in pre-transit. Nobody has seen any of the boards, not a single one has shipped. It's now been over a month since that last communication from Alex, almost a year since the initially promised GB fulfillment date.
He is no longer responding to support emails or Discord messages from anyone involved with the group buy. I have collaborated with Alex before, he was a well-known and well-trusted member of our community, and a vendor nonetheless.
The amount of disrespect and dishonesty shown towards Panc40 group buy participants is honestly abhorrent. Alex, if you're reading this, ship us our boards or refund us if you can. If neither of those things are possible, at least have the decency to be honest for once with us group buy participants and tell us the truth about what has happened with this group buy.
April 11th, 2022The first communication from Alex since the shipping labels were generated. To my knowledge he still has not responded to any DMs regarding address changes or anything else (Alex, if you're reading this, please don't send my board to my old address). Thankfully this update is substantial.
Videos:
1 2While I'm grateful to hear from Alex and get proof with pictures and videos, it doesn't diminish the terrible communication and inconsistent updates we've endured. Hopefully this board's saga will come to and end soon.
June 24th, 2022Absolute radio silence from Alex. Any attempts at communication have been met with silence. He’s clearly capable of receiving messages however, as he requested address updates for GMK Thai Tea. So the Panc40 group buy participants are just being ignored.
September 2022Still nothing from Alex to Panc40 purchasers, but now GMK Thai Tea buyers are also getting ignored. Check out the
GMK Thai Tea GB thread to read about that, but it's a very familiar story:
- Everything will be great
- Everything is on hand
- Excuses about minor thing needing to be done
- A few updates full of lies about minor thing being done (QC for Panc40, shipping address updates for Thai Tea)
- Absolute radio silence with no packages going out