Patrick – Your Community Manager

Patrick when do you expect that information to be sent?

Bill Kaczmarek   Oops!  I just read on the announcement that that is happening...

"Long story short: European units will take a few additional weeks to arrive. You will automatically receive the tracking number for your shipment as soon as it is on its way."

Patrick have any of the units been shipped?  You had mentioned a big update today on shipping kick starter backer units but I can't seem to find it. Please advise. 

brad kramer If you mean the Update for the European Units it is written from Raphael over here: https://planet.neeo.com/t/q5lvvw/important-shipping-info-for-backers-in-europe-and-other-countries-around-the-globe#36fq40

Harry Buurman Thank you very much!

Patrick I can imagine. I'm afraid you will be even more busy with all the new people joining ;-) I would love to get a look into the office now. As a former Product Owner I still can recall the human electricity going around the building and the explosion when you go "out in the open". I hope you can keep this "high" for a long time. It's a good vibe to build further on a nice product!

Rob Deol just read the Update Provided on Kickstarter! There are all Infos Available you need!

Rob Deol You're right, it was a mistake from my side. Also written over here: https://planet.neeo.com/t/36lvvn/the-white-rabbit-version-not-available

Daniel Lundkvist Super-cool to have you here!

Loic Samson 😀Welcome to Planet NEEO!

Patrick Seen it. Thanks. And sorry for the multiple posts - this really needs clarification. :-)

Patrick its an aircon-remote...  not used much in switzerland...  ;)

Patrick yeah not the prettiest of things but it is my AC controller, plenty of need for it here in Singapore! 

Raphael sorry to hear the news.  In Patrick's absence, can you please provide us a clear and specific update on shipping.  Have any notifications been sent?  If so, how many?  Summarizing status for all the kickstarter backers would be greatly appreciated.  

Raphael we all hope hope for his quick recovery and we also hope that you give us in his absence the answers we have been asking since one week. Where are our NEEOs? Hundreds of people have been asking for a detailed shipping information, hoping that you personally comment anything about the vat-gate. In the last 8 days you have simply made radio silence and do what you do the best. Let your dissapointed supporters wait for concrete answers. Please Raphael make NEEO great again. X)

Raphael will you be in IFA next week? CES in Jan ? 

Loic Samson IFA no, CES yes. Are you going to be there? Beer with the team would certainly be part of it ;)

Roberto Ruvalcaba where are you located? If you are in the US you should receive you tracking info shortly. If you are in Europe it will take a couple of weeks. Regarding your VAT question: The VAT, which your county collects, has not been collected on any unit. Therefore it will be due at delivery. I know this sucks. I'm spending part of my life in Switzerland and have this on anything I import. Trust me I would love this to disappear from the planet but this is one trick I don't master. There is a reason why an iPhone costs several hundred bucks more in Germany compared to the US. Biggest part of it is nasty VAT. 

Raphael will try to be at CES yes ! In case I make it I will definitely be coming down for a beer.

Harry Buurman I hope your guys will be back on track soon again. And yes I totally agree, Patrick is being missed very much. 

Raphael can you please answer the question I posed earlier.  As you can tell, over 875 views are allocated to discussion topics regarding shipping.  Your early backers from way back in Feb 2015 are very excited to finally get these in our hands.  Many of us were turned down as beta testers so we can't wait to get them in our hands.  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE give us an update.

brad kramer European units will take a couple of additional weeks. The logistics team is getting hundreds of US units ready as we speak and will continue to do so in the coming days.  Pretty sure people will let others know here when they received their tracking number. That's the point to get really excited. 

Raphael thanks for getting back to me but your update didn't provide any real specific news.  10 days ago you posted something very similar when you launched planet neeo and said that devices were shipping immediately.  You all then asked us to validate our address two different times with two day gaps between them.  We now stand a day after the last end of validation and I'm guessing that no shipping details have been sent.  So, in an effort of full transparency, can you please answer the following.  When will the first batch of kickstarter backers in the USA receive shipping notifications?  How many will be shipped at that point?  How many will be in the next phase and when will that occur?  And so on.  It would be great if you could give all kickstarter backer a specific timeline.  Please let me know your thoughts.

brad kramer no, I won't be able to go into that level of detail. When we announced a bit over a week ago we had of course opened for refunds and address changes and only once that was finalized we were able to freeze everything. You would not believe how many changes come in right after the deadline. More than before.. Some special units went out today and many more to come in the coming days. EU will take many weeks longer so - no tracking numbers for those units very soon to be realistic. Hope this helps. Stay tuned 

Raphael If I'm about backer 2,500 can you give me a better sense of when I can expect my unit?  Will it be shipped before 9/15?  Any detail you can provide is appreciated.

Raphael Why the european units takes many weeks longer than the others? You only said that it will take longer but noty why ... it would much more easy to understand this additional delay (only for a part of us which is also (in my opinion, because I'm in the EU) a little bit sad) when we know why.

Patrick told us that the CE EMC tests are all passed - what do you have to do here that takes many weeks? I don't get it ...

Andreas eu regulations state that documentation must be in the language of the arriving countries. For the rest everything is good to go. This is written somewhere, I don't have network access other than on my phone currently so I cant link it easily, maybe someone can help me out.

Niels de Klerk But, to be honest, it can't be to difficult to translate the manual. You go to a translation office, pay some money, and have it two weeks later back. Or make some pictograms, than you don't have anything to translate. The printing of these manuals should also be pretty fast. 

And to declare the conformity to CE it is also super simple to do this in many languages. There are so many examples ...

I don't think that you need many weeks for translations. It also changed from the inital update from a couple of weeks (for me, two to four) to many weeks (two or more months?). But maybe I'm wrong and there are truely only some translations left to do which takes (it feels so) forever.

Maybe someone from the NEEO team can clarify this shortly. It is a littble bit distracting that others get their new plaything so much earlier 😉

Andreas let us guestimate (Neeo is not involved in this estimation 😉)
two weeks translation; dont underestimate the time this takes
two week printing; yes, manuals need to dry and printing takes time. Probably the manual needs to be a specific size so a "knife" for cutting needs to be created/found. 
two week for opening the packages and adding the manuals by hand probably
a week fullfillment?
a week delivery time?
Could be two months... maybe a little less.

Yes, it feels like "many weeks". But I'm afraid it is reality. It's not to difficult. Some things just take time. It's not that bad.

Harry Buurman When it takes so long I can't change it. I also have no problem with it.

But I like to know what is needed to fulfill the european backers. I don't think that it is a company secret. I also don't want a shipping date, I only want to know what is going on.

And the translation can't be too hard. There is normaly only a quick start manual with nearly no text.

And another question (which I asked in another thread but got no answer) is how they collect the VAT? When they ship it from within the EU our parcels don't go through customs so it can't be collected there. They have to charge our credit cards again (where they should'nt have data for Kickstarter backers) or collect the money at our doors through the shipping company which would be expensive.

I don't want do complain about the additional delay or the VAT. But I like to know what is going on after so long time without information. I'm also looking forward to have my NEEO to replace the ugly and bulky harmony :)

Andreas As far as i readed here on Planet.Neeo (don't know if from Patrick or Raphael) they also use the additional Time needed to think about the best solution for this issue! at this moment i'm not able to find the entry again...

Raphael Is that a change that Swiss bakers can pick-up their pledge in Solothurn or Bern at an earliert date? And have a 🍺 together

Raphael  Patrick can you provide an answer as to when I can expect tracking information. I'm a kickstarter backer in the 2,500 range. Thanks!

brad kramer unfortunately we cannot do that. Posting about individual shipments would cause tons of requests and I need the team to stay focused. Hope you understand 

Raphael While I get your point I'm confused by it.  You posted this just yesterday.

I'm #549, and located about 30 minutes from Cupertino.  No notification yet for me either. 

Reply  Like

• Justin Feinman I don't want to interfere with the logistics crew and I cannot guarantee that I'm right but -- very good chances that you will spend your weekend with a NEEO..

I know you can't give everyone exact data but you all could do a much better job of setting expectations.  Something as simple as "we plan to complete all kickstarter backer orders by X".  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASe give us more details!

brad kramer Thanys exactly what I mean ;)

Raphael Don't understand your response.  Please clarify.  It would be great if you could just tell at the Kickstarter backers a date.  I'm sure we'd all be fine with something like EOM September.  You can make it conservative and then if you are early, you've exceeded expectations.  I don't see how it is a difficult thing to answer.  You have X kickstarter backers, Y units already produced and Z units coming off the assembly line every day.  This should be an easy answer.  Please advise.  I do appreciate you responding to so many direct questions from backers.  It makes me think this company will be a great one.

brad kramer your initial question was regarding a range of backer numbers and my responses were in that regard. I really don't want to go too much into detail and forward to many requests to the team -  I need the team to be focused and I will let the logistics guys do their job. Tracking numbers will be send out for all backers whoes units are on their way. I expect it to be a big number this week. I appreciate your enthusiastic way of trying to get even more details but please be aware - I will not be able to share more details, independently on how many times I would be asked ;) So stay tuned and best regards from the air - I'm travelling to China. Thanks for being here

Raphael Glad to hear you are heading to China.  Guessing lots of manufacturing going on.  The only reason you've seen repeated requests from me is that you all haven't been providing specific answers.  I won't drudge up the past week or 2+ years before that.  I want to focus on the positive.  I'm going to be the glass half full person and hope that "Tracking numbers will be send out for all backers whoes units are on their way. I expect it to be a big number this week." includes me.  Safe travels!

Sammie Prescott check the zwave booth.

Niels de Klerk Not this year;-)

Sammie Prescott We're booth #2842, located in the Innovation Alley.

Looking forward to see you there!

Horst Krohn Andreas

I don't know how you all can complain such thinks...

I mean, NEEO was starting it from ground on with a Crowd Funding campain, and for all time consuming issues they Provide an Update witch declarse the Problems (yes no real detail, but it was sayed every time). First Issue was that the Protoype they had was not possible to get to mass production and they need to change it to be able to do it, second there was the discovered issue with the NAND, also cleared and needs a redesign of the PCB-Board and the Software controlling everything! Then they had issues with some companys delivering crap to them, that was also cleared, the Production of the Test environment was also done by the guys itself, to ensure, that each unit is good for us customers! They also need to be shipped after the first units were tested by hand, also here a small delay! Know they have an issue with the Paperwork for the "stupid" European union, becaus in these days you need to provide a paper printed handbook in a foreign language, that thing needs to be designed, the text nedds to be typed and a handfull of people needs to translate this, then it needs to be printed and send back to NEEO to lay it to the original Package. This also needs some additional Time.

NEEO is not like Apple, or other big players in the Industry (at least at the moment) and can pay a high amount of money to get the Paper eliminated and Provide the Information electronical!

Also i have backed several other Projects, some of them earlier then NEEO and they are not providing, nearly, monthly Updates, they only provide two since the end of the campaign. Also some other Projects, they take the Money from the cround and since then giving the patents to other manufacturers and were gone! nothing to get back, nothing to deliver from them! But this is the Risk you take, when helping some young guys building their dream and they are not able to do it. I don't see this for Raphael ! He is available on the locations, he is on fairs providing you Infos and also he is Posting here!

But of course these is just my opinion!

  Markus Mahr 

i totally agree with you,  (two thumbs up for the neeo guys) but.. the only thing i think it is a bit weird ..

the last 10 months orso they were working on finishing the product, and no one thought of the "extra" things to do for the european market?

and if neeo talks about: many weeks, then it wil be several months.

jan venema i don't see a delay of several month at the moment! maybe they need about 3 to 4 weeks, but hey, then we get our units! I'm still patient and hopefull to get the NEEO in my hands, but if it takes time, it takes the time! that is here nothing else then in other live situations!

Markus Mahr I Agree, plus... we're almost 1,5 further so if it was a delay of a month we're almost half way. It's unfortionate but for me the awesome launch video and planet Neeo is exiting and fills the gap. I just moved into a new house, I'll use the time to quickly settle and make my living room Neeo ready! It also gives me time to spend with my family which is important. Since when Neeo arrives I'll probably be coding for days to implement the stuff I need (looking forward to that!). 

jan venema thanks for your comment. I can share a little background story on that point that surprised you a bit. We have invested over 200K for certification and have done it a way not so many startups would and could do. We worked in the large labs - next to some famous fruit branded products for certification for a total of over 60 countries. The most relevant certifications for he EU market are those around the CE mark. Two things happened that made it more complicated than planned: #1 The CE standard changed within the last moths and we decided to do stuff right according to the new guidelines in order to avoid recertification soon. Due to the new certification the labs were enormously book - anyways we had our slot and actually made it in time. #2 was the one that actually came by surprise. We were instructed to translate some parts of the little booklet that includes important product safety information. We did so. After this was already finished and done we were surprised to hear that we need to translate even more parts of the contents that booklet into even more languages. It's sort of non-sense in my personal opinion as we have those Infos available online and saving some paper would make a ton of sense. The regulation actually might change soon again in that regard for our product category and if that happenes the paper version would not be required anymore. Anyways: you will get one of the units were that booklet is manually added - so: I expect you to read it in full in all languages ;)

Raphael 

first, thank you for you're time to explain things, now i know where the problem is.

just put in my box the dutch translation and were good to go :)

and yes, i will read it all just like a bedtime story.

jan venema PS: I'm on a plane from Abu Dhabi to China right now and will be at the factory in about 12 hours and I will certainly check if your bedtime story is properly placed in the box ;) 

Raphael can't wait for that moment :)

Raphael Please let me know, if you will be in Shanghai and have some spare time. I will buy you a coffee/beer to celebrate the successful landing of Neeo!

Christian Figuring these things out to late and you need an extra couple of weeks. It's not a bad joke, just reality. Everyone would have loved seeing it differently. Off course they would have these documents ready if they would have know. Switzerland is not part of the EU, not that it's an excuse but it can't be held at them either.

Anders Ulfheden Thanks so much. That's exactly the spirit needed!