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Dear members,
I am writing you to caution you against doing business with Granite Embedded (their product being TrollPod). After reading many complaints about delays and also finding many personal replies from Carl online about his business woes, I decided against my better judgement, to contact him after about a year of waiting for him to resolve these issues.
I asked him if things are on track now and if he has units to ship. He was quite communicative during the pre-sale period and told me he has 100 units to ship and current software on them, but if I wanted to wait 7 days or so, he'd have new software. He also said the new hardware sounds really good, and encouraged the order.
So I ordered it through paypal, and that 7 days turned into 14. He simply stopped communicating at this point. Had he said, "Hmm, the new software is buggy, do you want me to ship it with the old software?" I would have said yes. Or had he said, "I don't know what's going on or how long it will take to fix. Do you want your money back?" I would have said yes, and re-ordered when it was fixed.
Instead he said nothing. Ever again. 40 days later I opened a dispute with paypal and he still said nothing (this is supposed to be a way for buyer and seller to resolve without paypal's involvement). At that point I sensed flat out fraud, and fearful of being taken, I escalated it to a claim with paypal. Magically and mysteriously, Carl finally said something: "Sorry for the delays" and they provided me a refund. I told him he is very mistaken if he thinks I'm complaining about delays. I could wait a year (and have) for a product I want. My complaint is with the communication before sale, and zero after sale. Not setting expectations correctly, and simply not communicating (to the point where you can't tell the difference between that and fraud). I'm not saying he's a fraud, I'm saying with his taking payment, then not answering any emails or sending any product (in my case for 43 days), it's very hard to tell the difference in intentions.
If you want to go through a similar ordeal, I suggest you do business with him. Or, if you don't, well, you decide...
Bless the internet for being able to provide feedback like this to help consumers.
Tom
posted by 24.21.17...
, Mon, 6 Oct 2008 15:41:33
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