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Comment by hagmonk | Hacker News Reader

I ordered two of them (one by accident, LOL) two months ago. Haven’t heard anything since. No order updates. Emails to their sales team have gone unanswered. Not sure if my case is typical but that might have been $450 I never see again …

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You'll get it. PINE runs on almost zero margin, they collect money right around when the production run is starting, and then you'll get your product when it's done being build, tested, packaged, and shipped.

Both my orders (PineBook Pro and PinePhone) took a while to arrive but I got them both.

Nevertheless, if you've ordered something and paid money, and haven't got the product, I feel the company shouldn't ignore emails about the order.

I'd be a bit more patient with COVID, also they pleaded recently in one of their newsletters to ask on the forum, rather than overwhelming them with emails.

Also, HK has some restrictions on shipping until June 7. You'll get it. They're a small company, give them a chance.

https://www.pine64.org/shipping/

They ship directly from China (Shenzen specifically), and there can be delays sometimes. When I ordered my pinebook pro, the Hong Kong protests resulted in a slight delay. I think the lockdowns in China are causing delays currently. They pushed back the release day of one of their new hardware platforms, the hardrock64. It is sort of lame that they haven't been transparent about shipping dates, but I think your goods will come.

You’ll definitely get it, but I ordered one way back almost when they first announced then and it took months to finally get here - they are very fair with pricing and it’s super cool how open source it is, but they aren’t fast :) plus with covid, it could take even longer. They definitely will ship you the laptops though.

I got mine in the UK a while ago and it did take a while to arrive, but I'm sure you'll be fine and get yours soon.

Got mine running Manjaro XFCE (installed on internal storage) and it's great. The screen is really nice.

Is it running the mainline/current stable kernel or is it something with out of tree patches that's behind?

The latter, but they're actively trying to get those patches upstreamed, which is more than most arm vendors do.

That's awesome. I've ordered the PinePhone and I know that's already mainline, so I trust them more than most other vendors to keep their word.

It's running 5.6.0-0.42-MANJARO-ARM, so that'll be a bit behind.

What was the import duty like?

I don't think I got stung with that. It's a bit random with getting stuff from the U.S. - sometimes you get stung with import tax and a stupid handling charge and sometimes you get lucky.

Edit: looking at other comments, it probably came from China which tends to be better for not getting caught with import charges.

When they started accepting orders last February/March, I thought it was clear that they wouldn't be shipping until May. I too ordered one and am eagerly awaiting it! While I agree that email updateds would have been nice, they have posted on their website updates:

https://www.pine64.org/2020/05/15/may-update-pinetab-pre-ord...

I emailed them today, and someone replied in 10 minutes.

I expect they are quite busy, and China / HK obviously have their CV-19 issues.

The shipping page can be helpful for when the next batch will ship.

https://www.pine64.org/shipping/

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