Back in April, a certain senior staff writer and editor emeritus over on Teleread seemed to be making excuses for Michael's handling of the Good Ereader's Indiegogo campaign, offering possible excuses that Michael himself had not made for the failure to deliver perks to backers while selling those same devices for profit on Good Ereader's website:
Quote:
I got the sense that the reason he’s offering them to others is that he expects to receive enough in the next shipment to fill the rest of the orders plus the orders for the ones he’s selling.
And I get the sense that he’s planning to shut those vociferous complainers up by providing them with the devices they’re owed in May.
Yes, two years is a pretty long time to wait for fulfillment after you pay your money. But if Michael is to be believed, it seems that at least some of the blame can be laid at the foot of the OEM, which is apparently just shipping him small batches as they get them built. And, as I said, that’s one of the risks you take when you crowdfund something.
I can’t agree with everything Michael does—in fact, I’m still rather annoyed at his habit of covering stories that originate on other sites (like TeleRead) without ever giving the other sites any credit. And those deceptions such as closing the site down are more than a little questionable, too, and fulfilling the orders out of order is a puzzler. But leaving the deceptions aside, he might be doing the best he can...
I just try to give people the benefit of the doubt whenever I can. Maybe they just weren’t able to afford to send them all out at once without selling some of them to earn more revenue to finance the rest. Shipping and overhead costs can be tough to calculate and account for in a Kickstarter, as Palladium discovered to its chagrin.
In any case, hopefully the next month will bring an end to the matter.
https://teleread.org/2018/04/29/good...g-orders-wait/
|
In May, the same writer again seemed to be making excuses for Michael:
Quote:
Here’s another object lesson in how hardware crowd funding projects often fail. Say what you will about Michael’s behavior, at least he has actually managed to deliver to most backers—rather than going bankrupt without shipping a thing after taking in literally millions of dollars.
https://teleread.org/2018/04/29/good...g-orders-wait/
|
When challenged to back up his assertion that Michael
"actually managed to deliver to most backers" with some credible evidence, having acknowledged in an earlier post that Michael is not the most credible of people, the senior staff writer and editor emeritus for Teleread suddenly went silent.
That same writer has remained silent even though Michael has since claimed to have sold over 5,000 of the devices:
Quote:
Good e-Reader has also released two models, a 6.8 and 13.3 e-reader and sold around 5,000 units. This year we intend on developing a second generation 6.8 using better hardware and a new 7.8 variant, both will have Android and come with a stylus to take notes.
https://goodereader.com/blog/electro...eader-business
|
That very same senior staff writer and editor emeritus for Teleread has remained silent even though Good Ereader has more recently put both its 6.8" device and its 13.3" device on sale on its website... while backers of the now shuttered Indiegogo campaign continue to post comments wondering when they will either receive their promised perks or a refund. It certainly doesn't seem like most of the backers from the Indiegogo campaign received a device.
How anyone, let alone a journalist, can defend behaviour such as Michael's is really quite incredible.