You didn’t really understand it properly.
If you read our update on Kickstarter carefully we stated that we shift the tier 2 to finish by the end of this month and the tier 3 will start shipping only in November (instead of October).
We still want to make our best to have crowdfunding devices shipped until the end of the year.
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I understand what your intentions are.
I read it carefully @jon.
- On March 1 you predicted 75% of the crowdfunded units would be delivered by end of May
- On March 22 you predicted it would be done more like mid/end of summer
- After the introduction of the tiered deliveries, on June 25 you were hopeful that the June/July tier would be fulfilled by end of July
- On August 2 you were optimistic that the June/July tier would be fulfilled in August/September.
- On August 24 you reported still fulfilling June/July orders
- On September 6 you were hopeful to start the second tier that week
- On September 13 factory delays were reported and everything is held up
- On September 23 it was reported that delays are mostly resolved and EU shipments are being prioritized
Again, this is your intention and not a guarantee right? Look, I’m along for the ride here, but based on MOD’s history, the history of this project, and the state of the world, you’ll have to forgive that I’ve set my expectations differently. If I receive my device on Dec. 1 it will indeed be closer to 1.5 years than 2 (1 year, 8 months).
You’ve done a great job stepping into the line of fire. Delivering bad news is hard, especially to a passionate audience. No matter how badly you want it to be true, try to be careful about ending every update with a sentiment like “we’re hopeful this will all be back on track within a week”.
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There aren’t any guarantees in the best of times and I’m sure we are all aware that these are definitely NOT the best of times.
What I’m most concerned about at this point - both for the Dwarf and the Expression Pedal - are the supply chain issues. I believe that the mod team has been experiencing them for quite some time on both the prototyping and the production sides.
Given that supply chain problems concern both part shortages and shipping issues, the shipping issues are very concerning to me. Both these things are out of the mod teams control. For the backers - me if no one else - this raises the question: Once the product is shipped to the end users what happens? Shipping containers (at least in the U.S. and Canada) are still sitting on ships in harbors waiting to be unloaded onto the docks. Then the shipping containers have to unloaded and the individual items directed to the next chain of carriers. The entire shipping process from the time the item leaves the mod team’s hands until it gets into the end-users hands has always had many potential points of failure and the whole supply chain/parts shortages/shipping issues are making this extremely complicated. I’ve never really understood or considered the intricacies of this whole process, and it seems to pretty chaotic at this point.
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And here is the question I want to pose to the group:
What delays in shipping (mod team to end-users) have other folks been experiencing?
Hi Dave,
I know this is pretty frustrating for those who backed, I ended up paying full price for a unit before I knew about the state of the crowdfunding stuff. That being said, I’m happy to have paid the full price as it helps keep the lights on so to speak.
When I received my unit, it was shipped through UPS internationally from Germany. The shipping was less than a week.
I work for UPS, and on my side of things, we are not experiencing many delays; and are ramping up for peak season as we begin to process the higher volume.
There is a chance that there will be a kink or two as we ramp up production for deliveries, but that is usually no more than a day or two.
I do not represent UPS, nor am I speaking on behalf of UPS. I’m just sharing what I observe while being in the front line of things.
I will say that I intentionally order from European stores because the shipping is far faster with international UPS than with domestic.
It’s a tough time for manufacturing, and logistics as a whole and backing on crowdfunding has generally been a frustrating ordeal in my experience.
I’ve had a lot of projects I’ve backed never actually get brought to fruition and then I was out of the money I pledged.
MOD is at least producing and delivering a product, and I know they are doing their best to get things moving to the best of their ability.
Hope all is well!
-Elk
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Thanks Elk! Glad to know things are going smoothly over there. I’m still concerned about what will happen over her once the containers get to the docks. I’m not usually this pessimistic, but given all the weird/scary/depressing things that have been happening over here - no need to say more, you know what I’m talking about - I’m pretty apprehensive.
Thanks again!
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Where are you located mate?
UPS doesn’t really use ships, just planes and trucks primarily. Being a private industry usually cuts out the delays.
UPS owns its own fleets, planes and trucks. Well, except for peak when we are renting uhauls lol.
I can definitely try to look into it for you though and see what the logistics look like for your country.
But if there is a UPS location anywhere near you, good chance we already are established and operating. We even have “ground” shipping to Hawaii. It’s obviously flown, but it’s delivered at a slower speed haha
I understand the delays and do not blame MOD.
But is it so hard to answer an inquiry about the exact scope of delivery.
I feel the advise to read the Kickstarter mails or other publications carefully as strange. This is not a part of our deal!
This was not about all Crowdfunding units, it was about the more or less 80 beta units to the beta backers.
Then we introduced those 3 tiers for all the other pledges.
It was actually fulfilled before the end of August.
Indeed, if I remember well, they have finished a few days after.
That’s exactly where we are right now, still shipping those, yet we are having a small momentary problem with shipping boxes (that were re-ordered two weeks before we run out of them and we are still waiting for them to arrive at any moment this week) and also US and UK cables.
Indeed it’s our intention and we have no guarantee on that. Mainly because we have no guarantee that everything will go well with the production at the factory and because we have no guarantee on the timings for the next re-supplies of all the accessories. At this point in the history of the world, this is true for MOD and for any other company relying on physical supply chains. Even the car manufacturing industries are having problems.
We are obviously totally fine with that. Yet, that will not be the reason to hold us from trying to get it better. Anyway, for all that we and you know we can’t really give you any 100% guarantee on what will happen.
Thank you and thanks for understanding 
We take note of the feedback. Yet, most of the time those are exactly the news that we get. When we had issues with the supply around July and after with the production line itself, we were not really expecting it a couple of days before and the messages that we were getting were different. On this one, we are exactly in the same boat as you.
That’s also the reason why we hold on to a lot of updates - so we have more accurate information - yet a lot of times we get pressured by our backers or even by the crowdfunding platforms themselves to post an update. When this happens, the best that we can do is to share the news that we have at the moment. If those news change after…it’s not really because we want or predicted it.
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Indeed. If this is now starting to hit really hard bigger companies and bigger industries, I can tell you that maybe since February (or even longer) it’s being really hard for us. Placing an order for pretty much anything (from components to accessories) it’s almost a reason to celebrate in the office.
Both the waiting times and the spike on costs make it really hard.
On this one, I can tell you that we had quite some problems in July with shipments to the US (by the way another thing that stole us a looooooot of time from shipping devices). Yet, now it seems to be fixed for a while. Yet, as you know, we are shipping a bit fewer devices to the US because of our power plugs shortage.
It is. But for that, we rely on UPS (a company way bigger than us that we hire to take care of that). Yet they already messed up greatly in the recent past (there’s still one device from the issues in July lost) and, once again, we can’t give any “100% guarantee”.
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Unfortunately, it is. It depends on many factors.
Let’s say that you are in place 20 on a list and you live in the US (I’m making out all of this for the sake of the example).
The list has 100 people.
When we are shipping the 10th person we realize that there’s a problem with UPS shipments to the US, or there is a problem with US cables (for example). When we notice this and we have units on the shelf we quickly decide to prioritize other locations so we don’t get everyone waiting while we have devices on the shelf and we can actually fulfill someone.
Another example situation is if we fulfill those 10 and then something happens at the factory (a machine getting broken for example) or there’s a delay on the resupply for some components and the factory itself needs to prioritize other clients. Then we have, say, 10 devices on the shelf and when they finish and the factory was not yet able to supply us more devices, pretty much everyone gets on hold.
So to say that these are all possible situations that we were not expecting and that make it impossible for us to give super accurate info about when each device will be shipped.
Well, allow me to disagree on this one. It is actually “your deal”.
The best that we can expect is that our backers read our updates as an interested part of the project.
Putting it really simple, every personal answer that we give on this takes us time to prepare and ship devices. In other words, it ends up delaying the process because we are a small team multi-tasking a lot.
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I am not a native English speaker but I do not think I (and others) asked for an answer regarding the delivery date but for the exact scope of delivery. (I am from EU)
Nebulous promises that there would be extras for the patience and the delay in delivery are not worth it to me.
To be clearer on another point - it’s not my deal that I study all the mailings from kickstarter and other things carefully. I found this claim disconcerting.
My part of the deal I have already complied with the payment in the previous year and now I’m waiting for compliance from your side. No duty is left from my side.
In fact, I referred Kickstarter to my spam folder because they kept offering things I am not interested.
I’m not an English speaker either, but from the fine print of indiegogo I didn’t bought a dwarf for 280€, I funded a project that in return will give me a 499€ device for that initial investment. It’s taking longer then projected but it’s still a very good return on the investment. Open source a all that good stuff.
Best,
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I’m in the US. There are several UPS stores and a couple of ‘distribution centers’ (?) around here. Once I get the tracking number I’ll keep a close watch on its progress.
Thanks!
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You’ll be golden mate!
We ship everything by air from Europe to the US, a lot of the time it’s 2 day shipping surprisingly. You should receive your dwarf pretty quickly after it ships.
I’m eagerly waiting for my DUOX to ship later this month or next lol
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Fair enough and I’m sorry for my misunderstanding on that. On my understanding, you were asking for that and that was the reason for my explanation.
I personally totally understand this. Anyway, as an interested part of the project (especially if you still didn’t receive the device), I believe that you should keep an eye on our Kickstarter/Indiegogo pages from time to time to keep updated on our Updates. That’s why they exist. If we need to communicate personally with each single backer it will be impossible to ship all the Crowdfunding devices.
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Thanks Elk!
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The reason I joined this forum in August was to get more detailed information on the Dwarf I hoped would be delivered in September.
I am more interested in technical information than any information regarding the status of the project and explanations why it still cannot be delivered yet. Please do not take this as rudeness.
Indeed, I understand the Dwarf better now.
But still I don’t know is exactly scope of supply.
So it is difficult to ask here if you think you are missing something. This was a my statement as reply to a message from your side and thus my entry into this part of the thread.
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No worries, I don’t Healthy discussions and feedback should be always welcome, taken as opportunities to improve and try to make better 
Honestly, that’s better than the updates. Any backers that keep a close eye here probably didn’t take the update in Kickstarter or Indiegogo as news since they were already pretty much aware.
For good and for bad we are way more up to date sharing details here - even stuff like “we are expecting this and that for next week” that sometimes turns out to not happen - than in Kickstarter or Indiegogo. There we always take it more as a summary of a few weeks.
I’m sorry, I didn’t quite understand this part. Are we talking about the Dwarf supply chain? By “missing something” do you mean missing some part for the MOD Dwarf either in production or fulfillment?
Sorry for my bad not getting it.
I was thinking of "Unlimited free access to 300+ curated plugins " as well as a promised compensation for the occurred delay in delivery as well as the promise of @Falk - Quote: "If there are any missing plugin licenses not yet given, just PM me and I will set it up. " Unquote. -
It would be impossible for me to determine missing plugin licenses with the information yet.
Hence my query about the exact scope of delivery.
No real reason for dissatisfaction. 