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Comment by retro64xyz | Hacker News Reader

I am an early adopter of a Pine product. I purchased the Pine64, a case, and some accessories. When I had problems with the product, the folks at Pine64 were completely silent and refused to communicate with me. It is possible that their customer service has improved since I last made a purchase. I will not test it and cannot recommend the Pine products. However, the idea of a $100 computer is tantalizing and I really hope they get their act together.

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My board from them failed to arrive, and customer service never replied to a thing I said, but I did eventually get a refund... Without a reply.

I think it is quite often the case that some startup promises something for very cheap. Until they discover that support processes etc cost money too, and then the service pretty quickly goes bad, and maybe even the product doesn't launch.

I bought a Pine 64 also after someone mentioned it on HN and I failed to look at reviews for it. After it arrived when I was going to get started with it I read about how difficult it was so I didn't bother to even try to boot it, I just put it aside. Someone else ITT did mention that OpenBSD supports the Pine64 so maybe I'll try and boot my Pine64 with that.

Could you share what distro to you put on your Pine? Any recommendations or tips? Cheers.

It sounds like they actually spent significant time helping which IMO is above and beyond on a 100$ product. If you want significant support, don't buy cheapest in it's category things as support is one of the things that must be cut to dramatically reduce prices.

I've gotten reasonable support on $100 2-in-1s, $100 appliances, and <$100 pieces of software.

It being cheap isn't an excuse to ship a defective product.

A 100$ toaster is not a cheap in the way a 100$ laptop is. Basically, if your buying a 1,000$ laptop and they reserve 5% of the price for support that's 50$. If your buying a 100$ laptop don't expect the same 50$ be set aside unless your actually willing to spend 150$ on 100$ of components and 50$ of support.

That is a reasonable analysis. I kinda agree that a computer cannot be treated the same way as a home appliance (well not right now anyways, this made me wonder how support for some of the smart appliances will pan out in the future). There are exponentially more things that can go wrong, whereas with, e.g. a Washer, there are a reasonably finite number of problems which can be fixed by a mechanic.

That being said though, radio silence is NOT the way you treat your customers. If they don't offer support, then simply state that in an email, or better yet, state that explicitly on the website. But if you have a customer support email and don't honor it, it feels pretty scummy IMO.

Your comment is non-constructive: you assumed I meant a cheap appliance (eg, toaster) rather than one for which $100 would be cheap to moderate (eg, fridge or AC), you ignored that the first item on the list was literally a laptop, and similarly ignored the software one (where 5% of the cost is $0.25).

Plenty of companies manage to warranty and support cheap products -- this one failed to do so.

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