I just tried the survey, and I must say the cautious optimism that had built up over the past few weeks seemed to evaporate almost instantaneously
1) It seems that the ticket that I submitted recently, which I had felt was properly read through and taken care of, was not all what it seemed. Changes to my order were not noted accordingly.
2) After weeks and months of 'the survey is about to be released very very very very soon', followed by people actually questioning why 'very very very very soon' seemed like forever, with LHL repeatedly stating 'BETA testing phase, ironing out kinks', I was actually somewhat happy since it seemed that LHL was adopting a 'do it once and do it right' mentality. If this was something LHL had rushed out, I would just be 'meh. sucks. needs refinement. should be sorted out soon'. but this is the supposed end product of rigorous testing and refinement over the course of many weeks, many months, and many false 'just-a-while-longer' promises, and yet it's still utterly terrible. now LHL is stating 'we're working on it'... umm okay, so how will working on it now be any different from what they've been supposedly working on for all this while?!
3) I don't even know where to start in terms of describing what's wrong with the survey, but it's already been expressed by a number of posters here. what I do want to constructively suggest is that, as hard as LHL is working on debugging,
please equally work hard on assembling a thorough, step-by-step guide on filling up the form. This should have already been done and released in tandem with the release of the survey. LHL acknowledges that it's very difficult to keep track of perks (due to a variety of reasons no doubt), so they're asking backers to help them out through the survey. Well, in the immortal words of Jerry Maguire: 'help me... to help you'.
4) Verb. Was on the verge of buying, but eventually did not. Have not heard it. Glad I have not bought it based on early impressions. I was specifically looking out for
@bhazard's impressions on these because of his downright amazing work in the Chinese IEM thread and how my ears agree with his very objective reviews and findings, but the plethora of negative feedback on these was enough to tell me that something is wrong with the Geek Verb. I can understand that some have tried to preach sanity by saying 'well it's really not bad for such a cheap IEM', and I can fully understand... if not for the fact that the Geek Verb IEMs were touted by LHL as an amazing value IEM which was the work of months and months of painstaking tuning by the LHL engineers themselves. Perhaps the Verb has been tainted by poor QC, or LHL was screwed over by the OEM company (most probably it's just not a hyper giant killing IEM at all). It doesn't matter. this is simply a case of self-overhyping, superb marketing, but not having what it takes to follow up with walking the talk and ensuring that backers received exactly what was being promised (in a consistent manner)
5) Casey. I'm very disappointed with some of the things he has posted here, and I find his line of logic very flawed. He has no supposedly no obligation to spend his time on forums? Umm okay, then he's in the wrong line, and should stick to working for a company which adheres to a conventional business model, and not a crowdfunding business. I don't really buy the 'it's crowdfunding/crowd-designing, technically he doesn't really have to answer... in my many years of experience working in _____, Casey really isn't obligated to ______' reasoning as well, unless someone can raise his hands and claim experience in working in a crowdfunding industry, which I highly doubt since its still such a novelty. If LHL's vision is just to be a one-hit-wonder contented with mediocrity, then I say its fair game and anything goes. But if you're a subsidiary of a reputed company, presenting a fantastic mission and vision for the future, then don't set low standards and then point your backers towards it in your defence. That's fundamentally hiding behind the veneer of crowdfunding and using grey area to give the excuse of saying whatever which pleases. Bottom line is, some of the things posted on here have been grossly unprofessional, and downright condescending at worst.
6) Casey. That said, give this guy a break. He's not the chief engineer, and he's not the marketing lead. If I were in his shoes I'd be mightily stressed up as well, hence I can somewhat empathize with him. He's not in any position to directly influence how things actually run or progress, but yet he's the one taking the brunt of the apocalypse. He's definitely got pride in what he does and in the company he works for, so it's going to hurt when someone tramples upon it. I can understand that backers have the right to be apoplectic, but he's not someone to take our frustrations out upon. I think we still need to cut him some slack. Ultimately I don't really bother with how he replies or what he replies. I care about the webdesigners solving the problem of surveys, marketing personnel curbing down on enthusiasm, designers and engineers delivering on expectations.
