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Purism wants Louis Rossman to Delete video exposing refund scam & delay tactic

70 points by macinjosh 3y ago

retrocryptid 3y ago
meh. the video goes on a bit. but i think i get what he's saying. if you assume you're a "bad person" you'll work hard to be seen as being trustworthy that that will motivate you a bit more if you happen to be a less bad person than you're assuming you are. my direct experience w/ purism is pretty minimal, but it's clear there are people who are ticked off at them; just look at this BBB report: https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/general-merchandise/purism-spc-1116-925629 https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/general-merc...
- em-bee 3y ago
  (EDIT: i have no stake in this project, and i am just commenting on what i can gather from this video) if you assume you're a "bad person" you'll work hard to be seen as being trustworthy i don't agree with this. if i assume i am a bad person, then to me that means i don't care what others think and it would exactly not motivate me to be better. i have heard this many times, people excusing their bad behavior with saying that they are a bad person and can't or don't want to improve. when louis says he is a PoS, then to me that sounds like it should be ok to be a PoS. i am sorry, but it is absolutely not ok. on the other hand people who assume that they are good, should want to apologize and make corrections if it comes to light that their actions or words had a negative effect on others. of course there is also the attitude of some people that they can't do no wrong an that any criticism of their behavior is an insult. that's also not ok. the primary fault with purism here seems to be failure to communicate. the purism project may be well intentioned, but they are lacking resources which could easily be used to explain the delays in handling refunds if they had properly communicated that. but admitting failure is embarrassing, in other cultures even more so than in ours, and that can get people to try to avoid the problem rather than facing it which can lead to the situation here, however criticism like this is not helping matters either, instead it makes it worse. it is not giving others the chance to correct their mistakes. it is essentially saying: i don't want you to solve the problem, but i want to see you burn. how is that helpful?
  - OhMeadhbh 3y ago
    I think Louis is saying the exact opposite of what you think he's saying.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      how is that? he says that calling yourself a PoS is good for you because it should motivate you to be better, and i say it's bad, because while it may work for him, it doesn't work for me and anyone else that i encountered who did that. this attitude also makes me look at other people the same way which is not good either. it's also defeatist, and self-depricating, just like the christian attitude that we are all born sinners, and we'll never overcome all our sins. with that attitude why should i even try? i rather believe we are born noble and that we should strive to keep that nobility or try to get back to it if we go astray.
      - OhMeadhbh 3y ago
        You initially said "it didn't work" not that "it doesn't work for me." The two statements are different. For the record, I agree with you, self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglect.
wmf 3y ago
Louis didn't mention this, but the FTC requires companies to give refunds if they can't ship within 30 days. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-billed-things-you-never-got-or-you-get-unordered-products https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-billed-th...
Sabinus 3y ago
The amount of coolaid you must have to have drunk to be capable of writing an PR email like that must be substantial, right?
LargeTomato 3y ago
I love Louis.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
Two entities HN loves collide. Not a native speaker, but to me the email sounds in the utmost way like a snake salesman riding into town. For sure I'll never buy a Purism phone from such people.
fggjnncvb 3y ago
[flagged]
4oo4 3y ago
Purism forums are still down, based on this I'm beginning to think that this might be intentional to shut down more unhappy customers. This is such a shame, my main device for years has been a Librem 15 and overall I had been really happy with it. Although it is overpriced compared based on specs, I thought it was worth it to have a user-friendly version of Heads firmware (PureBoot) that someone flashed for me. I don't need that level of security but it's awesome to have open source firmware that's Linux based. Louis nails it when he calls out that they see themselves as always being the good guy as being particularly insidious. Purism had good intentions with what they were developing and were very ambitious with what they were trying to do, and because of that I too had always wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. At this point I'm really glad I never bought a Librem mini or Librem 5 like I was wanting to before, I had stopped following the company a while ago but I knew something was up with their shady "investment opportunity" emails that appear to violate securities laws and may or may not be a ponzi scheme. Seriously, you tried really hard to do something really ambitious and awesome and have failed your customers, it's way past time to come clean. It's laughable to be organized as a Social Purpose Corporation but defraud and lie to your customers. If you work at Purism and you see shady and unethical things going on as part of this, don't be afraid to be a whistleblower.
- amosbatto 3y ago
  Purism suffered a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on July 29, 2023, which took down their site, as they explained on their Matrix channel and forum (when the site came back online). See: https://forums.puri.sm/t/sites-down-no-comms/21000/3 https://forums.puri.sm/t/sites-down-no-comms/21000/3 It is likely that someone who owns a botnet saw Rossmann's criticism of Purism and decided to that the company deserved to be attacked, which is a really rotten thing to do, because then people assume that Purism is hiding something. I agree that Purism should have refunded the cancelled orders, but calling the company a "scam" is way over the top, considering the huge amount of dev work that Purism has done on mobile Linux and the Phosh interface. I own both the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA and the company is definitely not a "scam".
  - 4oo4 3y ago

70 points by macinjosh 3y ago

meh. the video goes on a bit. but i think i get what he's saying. if you assume you're a "bad person" you'll work hard to be seen as being trustworthy that that will motivate you a bit more if you happen to be a less bad person than you're assuming you are. my direct experience w/ purism is pretty minimal, but it's clear there are people who are ticked off at them; just look at this BBB report: https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/general-merchandise/purism-spc-1116-925629 https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/general-merc...

em-bee 3y ago
(EDIT: i have no stake in this project, and i am just commenting on what i can gather from this video) if you assume you're a "bad person" you'll work hard to be seen as being trustworthy i don't agree with this. if i assume i am a bad person, then to me that means i don't care what others think and it would exactly not motivate me to be better. i have heard this many times, people excusing their bad behavior with saying that they are a bad person and can't or don't want to improve. when louis says he is a PoS, then to me that sounds like it should be ok to be a PoS. i am sorry, but it is absolutely not ok. on the other hand people who assume that they are good, should want to apologize and make corrections if it comes to light that their actions or words had a negative effect on others. of course there is also the attitude of some people that they can't do no wrong an that any criticism of their behavior is an insult. that's also not ok. the primary fault with purism here seems to be failure to communicate. the purism project may be well intentioned, but they are lacking resources which could easily be used to explain the delays in handling refunds if they had properly communicated that. but admitting failure is embarrassing, in other cultures even more so than in ours, and that can get people to try to avoid the problem rather than facing it which can lead to the situation here, however criticism like this is not helping matters either, instead it makes it worse. it is not giving others the chance to correct their mistakes. it is essentially saying: i don't want you to solve the problem, but i want to see you burn. how is that helpful?
- OhMeadhbh 3y ago
  I think Louis is saying the exact opposite of what you think he's saying.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    how is that? he says that calling yourself a PoS is good for you because it should motivate you to be better, and i say it's bad, because while it may work for him, it doesn't work for me and anyone else that i encountered who did that. this attitude also makes me look at other people the same way which is not good either. it's also defeatist, and self-depricating, just like the christian attitude that we are all born sinners, and we'll never overcome all our sins. with that attitude why should i even try? i rather believe we are born noble and that we should strive to keep that nobility or try to get back to it if we go astray.
    - OhMeadhbh 3y ago
      You initially said "it didn't work" not that "it doesn't work for me." The two statements are different. For the record, I agree with you, self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglect.

wmf 3y ago

Louis didn't mention this, but the FTC requires companies to give refunds if they can't ship within 30 days. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-billed-things-you-never-got-or-you-get-unordered-products https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-billed-th...

Sabinus 3y ago

The amount of coolaid you must have to have drunk to be capable of writing an PR email like that must be substantial, right?

LargeTomato 3y ago

I love Louis.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

Two entities HN loves collide. Not a native speaker, but to me the email sounds in the utmost way like a snake salesman riding into town. For sure I'll never buy a Purism phone from such people.

fggjnncvb 3y ago

[flagged]

4oo4 3y ago

Purism forums are still down, based on this I'm beginning to think that this might be intentional to shut down more unhappy customers. This is such a shame, my main device for years has been a Librem 15 and overall I had been really happy with it. Although it is overpriced compared based on specs, I thought it was worth it to have a user-friendly version of Heads firmware (PureBoot) that someone flashed for me. I don't need that level of security but it's awesome to have open source firmware that's Linux based. Louis nails it when he calls out that they see themselves as always being the good guy as being particularly insidious. Purism had good intentions with what they were developing and were very ambitious with what they were trying to do, and because of that I too had always wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. At this point I'm really glad I never bought a Librem mini or Librem 5 like I was wanting to before, I had stopped following the company a while ago but I knew something was up with their shady "investment opportunity" emails that appear to violate securities laws and may or may not be a ponzi scheme. Seriously, you tried really hard to do something really ambitious and awesome and have failed your customers, it's way past time to come clean. It's laughable to be organized as a Social Purpose Corporation but defraud and lie to your customers. If you work at Purism and you see shady and unethical things going on as part of this, don't be afraid to be a whistleblower.

amosbatto 3y ago
Purism suffered a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on July 29, 2023, which took down their site, as they explained on their Matrix channel and forum (when the site came back online). See: https://forums.puri.sm/t/sites-down-no-comms/21000/3 https://forums.puri.sm/t/sites-down-no-comms/21000/3 It is likely that someone who owns a botnet saw Rossmann's criticism of Purism and decided to that the company deserved to be attacked, which is a really rotten thing to do, because then people assume that Purism is hiding something. I agree that Purism should have refunded the cancelled orders, but calling the company a "scam" is way over the top, considering the huge amount of dev work that Purism has done on mobile Linux and the Phosh interface. I own both the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA and the company is definitely not a "scam".
- 4oo4 3y ago