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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

Although no money was ever collected from those who have pre-ordered

Bullsh!t.

Just because they didn't collect the entire cost of the wakemate, they can't claim not to have collected money. Many here on HN and elsewhere (myself included) paid the down payment of 5 bucks to get on the waiting list. Of course I don't care about the 5 bucks, but for them to claim they didn't take any money.......

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I've updated the blog post to reflect what actually happened...

the majority of pre-orders (> 80%), which were through Google Checkout, were never charged; the Paypal pre-orders, however, were.

To follow up on that further: PayPal quickly limited the account, hence the move to Google. PayPal funds remain in PayPal and are used to process refunds.

To make it 100% clear: the only entity to profit from pre-orders has been PayPal, from interest earned on locked funds. We have not made a single dime.

More bullshit. I ordered through Google Checkout and definitely have a $5 my credit card bill.

Did you confirm the charge was never returned? That's how the $1 authentication charge works on our new store; we charge $1 and if the full amount isn't settled within a couple weeks the $1 is returned and we're charged a small fee (so pre-orders actually cost us money). If that's not the case, it's probably a fluke.

I apologize for the accusation. I have an email from Google confirming that my card will be charged, and an email from my bank alerting me to the ($5) charge, but there is no actual charge on my bank statement (though it was there at one time).

Did they lock the account similar to some of the paypal horror stories we have seen float around? If so, that's another strike for paypal and a reason to motivate everyone to avoid them like the plague.

I had mine locked. I'm pretty sure it's routine.

  * You get a large number, or high transaction value
  * They lock it until you verify bank details/contact details etc
  * It's unlocked

Mine was unlocked in a few days and has been fine ever since.

I find this a very troubling mentality on an official blog post. This makes me think that the general mindset of WakeMate was to disregard or forget about the initial payments by their customers. The fact that they had to be reminded of this by those customers tells me more about their delays than anything else. It just seems so nonchalant.

As one of those customers I would definitely like you to take my pre-order more seriously. Money was exchanged, and no service or product has been provided yet. 6 months + and I'm still waiting. Hopefully you'll meet your goals at the end of the month.

Yeah, that was my immediate thought (as an outside observer). Seems like a major snafu in either communications or (worse still, and less likely) corporate attitude to think 'no money has changed hands' when it actually has.

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