@Philips_Support_T @IvoGrijt
hey guys, sorry but can we please get some update?
Last news was that the goods never left the forwarder’s premises. Then what?
Furthermore, there is most likely a handful of backers in Qatar and the goods could have been shipped directly to each and every single one of them without using a forwarder.
So ,when can we get the product we paid for 10 months ago?
Thanks
Here is another request for updates on shipments to Qatar.
@IvoGrijt @Philips_Support_N @Philips_Support_N @Philips_Support_T
Listen gentlemen, I’m starting to have enough of this despicable situation. We are several customers waiting for a product we paid for. The last info @IvoGrijt provided us with was that he would inquire about the status of the shipment to Qatar. We are yet to receive something about that inquiry.
On 24 June, @IvoGrijt confirmed to me that he “believe(s) the unit just never left their premises once we delivered it to them and they labeled it.”
I mean, what can of logistical circus show is this? Who on Earth is responsible for this small scale industrial incident?
Now, you guys deliberately ignore messages and complaints from us (backers in Qatar). This is no longer tolerable.
Let me be clear for a second: if I do not get either the product itself within 15 business days or some update that will clarify the situation within the next 48 hours, I am going to go full blast on social media and explain to prospective clients the kind of ordeal I have been through as a customer myself. And trust me, that will be a full blast all over the place.
Looking forward to your reply.
Olivier,
Nobody is deliberately ignoring you or the other backers, be it from Qatar or elsewhere. But rather than provide you with pacifiers we opt to actually do the work needed to FIX the issues caused by our forwarder’s way of working (or lack thereof). This means we don’t reply until we have something solid to share with you.
You called this a logistical circus, to us it’s a nightmare. We trusted our forwarder to do as agreed and they didn’t and still don’t. You are upset about your package, we are upset about many more! I asked many times what they would do about the shipments to Qatar among others, with no answer whatsoever.
Today we found another, much more expensive shipping service which may be able to solve our issues with certain countries. We are running a trial shipment now to see if they can deliver, once we have confirmation of this by next week we will probably start shipping via this service if all goes well.
So please bear with us a little longer, and refrain from posting on social media or badgering Indiegogo about this.
@IvoGrijt Thanks for the update, which is not really news to us though.
To be frank, one of the guarantees of this project was the name behind it: Philips.
When I read that you guys have problems with a forwarder, I really feel I’m dealing with a small hardware shop from a remote area.
If you guys cannot make deals with renowned and reliable forwarders as a major consumer global brand, then fine, it means you need to bear the cost of shipping the projector individually with any of the courier companies available on the market, ie UPS, EMS, etc
That’s a readily solution to get our purchase shipped in no time. When talking specifically about Qatar, we are literally 8 of us… That’s a small cost to bear. Don’t you think?
Anyway, let’s see how things progress.
PS: as reminded by the IGG support team after I did complain to them, “At the heart of any successful collaboration is open communication.” LOL
Simply said, just be honest with backers. Tell us it’s a logistic disaster, poorly managed from A to Z (at least in terms of logistics) and give us news every week, whether positive or not: (1) you will avoid having backers constantly asking for news and (2) it will not give a false impression to backers. Also, just don’t wait until there is a serious grudge or queries over accumulate to say something.
Search my posts on this forum and use as keyword “skills”, and you’ll see what I’ve been saying all along. It’s even the reason why I joined the team. So I’ve always been honest with you guys.
Philips Projection made choices regarding shipping for many reasons, but getting the best deal for you the backers was prime among them. And I’m referring to things like the shipping cost and the import tax in some countries. Had this not been taken into consideration, then the cost would’ve been much higher for everyone. Also, no one counted or planned on COVID 19 and its effects on cargo shipping worldwide, with diminished service and even outages at times, and sky high prices as a result.
We communicate a lot, but a lot we can’t because we don’t know, we are sometimes also kept in the dark by our forwarder. It’s like marrying a person only to find out after the honeymoon that they don’t always brush their teeth, can’t cook, and aren’t truthful, yet their name is also on the mortgage and the car lease. You may want to break away but every time you’re promised that things will be better, only for them to slip again.
And now some of you are caught in between all this.
Also, don’t forget that over 12000 (my cautious estimate) of these shipments went just fine. Sure, a bit later due to COVID and such, but the majority of all shipments went off just fine still. So a logistical mismanagement from A to Z hardly qualifies here. If anything it’s XYZ that aren’t going well, and the communication from our Chinese speaking forwarder is just lacking in these cases.
Anyways, we are still working on these for all of you. It would be nice to be able to do so without the “bullying”.
@IvoGrijt
Thanks for taking the time to self-congratulate you and your team in length instead of providing us with the tiniest token of apology one could hope at least. I have no doubt you excel at whatever you’re doing in your job. However, sad to say, I do rest my case.
You tend to forget a rather simple principle here: we (backers) are customers . We paid for a product and ultimately some customer service of some sort. In the end, I still do not have my product when I quote you: “12000 (my cautious estimate) of these shipments went just fine.” And this is how you respond to customers’ concerns and complaints. Are you even serious?
As for “bullying”, I can confirm communication is certainly not your best skill. I’m not sure what kind of induction PHILIPS does provide its staff with but calling customers “bullies” is quite outstanding. Not only the customer service has shrunk to its minimum over the weeks but now I am getting personally insulted. We’ve reached a new level I will happily keep on record for future reference.
Attaboy, my man! I’m starting to believe you are at the wrong place doing the wrong job.
Now, instead of berating your unhappy customers you could have been straight forward and addressed my previous remark: what about shipping 8 projectors individually to Qatar instead of looking at this nonsense Mickey Mouse forwarder solution of yours?
Finally, please stop using Covid as an excuse for this miserable failure. As a matter of fact, I order stuff on regular basis from countries like the US (which is by the way in a worse situation compared to that in Asia in terms of logistics) and I still get it on time more or less. On top, I can tell from my very own work experience that cargo is doing very well these days… so, don’t you worry.
I guess this is my last post to you and your team.
So, yes, definitely and for sure : you " are still working on these for all of you".
This is indeed the least we expect from you as customers, my man. The lack of contrition is rather shocking in the end.
I’m more than happy to praise people for their good work and make it public if deemed necessary. Nevertheless, don’t expect me to stand up and applaud you for repeatedly failing and lacking basic customer awareness.
As said previously, I will keep all this on record and will happily share it with a wider audience at a later stage as this is pretty much unseen with a global brand like PHILIPS.
I already did two posts ago:
Regarding apologies, we have apologized many times over now. Rather than to keep doing that I chose to give hard facts and an actual feedback the backers from Qatar could use. We are sorry you haven’t gotten yours yet, which is why we are working hard to still get them to you.
Again, this is vague as can be.
“Running a trial”? Seriously?
Are you sending the stuff into orbit and waiting for it to land back on Earth? What’s this trial about?
I’m really curious as any basic courier company I did quote you can safely, rapidly, and efficiently ship the projectors out to us in Qatar.
Anyway… yet another great example of your extensive “open communication” style, I suppose.
We have been burned before. We had to try many different forwarders before choosing the one we currently use, and who have turned out to also not be 100% flawless.
With the couriers we’ve also been hit and miss, with the Russian shipments for example we had to ship 3 separate times and even had to put most of them on a train transport to be able to deliver.
So yes, we’re being as cautious as NASA to make sure we don’t promise you something again and don’t deliver.
This is a new service we are trying and only when we know it works will we commit to sending.
Also, shipments you make or receive for others may or may not involve batteries, for us it’s been an issue quite a few times already. Just the other day a return shipment was refused pickup because DHL suddenly said they would not handle it as it contained a battery, yet they were the ones who transported it to the customer in the first place. So your experience doesn’t necessarily apply to our shipments, nor does your notion of Covid 19 not being an actor in all these shipping issues.
In any case, like I said we are working on solutions. We arranged for a unit to be shipped from Germany to you, you’ll find the tracking number in a reply to your ticket #26653.
Ivo
To all the other backers in Qatar: we will find ways to ship to you as well. Thank you for your patience and we apologize for the fact that it has taken this long.
@IvoGrijt I can see a pattern here… every time any of the backers has “loudly” asked/ pushed for the update (which is their right to do so), you tend to keep him quiet by sending his projector out first regardless the cost. I can still remember that one guy from Saudi.
HOW ABOUT REST OF US FROM QATAR??
There are only 8 of us and we are all in the same situation. Backed the project since Sept last year for something that was promised in December. Now it is already approaching August. We have our patience but I can tell you it is now wearing out very thin!!
So you feel this is unfair, don’t you? And I agree it is!
It’s unfair that you guys weren’t shipped when they told us they would ship.
It’s unfair that someone even feels they need to resort to bullying to jump the line.
We apparently had a unit in Germany somewhere we could send to him. If we had more we would probably send them all that way. But we don’t.
We are working our asses off (well at least I know I am) to finally find a solution for all of you still waiting, from Qatar, South Africa, Reunion, and so many other places.
You can believe me or not, but we are.
So here’s the deal: if you believe me and you want to wait for news of that solution next week, then open or reply to your ticket telling me you want to wait one more week. Make sure to include your latest address and contact information in case it changed since you completed the survey. Post your ticket number here just to help me find them in the haystack.
If you don’t want to wait anymore and want a refund instead, then open or reply to your ticket telling me you don’t want to wait one more week and want a refund instead. Post your ticket number here just to help me find them in the haystack. I’ll then make sure your request gets to PhilipsNono as I can’t handle those myself.
That’s all I can tell you right now.
@IvoGrijt after waiting for almost 1 year, do you really think that refund is an option that we are all looking for? We want you and your team to actually working you asses off (as you said but I didnt see it from the outcome) and fix the problem rather than sending long reply without any solution. Plus not to put the blame to the forwarder as what you have been doing for the past 2 months! It is a very poor management if it took you 2 months to realize that the forwarder cannot do their job.
I understand from your previous update in the other threads that the projectors have arrived in HK with the forwarder. Why cant you send these projectors out via courier as you have done for Oliver? If you can send one from Germany to Qatar, then your excuse that no shipment with battery could be sent to Qatar is not valid.
I’m damned if I answer and I’m damned if I don’t.
I’m also going to also stop responding then, as nothing I say matters anyways…
Of course if the reply is the same for last 2 months. For the past 2 months the replies were “forwarder has f**k us up and we are discussing with the forwarder”.
And you have not reply to why the projectors in HK cannot be couriered directly to Qatar if you can do it from Germany?
The one in Germany was sent by us directly taking it to DHL themselves. The ones in China are with our forwarder and he’s been telling us “we shipped” by giving tracking numbers when in fact they haven’t shipped, or they just didn’t ship anything despite us asking them.
We are no longer just talking to and waiting for an answer from the forwarder, we are actively switching to another solution, as soon as we know the one we’re testing out works, which will be next week hopefully.
Ticket 24654. Contribution ID: 11064. Already sent (twice) requested address to hello@picopix.com yesterday and last week as it said that:
“We are sorry to contact you again for the shipment but DHL came back to us asking more precision about your address. Depending on your case, it could be a wrong phone number, wrong address, truncated Zip code…” 
Yes, that’s why they said they didn’t ship to you. So if you just confirm(ed) this information requested, we can use the information knowing that it’s absolutely correct, without any BS from the forwarder saying otherwise.
Please reply to that ticket with the requested info or to the email you got. Don’t worry if you get a message back that the mail address is out of order, we will still get your mail.
Guys,
To be fully transparent, things have improved for me after I did lodge a direct complaint with IGG. I was then contacted by the Philips Support Team (wtih IGG in cc), which proposed to ship the projector from Germany.
However, contrary to what @IvoGrijt is implying in this thread, I also did inquire about the rest of the Qatar backers in my communication with the following Post Scriptum (as opposed to “bullying to jump the line”):
“We are a few backers in QATAR (8 I believe) who are in the same situation. They probably deserve the same attention I’ve received.”
The Philips Support Team then replied:
“Yes indeed we have the list.
We will do our best to make it asap.
If not working, we will ship our products from Switzerland but we prefer not to due to very high taxes.”
As for @IvoGrijt, I will not leave the issue with his aggressive communication and lack of respect unattended and will do my best to escalate the matter as high as possible with the Philips management as this is clearly not tolerable and rather unprofressional.