[Stillhart]

  i just received an email about upgrade options for the pulse/out bundle:
 
 
i upgraded to the 720. weird thing is that you add money for the upgrade using the geek wave campaign...seems like an odd way to increase the funding for the wave, if you ask me.
 
anyway, i hope they ship as soon as they received my email response and payment. we'll see...

Yeah, I hate to be a negative nancy, but this kind of thing really makes me want to stay away from the Geek.  It's like they don't have enough faith in their own product and have to scam money from one campaign to the other.  It's weird and offputting to me...
 
Still, looking forward to some impressions of the 450 and 720!

 

[miceblue]

i just received an email about upgrade options for the pulse/out bundle:

.
 It is now time for the “Geek Pulse/Geek Out Bundles” to begin shipping of the Geek Out units. We are contacting you because you have purchased the bundle package and want to offer an upgrade. You can upgrade to the “Super 720Mw Geek Out” for an additional $50 dollars or the “Super Duper 1,000mw” Geek Out for an additional $100 dollars. All you need to do is add this to our “big Thanks” perk in our Geek Wave campaign found on Indiegogo.com. Please email us the color you would like your Geek Out to be at cs@lhlabs.com. Thank you for the support with all our Geek campaigns and we look forward to seeing your upgrades.

i upgraded to the 720. weird thing is that you add money for the upgrade using the geek wave campaign...seems like an odd way to increase the funding for the wave, if you ask me.  

anyway, i hope they ship as soon as they received my email response and payment. we'll see...

That's good and all, but how do they know what you ordered since the Geek Pulse surveys haven't even been sent out yet...?

 

[jaywillin]

Some surveys went out, I got one

 

[kugino]

That's good and all, but how do they know what you ordered since the Geek Pulse surveys haven't even been sent out yet...?

Were all the pulse/out bundles for the basic geek out? I think so...so I imagine they have a list of all those people somewhere. I don't think there were that many.

 

[miceblue]

Some surveys went out, I got one

The real survey, or the beta-tester survey?

That's good and all, but how do they know what you ordered since the Geek Pulse surveys haven't even been sent out yet...?

Were all the pulse/out bundles for the basic geek out? I think so...so I imagine they have a list of all those people somewhere. I don't think there were that many.

Yes, but I did exactly what they instructed and pledged an additional $100 in the "Big Thanks" perk of the original Pulse campaign to upgrade it to the Geek Out 1000. It was also mentioned that you get to choose which colour Geek Out you want and that was never confirmed yet (it's ideally going to be in the survey that hasn't been sent out yet).

 

[jaywillin]

Oh yeah, it was the beta

 

[kugino]

The real survey, or the beta-tester survey?
Yes, but I did exactly what they instructed and pledged an additional $100 in the "Big Thanks" perk of the original Pulse campaign to upgrade it to the Geek Out 1000. It was also mentioned that you get to choose which colour Geek Out you want and that was never confirmed yet (it's ideally going to be in the survey that hasn't been sent out yet).

So then they should be sending you an email asking for your color, right? Or maybe you could just email them, though I hear many emails don't get replies...

 

[AxelCloris]

I received the same email from Manny about upgrading the GO in a combo pack. During the original Indiegogo campaign I pledged an additional $100 to upgrade to GO, one from the combo and the other from referrals, to the 720 mW models. So I sent him a response mentioning this and what colors I was requesting. Hopefully it won't cause a hassle, but that's how we were instructed to handle upgrading the GO originally during while the Indiegogo campaign was active. My GO 1000 is shipping this week so I don't mind if I have to wait for the survey to get mine shipped, but I can definitely understand any frustration that may arise if the same happens to others who don't already have a GO inbound.
 
As for their use of the wave campaign to collect funds for the upgrade, I'm not opposed. This is going to be easier for them to manage since it's already tied to your Indiegogo ID and they can easily pair that to the Pulse campaign and your combo backings. Sure it'll artificially inflate the numbers for the Wave slightly, but how many people are going to do their upgrade now and how many already completed the upgrade pricing through one of the two Pulse campaigns? It was often mentioned on their forums to donate using the Easy perk and I know of several people who have already done so. Using the Wave campaign is just going to be a bit easier on their team than managing an untold number of loose individual payments via PayPal. If it makes it easier on the LHLabs team, I'm all for it.

 

[MarcJC]

After a day of reading the background behind Light Harmonic, I had this geeky dream of the Geek Out's awesomifier in a metaphoric brawl with the Smyth Research A8 Realiser. Then I woke up at 2AM when my jumped on my keyboard. I miss that dream :<

 

[Supperconductor]

Yeah, I hate to be a negative nancy, but this kind of thing really makes me want to stay away from the Geek.  It's like they don't have enough faith in their own product and have to scam money from one campaign to the other.  It's weird and offputting to me...

Still, looking forward to some impressions of the 450 and 720!

Um, just exactly how are they running a scam? The Geek Out had been delayed and IMO they were transparent about the reasons. They have started shipping and it's a fantastic product. Now I can understand folks getting frustrated about the delays but nothing I've seen indicates people have been cheated out of their money. Crowd funded campaigns have their risks spelled out in advance. You get a discount for rolling the dice.

 

[Stillhart]

Um, just exactly how are they running a scam? The Geek Out had been delayed and IMO they were transparent about the reasons. They have started shipping and it's a fantastic product. Now I can understand folks getting frustrated about the delays but nothing I've seen indicates people have been cheated out of their money. Crowd funded campaigns have their risks spelled out in advance. You get a discount for rolling the dice.

 
"Hi, I want to buy your item off Craigslist.  Can you please ship it to my brother as I'm out of the country?" 
"Hi, you want to upgrade your Geek Out?  Sure just donate to the Geek Wave."
 
It feels wrong.  Money for X shouldn't be paid to Y.  They're artificially inflating the GW campaign with money from GO's.  @AxelCloris proposed a very reasonable reason why they'd do this, but I'm an accountant and I've been through too many SOX audits to find this anything but questionable.  I don't know Indiegogo's rules for how these things have to work, but in GAAP accounting, you can't artificially inflate numbers to make certain aspects of your business look better than they actually are.
 
To be clear, I'm NOT saying this is a scam.  I'm saying it feels wrong to me how they're handling the multiple campaigns at the same time as well as shuffling money between the three.  It doesn't help that I find the campaigns to be far too "marketing speaky"; I have an inherent distrust of people talking to me like I'm a mark.  Your feelings may be completely different and that's perfectly fine with me. 

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

A bit OT: So since you're an accountant, what will be your proposal?

 

[Stillhart]

  A bit OT: So since you're an accountant, what will be your proposal?

My proposal is that we all take a step back from the hype and analyze the situation objectively to see if we sense any "red flags". 
 
It may amount to nothing, but for me, my gut is telling me that caution is the way to go here.  Rather than throw hundreds of dollars at a company with two campaigns that have yet to prove successful, I'll wait until the product exists before deciding whether to buy it.  It may cost me a little more money to buy it later, but it may also save me hundreds of dollars if this campaign doesn't turn out the way we'd all like.
 
It's up to you all to make your own decisions.
 
BTW, is there a topic for the GW?  I'd be happy to move this discussion over there (if there's any more discussion needed at this point).  My apologies for derailing this thread.

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

Here it is Bro.: http://www.head-fi.org/t/713829/geek-wave
 
But is quite inactive lately

 

[hatefulsandwich]

So some people have received shipping notifications on their 450s... are there other backers who haven't received any notification? Because I certainly haven't. Perhaps international shipping comes later.
 
So I got the impression from Gavin's e-mail that LH had planned to release three products to market from the start? Just like The Matrix was always going to be a trilogy? Sorry, still strikes me as "milking it" (I giggled when I saw I'd been quoted). Even moreso now, actually. Maybe it's just normal to hold your cards close to your chest away from your potential customers, I don't know. But some of us don't have money to fund all three of these devices and I wouldn't be surprised if some people wish they'd known the next-best-thing were in the works before they put down some cash on the earlier product. At the beginning of the Geek Out campaign, the impression I got was that the Geek Out was going to be this special, first consumer-line release from LH, but it turns out they had all sorts of things in the works already.
 
I'm not trying to just sit and bash LH, by the way, I'm just giving my impression as one of the Geek Out backers and I certainly know I'm far from the only one feeling like a bit of a doormat to the entrance of the Geek Pulse to the temple of the Geek Wave. It would be nice if LH could acknowledge our grievances as something valid that they'll keep in mind for future campaigns and product releases, maybe even apologise for it causing unintended grievance. LH may not have intentionally milked us, but the point is that a lot of us feel milked and that's something that they could be a bit more open in discussing rather than just denying.
 
I know I never would have gone for the other Geek Products anyway because I just don't have that kind of money, but for some reason it would have gone a long way to simply know that there were other products in the works at the same time. I can't explain why exactly, but it would. Maybe others feel the same, maybe they don't, I don't know. I just want to make this clear that this is not just backer tantrums over late delivery being thrown here, this is an opportunity that LH could take to improve customer relations.
 
I look forward to hearing my Geek Out (one day) and I'm sure it'll be amazing. I simply hope LH takes our criticisms into consideration with future product launches and campaigns.