Yah its pretty freaking hilarious the claims jaxx has made in retrospect. Even if the boards were delivered perfectly from China, we still wouldn't have them because of these phantom PCBs!
lmao meanwhile other alice GBs are getting delivered every other month.
Funny how that works.
Ya know, it’s kinda funny that the last straw for Jaxx using a Chinese manufacturer and taking legal action against them was a 3 month delay and some shipping issues. But people start complaining that 1.5 years later we have no pictures of finished boards that were shipped? “Whoaaaaaa cmon relax it’s fine they’re coming just meme this and remember ice cream machine? I love rukia?? Good times, good times.”
lol I forgot about aluminum tops. Didn’t even get a bullet point smh. Man y’all remember November 2020 was when we first thought they were coming? Kinda wild that PCB design wasn’t even finalized and that was the projected date. Really makes you wonder….
Compiled some information below, sourcing stuff from public Geekhack posts and and Jaxx's Discord server (or what's left of it, anyway), since everything's sort of spread out at this point and I think it helps to look at everything in one place in order to better make sense of what happened. But this GB has been packed with all sorts of really strange things like the one you guys describe. I have my own suspicions as to what kind of explanation fits everything (it also happens to be the simplest one... or at least, the second-simplest one IMO), but I'll try to leave that out of things and just sort of point out the big questions/issues I see with each part.
1. If you've spent GB money on overseas boards, and it's delayed for a few months due to being boat-shipped, why is the immediate reaction
on 12/12/2020 effectively "I better seek legal compensation, tank the rest of the overseas GB, and make all the boards in-house instead so you get the boards sooner"? What?? Why not wait for the shipment to arrive and/or work out a deal with the manufacturer instead? How do you finance a decision like this? Why so trigger-happy to jump to costly litigation? Why the huge undertaking of risk, cost, time, difficulty, and downside exposure in exchange for the
chance of a very limited upside to customers? It's even weirder if we go by Jaxx's own timeline where he says that
on 8/16/2020 he decided to make everything in-house - this would have been 4 months before learning about the boat-shipping delay
on 12/12/2020 and 7 months before learning about the box cutter damage
on 3/13/2021. Whether this decision to make R2 in-house was on 8/16/2020 or 12/12/2020, the given explanation doesn't really make sense or justify the decision.
2. Suing a Chinese manufacturer from overseas is
difficult, often costly, and timeconsuming (you typically have to go file the suit in China and handle it through their court system, on top of several other obstacles and considerations), let alone for a (relatively) short delay in shipment: "Chinese courts rarely issue large damage awards, no matter the case. Chinese companies generally operate at low margins and Chinese courts are loath to badly harm a functioning business or to cause layoffs. In particular, Chinese judges are hesitant to award damages for lost profits or for pain and suffering. Chinese courts simply do not award the sort of damages available in a U.S. court." Now I'm no lawyer, but AFAIK, for many small to medium companies there's usually no suing in this kind of situation - many eat the cost and move on at the expense of the relationship/their reputation/prospects of future business. In case there was some kind of local intermediary, I checked some public records real quick but found no evidence that Jaxx filed any lawsuits - but hey maybe I missed something. Either way, it doesn't really make sense to me
why there would be a lawyer telling him he can't even talk about the overseas boards. Since this was where most of the GB money was supposed to go, it's unacceptable that he refuses to comment on it.
3. Jaxx is
obviously not working in a SCIF. You
wouldn't be making keyboards in a SCIF. This claim is so ludicrous that I can't believe he would say it with a straight face. Besides, you'd think he would have mentioned such an important thing
back in February 2021 when he moved into this new facility, or
in March 2021 when he mentioned streaming his CNC process and showing off part of the shop.
April 2021 rolls around and suddenly "actually everything's in a SCIF and I can't even take pictures." Jaxx somehow forgot to mention for several months that he was moving to a government facility where he wouldn't be able to provide pictures? And with no consideration given to how unfair this might be for his customers? Not only is the claim outrageous to begin with - it doesn't really make sense even by Jaxx's own timeline.
4. How many overseas boards were there?
The number was 150 up until it
changed to 300 suddenly on 3/13/2021 without any explanation, around the time he claimed he would receive the shipment the following Monday (3/15/2021). Also, an "undisclosed number" of boards got damaged (mentioning box-cutters). A couple of them? Some of them? Most of them? All of them? Jaxx never clarified even after receiving the boards a couple days later. We still don't know what became of these boards or their status. Even though he claimed he couldn't talk about the boards because of his lawyer, why then did he talk about the damage in the first place? He can bring it up but then say nothing about it two days later?
5. The pics on 5/6/2021 are strange.
First some photos of boards, "Left is from the manu. Right is by me." And then later,
some photos of damage, "So some weights were damaged along with cases. This is an example of what I can fix and still ship out--patina due to moisture and sitting around + This is something I can't really fix though", etc. At first glance, this sounds like he's referring to the overseas boards "from the manu". But really he's talking about getting "the finish the same as round 1." In other words, these "manu boards" are R1 boards, not overseas R2 boards - but he's using them as stand-ins to show
examples of damage he can and can't fix. Why not just show a picture of the overseas R2 boards directly and show the actual damage? At this point in time he ostensibly received those boards almost two months prior. Why word things in such an unclear way to give off the impression that these were the damaged overseas R2 boards? Are the boards on the right really even R2s?
6. In the same post on 5/6, the CNC machine pictures and video are also strange. At first glance, he's apparently got one CNC machine (a Haas VF-2SS, the "workhorse" he calls "Swift Wind"). But on a closer look,
this and
this appear to indicate different machines. And all this content was posted on the same day, where Jaxx talked about getting all this approval to snap pics and whatnot. So same general model, but different machines. Going back to the video, for a few frames there do appear to be
multiple Haas machines. Unclear what those are specifically. Either way, there are at least two Haas VF-2SS models in this facility. We don't actually see any keyboards being made in the CNC machine - there's
too much splashing to see anything.
Even the photos of the board damage are unclear, close up. It's like a post meant to show everything while actually showing nothing. Even the video is odd - he claims to be "getting chastised" but there's nobody else in the video.
7. Four days later, after taking these pics,
on 5/10/2021 he quoted a 5/24/2021 shipping date, notable here because of how short and aggressive it is (two weeks!) - which means things must have been nearing the end and he should have
literally hundreds of boards made "in-house" that he could snap pictures of. And yet... it's been nearly five months since then as of this post (10/23/2021) and still: no pics, no confirmation, no details, no explanation.
8. We also now know that the PCBs hadn't been handled when he was quoting all these ETAs for shipping.
Around 9/2020 presumably, Jaxx quoted 11/2020 (Thanksgiving).
On 11/14/2020, he quoted early 12/2020 (with Rukia SE being 1/2021).
On 12/12/2020, he estimated 2/2021.
On 3/13/2021, he quoted 4/19/2021 through 4/30/2021.
On 4/20/2021, he quoted 5/10/2021.
On 5/10/2021, he quoted 5/24/2021. Finally
on 5/31/2021 did we finally learn that he was now running into component shortage and fitment issues, and that
he hadn't prototyped or ordered PCBs yet (
nor received a firmware from Gondo) at any of these points in the past - even way back in late 2020, which in itself was over half a year past the end of the GB close date. I also find it strange that Gondo had to hear about this from some third party - that Jaxx didn't think to ask his PCB guy when he ran into this issue. Why quote ETAs like these before you've even moved on your PCBs?
9. According to Jaxx,
on 5/31/2021, some Rukia kits without PCBs were shipped out to customers. Who received these? How many people? How were they selected? Seems odd that these individuals are supposedly out there somewhere and yet they haven't made a peep these past several months to confirm that they in fact received boards.
10. The PCB discussions afterward were also strained. Two weeks later,
on 6/13/2021, we get "PCBs incoming" though as far as Gondo was aware,
protos of his PCB hadn't been ordered yet - but that maybe that's what Jaxx had ordered.
On 7/8/2021, Jaxx mentioned he paid some rush order to Elecrow to speed things up for "the PCBs" but was quoted several weeks for assembly regardless. At this point,
Gondo had to step in and yet again mention that as far as he knew, protos had still not been ordered yet and that if Jaxx was indeed ordering a larger batch, this was a huge problem. But
Jaxx had been ghosting Gondo so he wasn't sure what was going on himself. Only after lots of heated worry in the thread did
Jaxx contact Gondo and say "oh that order was indeed the protos." What? Fast forward some 6 weeks
to 8/19/2021 and according to Gondo, Jaxx was still getting protos manufactured. I find all of this confusing. If these were protos, why didn't Jaxx just say that? Why talk about ordering PCBs as if referencing the main batch? Why quote such timelines if these were protos?
11. If it took two weeks to sandblast 25% of the boards
as of mid-June, you would think the boards would be finished sometime around early August 2021. Also, does the 25% figure imply that all the boards have been manufactured at this point? Either way, jump forward another month to
Jaxx's 9/18/2021 update - still no comment or update about PCB protos, and no comment or update about the sandblasting being completed (let alone the boards being made in the first place).
12. On 9/18/2021, Jaxx mentions two CNC crashes as being a source of delays. This is a little strange
for reasons explained by spartaman64. The unfortunate part about this particular explanation is that it's a bad sign whether it's true or false. Serious crashes should not be so common - yet we have two of them over the few months since the last update.
13. In the same update,
Jaxx responds to questions such as where the money went and whether he used the money to buy a CNC machine. Rukia money went to Rukia... okay, so... why no pics or any info at all? The CNC response was also weird to me. Nobody is asking whether he's using Rukia funds on a second business, but that's the question he answers. People are asking how Jaxx was financing all the equipment being used to make the Rukias in-house. I think it's a reasonable question to ask, considering that
as of 8/2019, Jaxx was considering quitting his job that wasn't paying him enough to live on even after receiving a promotion, and that he was still looking to secure funds for self-manufacturing UHMWPE. Then the
GB begins sometime around 3/2020 (and on Discord somewhere, Jaxx mentions he wants to set up his own manu
but isn't ready yet) and then the
GB ends 5/4/2020. Fast forward six months to
11/2020 and
12/2020 and Jaxx is moving to new facilities, setting up injection molding, "has the means now" to CNC, etc. He mentions
two business loans for the UHWMPE equipment, and that in-house production
has always been funded with business loans, with
operational costs funded via contract work. And
as of 9/18/2021 he's continuing contract work to fund Rukia. Why is extra work needed to fund Rukia unless the GB money has since vaporized? What became of the money spent on the overseas boards? How big of a shortfall are we talking here? Is it even realistic to expect one person to fulfill so many boards on his own dime? How were the loans justified or approved in the first place, and on what basis? How are they being paid back at this point? (It's not like Jaxx is releasing UHMWPE products now) What if contract work dries up? To what extent is this "in-house"? Is/was GB money ever spent on any of the equipment costs? And on that note, why go to the trouble of trying to set up all this extra equipment at the same time you're running a separate GB when starting from scratch in the first place?
14. Why
lock down the Discord channels on a pretext of "toxicity" instead of having your moderators moderate? Why blame supportive messages for making it hard to find information when entire channels are being shut down? All this does is hurt customers, reduce transparency, and make it harder for people to reach you. But then again, we've got the
stealth-editing of failed ETAs and
removal of older updates, namely
Rain's 2/16/2021 post, which as far as I'm aware requires deliberate action. I also find it a little strange that the server only goes back to 11/14/2020 when it comes to Rukia updates.
15. The refunds - worth summarizing. Back in
12/12/2020, when Jaxx mentioned CNCing the R2 design, he offered people refunds if they felt "uneasy about the continued delays". Though at the same time,
he didn't want too many taking him up on the offer either (understandably). This particular post I think is worth noting because he mentions "It comes out of pocket, since the manufacturers have already been paid." Refunds were also mentioned in Rain's now-deleted update post on
2/16/2021: "If you feel at all uncomfortable with the state of the current buy, Jaxx is willing to offer refunds on your spot. This is extremely uncharacteristic of a runner; do not expect all runners will offer refunds this far into a buy." On
12/29/2020 and later 3/9/2021, refunded spots were re-raffled to anyone who missed the GB window. Unsure how many spots were re-raffled in total. Presumably, this means any money Jaxx spent out of pocket on refunds was eventually replenished by someone else's re-raffled purchase. Refunds were no longer given out as of
4/19/2021 as Jaxx mentions hitting the limit of what he could afford as a result of extra funding spent "getting things here faster". Why I bring all this stuff up: Were customers really given all the true, relevant information needed at the time in order to assess the state of the GB?
16. Overall, Jaxx has not been transparent at all. Showing pics or talking about the overseas batch...
can't do it - lawyer. Showing pics or talking about the local "in-house" boards instead...
can't do it - SCIF. Responding to customers' requests for transparent information...
can't do it, lawyer's and doctor's orders. There's no evidence the overseas shipment actually existed (or if it did, what happened to it and what became of the GB money spent on it). There's no evidence that any significant number of in-house units were ever made. There's no evidence that PCBs ever got made (let alone ordered or prototyped). There's no evidence that some customers people actually received Rukia kits without PCBs.
Anyhow, if I've made an error or mistake somewhere in summarizing all of this (or if I missed something important somewhere), I'll correct it -- I also never saw #rukia when it was open so I'm completely unaware of anything that was said in there.