Dear everyone!
You might already know me if you have been with the mighty Jolla community for a while. In this post I am going to introduce myself to all the old and new members of this community, thank the amazing people who are no longer in the company, and also share some pictures from my first day at work which was this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.
To be honest, I knew it is going to be a fun ride and what would be a better way to start working with a company that provides exciting mobile services than doing it in the middle of Mobile World Congress? Although it was my third time attending MWC in Barcelona with the sailors (Third time lucky?) and despite the lack of presentation and personnel compared to last year, it surely went smooth and turned out to be a successful one.
As you might (or might not!) have heard already, my role in the company is to be the Community Manager. Jolla lost many capable hands handling the oars during the unfortunate financial situation last year. Among them was the previous Community Chief, Carol Chen (cybette). Her various responsibilities fell by the wayside, even though many Sailors, such as Jolla’s Head of Communications Juhani Lassila and Hardware Adaptation/L10n Engineer Simonas Leleiva, chipped in to help and even Carol continued as much as she could to take care of the community while not being officially a part of the company any longer. Fortunately, she still is an active member even though she is now employed elsewhere; she always makes time to take care of us as I am sure, her love for the community doesn’t fade away.
Photo Credit: Marko Saukko
Photo Credit to Alexandro Gómez from JollaES
I personally see the opportunity here to thank Carol Chen for everything that she has done over the years at Jolla for the community, looking after us and making the magic happen, as well as all of the other sailors who have made it possible for Jolla and Sailfish OS to live through the thick and thin. I also would like to thank the wonderful Jolla community that are supporting the ones who are trying to make a change. Thank you for sticking with us through and through.
I am honored to step on the boat now and reinstate activities and processes for the wonderful Jolla and Sailfish OS Community.
Back to my first days at work, the MWC 2016, I can admit that it was a fantastic show to begin with. The traditional selfie (group selfie… groupie!) in Barcelona’s metro was there, as it has been over the past 4 times:
The community members, although fewer than last year, were among the sailors closer than ever, wishing the rest of the community members were there like last year so we could have more fun and get more things done! But, maybe next time? I have hope that by next year we will be making huge progress and will definitely be more visible to the world of smartphones, more so than ever, ready for us and vice versa.
The new Intex Aqua Fish was finally revealed to the public, made it into the hands of many journalists and came off with flying colors, a bright example being Engadget writing beautifully about it. I was there to do as I did during the previous years; cover community events, handle a number of journalists with demos such as Nitansh Rastogi from 91mobiles one of India’s biggest Smartphone reviewing websites, and also helping around with other new duties that I was introduced to. From now on, I will also be handling community engagement and hosting, communications in social media channels and managing community related tasks.
We have always said at Jolla that community is the heart of Jolla and we would not be able to be anywhere on the map without our community, and we have thankfully received a ton of support from our community over the years, so let it continue for the better!
Here I present you with a gallery of this year’s Mobile World Congress with a special thanks to Alex from JollaES for most of the beautiful photos:
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Jolla Phone vs Intex Aqua Fish.
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Jolla Phone vs Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Jolla Phone vs Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Jolla Phone vs Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Simonas Leleiva showing off Sailfish OS 2.0 on an Intex Aqua Fish device. Credits: JollaES
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- A passerby interested in checking the Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- One of the Sailfish girls presenting Aqua Fish to an interested passerby. Credits: JollaES
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- Simonas Leleiva explaining how Sailfish OS is integrated on Intex Aqua Fish! Credits: JollaES
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- Taru Aalto and James Noori (Me). Credits: JollaES
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- Mobile World Congress venue entrance. Credits: JollaES
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- Before the press conference. Credits: JollaES
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- Juhani Lassila starting the conference. Credits: JollaES
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- Antti Saarnio presenting Sailfish India. Credits: JollaES
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- Martin Schüle, Chief Designer at Jolla playing with an Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Jolla and Intex. Credits: JollaES
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- Credits: JollaES
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- Jolla and Fairphone. Credits: JollaES
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- Credits: JollaES
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- Fairphone 2 running Sailfish OS 2.0. Credits: JollaES
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- Intex Aqua Fish. Credits: JollaES
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- Fairphone 2 disassembled in less than a minute! Credits: JollaES
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- Fairphone 2 and Oppo find 5 running Sailfish OS 2.0 community port. Credits: JollaES
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- Sailfish OS banner with the new logo from our press conference at Mobile World Congress. Credit: JollaES
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- Fairphone 2 with its beautiful transparent back cover. Credits: JollaES
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- Aqua Fish at Intex stand
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- Intex Aqua Fish and its beautiful packaging
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- Dinner with Sailors and our amazing community
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- The “groupfie” on the metro!
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- The “groupfie” on the way to metro!
And that brings me to the end of my first ever post on the official Jolla blog. It all started from a cheeky Twitter account and a big dream! Never thought it would take me to actually working for Jolla. But now I’m here. Remember to dream big!
Cheers,
James
WOW! Are you the James Noori from JollaUsers? Glad to see you there (as Carol did not work in Jolla anymore 🙁 .) I’ve read and translated some of your articles, we Chinese Jolla fans love your post! It’s really great to see you in Jolla 😀
Hi! YES! I am the one from JollaUsers! Thank you for your long term support and translating my articles!
It is indeed sad that Carol doesn’t work for Jolla anymore, but I will try and follow her steps 🙂 Thanks again, Tyler!
Hi James i want to publish a xiaomi mi 4i review on your blog so how can i contact you or else share me your mail id
Hi!
I’m sorry but this is a Jolla/Sailfish only blog!
Cheers
Congrats James!
Thanks a lot, Dirk!
Great!
When I read that Carol is no longer at Jolla it made me pretty sad. To follow in her steps as community manager is not easy. Then I saw it’s you James from JollaUsers, whose passion and excitement for Sailfish took a big part in convincing me to become a sailor. Happy to see you here and I am looking forward to see your work. 🙂
It is indeed not easy to fill Carol’s shoes! She has done a fantastic job so far and we know it! She wholeheartedly defended the brand and the community! I will do my best to reach her level at some point 🙂
Congrats again, this time on a great first post! Linking few sailors, a blog and some media coverage, all being part of your job too was a nice idea. Looking forward for your posts here and elsewhere, communication is the King! YIS, Simo
Thank you! I will do my best to deliver what I’m supposed to deliver both to the company and the community!
Grats on the new job! Great that you are from JollaUsers,
Good luck with your new role and hopefully there is often more two-way communication now.Hopefully Jolla can survive and show a new phone soon because the battery only lasts for a day now anymore ( Got it since launch ) I have to look for a new phone soonish so i hope there will be a new sailfish option available! 🙂
Thanks Pytoks! I am glad that the community is still strongly supporting us and I will do my absolute best to deliver a two-way communication between the company and the community!
Excellent choice on the new Community Manager and happy to have someone in charge with a great passion for Jolla and Sailfish OS =) Congrats and thank you for this introduction.
Thanks a lot for your kind words! It really means a lot to see the community believing in me so much!
Hey James,
I remember JollaUsers was my goto place for all things Jolla, especially in the days when jolla.com was just a collection of tweets 🙂
Congrats on the job; your really deserve it. You and JollaTides were my source of information….and you published one of my posts once 😉
We’ll miss Carol (though she’s not “gone”) ..and sail on sailors. The world needs an alternative which remains Unlike.
br
Nyonglema
Hey!
Thanks for supporting Jolla, JollaUsers and JollaTides for the longest time! I also used to write for JollaTides for a short while before I became ever so slightly busy! I also remember publishing your post of course 😉
Yeah Carol is still a great contributor in our community and that gives me the chills to know that she is around and not leaving us 😉
Cheers!
James congratulations on your new role but if you are to be Community Manager please can you be clear and straightforward in your posts.
You say “Among them was the previous Community Chief, Carol Chen (cybette). Her various responsibilities fell by the wayside, even though many Sailors, such as Jolla’s Head of Communications Juhani Lassila and Hardware Adaptation/L10n Engineer Simonas Leleiva, chipped in to help and even Carol continued as much as she could to take care of the community while not being officially a part of the company any longer. Fortunately, she still is an active member even though she is now employed elsewhere;”
Does this mean “Carol Chen has left Jolla but will still be contributing to the Jolla Community”?
Please let’s keep it simple. Use short sentences and simple words. It will help rebuild the limited credibility Jolla has.
Thank you Ninepine for your comment!
The post is actually rather clear as is it possible not to be in the company and contribute on community activities.
I clearly said that she left the company, so that one is out of the way. After that, whatever Carol decides to do for Jolla will be considered a community activity which many other people, in or outside of the company, have done, still do, and will do to help Jolla keep the boat afloat.
Carol is no exception. She has been the community chief, now she is an active community member like many others.
Cheers 🙂
Hi James,
great to have you here to communicate!
The best thing, from my point of view, Jolla can do now, is to present an convincing option for the future: i.e. Fairphone2 with official SFOS support!
What can you tell us about it, when can we put our hands on this?
I think there are many people like me, who won’t use an Androidphone, but love to use a fair produced phone with SFOS…
Good luck from Germany!!
Hi!!
Thanks for your comment!
I will definitely pass your opinions to the sailors!
I can’t tell too much about the plans unfortunately, but even now with the full community support Fairphone 2 is a really compelling product to install SFOS on. I hope we can come back to you with amazing news regarding that 🙂
Cheers!
James
James…you geeky sneak. Show the community some love!
Haha this one made me laugh every time I looked at it! “geeky sneak” haha xD I’ll show the community all the love I have!
Jolla has never acknowledged turin Phone’s announcement that its launching with Sailfish. Hope they will soon. Congrats on the new job 🙂
Hi swave. We have been discussing with Turing about contractual items for some time, but now things look a bit clearer. That’s the reason we have not yet addressed this in public. We’re just preparing an announcement, which includes Turing as well.
Lovely words James, I’m proud to see you taking the community oars in hand, and look forward to great things from you. It’ll be my privilege to support you in your new role, as you have supported me in the past. It’s also heart-warming to see the responses from the community members, who have stood by Jolla through the highs and the lows, and continue to do so (now with me huddling along). Take care of the community, and take care of the Jolla sailors for me too!
Thanks Carol!
I’m really overwhelmed by the amount of love I’m receiving!! I have to give all of it back ^.^ Not complaining though!
Thank you so much for the support you’re providing to me! You’ll always remain as my Chief here 🙂
I’ll take care of them, I’ll do my best!
Good luck and thanks for the introduction. It’s refreshing to see a blog post that’s not Tablet-related. 🙂
Haha you’re welcome! There will be plenty more to come 🙂
Hey James, I wish you all the success in this position with Jolla and your association with Jolla to continue for years to come.
As a Jolla user for more than 20 months, I am proud to be a Jolla (Sailfish) user, will continue to do so and have a banter with my son showing off my Jolla outperform his much superior hardware android device.. :D. Lets enjoy the turbulent ride (for the time being.. 🙂 ).
Hello 🙂
Thank you for your beautiful comment!
I’m glad I’m not the only one beating high-end Androids with my Sailfish device! 😀
Let’s enjoy the ride 😉
Hi James,
I really hope that you can improve the communication at Jolla so good luck for that.
The development of Sailfish must go on as it is so superior to other systems. Hopefully we can see the potential of it on some better hardware soon.
I will be contributing by developing Sailfish apps which has become quite a hobby for me (right now I am working on a OBD app).
Hi John!
Thanks for your comment, and yes, most definitely, I’ll try my best to keep the communication between the company and the community afloat!
Thanks for your contributions to our app ecosystem. We will be working on getting things much better for app developers of course.
Cheers.
…. so glad to see some further recovery and re-establishment of community affairs ! Hotfixes next !
d (^_^) b
Community is the heart of Jolla!
And yes, one at a time 🙂
we want to make tablet with sailfish os,may you give some advice?
if we do that,what’s your licence model? what support we can get from you?
Hi! You can contact info@jolla.com for your inquiry. Thanks!
Congrats James, I regularly visited jollausers from the very beginning and found it very informative. Please can you post something about where Jolla is up to with Sailfish OS and partners. Particularly Intex, Fairphone 2, Turing Phone and Puzzle Phone. At the very least Jolla needs to provide the community with SFOS 2.0 images for existing Android mobiles, like Samsung, Sony and HTC. That way the community can showcase the OS and spread the word to create more consumer demand.
Thanks a lot for your long term support!
We are actually working on a lot of new blog posts and topics to communicate better with our community and keep our promise of communication alive. There will be posts about most of the things you asked if all goes as planned.
Thanks again and cheers!
Hello James, and good luck!
You got a difficult job. There is true affection for Jolla in the hearts of people, despite all the recent events, and you can capitalise on that.
Hi! Thanks a lot for commenting, I will definitely try my best to deliver that 🙂
Hi James. Can you head over to da big boss and check da status of the refund? Thought we should have the money by now according to earlier blog post.
but it seems that they are still missing.
If he refuse to answer…tell him that we don’t have much of a community left soon…the clock is ticking.
When is the next community meeting?
Hi Dave!
From the information I got, the refunds are being processed as we speak. I understand that it took quite a long time but there were a lot more factors to consider and wait for in compare to what we can see from the outside. International money transfers, transfers to PayPal, getting all the lists right, getting confirmation from different sources so we don’t do it wrong, and most importantly, waiting for the community till the last minute to use the refund tool and complete their form. All of that took precious time and we totally understand the frustration it might have brought for those who have been waiting for a while.
But I assure you, we are doing our absolute best to deliver the amount to your account as soon as we possibly can. There is no reason for us to keep your money for an unnecessary amount of time! Thank you again for your patience.
Great answer. Lets hope source trustworthy. 😀
You should trust me 😛
Your money is yours, it’s just a matter of time. The thing is that at Jolla we have people that are doing the job of a full team, and some of those people sometimes should do other things at the same time (e.g the refunds) and that slows everything down, naturally.
Our plan is to finish returning all of the money to the people who we owe the money to in less than a month.
James….My money is never mine. I have a wife…
However. Your words Sounds great and I hope its true. Cant say I Trust jolla ATM but you seems like a sincere guy. Let’s hope for the best. Thanks.
Dave! For some reason I can’t reply to that tablet thread that you mentioned me on TMO any longer 🙁
I don’t know what has happened but the “Image verification” doesn’t show me any image, ONLY for the thread so basically I’m unable to reply. No matter how many times I tried during different days, using different browsers, even IE ( 😀 ) it just doesn’t show me any image to verify.
Hi.Im sorry to hear that.but at lesst you tried, thx. It could be that the AI reqognize you as as a threat to the Maemo since you have joined jolla officially and trying to look you out.
Hi James!
When will we receive an update of Sailfish 2.0? At least a bug fix and some basic improvements?
I know thatJolla wants to wait for the big screen together with fair phone, Turing phone etc. but a slight improvement for all of us should be possible.
The jolla phone is becoming outdated and the battery problems occur at every jolla phone owners. So, the question about a new phone becomes more and more important: When does a new phone “arrive”?
If jolla will not be able to announce a deliverable device within the next 3 month, a lot of the jolla users will have to change to apple and android phones and will probably not turning back, or at least earliest in 2-3 years.
Hi!
Thank you for commenting!
There always is an update waiting to be done and released to the public. We have released the early adopters version of our next update a while back but the development became a challenge due to certain issues and bugs that were blocking us from getting the final version ready and out. (I don’t exactly know the technical parts!) but our engineers are working hard to get the update out as soon as possible.
About a new phone to arrive, Jolla is now a software company and will not release any consumer hardware any time soon, but of course our partners (e.g Intex) are working hard on getting new hardware out.
Cheers!
Hello Chris, sounds like Jolla is interested in Asia market and going to drop European! Goodbye jolla. Still waiting for my money which used to built a better software instead of make a tablet. Great job from Jolla management!
That would be sad for the current community, but maybe Jolla is satisfied with the Indian (Intex) market.
Hi James,
Could you please give us an update on the refund schedule?
Preferably with hard dates. We’ve had a bit too much of wishy-washy language from Jolla over the last 18 months.
From the original blog post, I think a lot of people were left with the impression that they would get their refund a week after filling out the request. Specifically this language:
“Refunds will be processed on a weekly basis”
I understand there may be some delay in the actual funds being available in our PayPal account, but since filling out the refund form in middle March I have heard absolutely nothing from Jolla about the status of the first half of my refund.
This seems to go against the above quote from the blog.
As the new community manager, we would appreciate it if you could unambiguously clarify the first refund schedule for us.
On what date will refunds begin to PayPal accounts?
What is the last date that refunds for the first 50% of contribution money be made?
Welcome to the ship. Hopefully the mismanagement from previous crews doesn’t leave you too sea sick!
Hi Martin!
I totally understand your frustration. But as usual, things did not go as planned. There were a lot of people with missing information and a lot of people who submitted their refund application really late (Trust me, there still are people who haven’t filled the form despite the fact that the form is expired now!!)
So that basically had a lot to do with more and more delays on the program.
Another thing worth mentioning that I mentioned above to another user (Dave999) that some of our sailors are doing the job of a team and with that aside, some of them are doing more than that as well (like the refunding) which makes things slower than it usually would have been.
Another factor here is the international money transfer that we had a lot of delays on because the amount was not little.
Our schedule is set to refund everything that should be refunded in less than a month. And we are doing what ever it takes to meet the deadline.
Unfortunately I can’t give you any hard dates since unpredictable things can happen during any process.
Hope you understand, and thank you so much for being patience with us!!
Cheers!
Hi James,
It seems that the first half of the partial refunds have begun.
As the new community manager, I feel that more clarification is in order about the schedule of these refunds.
I know that I certainly have not received any emails from Jolla about the status of my refund request since the middle of March, and I do not have any refund from Jolla in my PayPal account!
Please increase transparency!
I don’t get it … a community manager … for what community?
Sorry to be a partypooper, but most interested people (as me) are already gone or just wait for the refund. If you look at together.jolla.com you notice that there are pretty few contributions and mostly bug reports by device owners. Due to a lack of devices, software updates and a roadmap, there will no new users join in.
IMHO there was a time during the crowdfunding and SFOS 2.0 development, where was a vibrant community that was happy to communicate with / about Jolla Inc. But at that time, the company only spend 1/2 position (Carol) to share information and to moderate comments and ideas. For the amount of channels, this was information overload to Carol and of course, she wasn’t allowed to post some relevant details (esp. in time). All in all this kind of strategy seems to be a big part of why Jolla failed and why this is just an desert, where you can hear some lost phones ringing…
Hi! Thanks for commenting.
I respect your opinion but I would have to disagree with you on the part that said there is no community left. Maybe your case differs as you were interested a while ago and you have lost your interest now because of the mishap that happened during the tablet era.
But I think you are underestimating our community quite a bit. Jolla’s heart is its community and and the hardcore fans that have been with us are still there and are helping us a lot with development.(See this ) and that is only a part of the story. There are plans that we will announce in the near future and we are working on expanding the xommunity. One failure should not result giving up, in my opinion.
We at Jolla are doing our best to keep everything community centered. It may be quite now, but a little patience might reveal much better things waiting for our community.
Cheers!
Hi James,
I’m glad that you keep good spirit in such a hard period.
If Jolla really want to gain back the lost credibility it should be done:
1. Immediately to refund for the tablet project, not to make 1 year process and in the end to announce that it failed. Most of the money will be reinvested in Jolla products.
2. To be truly open source, at least as Ubuntu phone and Tizen. This will bring open source power.
3. To provide commercial support to device manufacturers and to choose 1 device as preferred and sold as Jolla brand, as Google Nexus.
Thank you so much for your feedback, I agree with most of it!
We are also trying our best to make it happen.
1.The refunds are being made starting today.
2.We’re working on that one! Will get back to you with more news if I had.
3.That needs a lot of resources but the plans are similar to what you are thinking. Let’s see what the few months forward will bring us.
Cheers.
I’m waiting for the refund to be able to buy a Jolla Phone but I can’t find it anymore. Will sell new smartphones running Sailfish in Europe in the coming weeks-months?
Hi! Thank you for commenting!
We’re sorry that the Jolla phone is out of stock :\ I don’t think there are plans to bring it back any time soon either.
About new smartphones, let’s wait and see what happens 🙂
In the meanwhile you can use phones like the FairPhone2 that can have Sailfish OS on it which our community has ported it and it’s amazing!
The refund also is supposed to be in your PayPal account very very soon! Starting today!
Thanks for the answer, I hope to see a lot of phones running Sailfish very soon! 😀
Why is there a need for a community manager when there is no community left? Even if there were a community left, there is no way that it can groove since it is not possible to get a Jolla phone or tablet. The community is dead or at least almost dead, let it rest in peace.
Who cares about a crippled, feature incomplete, buggy OS anyway…
Community Refund Manager might be better?
Yes, exactly! That is the best way to solve the refund problems that Jolla seems to have… 😉
…howerever, I think that one of the main reasons why the money hasn’t been repaid yet is because Jolla doesn’t have the money. They are simply trying to hold the repayment as long as possible in hope to be able to earn some money first. So a community refund manager would probably cost money which they don’t have.
Hi! Thank you for commenting!
But I have to disagree with you; the community is not dead and isn’t going anywhere! We have our community beta group that has always been fully active, and we have many other channels that people are fully active on them contributing in how ever way possible to make Sailfish a better operating system. You could visit IRC sometimes and check out Twitter/Facebook (Jolla Pioneer Fans group) and other channels such as Diaspora* if you don’t like the first options.
Anyway, the refunds are being made starting from today! We did have the money and we still have it. The problem was that it took way longer than expected for the amount to be transferred into out Hong Kong PayPal account from where it was planned to be paid back. To add onto that, we had people being really late on submitting their refund forms which made everything even slower. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not bringing excuses here, the money was, is and will be yours!
Hi!
Just to make it clear, Sailfish is not an open source project, which means that there is no way that as a community member you can truly contribute. I was in from the start in hope that Jolla might possible open source Sailfish in the future, at least that is how they won me over.
However, Jolla has lost me as a supporter since all of this have had a very bad taste. My Jolla phone is sub-par to any other phone on the market. So I am a happy iPhone user nowadays. 🙂 While I know that it is less open source (it consists of open source parts too) than Jolla it is the best google free alternative.
I still believe that the community is dead, even if there are some supporters left. The number of supporters have declined a lot because of how Jolla have handled the tablet story.
@Nightfall Your claim about Sailfish not being open source (whatever that means… free software is a better expression) is a lie. 80% of the OS is free software and you are free to contribute.
It’s ridiculous to see people complain about SailfishOS not being open and claim they’d fix each and every bug if they only had access to the sources, when at the same time none of those guys gives a damn about the 80% of the code that actually is *open* and would need some love as well. Hypocrite!
I give a damn of the 80% as well! 🙂
However, most of the annoying bugs and missing features in my opinion are located in the __user__interface__ which is part of the __proprietary__ part of Sailfish. So no, I can’t fix anything even if I would like to.
Hi! James, it’s taken 12 days since they were started…How long will it take to have the 1st half of the repayments sorted?
Congrats on the job. But first things first, where is my money?
Hi Antti!
The refunds are being made starting today 🙂
hope you get yours soon; we apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for being patient with us!
That’s first good news in ages. I really hope you haven’t learnt the bad habbit of misusing the word “soon” from Jolla.
Good news if true. The only good news in 1,5 years from Jolla.
This will be an Epic Weekend if I find my money on my account!
A lot of comments have already appeared on our blog from the people who received their first half 🙂 Tweets are flowing as well!
This is a great weekend!
Maybe a good weekend for those who got some refund…
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/soon?q=Soon
I’m asking once again: Can the page http://jolla.com/tablet be corrected with the current status? It is not “sold out”, but rather it failed to be delivered.
And once again: You’re wrong. It was delivered (in small quantities only, but still), and now it’s no longer available. That’s the very definition of “sold out”.
Was about to write something similar, but I guess that speaks for itself 🙂
There are times when honesty and integrity are possibly more desirable than simple definitions however…
Could you explain why our tablets were on sale on Taobao market?
Otherwise it brings this sold out a joke I think.
Perhaps too rude, thank you for the partial refund! All the best.
Just curious: where do you draw the line of “delivered”? If you delivered one tablet, would you as well say that the tablet “was delivered, in small quantity, but still”?
I hoped to see some progress in communication compared to Lassila, but the fact that you “was about to write something similar” to Ossi (sic) is a BAD omen.
No comments, people know the truth of this “it was delivered”.
You are so right. Browsing the website, one might think the tablet was a great success. Look Ma, it even won an award!
“Our aim is to be open, independent, and transparent in everything we do.”
What a joke. If this was the truth, you wouldn’t highlight a 97% failed project, and then show me this…
“Missed your chance to get the Jolla Tablet? Be the first to know about availability and other Jolla products!”
Who missed what? Oh, wait, you must be referring to the number of missed deadlines Jolla couldn’t fulfill, leading to the eventual demise of the project. I really just can’t wait for the next great Jolla product to hit the market, please keep me in the loop! What’s that you say? You’re a software company now? With only one product? You mean you don’t sell phones anymore, and there is zero chance of there ever being more tablet stock? Great! Please keep me informed and entertained with more lies, hurrah!
Enjoy managing the hundreds of community users, just try and be more honest and forthright than Jolla has been thus far.
+1
+1
+1
+1
Hi James,
welcome as the new community manager. I have been following your jollausers site from the beginning and like your “groupfies” from the hopefully now growing Sailor team.
Some tablet refunds have been donated or the refund request haven’t been filled in. I would like to now ideas of the Sailor team how they would invest the community money and hope Antti will support some of the ideas. Please have also a look at https://together.jolla.com/question/133663.
Hi Axel!
I will forward your request, since I have no clue about the amounts that has been donated, refunded or tablets that has been delivered! But I thank you on behalf of our team for your generous and amazingly kind gesture!
Cheers!
Still no money… Soon, they said…
Me neither. But its soon time for the other half of the refund so maybe they sqeeize it toghter so the can move on.
Not a single penny of refund here either
Hi Antti!
We have been delivering refunds from late April, and we’re continuing now as we speak. The process, sadly, has left us with a lot of difficulties (Dealing with PayPal, international money transfers until the money reached PayPal, extra charges we faced later on while using PayPal and more).
I apologize for the delays, as I have always said, that money is yours and it will be back into your account. We’re working hard on it.
Cheers
James
I received my refund for the first half on April 29 so they are being processed.
While I won’t defend some earlier communication failures on Jolla’s part, the tablet mess was clearly just bad luck and they especially can’t be blamed for anything that’s being offered for sale in China or India with their name on it. Bad things can happen in business and small companies simply don’t have the millions of dollars to fight back in court.
There is something that I do find to be a betrayal of trust and that is the apparent complete lack of interest in even discussing replacement batteries for the phone. Perhaps I’m mistaken about this, and I hope I am, but I would not be happy to be discarding any cherished device because the battery is worn out. It looks very bad.
Hi Jozsef and thank you for this comment!!
We’re glad that you have received your refund and we are delighted to see how understanding our community can be!
Yes it was pure bad luck for us as sometimes “bad” things happen all at the same time to the extent of burning a project down and almost bankrupting a company. It’s never fun let me tell you, neither for the company nor the consumer.
About replacement batteries, I’ll get back to you as soon as I have a clear answer!
Just chiming in that I also haven’t received the first refund. If we look at here and twitter as a bellwether, I think more are waiting than have received at this point.
I didn’t also receive my refund. how long we have to wait for our refund?
Hi. We started in late April with the refunds, and are continuing them as we speak. All should be done during May.
Jolla just secured 10,4 million euros funding. If they do not understand to use some of that money to refub the tablet backers in full and maybe throw in some bonus for holding our money so long, then they are fools.
Still nothing in my Paypal account and no communication as to when it’s due. Jolla bad show -what!
I am in the same boat… No money and the usual lack of communication.
unfortunately I am in the same situation (no money on my paypal account)and still waiting…
exactly the same story here…no refund so far
Congratulations to Jolla and team headed by Antii for securing the finances and keeping the Jolla afloat (forever.. 🙂 ).
Ukko Perkele is always there to help out anytime.. 😀
Eteenpain Eteenpain Sininen Valkoinen Soturi.. 🙂
Thank you so much!
Secured $10.4 millions! 5.2 to Jolla and 5.2 to backers…
I wish it was that easy, Dave!
$10.4 million so can I have all my tablet money back now. Still waiting for first part of the refund………………..
Hi Dave.
@James could you ask mr. Saarnio what does soon mean, because I’m starting to believe all those dictionaries are wrong about it? Still no refund…
Hi Antti! Thanks for commenting!
As I have said above, we have started proceeding refunds starting from late April and are continuing as we speak. I’m sure yours will be processed along the way as well. We apologize for being so late but we never intended to do anything else with your money than refunding it to you!
The word “soon” really means “soon” now 😉
Hi James and welcome as new Community Manager! I read that the first half of refunds was sent at the end of april. That’s almost two weeks ago and I can’t find any money on my Paypal account. Would you care to tell me/us when the rest will be sent and why exactly a few of us (once again) have to wait?
Thank you, Laubblaeser
I think they are doing like tablet shipment: pay in small portion (1 payment/week) to make sure that money are process correctly.
The real reason I think we all know. Otherwise would not be this issue.
+
Hi! Thanks for your comment!
Yes I can! We have begun the process from last month, that is true, as you might have seen on Twitter and on this blog, there are people who have received their refunds as well as those who are still waiting.
Our team for refunding the amount is not as big as you might think it is and that is part of the slower speed that we’re experiencing, while another reason is that we faced some extra charges while using PayPal, and figuring that out has slowed us down even further! But nothing will stop us, and we will refund your money.
We apologize for any delay, miscommunication and misunderstandings along the way.
Cheers,
James
Hi James,
Do your team introduce manually each payment into Paypal once you argue that “Our team for refunding the amount is not as big as you might think it is”?
Please consider using https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-overview-outside .
The whole process a see max few md of work with data collection webform, not more. It past more than 6 months and still no actions. The story is the same as shipment.
In the end you will consider this task as done as the shipment of tablet released and delivered.
Hi!
I’m sorry but I don’t know details of how they are doing it. But if there were no sudden issues, the funds would have been returned way earlier. I can assure you there is no other reason to it.
I will however pass the link you pasted here although I’m quite certain that they know about it already!
Thanks for your comment.
James
Thanks James for your reply.
Maybe the truth is in the lack of money, not the complex process or team size?
Me, as many others, would prefer to know the truth instead of sweet lie.
It is not your fault. I understand that you’re in the middle of fights.
But I think your management should know it.
Well, that is not the truth. I talked to you with as much honesty and openness as possible! I can assure you that the issue is not lack of money.
Thank you James.
I hope this issue will be resolved soon.
You’re welcome, and trust me, I want this to be solved more than anyone! There are much better things to focus on coming along Jolla and Sailfish OS’ way!
I confirm that I received today the first half of money.
Thank you!
I’m waiting for the second part and for “those much better things to focus on coming along Jolla and Sailfish OS’ way”.
Cheers!
Awesome piece of news there! I hope everything happens fast! More things will follow really soon 🙂
Cheers!
Hi,James.I’m a huge fans of jolla and I have follow it since you guys start to build a new meego system —– sailfish os ,as also I’m a chinese,; I just wondering will you design a new jolla phone(maybe jolla phone2)?I love this os very much and I have a jolla tablet, it’s a great tablet and os and I love it; I hope Jolla will be strong and have it own app, because it was odd that a system has two totally defferent UX.
Hi Ryan! Thank you for your supporting comment!
I’m glad that you have your tablet in hand and are enjoying it. We truly do have a unique UX!
About phones, please stay tuned as our partners announce their plans.
I find it really hard to understand how it takes Jolla an entire month to sort out all the refunds… Do miracles happen?
No miracles, at least from this lot at Jolla. Miracles require good planning and foresight, none of which Jolla has.
Who knows, even the new community manager has stopped replying to people in this thread.
It’s pretty funny that Jolla has had more investment, but still cannot come up with a refund for their original supports on IndieGoGo.
Most other IndieGoGo projects which end in failure are a result of the company going out of business. In this case, Jolla just took our money, used it for their operating system, decided to quit hardware, and keep all our money. They’re still in business, and they’re selling (licensing) a product which was funded in part by IndieGoGo contributions to the tablet project. In other words… fraud.
I actually was a bit extra-busy last week, that is why I did’t find enough time to reply to the comments here! Apologies for that.
In reply to the rest of your message, please read my reply to Rommi.
Cheers,
James
Hi Rommi!
As I have said above, we have begun refunding the money from late April. If you look through Twitter and even this blog, there are people who have received their refund already. Unfortunately though, the process hasn’t been the easiest for us. We have tried our best to be on time but PayPal faced us with some new charges and that slowed us down a little bit more. As I have always said, the money is yours, and you will most definitely receive it as soon as possible.
We apologize for being late or any miscommunication and misunderstanding, and we than you for being patient with us.
Cheers,
James
Hi James,
I received “the 1st half of my refund amount” this morning from Jolla Asia Limited, but it was for only $12.50 (yes, that is twelve USD and 50 cents, not a typo).
My refund registration page said that I should receive a first round refund of $127.00.
I wondered whether the refunds would be processed for each individual part of my original order (i.,e. 3 separate refunds for half the value of the tablet, the shipping, and the memory upgrade), but the following text in the email from Paypal, plus the fact that I received the email over 2h ago now makes me wonder what’s going on:
“Subject: Jolla Tablet Refund – 1st half
Custom Note: This is the 1st half of your refund amount. Thanks for supporting the Jolla Tablet project.”
Any ideas what’s gone wrong here – should I expect further amounts to make up my “first round refund” or has someone made a mistake with the payment amount?
Thanks, Simon
Sweet Jesus. Looks like it wasn’t a joke, they actually DO process each refund manually.
Hi!
I talked to our care team and it seems that you have solved the issue with them? Please confirm so I can go further with this.
I didn’t contact them but the remainder of the money has been refunded to Paypal (in 3 separate transactions),
Thanks for your help 🙂
Simon
Yes, I double-checked and I believe the reason was that you paid in different methods (i.e PayPal, credit cards, etc) and that made the system divide your transactions into parts.
I’m so glad it’s solved! 🙂
Thanks for your support.
James