Topic: Ended CardReaderFactory Lancelot Group Purchase due to Seller Business Practice - page 2. (Read 7623 times)

I'm ending the group purchase due to blackarrow / cardreaderfactory's business practices in this matter. It makes no sense to start collecting payment from members when our order is going to have negative priority in being processed due to desiring escrow services.

I agree, Beaflag.

Thank you for your efforts even though they ultimately proved to be fruitless. (Please don't misunderstand, clearly through no fault of yours.)

I'm ending the group purchase due to ...

Obviously not.

that is disappointing. You'd think they'd want our business

Dear Customers,

We've based our offer on a IC supplier that promised us a certain price for any quantity with immediate supply. When we've placed the order with them (immediately after receiving the first orders), they gave us few FPGAs and asked us to wait 8 weeks if we want more. Since then we have continued to look for the FPGAs.

Today we've only been able to get enough FPGAs for 50 boards (from another supplier) but this is not enough to clear our backorders. We'll put these in production tomorrow and should ship by Friday.

Meanwhile it looks that we've asked every company in Shenzhen for these FPGA. Most of them are indirect re-sellers but they did not told us this upfront. What happened was that they started to ask between themselves and they got the impression that the demand is higher than it actually is. For this reason they've upped the price by 30-45% which makes it impossible for us to sell them with the discounted price of $275/pcs. We are still looking for the parts but it appears that the only certain way to get them is to place an order from Xilinx which will take 8 weeks.

Would anybody be willing to wait 8 weeks if we can sell at $275?

We have now put the Lancelot devices "Out of Stock" on our website and will not take any more orders until we can clear the backlog and find a proper supplier.

If anybody can supply us with the following ICs, we would be very grateful. Please send me a private message if you can get them within few days.

XC6SLX150-3NFGG484C   
XC6SLX150-3NFGG484I   
XC6SLX150-3FGG484C   
XC6SLX150-3FGG484I
XC6SLX150-2FGG484C
XC6SLX150-2FGG484I

Regards!

Just a quick update. We're sending everybody who've placed orders and have not yet paid this message. We think it is the fairest thing to do right now. We welcome useful suggestions.


We have an update for your order:

We will have in stock 50 x Lancelot devices on Friday but this is not enough to complete all our backlog. For this reason you might not get the order in time.

You can now pay your order but if you do so you agree to the following conditions:

We will ship the orders on first paid, first shipped basis.

If we've sold all the above stock and you have not paid by then, we will put your order status back on "Backordered"
If your payment arrives after we've sold this stock you can ask for a refund immediatelly (you will cover all the refund or exchange fees where aplicable - none for Bitcoin) or you can let us know by next Monday how long you are willing to wait for your order to be shipped. Based on this information we will organize our parts order to ensure that we can fulfill your order.
Once you've commited to a shipping date, and we've accepted it, your refund will be available only after that date if we fail to ship it.
Although we accept escrow payments we will favorize all other payment methods but escrow. This means that if you choose to pay with bitcoin escrow, you will only receive your order once we've cleared our backlog of all other orders paid through different payment methods.
Your order is on hold as we are waiting for the payment.

This doesn't seem shady to anyone? Nevermind, what we said before about escrow services, please pay us now to receive your order eventually. When, we can't tell you, but we'll let you know.

As the organizer of a 163 unit order, paying customers would constantly bump our large order to the end of the line because we are requesting escrow service. Receiving inadequate stock of xilinx units as infrequent as 50 at a time with no certain time line for more, guarantees never being able to supply the units in a timely manner. Paying orders would stack up ahead of us faster than they can send them out the door due to inadequate stock of xilinx units. Combine those two factors and we'd end up waiting at absolute minimum a month to receive units and possibly longer.

Wouldn't it be more convenient if you would fly here to pick them up?  You could pay here in Cash, test them, avoid paying 600-900usd in escrow, customs taxes and DHL fees.

We cannot declare very low value for customs as we will need to insure them for the full value.

Regards!

Fixed. Pasted from our pm conversation. Waiting on blackarrow's confirmation of stock and John K.

Not quite. Also still need blackarrow to affirm product availability. (Unless he has already done this in private conversation with you. If so, the statement needs to become public.)

All I've seen recently is that he is still working on procuring sufficient chips to actually build more boards.

Please get some specificity as to blackarrow's actual ability to deliver in xx time frame prior to placing the order.

...
All we are waiting on is for blackarrow to confirm John K. as an acceptable escrow agent and I will place the order for the units.

Please wait few more days before starting collecting payments. We will let you know as soon as we have confirmation from our FPGA supplier then you can start collecting the payments.

Put me in for 4 of this.

Is there an estimate of delivery time?

Depending on when the order will be place I might be good for 1 atm.

I got a reply from blackbarrow, I had asked him a few questions before I knew about the group purchase, saying

"We do accept Bitcoins as payment, even escrow service.
We aim to ship at the end of this week but we'll know for sure on Monday. We are still waiting for our FPGA suppliers hence we cannot be 100% sure that we'll ship everything at the end of the week."