Originally Posted by joerg_rw

I suppose GDC will implement two buttons to your customer order management page you received the URL in your invoice
Please forward my refund to Neo900 UG
Please send my refund to this account: "BIC:____; IBAN:_____; Bank Name:____"
Then you'll receive a mail from GDC asking you to visit your customer order management page and select either of both. I don't know exactly what Nikolaus is planning to do, but this approach seems least effort for customers and him.

cheers
jOERG

Originally Posted by klinglerware

I am glad that you are not considering Kickstarter. Based on the iControlPad 2 fiasco (do a search for "icp2 kickstarter" for the background), I can only conclude 3 things:

1. Kickstarter and Amazon Payments skim a lot off the top
2. Kickstarter is risky for developers, since their TOS requires that the end result is tangible product returned to the backers (or full refunds, presumably)
3. Kickstarter is risky for backers, since Kickstarter doesn't appear to enforce their TOS as mentioned above

Kickstarter is good for a lot of things, but electronic hardware development and production is probably not one of them.

Originally Posted by wicket

Note for dos1: Other than being mentioned in the December Progress Update, I couldn't find any other mention on the website of two-point multi-touch support (it doesn't seem to be under Features, Specs nor FAQ). It might be worth making this more visible. Replicant users in particular would be very interested in this feature. Maybe give this guy a ping too.

Originally Posted by wicket

You've probably thought of this already but in case you haven't, in order to encourage transfers to Neo900 UG, it would be a good idea to include in the email a list the negative points of choosing real refunds (loss of currency exchange, loss of pre-order bonus, etc.) and also list incentives such as recent developments that not everyone may be aware of (two-point multi-touch, likely to have 1GB RAM, etc.).

Originally Posted by misiak

It might be the language barrier, but my first reaction to the announcement about need to transfer funds etc. was closer to the second one and it brought rather negative feelings at first.

Dear Neo900 customer,

You may have read on the forums and mailing lists that we need to
reorganize the financial side of how the project is managed:

<http://neo900.org/news-0011-progress-update-may>

For performing this reorganization, we need your help.

We have to "roll back" the orders Golden Delicious Computers (GDC)
have received. The money will then be transferred to Neo900 UG (i.e.,
the new head of the project), in the form of donations. Since the
"roll back" voids your agreement with GDC, we also have to offer those
who sent 100 EUR or more the option to get a refund.

We hope and ask for your continued interest and support, but if you
should prefer a refund, the amount refunded will be your original
payment minus about 13% for work done in the project so far (see below
for details). If your transfer was in a foreign currency, there can
be additional differences due to exchange rate variations.

Please note that GDC and Neo900 UG are two distinct entities and GDC
therefore can have no liability for what Neo900 UG will be using the
money for. Please see
<http://neo900.org/news-0011-progress-update-may> and the
talk.maemo.org thread linked to from there to find Neo900 UG / Joerg
Reisenweber's statement (#1F) explaining the details.

Therefore, please give a binding answer to the following question
through our shop communication system. Please do this by following the
„personal order link“ at the end of this mail and scrolling down to
„Notes / Add to Notes“ (please don't reply by e-mail):

Q: Do you instruct GDC to transfer all order data and your refund to
Neo900 UG instead of doing the refund directly to you?

A1: If you agree, please answer with „Yes, I instruct a transfer“.
A2: If you don't agree, please answer with „No, I want a refund“.

In case you are choosing the refund, it goes either directly back to
your credit card (if you used one to pay) or if you have used
SEPA/IBAN bank transfer, please provide your account data. Please note
that we do the refund in EUR, so the resulting amount depends on the
exchange rate of your local currency.

Here are the details how we have calculated the refund amount.
GDC has spent (incl. VAT) so far for this project:

* 2983.66 EUR - material (e.g. PCBs, components, 1000 display connectors)
* 6924.31 EUR - engineering (R&D)
* 990.80 EUR - other expenses (e.g. shipment, credit card fees, server
operation, shop, tax advisor, etc.)

Payments below 100 EUR are not refundable. They make a total of
exactly 1000 EUR from 50 persons. This means that the remaining
expenses of 9898.77 EUR are to be equitably shared by the customers
with payments of 100 EUR or more, who donated 75 045 EUR in total.
Therefore, 13.19% of the total amount has been already spent.

This amount (13.19%) will be subtracted from what you have originally
paid and is equivalent to your contribution to bring the project to
the status it currently has (thanks!).

The spirit, idea and concept behind the donation remains the same, so for our donors nothing relevant will change, but we can't do it with that fineprint we had so far[...]
Legally this turns your donation from whatever it's right now in the notion of german Tax Office into a true clean donation to Neo900 UG, something that it meant to be from beginning. By agreeing to this you also agree to GDC forwarding the data of your order (amount, date of transfer, special requests, etc) to Neo900 UG so we can handle your donation correctly.

Originally Posted by joerg_rw

Since it seems the following draft - despite based on his initial version of it and just cleaned up and reworded - is not acceptable for Nikolaus to send out to "his customers" (== donors), I post it here to let you know and discuss.

Please note that for all I know you already could follow the instructions in this letter, originally put there by Nikolaus. When you do and succeed, then please report here to encourage others to do same.

Which is something my lawyers forbid me to do, see rationale in #70.

Originally Posted by gta04

Sorry that it did take this end. I have tried for months to give Jörg support and help, but there is some point where it becomes unprofitable.

Originally Posted by gta04

For your understanding: I don't have anything personally against Jörg (he is a nice guy and we share a lot of ideas and visions) and I am not chasing/stalking/bashing him. It is his project and he wants my help. But in a way that I don't feel comfortable any more even trying to help him.

Originally Posted by gta04

Please don't be disappointed. There will be other interesting projects. And other interesting aspects of life. Neo900 is not the destiny and center of life.