Enso zenPad MID $155

[Highroller]

I will keep my fingers crossed for you Katelyn )

[pilotbob]

Same here. If you have good luck with this I am probably going to get one.

BOb

[Dellaster]

Originally Posted by Katelyn

Here is an email I received yesterday. I hope it isn't too long a delay /cry

I can sympathize with you, Katelyn, since I also have a zenPad on order. Though it's only been five business days for me (March 31st). I've been hoping for news from you that yours has shipped to ease my mind.

Enso now has this in their FAQ: "IMPORTANT NOTICE: Due to our huge and sudden success, our facilities have a hard time to keep up with demand and shipping delays are longer than usual. Be advised that the current average wait time for shipping is 15-23 days." Oddly it's under Tax & Tariff instead of the shipping time section (honest goof?), which still reads: "Our Shenzhen warehouse will process your device within 4 days of receiving the order, and it will be shipped within 3 additional working days. This means your device will be shipped within 7 working days."

A Google search for anyone receiving notice of shipment comes up empty (I used many different search terms). And clearly nobody has one in their hands yet. This makes me nervous.

I don't recommend anyone order the zenPad until somebody who's word is trustworthy says they have one in their hands. Hopefully that'll be Katelyn real soon now.

[Highroller]

Yup, I have a nasty suspicion they opened orders early and then hit some kind of snag...hopefully not a BIG snag...

I mean its not like it takes long to put an address label on a box and add it to a pile to go out...so success only means a delay to me if they don't have product... and even then unless they took orders before they had ANY product ready some should have shipped and someone should have posted a review...

[Dellaster]

Originally Posted by Highroller

I mean its not like it takes long to put an address label on a box and add it to a pile to go out...

Right. And even if the demand exceeds expectations, as they claim, there's no reason why they couldn't fulfill the amount they did expect and backorder the rest. Say they anticipated 100 immediate orders and got 500. Why not ship those first 100 instead of holding off on all shipping until they can meet demand? It doesn't make sense not to prioritize by order date and get some out ... unless they don't have any to send.

/sigh

Edit: Another curious thing is my order number. It's a "1" followed by a bunch of zeros ending in "8". Order number eight? A week or so after the order page activated?! What is/are the last non-zero digit(s) of your order number, Katelyn?

[saltek]

Hi,

Just to share my "ZenPad" experience:

I ordered the ZenPad on 3/23/10, and the money was immediately deducted from my PayPal account. I hadn't heard from them with any specifics, so I emailed them on 3/28 for some idea about shipping dates. I got this response on 3/29:

Hello,

Your zenPad will be shipped out within 10 days, we are working for speed up the shipping process and avoid any delay.
As soon as your zenPad is shipped out, we will email you a tracking number, to track your package.

Thank you for asking!

Regards,
Maurizio
Enso-now

I haven't been able to logon to the site lately because they claim they are "updating." Let's see what happens.

Steve

[Katelyn]

I haven't been able to logon to the site lately because they claim they are "updating." Let's see what happens.

Yep, their site has indeed been updated.

OK, here is the deal with zenPad. I was pretty pissed that I'm still waiting and I emailed them quite a few times. This morning, I got several emails from them taking full responsibility for the delay. I was given the link to their blog and was offered a refund if I don't want to wait for the new ship date - May 8th.

It sounds like they had all their funds held by PayPal which explains why their Ebay account was closed. They were lucky enough to get HUGE press and unlucky enough to not be prepared along with having all their income locked so they have no cashflow.

You know what? I'm willing to believe them and wait. Hell, I've been waiting for the Pocketbook 602 for months and months If you do want a refund, I think you can get it pretty easily. The emails I got were very apologetic and promised to live up to their word.

From their blog:
Enso's Real Story 4/8/10 11:44 AM

This is Alberto Armandi, founder of Enso, a startup specialized in high quality devices running opensource software such as Linux and Android.

First of all I want to personally apologize with our customers, especially those who placed orders before March 30 and still did not get their devices. There are many reasons behind what happened and wish to clarify them here.

In order of importance, the unrequested and sudden coverage from Engadget.com, one of the most influential technology blogs on the web nowadays with an average of 3 millions visitors daily.

As a first step, our website went down following their article about the Zenpad and its 155 USD price tag.

We were not ready to sustain that kind of traffic, and our infrastructure was near to collapse.

We took action, upgraded our server hardware, doubled bandwidth and deployed a caching system for every database operation. This took time and money but we finally succeded and our website was up and running again in a couple of hours.

Despite this outage, our Ebay store received literally hundred of orders.

This triggered a reaction from Ebay and Paypal, our payment processor, they both decided to block our accounts, since they are affiliated. All of this because we received too much money, in a very short time span.

We tried to explain them the reason behind the sales spike, but they instead asked us to provide a tracking number for every order received.

They did not listen to us when we said that we were only a small startup, and we needed the cash to cover manufacturing costs and start shipping. This represented a big problem for us as we were receiving tons of orders but had no real cash flow.

We were running completely on our limited financial abilites. So we took action and travelled back to Italy to seek investments and fill the order as soon as possible. A local bank just granted us a small loan that is enough to cover our travel expenses and fill the first order batch.

The funds will be available to us within the next few days. We never intended to scam anybody, blame Paypal and Ebay for this delay only, because they literally frozen our funds with no tangible reason.

We were not able to place an order within the expected timeframe because of this. Also, with a limited Paypal account there is no way to refund anybody, but Paypal keeps the transaction fees in the bank despite that money should go to our customers who requested it back. Note that this only applies to customers who paid prior March 30.

In the meantime we did complete the porting of Androind 2.1 "Eclair" for the Zenpad, so all the devices will be shipped with this version instead of the old Android 1.6 "Donut". The firmware will be available on our website and all our customers will have access to their private area for downloading operating manuals and documentation.

We sincerely apologize for the long waiting time. Shippings will start within May 8, 2010.

Thanks for your immense patience.

Alberto Armandi


Enso's zenPad launch was an overwhelming success ! 3/31/10 7:13 PM

Enso's team is happy to announce that the zenPad launch was an overwhelming success. Thousands of devices were ordered, barely a few weeks following its arrival on the market. Needless to say that the powerful device drew many supporters due to its appealing price and unpreceded quality/price ratio. We received tons of requests from technology press stating their intention to try and review the zenPad and also received noteworthy enthusiasm from Android's developer community: some application developers are even looking forward to tailor their software's user experience expressely for the zenPad.

That being said, Enso was also victim of its own sudden success. Indeed, the zenPad drew so much enthusiasm that our manufacturing and shipping facilities have a hard time to keep up with demand. Shipping times are longer than expected and sadly, we won't be able to ship most orders before May 08.

In order to compensate for those shipping delays, Enso is happy to announce that we will offer a free upgrade to Android 2.1 to all customers. Needless to say that customers who are not willing to wait any longer can request a refund at any time.

We sincerely apologize to all customers for those unexpected delays. Be assured that we have your interests at heart and that we are actively working on scaling our infrastructure in order to better serve you.

[Dellaster]

Originally Posted by Katelyn

You know what? I'm willing to believe them and wait.

Me too, I guess. That latest blog entry sounds sincere and plausable. Thanks for posting it.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Dellaster

Me too, I guess. That latest blog entry sounds sincere and plausable. Thanks for posting it.

I know PayPal has been a bit touchy is the past. But, they usually don't suspend accounts unless there are complaints.

Bad PayPal (if it is true).

BOb

[Dellaster]

Shipping in 29 Days, 20 Hours, 06 Minutes, 40 Seconds

... is what it's saying now in the countdown at the top-right of their website.

[ColdSun]

Paypal and eBay can be a pain, as their automated systems do indeed do this and their level 1 support is next to worthless. It isn't so bad for buyers, but sellers can really have issues with it.

[saltek]

As cynical as I am, I agree it is a plausible account of what may have happened. I paid on 3/23 and am willing to wait. It will be a fun surprise when it arrives. (!?!) I just hope it's worth the wait! It gives us time to do finger exercises in preparation.

Good luck to us all.

[ripxrip]

I'm also incredibly cynical, but have to give them credit. As an excuse it's very plausible. As to what Highroller said, I'd say he was pretty much on the mark. Sounds like they did not have any stock on hand, just a guaranteed supply of hardware devices that they would be installing Android on and reselling. Then due to the ebay/paypal freeze, they could not actually pay for the hardware to fulfill their orders in a timely manner.

Plausible? Oh yeah... almost this exact same thing happened to an "entrepreneur" friend of mine. He actually had the manufacturer change his cost on him after he'd taken orders and he ended up selling over 2000 "items" and lost money in the end due to overhead costs. Needless to say he learned the hard way about not having a set in stone contract with no room for extra "fees" to be added on after you're in business. Which he wasn't for very long, much to the upset of his happy customers.

Anyway, I'm dying over here waiting for SOMEONE to actually receive the item and give us pictures/video and/or a review. Hell I don't even care if the damn thing is slow and has a semi-unresponsive screen, as long as it's not buggy as hell and has decent battery life with the back light on low and wifi disabled. I want a new back-lit multi-format ebook reader at a decent price!!

ripxrip

[Highroller]

Ok, thats one I hadn't heard before but from experiences my deceased wife had with paypal I find it VERY believable. She ordered a laptop from dell. Dell canceled her order. Then against her wishes, since she had since bought a laptop retail, Dell redid her order after she had TOLD them she didn't want it redone. Paypal drafted the money for this unwanted order out of her bank account. Her bank got it back. They drafted it again. Bank got it back. This went on until she finally had to close the bank account. Just to complete the nightmare, Dell shipped it. So someone somewhere has a Dell laptop. It never came to us...But paypal was NEVER on the customers side in this story.

So yes I can really believe them getting screwed by paypal. So I guess in a way they were a victim of their success ie the number of orders is why paypal froze their account.

[pilotbob]

Did anyone see this post from Engadget today?

Enso's zePad is vaporware:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/e...ile-they-last/

BOb