Big Delays, Small Laptops: OLPC XO Recipients Mad

PCWMike writes to tell us about the growing concern over the failure of OLPC to deliver laptops to some of its customers. PC World editor-in-chief Harry McCracken notes that record-keeping was poor for some of the people who paid via PayPal. A report on LinuxJournal also suggests that customer information was lost due to errors in the database software used by OLPC. Quoting PC World: "OLPC spokesperson Jackie Lustig acknowledges problems with the ordering and the fulfillment process, but says the biggest challenges are a short supply of XO laptops and the organization's ability to meet consumer demand for the XO laptop. Some also wonder whether chronic delivery problems for Give One, Get One donors may bode poorly for the 15 countries slated to receive nearly 500,000 XO notebooks. Lustig says delivering in bulk to just over a dozen countries is infinitely simpler than processing and delivering 80,000 individual laptops."

Comments

Why am I not surprised?

[mi]

Starry-eyed desire to save the world is a good drive, but fulfilling the orders and delivering on the promises requires a lot of mundane work. One needs to get "all corporationy" to provide consistently good service...

Re:It *is* simpler

[morgan_greywolf]

He is absolutely correct; a half-million units shipped to just 12 to 15 destinations *IS* simple by comparison. Just look at the complexities of UPS' operations in moving 80000 packages within the boundaries of the US, and that becomes apparent. Yep. This is why any company that does significant amounts of shipping has an entire department and sometimes more than one department devoted to it. Some companies even have entire shipping divisions. Moving a large number of packages quickly is a significant undertaking and that's why there's an entire industry called the logistics industry devoted to it. A friend of mine works in the logistics industry and her job is to coordinate the shipping of packages and crates to various places around the world. It's a big job.

the silence is the problem

[xeno]

I ordered two -- in the first hour of the first day of the promotion -- to be shipped to my house in the US. As of today, I have nothing. No laptops, no email, no nuthin.' I phoned and confirmed that my order number does exist and indeed I have been charged for both the laptops (in November) and $50 for shipping (the day after Christmas).

But it's not the lack of laptops that's turning me from an interested and cheerful donor, to mild annoyance when it didn't show up before Christmas, to contemplating reversing the charges. It's the lack of information. Sure, there are delays. Sure, there are priorities for getting big shipments out to major educational recipients. But I gave these folks $850, and I don't even get the courtesy of a *status* message?

According to the schedule, mine should have showed up a month ago -- at the absolute latest. Before Christmas. I made the mistake of telling my kids about it, thinking I would teach them something about partnerships and donations, etc etc, and that's my own fault. But *still* even after phone calls and tracing and corrections... when I check the laptopgiving.org page, it tells me the order number is invalid, and that my email address is not found.

The kicker is that I work for a UN agency that manages large refugee aid programs, and I had to borrow an OLPC from a friend to show it to the Education & IT department directors. They're very interested in the OLPC, as it fits some of the educational needs pretty nicely. What am I going to tell these guys when they ask whether the project is well-run, has decent governance, and can deliver?

Sheesh.

-Jon