Introspection

Dear All,

Last night had been on the brown and dry grass for us! Let’s look at where we are and why things are the way they look now:

• Notion Ink ships from China. We promised global pricing. That would mean no direct conversion of USD to Euros. That should apply on shipping rates as well. DHL shipping price from East Coast USA to West Coast USA for 2lb is $36. Notion Ink’s shipping rate is $50 flat for every country. Here is a reference for you all: http://www.dhl-usa.com/resources/Standard_Rate_Guide_2011.pdf Charge to Notion Ink for shipping to Russia is 1161 RMB which turns out to be $180! Now One Global Price would mean One global price. Europe has seen a lot of abuse when it comes to product pricing. We have tried to streamline this. (Do check the fuel surcharge, remote area service, address correction and other terms in the reference document.)
• Global Warranty: Notion Ink’s warranty policy represents singularity. Unlike for other firms where cross border purchases or international purchases ensures that the warranty benefits are lost, we have proposed singular solution where irrespective of where you are and even if you migrate, policies remain same.  http://images.apple.com/legal/warranty/docs/NA_iPad_Warranty_v20.pdf This would be where the warranty does not extent to the most important part of the device which is battery. Notion Ink provides 180 days for batteries.
• MasterCard: Notion Ink has already applied for MasterCard and theirs is the longest process. Officially we were told that it will not take more than 2 weeks, but now they need 3 more weeks for the same. Visa and other integrations took us 3 days.
• Transaction Issues: CCAvenue is a reputed firm here in India. Worlds biggest Transportation Firm, Indian Railways, is dependent on them, and handles millions of transactions a day. Users in USA are facing difficulty because their banks are detecting fraud (extremely weird) and the server timed out in most of the cases when users were re-directed to their payment page. Our personnels are on it and querying them to know the reason.
• Return and Refund Policy: Lets look at this page for a moment: http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/salespolicies.html#topic-21 This is one of the better policies followed by any company, others are much worse. For Toshiba, the number of days are 10. Let’s take a look at this one:
  http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/policy/en/policy?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&~section=018#total
  return policy of dell, restocking fees of upto 15% applicable. Upon receipt of your return, Dell will issue a credit or a refund of the purchase price paid, less shipping and handling and any applicable restocking fees subject to this policy.
  Ship the products at your expense, and insure the shipment or accept the risk of loss or damage during shipment.
• FCC: We shared the information that it is expected in early 20s. Even if it gets delayed, it will be in December, and this is specifically the reason why first Adam will only be shipped on 6th January.
• I believe our team did an error by mentioning the policies in few readable lines. You will see the complete document reflected on the website in couple of hours from now.
• Pixel Qi has already sold out and the 3G variants are the next. Even though the stats for purchases is extremely good, everybody at Notion Ink is dis-heartened and sad because of all the confusion that erupted because of Mr. Murphy.
• The Pre-Order vs CES. We do realize the lack of ‘more’ videos and hands on demo or review by our fellow technical bloggers, and deeply respect those who want to wait for the same. CES is where we intended to demo, show everything and allow for review, else there is no point for a good CES event. Pre-order was essentially for those who wanted to pre-book before Adam go out of stock (which it has already started for some variants). But now reading your comments it feels extremely unfair on our part in not releasing videos, run through and other important thing you need to know.
• In-depth video will be released on 18th December, and till then you can hold on continuing your purchases.

We at Notion Ink love all of you, and we have tried to be completely impartial to the system, but seems it is too difficult to keep everyone happy. Earlier we discussed how we are open to your ideas, listen and implement them as well. I would be spending rest of the day in reading through your comments and understanding how exactly you want us to deviate from industry standards.

With Warm Regards

Rohan Shravan