Purism wants me to delete my video exposing their refund scam & delay tactic - answer is no

hey everybody how's it going hope you're having a lovely day today I would like to follow up in a video I did last week purism ghost lieben 5 customer lies about refund policy avoid the tldr of that video is somebody pre-orders a phone they realize that this phone is probably never gonna actually come out they asked for a refund several years later they did not buy this from Kickstarter they bought it from the company's own website so they're kind of out of phone at that point and if they don't get the phone they're kind of vote a refund the person was told they cannot get a refund unless they wait a few months they waited a few months no refund they check in on the status of the refund they say okay we're gonna work on getting you a refund and then after that a few months later after getting ghosted again he emails again and is told oh yeah no refund for you even though we don't have a phone to ship you and this is one of those cases it's it's one of those unfortunate cases where somebody's riding that wave of people caring about Freedom phone privacy phone Foss phone I'm gonna give you it if you pay me now in four or five years phone and not actually getting anything and it's very informative and unfortunate how this particular situation Asian worked out I think that this is a horrible company not because they were not able to deliver the product but for what they did if they simply said Maya culpa we screwed up here's how we screwed up here's the situation we're in I would understand even if it wasn't an ideal situation that's not what happened what they chose to do is they chose to try and make the customer go away by telling you can get a refund later they ghosted him for months after he requested his refund they decide we're not going to respond to this person that gave us hundreds of dollars we're going to pretend he doesn't exist and then they finally changed their minds and said yeah we're not giving you a refund that's just a really crappy way to deal with people and they're still sending out emails to this day asking for people to invest in them which is absolutely hysterical when they don't even have the ability to deliver on the promises that they made to people five years ago anyway after this happened I got a message that I can only describe as one of the most culty things I have read in a very long period of time and I'd like to read it to you I'm not going to say the person's name I'm just going to read the message very dear Lewis I founded my digital agency in two thousand and I'm now in the final stages of selling it fingers crossed I'm out in a few months we have worked with Fortune 100 all levels of the Israeli government top ad agencies and startups of all shapes and sizes I can think of in parallel I founded another company did some interviewing work for fun got tired of it all in 2019 and decided to take an extended leave to work on my character although I'm still a work in progress my wife and kids will be the first to testify for the advancement I've made in the past few years I did not plan to get involved in anything for another few years beyond my board commitments and a bit of volunteering but felt the urge to email Todd with purism insane right this is before I knew what I know now and offer him a hand after buying and actually receiving his products so here I am meeting you on my spiritual journey contacting you after being deeply influenced by your recent video the two highlights were one a horrible customer journey of an early supporter two a post on Hacker News indicating the shortcomings of the Librium foam some of what you said was new when I integrated it with the information I've already known especially The Insider information I've collected over the past few months I have a new perspective and I would like to thank you for helping me reshape my Paradigm through which I see my work with purism this whole reshape my Paradigm and are you buying this I appreciate you standing for justice and preventing other potential buyers from going through the same pain Lewis this is an important moment in my life my involvement with purism and my interaction with you can significantly impact purism's future as I speak with Tai directly therefore I would like you to thoroughly consider my request I am asking to have a 20 to 30 minute phone call with you over the weekend or on Monday to confidentially share uh what I know on top of what you've mentioned then we can synergize and see what we can do with this information I don't have a concrete outcome in mind but I think combining our thoughts and knowledge can create one and that will benefit many please let me know if you have a time what I said was simple being honest with you I'm not really invested enough empirism for a half hour phone call I have no skin in the game here I'm not an investor I'm not an influence of this company and I don't work there I don't care about this product since it doesn't seem very impressive whether purism makes a ton of money in the CEO gets rich or they don't make a ton of money and they lose all their money has no effect on my company my day my goals are my life I just hope for less people to give money to a company that treats their customers like garbage great thank you Lewis have a cup of something warm and lean back into cozy chair as I worked on the below for the whole day and well into the night please take your time to consider it thoroughly take it in and think it through I will start with personal I do not get along with untruthful people I don't see the basis for any relationship working or personal if there is no trust which is the foundation I organize workshops for entrepreneurs on spirituality and just a few weeks ago someone tried to challenge me about honesty he told a story about his gaming business for which he had hired a salesperson who had screwed him days earlier he had made a real estate transaction with her and thought that she is the best candidate for the job he tried to convince me in the group that her dishonesty brought her luck a new job with him I inquired would you like this person to be your friend no how about your partner or family member oh for sure no now imagine how all her relationships look like with her current character and mindset he agreed my belief in truthfulness as a virtue is very deep I practice it with my girls every day if I say I will it's an equivalent of I promise so if circumstances change and my promise doesn't make sense anymore I asked them to leave me from that promise if they don't I do the thing that I said I will even if it doesn't make sense anymore if I said I will it's up to the receiver to relieve me my girls are just seven and four but they deserve the same level of respect I give to others because the same principles govern all my relationships these principles are Universal when Kyle of purism in May Todd asked me to take over the customer service all I write below is true and accurate to my knowledge and I would like you to truly try to understand me I got curious and wanted to investigate a paradox I've noticed on one hand it has the mission the values very strong open source Community well on the other it has all this backlash from the very same people who helped the company in the very early days after interviewing most of the staff here speaking and helping over 50 customers and resolving quite a few internal problems here's what I've learned so far Todd ran a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter he had then moved to his own platform purism site and can it continue raising money for a product that did not exist the goal was quite ambitious and required extensive r d the money they received from its supporters was paid to suppliers anything from microchip manufactures to software developers when things took longer than expected not only due to covet as this is quite a journey even without covid and Warren communicated with consistency some people started getting cold feet and requested refunds at that point he still had some extra cash so he processed the refunds without hurting the other 99 of those who kept believing in the company the news about refunds and the doubts about reaching the goal spread quickly and that triggered many others to request refunds in a short period of time quickly the amount of refunds outpaced what he could handle without stopping the r d this work was necessary to meet purism's obligations to the users who kept their faith which is still over 90 percent of everyone who had contributed the decision was straightforward ninety percent voted with their money to continue if Todd honored the refund request from the 10 who wanted to withdraw it it would have hurt the 90 who kept their support the reason for this inability to refund was miscalculation production of the phone ended up costing more than people had paid to pre-order it so in other Paradox I've discovered was that it was cheaper for purism to refund than to send the phone the difference was financed through sales of other products Todd decided to honor his commitment to the majority and keep the investment in the r d while honoring the refund requests over time by funding them other products his other alternative was honoring 10 to be refunded right away which would have down the operations tanking the other 90 of supporters that would have not been fair to the super majority this is the background behind the problematic refund policy offering a refund when a customer is reaching the queue totally agree not a good policy would love to hear other ideas don't lie to people don't tell them that we will consider a refund in the queue and then say [ __ ] you once they have reached the queue further don't ignore your customers for two months at a time if a customer emails me and it takes Kevin more than two hours to email that customer back I torture him in every manner that Greg Abbott will legally allow me to torture my employees in the state of which there are many some of those who asked for refunds became entrenched in their positions they did not want the phone anymore they didn't want store credit they started being very vocal and spoke out against purism sales of other products started to decline in part because of the reputation damage which turned away potential clients this negative reputation reduces sales which reduces the refunds that we can honor it's a downward spiral a lose-lose for all right now we are heavily invested in stock we shipped hundreds of phones every week which is what that initial money came to fund we are reaching shipping parity soon our situation still does not allow to honor all refund requests at once and we do not enjoy this at all this has consequences on the reimbursement of our staff too so he had some painful cuts to stay lean and viable in the long term once we turn around that stock and converted to cash will we be in a much better position to summarize Todd promised something that he could only achieve with the financial support of others people believed in him and voted with their money once they did Todd invested that money into product now that he has the product F3 worked on it for years some people want their money back it's cheaper for him to refund than to send the phone so we do want to refund when we generate cash from other products I refunded about 30 customers in May with about 20 accepting exchanges the refunds were financed by a good month selling other Hardware this leads me to a philosophical Point thanks for hanging in there Louis I really appreciate this communication with you and your openness but that's not the philosophical Point here it comes your intention behind this video is for less people to give money to a company that treats their customers like garbage like I wrote that's an honorable goal now that I explained our situation I would like to extrapolate the consequences of your video we have about 600 people waiting for their refunds which is preferable to us sending them the phone we have their phone but they don't want it it's a win-win for us to give them their cash back we do that from sales of phones laptops and soon tablets your video highlights only one part of the story we have not had an opportunity to explain what stands behind our inability to refund I hope that by now I have succeeded to explain that we are not a scam at all and we have the same good intentions that you do he's just like me I ignore my customers when they email me for months too I make false promises to my customers too we're the same person I run entrepreneurial seminars where I teach people about all this foofy poofy [ __ ] that allows you to reshape and pretend that you're the good guy when you're not in many of my videos I have gone over this for years and this is a very important sticking point that I need all of you to be aware of I never assume that I am a good person I have gone over this many times in many videos I never assume that I'm a good guy and the reason I never assume that I'm a good person is because the people that assume that they are the good guys tend to be the biggest pieces of [ __ ] imaginable more important the people that will tell themselves that they are honest they are true that they do what they say and say what they do and even with their daughter they did that and the other if you tell yourself that you're a good person you will frame all of your actions everything you do how you plan a business how you communicate with your customers how you deal with your employees everything gets framed through the idea that I am good and as long as you're framing everything that you're doing and saying through this I am good nonsense then everything you're doing must be in the pursuit of a good cause even if you're scamming people even if you're screwing people even if you're ignoring people I always assume that I am a piece of [ __ ] when people ask me when they say Louis you're a great guy you'll see it on my live streams you'll see it in my comments section 100 of the time that this happens I tell them no I am a piece of [ __ ] it is not being done as a form of self-deprecation I mean it when I say that I assume that I am the bad guy I assume that I am the villain I assume that everything I do I do out of selfish self-interest because as long as I assume that I am the bad guy it gets rid of this blind spot where you give yourself a license to screw people and not even care you see the thing is I needed to keep my obligations to the 90 that we're not asking for refunds so I had to not refund the 10 that were asking if I told them I can't give you a refund because I don't have the money to rather than telling them nine months down the line no refunds then maybe more of the 90 would ask for refunds and then we would have less money to continue developing the product and then when those people speak up then all the other people are not going to want a product and they're going to ask for refunds too so really what I you see what I have to do is I have to ignore your email I have to lie to you about the financial condition of the company I have to lie about whether or not I'm even able to give you a refund I have to lie to you and tell you come back in six months for your refund so that you don't ask for a refund so that I can better serve these people over here because I'm a good person I'm not lying I'm not screwing you I'm a good guy this is why I assume I'm a piece of [ __ ] because if I assume that I'm a piece of [ __ ] and I find myself in a position where I'm ignoring somebody I'm lying to somebody and I am taking their money the natural conclusion there is I'm doing something wrong I should stop this but if I assume I'm a good person I can craft a narrative that allows me to continue doing this [ __ ] indefinitely we are sold this false concept of what a villain is by comics in the media this idea that villains or Lex Luthor villains are Kuja from Final Fantasy 9 they're not at the end of the day many villains are not people that are honest about the fact that they are a villain they're not honest about their intentions they don't as they destroy the world they actually believe in their mind that they are good people doing good things and that every bad thing they do is actually a good thing because it wasn't the pursuit of the good mission that they have because they're a good person the biggest villains in society think they are good people and it's something that's really important to keep in mind we are sold this false bill of goods by comics in the media as to what it is that constitutes a bad person a bad person is the Joker a villain is Lex Luthor a villain is Kuja from Final Fantasy 9. at the end of the day villains are not people that are I'm going to destroy the world if I can't live then nobody can that's not the way any of this works in the real world the biggest villains the people that do the most harm to society actually believe and buy into the fact that they are good people and they use that justification if I am good and I want to do good therefore everything I am doing is in the pursuit of good so if I have to do a little bad here it is in the pursuit of good though those are the people that are the most dangerous the most dangerous people in the world are the villains that convince themselves that they are doing good and that they are good people people that are honest about the fact that they're evil I'll take Cujo from Final Fantasy 9 I'll take the Joker I'll take Luke Lex Luthor any day over the type of people that convince themselves of this self-aggrandizing entrepreneurship seminar I do good and honest to my children do what I say say what I do garbage because that's what it is it's culty garbage that gives them a license to screw over as many people as possible without ever feeling bad this sociopathic mindset short-circuits that part in your brain that stops you from doing something wrong when you know in your heart that you're lying and you're screwing people and it's sick we are aligned I chose to be vulnerable with you and expose our weaknesses and shortcomings I hope you treat this with understanding and care I see you the issue is that your broad reach will significantly hinder our ability to sell more products and refund these 600 people are we are our products perfect of course not some people think they are garbage but there are others who absolutely love it and they are intelligent and educated people they just have their own reasons we're all different and we're all trying to accomplish different goals in life so all purism is not for everyone it still is for some for their own reasons so my conclusion is that your intention to help you are driven by compassion and have a strong value system you're an independent thinker with a strong sense of identity and high integrity you stand for justice so do I and that's why I am with purism to make things right and I'm kindly asking for your help my question to you as the inclusion of this manifestation of patience in a form of very long read is what would have to be true for you to remove the video ding ding ding ding ding and now we have figured out what all of that [ __ ] was written for the reason for all of that culty entrepreneur seminar sounding [ __ ] is because you want me to delete a video that goes over the truth that you ghosted a customer for months and [ __ ] them over and strung them along for a year rather than be honest with them up front all you had to do up front to get my support was say listen here's the issue we're in we're having financial difficulties here's how it worked out I am sorry if you did that you would have my support you didn't do that you lied to the customer you ignored the customer and then you [ __ ] them and because you [ __ ] them I am not going to listen to this foofy poofy [ __ ] now nor am I gonna let you off the hook you have got some [ __ ] balls asking me to delete a video particularly appealing to my sense of compassion and integrity [ __ ] you sir what commitment or evidence would you like me to provide I would like us to be goal oriented and be focused on helping these 600 folks to get their money back what work would you like to see done in the future so that you would remove your post now if it was anything in the world what would have to happen for you to reconsider a time machine a time machine I'm committed to do work be proactive and practical not removing the post would hurt everyone even if we don't recover from this reputational damage see what he's doing there he's saying listen look what you made me do this is kind of like the spouse that like he does this he takes his wife's hand and he puts it on his wrist and then does look what you made me do look what you made me do you made me not refund the customers look ow look our customers are getting we would love we would have loved to refunded our customer was we would have loved to have been honest with them but we can't because you did a video years after we ignored and screwed them damn you Louis I'm not saying we're Flawless we have lots to improve but we not have this opportunity anymore if this video is not removed it's very real and will especially hurt those people whom you and I want to help let's unite for these poor folks let's incorporate your input in our policies and products to prevent it in the future we're on the same side and want the same thing my response my response to all of this was very simple you almost got me dot dot dot he almost got me this is the most underhanded manipulative [ __ ] and I want to point this out and I want you to really understand what makes this language manipulative you're just like me look I know you're trying to do a good thing let me help you do a good thing by helping us to continue to do bad things without being held to task you trying to hold us accountable and responsible for screwing over our customers is actually the reason that we're not able to stop screwing our customers it's this sick little guilt Loop that just makes me absolutely disgusted the customer that emailed me this emailed me back when I shared with him I'm glad you see through this manipulative [ __ ] he tries to butter you up and then guilt-trip you by saying that it's your fault if we can't get refunds and if other people can't get this products this honesty [ __ ] is as transparent as can be the people who will tell everyone they are Saints are the worst Sinners there are a few points I'd like to say and retort I did believe in purism back when I bought the phone even though I had no reason to it is in no way Meyer anyone else's fault that they miscalculated and are failing to deliver on their promises this is precisely why I waited so long to speak out because I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt this dude waited four years by the way that's really patient the straw that broke the camel's back was as you saw the response I got from customer service a cut and dry re no refunds after telling me that I could get a refund months later he says they have not had the opportunity to explain why their position has changed so much bear in mind they have sent out quarterly emails to supporters to update them on the situation of the lieban 5 and they have never once mentioned any of this even if they had it is not my job to make sure a company of which I am not just a customer stays afloat they even have the balls to send out emails asking people for investment money if you remember how the liquidity problem was Robin Hood during the gme Fiasco you realize that people don't have any sympathy they expected them to fulfill their obligations and when they didn't they said goodbye and there was even some talk of legal repercussions finally I find it endlessly baffling how he recognizes that his company treated me and others like garbage and then talks about a spiritual journey of treating people right only to end with what was obviously the goal from the very beginning which was to get you to remove your video so that no one else can see how this company treats people can anybody watching raise your hand if you believed within the first 20 seconds of me reading his email that he wanted me to remove the video raise your hand if you knew that that was the ask from the very beginning no that's not how this works I'm not removing my video you stop treating your customers like garbage be honest and upfront with your customers don't wait until somebody with over a million subscribers points out that you're screwing people over to be upfront with your customers how about you get into a time machine be honest with your customers a year ago how about you be honest with your intentions with them on the refunds you be honest when it comes to emailing replies to them when they email you I have a lot of unpleasant emails at my company that I got to deal with on a regular basis that I employ people to deal with on a regular basis you can open and respond to your unpleasant emails the same way that I have to respond to mine when I take customer money and above all get out of here with this spiritual journey [ __ ] just don't if you're gonna do that stuff at the very least don't come out with that [ __ ] when you ask me to remove a video hold you accountable that is transparent that is obvious [ __ ] and everybody can see through it the answer for today and as always I hope you learned something if you give money to this company at this point that's on you and to be clear I am still staying private about what I know as I mentioned in this Reddit post almost four years ago I had very clear reason to think that this entire company was a scam three and a half years ago unfortunately I'm not able to say what that is publicly because I would be betraying the trust of somebody I care about that I know personally that I actually I I actually respect the confidence of some dude asking me to delete my video after I rip point out that his company is screwing people no there's no expectation of privacy there you don't have an expectation of privacy when you email me asking me to delete a video holding your company accountable for screwing people after years of screwing people no the person that I actually care about they've earned an expectation of privacy with me I knew that this company in many ways was going to be scamming people three years ago like I knew it I just couldn't say why at the time and it kills me that to this day I still can't say why but I knew this was coming and I waited until there was a lot of proof that this is what was coming and this is exactly what happened this is exactly what happened I made it through this video without ruining my new Microsoft 600 keyboard I will leave while I'm ahead and if you're actually into this whole privacy secure phone thing I may have differences with the developer of the operating system I may have some things to say about my thoughts on how he views the world and social interactions and I may but that all of that stuff aside if you want actual privacy and security where they actually do what they say they say what they do and they deliver check out graphene OS seriously they are actually doing everything that purism claims they want to do and it is actually technically proficient every claim that they make is true unlike purism everything that they say is actually making what they're doing more secure is true unlike purism and at the end of the day they're not screwing people maybe they have a little lead developer that is um I'll leave it at that you can watch my old videos if you want to know about that but they're actually doing what they're claiming it is actually good code they're not scamming and screwing people which is more than I can say for this culty [ __ ] that you see of purism and if you're actually into this whole privacy secure phone thing I may have differences with the developer of the operating system I may have some things to say about my thoughts on how he views the world and social interactions and I may but that all of that stuff aside if you want actual privacy and security where they actually do what they say they say what they do and they deliver check out graphene OS seriously they are actually doing everything that purism claims they want to do and it is actually technically proficient every claim that they make is true unlike purism everything that they say is actually making what they're doing more secure is true unlike purism and at the end of the day they're not screwing people maybe they have a little lead developer that is um I'll leave it at that you can watch my old videos if you want to know about that but they're actually doing what they're claiming it is actually good code they're not scamming and screwing people which is more than I can say for this culty [ __ ] that you see of purism let me know what you think in the comments down below that's it for today and as always I hope you learned something

Channel: Louis Rossmann

Views: 549,999

Keywords: purism, librem 5

Id: -IjUryQOlgk

Length: 25min 9sec (1509 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023