Jolla Tablet: project update, how do we move from here

Hi all Jolla Tablet backers and other Jolla followers,

Even though we’ve been busy with Mobile World Congress 2016 and all the excitement lately, we haven’t forgotten about our Tablet backers, and have been working hard on the Closure project. Now we felt it was time to give you a progress report.

We have been pursuing all three avenues of the Tablet project’s closure in parallel: shipping the remaining batch of tablets, refunding Indiegogo contributors, and refunding our pre-order customers. The team is small and there’s a lot to do, but we are making progress all the time.

Indiegogo refunds

The Indiegogo refund process is a bit complex due to the sheer number of contributions and contributors (22,000 and 10,000, respectively), and differing refund practices for the different payment providers used during the campaign. We are receiving a lot of help from our partners, though, and are very grateful for their help in achieving what we have set out to do.

We are currently developing a tool to collect the necessary information from contributors, one which will enable us to automate the refunding process. The tool will be utilized to collect and validate, e.g., contribution email, contribution pledge ID(s) and PayPal data, and it will gather other necessary inputs to enable PayPal refunds. For those who paid with credit card, we will need to have a valid PayPal address, otherwise we have no destination to refund to – we realize this will be an inconvenience for some, however, this is the only way we will be executing refunds.

It will still take some time to finalize the Tablet refund process and ensure that everything works as planned. However, we are still targeting the first half of refunds will be well underway during Q1/2016, as previously estimated. Once again we will be communicating specifics via this blog and via email to Tablet backers when we are ready to go.

And also as already promised we will email all of you with instructions on what you need to do.

Tablet shipments

*Update* We have just recently shipped a batch of 77 devices to backers who earlier confirmed their order in the Jolla Shop.  

For the rest of the shipments: Chinese New Year stalled operations in China and Hong Kong for a bit, and we are continuing to prepare the shipments as quickly as we possibly can. A part of this work is creating the invites list, which we have to review carefully, as some contributors have moved to unsupported countries, and we know that some email addresses have expired. We are doing our utmost to ensure that the earliest contributors who are actually able to receive a Tablet will receive one.

Once we are ready to ship, we will be sending out email invites asking recipients to confirm their order and provide any updates to shipping details.

We anticipate these invites to go out in the next couple of weeks.

Pre-Order refunds

In addition to the above, we have also progressed with Pre-Order customer refunds (pre-orders made through Jolla online Shop during August-September 2015). After successfully issuing refunds to a small trial batch of pre-orders, we were able to execute refunds for all Pre-order Customers. PayPal will subsequently process refunds as soon as they can. And, depending on how one paid, it may take up to 30 days for the money to become available. Nothing further is required of Pre-order customers at this time, as we have a record of all transactions. All pre-order customers were notified via email prior to executing the refunds.

If you suspect/encounter problems/any issues in/with receiving your Pre-Order refund, please contact PayPal, and if they so instructed, contact us.

We hope you guys enjoyed this update, as we’re very happy to be able to report this progress. Please stay tuned to the Blog for our Mobile World Congress 2016 summary and update. We’re really proud about our cooperation with Intex, and can’t wait to tell you more.

Happy sailing into spring 2016!

On behalf of the Jolla team, Juhani

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