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Comment by cf141q5325 | Hacker News Reader

I understand the frustration if you got into this not understanding what was going on. In which case even more effort needs to be made to make sure such misunderstandings dont occur again. Thats why i am asking where exactly the problem stemmed from.

If i personally send you a prototype at cost and you demand it to be treated like a normal customer interaction the result will be that i wont be sending out prototypes at cost to just anyone any longer. Thats quite the bummer for people who wanted one.

So the question is how can we connect group A (manufacturer) and B(eager testers) without group C(Consumers) getting caught in the whole thing?

edit: Not saying what Pine is doing is good or bad, but the core problem isnt specific to Pine and many tinkerers might end up in this situation one day. And charging above cost is extremely counterproductive in some situations because it locks out some developers.

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Again, you're missing the point: there is no amount of clever verbiage that makes it ok to charge someone money to ship them a phone with a broken screen and make that person eat the cost. It doesn't matter if you call it a "prototype" and say "you're not a consumer". It is not ok no matter what language you use.

If you genuinely want people to be prototype/beta testers, give them the phone for free and then ask for it back at the end of the beta period. But the transaction occurring here is, fundamentally, a consumer transaction no matter what Pine wants to call it, and that comes with certain responsibilities which cannot be disclaimed, period.

I am not arguing that you dont have the rights as a consumer. You obviously have.

I confused why somebody would claim them despite knowing that the only reason they can get a device in the first place is because they are ordering something that is not meant to be ordered by consumers. They arent priced in. You used a mechanism and involved yourself into an interaction you werent supposed to be in. Because the fix for the problem at hand is no longer allowing just anyone to get a devkit. Because the whole point is to get the device to developers as cheap as possible.

edit: Or differently put, the problem here isnt that OP got damaged hardware but that he ended up in an interaction he wasnt supposed to be in. And keeping people from accidentally ending up in there is one problem you can work on, but what motivates people to do this consciously?

I think the people arguing the opposite view might have misunderstood the complaint as being about software. I'm sure Pine64 does get complaints about the software not being usable and that's why they have the big red disclaimers. There's no excuse for shipping a broken screen and not fixing it, or issuing a refund, prototype or not.

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