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Jolla Tablet: refund round 1 closing

Dear Jolla Tablet contributors, and other Jolla followers,

As our promised round 1 refund schedule – end of May 2016 – has now passed, it is time to update the situation. This post is  intended for backers who have not yet received the round 1 refund in full.   

From late April and throughout May 2016 our team attempted to refund ALL backers who provided us refund info within the allotted timeframe (16.Mar-16.April.2016). The vast majority of the refunds were done successfully, and yet some of the refund attempts failed. 

All failed attempts are currently under investigation, and our aim is redo the failed refund attempts as soon as possible. We can’t give a solid timeline for this, but we anticipate that the investigation and redo of failed refund attempts will take a few weeks.

For those of you who did not receive the refund, or received only a part of it, please refer to the check-list at the end of this post.

There are many factors that might lead to a failed refund attempt (and not necessarily something Jolla can influence), therefore, we kindly ask you to help us in solving all these cases, as needed. Thanks in advance for your help!

We again apologize for the hassle and inconvenience this may cause to some of you.

On behalf of the whole Jolla team,
Juhani

If you think you did not receive the refund as you should have, please refer to the following:

1) Double check that your refund has not actually arrived.

We have used/are using two different methods to refund. And for this reason it is important to first check the Activity section in the PayPal UI. 

We have been executing refunds between April 25 and May 31, so, look for transactions from us on this timeline.  

For pledges where you originally paid with your PayPal account we will refund against the existing/original PayPal transaction. You can look up that original transaction and view its details. 

If we have successfully refunded the amount, you should see a status “Partially Refunded”, and under “Related Transactions” see the refund we recently executed.

2) “I checked again, and there is nothing there from Jolla, or only part of it is there, now what?”

PayPal accounts are usually linked to credit cards or bank accounts (depending on the jurisdiction), PayPal calls these “funding instruments”.

If your account is linked to a credit card/bank account that you no longer have access to (it expired/got lost/is otherwise invalid), please unlink it and make sure to have a valid funding instrument linked to your PayPal account. Furthermore, kindly ensure that the email address associated with your PayPal account – with which you supplied us – is correct and active.

3) What do I do about “Unclaimed payments”?

For pledges originally paid with a credit card, we have executed a so-called Mass Payment. In this case, PayPal will send an email notification stating “Jolla Asia Limited sent you $XX.00 USD”. In most cases, one will also have a transaction with this payment amount in the Activity view, and all is well. However, in other cases, one might have received the notification but not the money (this can happen, e.g., if the PayPal account is in a different currency and is set up to not automatically convert payments in a different currency). For such cases, one needs to manually claim the payment.

To do this, please refer to the instructions in the notification email under the section entitled “Don’t see the money in your account?”.  

We are aware that for some cases these instructions do not seem to apply.  Should this be the case for you, you can either wait for us to help resolve it, or you can contact PayPal on how to claim the payment. Please note that if you do not claim the money within 30 days, it will be returned to us and we’ll have to send you a payment again.

4) What is going to happen in the coming days?

In the coming days we are going to retry the failed refund payments. Backers for whom these “re-refunds” still fail will be contacted in due course and we’ll update the blog about the refund status. 

If after this you still have not received the round 1 refund amount for which you applied, you may contact Jolla Service & Support. Please do not contact Jolla Service & Support before that time to enquire about your refund, as answering individual requests takes away from time we would otherwise spend on resolving the systemic refund issues.

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Juhani@Jolla

Head of Communications for Jolla. International PR & Communications professional. Music enthusiast. Guitarist and band leader in several bands.

73 Comments

  1. Avatar

    Kuinka ihmeessä toimenpiteeseen menee viikkoja!? Kuinka moni itseasiassa ei ole maksusuoritusta vielä saanut? Omalta osaltani kaikki kohdat 1-4 tsekattu. Kaikki kunnossa siltä osin…

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    Thanks for update… looking forward regarding how to proceed with second part as soon as possible.

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    I’ve checked and rechecked. Both my old PayPal account and the new one I told you to use (request #27380). On the old one, I got 21 $ back – half the mapbagrag case. And that was all.
    So, both accounts are active, even if the old one should have been deactivated by now, and you still were unable to transfer the whole refund. I don’t think I need to make any more comments, more than 18 months after you got my money for a tablet you failed to deliver.

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      well said..I’ve had enough of this…so gutted I am

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    I am new to PayPal, this is my first time I get paid with PayPal, I saw the refund in my PayPal account, do I need to do anything with it?

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      Yes, you have to accept it.

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      1) go to your bank’s website and get the information about your bank account
      2) login to PayPal and go to “connected bank accounts” or something like that
      3) add your bank account to PayPal
      4) PayPal will send a tiny amount of money to your bank account
      5) wait till this amount reaches your bank account (may be several days)
      6) when you get this money, login to your PayPal account and enter this amount to “validate” your bank account inside PayPal
      7) from your PayPal account, send the money you received from Jolla to your connected bank account
      8) wait till your money reaches your bank account (again, may be several days)

    • Avatar

      I suppose you don’t need to, but you can
      1) use it (buy something, contribute a crowdfunding project etc.)
      2) leave it there
      3) transfer it to your bank
      4) send it to somebody

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    I haven’t got anything yet. I checked the account and the email.

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      I got my refund today. It was paid by Jolla Asia Ltd to my Paypal account. I am not leaving a comment here to thank Jolla for that, but I have a a few thoughts I would like to share with other commentators.

      I dont personally know anybody working for Jolla. It has been interesting, inspiring and sad to follow Jolla’s development. It has been also frustrating to spend time in this process first waiting the tablet and now trying to organize refunds for myself. All the fine ideas dont always work out as You would wish.

      Still I have not noticed any criminal actions or even heard any noteable claims that Jolla would be some kind of fraud. Why would they return any of the money if they were crooks? I believe that these guys really tried their best and I feel sorry for them.

      Jolla does not have much personnel left, and I believe (just a belief) that those who are still aboard are those who leave the ship last; most hardworking and trustworthy workers. Their job is ungrateful and they dont get any compliments even when they succeed.

      And that is why I feel bad when I read some very angry comments here. I hope we could all respect those guys who have tried and failed – at least for now. I believe they are going to get their other chance, and third one too for that matter, if necessary.

      That is all. Thanks for reading. I am just leaving this here.

      • Avatar

        Hi!

        Thanks for confirming with us that you have received your refund, and thanks for the rather awesome comment you made.

        I would have to agree with you on some terms, and disagree on others.

        The fact that we never intended to steal anybody’s money is definitely clear to those who understand that we are trying our best to give it back after what happened to the tablet project, people like you who are looking at the situation with an open mind. I deeply thank you for that, on behalf of our team as well.

        However, I’ll have to partly disagree with you about the part that you said “Those who are still aboard are those who leave the ship last; most hardworking and trustworthy workers.” since the others would most definitely stay if the situation didn’t get so deadly for Jolla and the layoffs wouldn’t have happened. It was difficult for everyone. It still is!
        Although I agree with the part about the hardworking people at Jolla. I really have seen with my own eyes how the sailors work to deliver and how they really put effort and time to make things happen. It’s now 22:20 PM and I’m still working! It’s the teamwork + hard work that will make us succeed again, back to the top.

        I am sure open minded people like you will understand all of this and will accept our apology regarding all that has happened.

        Thanks again for your comment, and cheers,

        James

  6. Avatar

    Check, check, check… I started thinking about some kind of reverse Winston Churchill quote: “Never was so much owed by so few to so many”. Of course this is by no means your fault, everyone else and modern technology is to blame! I think I’ll send my Jolla Phone to Hydraulic Pressure Channel to be crushed. Just give us the money and let us leave the ship.

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    I was only half refunded. Is that expected behavior? The dollar amounts were split in half exactly?

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      No its totally unexpected. This is only Jolla that doing this, so when dealing with them it’s totally expected. Half now, half…when?

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        I meant expected behavior by Jolla, not by us. “Expected behavior” is a common phrase in the world of software development.

        • Avatar

          yeah, but we’re talking refunds here…so when dealing with jolla expected the unexpected.

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      Yes, that’s correct. This older blog post (Jan 28) I think is the first that mentioned the half-and-half refund plan: https://blog.jolla.com/jolla-tablet-closure

      The problem for Jolla is they simply don’t have the money to do full refunds all at once, snce they’ve only got just enough funding to keep going as it is. It sounds like basically if they tried to full refund everyone, the company would go under and Jolla would be gone forever. So they’re paying out half now as a gesture of good faith, with a plan to pay out the rest if and when they can.

      Not great when you want your money back for a product that’s never going to happen, but I can understand their position.

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        Thank you. I thought I remembered something about that but the recent wording felt a bit vague and made it sound like I was supposed to get all of it.

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        “The problem for Jolla is they simply don’t have the money to do full refunds all at once, snce they’ve only got just enough funding to keep going as it is. It sounds like basically if they tried to full refund everyone, the company would go under and Jolla would be gone forever.”

        Not, my problem. The company allready last any kind of goodwill or sign of professionality. Maybe another can develop the Software on. But this one… Fool me once…

  8. Avatar

    Do you have any estimate of “the coming days”? How long period do you mean? Week, month, year, eternity? Or… never?

  9. Avatar

    Checked all 4 and no money to be seen. Honestly, we do know how to check if the refund has been sent.

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    In my paypal account there are added Credit Card and Bank account. I got new Credit Card about a year ago but it’s been updated to paypal.

    Could this fail the refunding?

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      Paypal is a public company, with Mkt cap 47.38B dollars, serious company not like Jolla. There is not more room to blame this on Paypal. Jolla simply don’t have the money.

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        I reckon it’s not PayPal to blame this time.
        In my case everything’s perfect at that end.

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      Hi!

      I am not sure if it actually would affect anything. We will retry refunding your money (and other failed cases) and will get back to the individuals in case of another failure.

      Cheers,
      James

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    “As our promised round 1 refund schedule – end of May 2016 – has now passed”

    Err… Can you point us where you announced this schedule? It’s written “early May 2016” in your last blog update.

  12. Avatar

    Great, those thieves force me to give them a free loan till they deign to pay the other half back too.

    Sadly you cant for them to pay interest for that free loan.

  13. Avatar

    So, yet another month do I have to add to this endless waiting time; first year and half for The Tablet and then some months wait for to know whether Jolla survives or not, then half a year or more for refunds and now even that don’t work, my PP is active and been ready for the full Tablet pledge w/ 64 GB upgrade and shipping costs and case in total around 300 euros, and as of beginning of June 2016 there is 0,00 euros, and Jolla says:Don’t do anything, just wait… 🙁 😛 :/

    Thanks for *nothing*, You have a perfect biz model and strategy in execution; a model and operations that alienates all your devoted fans ane advocates and supports from you and your ‘open’ products and services that you just can’t (i.e don’t want to) deliver to us who have paid 100s and 1000s euros and tens of thousands of hours time&efforts for you and your (sinking) company..

    It’s all your fault, and don’t expect any support or nice word’s from me anymore, I’m out – and disgusted by how you as a company treat your friends, supporters and developer & user communities.

    Shame on you Jolla..:/

    • Avatar

      Hi Jukka!

      We apologize for the inconvenience, we understand your frustration and we have tried our best to deliver the refunds to everyone who contributed. There has been quite a handful of failed attempts while we tried to deliver the promised refund. Apparently and unfortunately your account were amongst the failed attempts which makes everyone wonder why since you have entered your information correctly and in time. We understand and appreciate your constant support throughout the years for Jolla and Sailfish OS and we are proud to have such dedicated supporters in our community.

      I personally hope you get your refund back ASAP.

      Cheers,
      James

  14. Avatar

    My login on paypay has “+” (email without “+” was used to my other acount which I don’t use anymore), could it be the reason why I didn’t get refund?

    • Avatar

      Hi!

      Do you mean that your email has a “+” sign in it? I don’t think that should be an issue if you have filled in the address correctly in our refund tool.
      Anyway, as we have said in this blog post, in case of yet another failure to deliver the refund to anyone, we will contact the individual(s) personally.

      Cheers,
      James

  15. Avatar

    Got the funds into the correct Paypal account but Paypal forwarded the money towards the credit card used for the original purchase two years ago. Which was unlinked from the account, as it expired during the time you were hogging my money.

    • Avatar

      Hi!

      Did you have your new card linked to PayPal? Could you elaborate what happened after the attempt from PayPal? Did you get the money back by any chance?

      Cheers,
      James

  16. Avatar

    Any news regarding the second part of the refund?

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      Hi Dave!

      We have definitely stated that the next round will be in a year-time from the first round.

      Cheers,
      James

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        Yeah. Almost true. First refund was announced 28 Jan in this blog so then second should show up latest 28 Jan 2017. But you have never said second is a done deal so start to save money please. No more hiring, development until you secured second part. GL

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        Sorr James but i cannot accept that, you are working with my money.

        Do we get interest for this year-long loan?

        Or do you want to pay the 2nd half now?

    • Avatar

      Also very interested in this. Maybe a bit of the profits from the new phone can go to speeding up this process.

      • Avatar

        Hi Giles!

        Just to clarify, Jolla is not making any profit on this phone or this program (If something is leftover, it’ll be spent on the program). The reason we have this program is to raise awareness in the community and the developers for building Sailfish OS as a richer and better operating system.

        The refunds are going to be completed a year after the first round.

        Cheers,
        James

  17. Avatar

    I received a refund yesterday around midnight. Thanks jolla.

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      Hi!

      Thank you for confirming.

      Cheers,
      James

  18. Avatar

    Refund received, Check!

    • Avatar

      Hi,

      Thanks for confirming with us!

      Cheers
      James

  19. Avatar

    Refund received! Better late than never, I quess. Thank you very much!!!

    • Avatar

      Hi!

      I’m glad you finally received your refund. Sorry for the delay, I apologize on behalf of the team!

      Cheers,
      James

  20. Avatar

    What was left of half the refund received, and this time on the right account. Seems that even though I am too much of a nuisance to grant an answer here, people still read my posts.

    • Avatar

      Hi,

      Thanks for confirming with us! Of course we read your comments. That’s for sure!

      Cheers,
      James

    • Avatar

      What is the request about? For some reason I am unable to open the link 🙁

  21. Avatar

    TOH

    I get it now… it was always only ever intended to mean the second round of refund payments…

  22. Avatar

    Do not know what kind of error Paypal is giving you, but checked my account to see if I was able to receive money and I received it just fine. Very much appreciated to have an answer if Paypal is giving you an error and if so, what error this is…

  23. Avatar

    Complaints, more complaints and aggression…

    Quite honestly, despite being sad not to have gotten the tablet I wished for and whose development I supported by backing it, I fail to understand why so many people see the need to get aggressive?

    To those you aggressively post here and have joined as backers: You do realize you did *not* order a tablet, you supported a project whose goal it was to create one. As with any risk(!!) based funding, this may or may not work out. This time, obviously, it didn’t and from a legal perspective it doesn’t really matter as to why that is. If you wanted to *buy* a tablet, you should have bought an existing one from a webshop of your liking.

    I’m not a lawyer but the way I see it, every backer is simply investing into an opportunity rather than giving a credit that has to be paid back in case of failure. So instead of being annoyed, you should be happy Jolla is working on refunding anyhow – despite the fact they take their time to do so.

    We can definitely argue about their way of communication, the times it takes to do all those things. On the other hand, I personally had the “pleasure” to deal with payment providers from a developer’s perspective and what may sound so easy as simply transferring funds around is actually a scarily cumbersome process with lots and lots of potential to fail. And running potentially 10.000+ transactions with even only a few hundred failing causes a tremendous amount of manual work.

    @Jolla: I’d love to know how many people actually choose the option to donate their share rather than asking to be refunded. While I didn’t expect any personal reaction, I’d at least would have loved an (automated?) thank you for forgiving the “debt”..

    • Avatar

      > As with any risk(!!) based funding, this may or may not work out.

      Yes, but the company is still in business, and we were not delivered any (!!) perks.

      > You do realize you did *not* order a tablet

      Yes I did. It’s in the IndieGogo perks:

      “You may return the tablet delivered to you within 14 days of receiving it.”

      > every backer is simply investing into an opportunity rather than giving a credit that has to be paid back in case of failure.

      Sorry, but that’s not correct. If the company had gone bankrupt, then we would not be entitled to get any of our money back because we’re not debtors. But what Jolla did was decide not to continue with the tablet project and keep all our money. After the HUGE fallout of that announcement, they gave a vague plan to refund the money eventually.

      Since they advertised, quite successfully, on IndieGogo that backers would receive A TABLET, and then delivered nothing more than PR blog posts, this is quite simply a fraud.

      Yes, we committed our money to a project, but the project falsely advertised that we would receive a tablet.

      Jolla could have afforded to deliver all the tablets with the money backers gave them, but they would have gone out of business doing so.

      Instead, they chose to screw over the backers by sending them nothing, and stay in business to produce other products which make them money.

      > We can definitely argue about their way of communication

      There’s no need to argue. Their communication sucks. The only time their CEO has ever interacted with the community throughout this whole disaster was to spout a press release about how deeply sorry he is that everyone got butthurt.

      Community moderators routinely ignore negative posts on the blog, even if the posters have a valid question/complaint.

      Has Jolla ever answered why they cancelled all orders from Russia? There were many Russians in the first batch of orders, who should have received a Jolla tablet, but never did.

      > I’d at least would have loved an (automated?) thank you for forgiving the “debt”

      Hah. If Jolla was that coordinated and professional, do you think the tablet project would have failed as massively as it did?

  24. Avatar

    All may mail addresses on PayPal are actual, but no money has come until now. You have send me already second alert, why?
    My primary address is approved and it is the same mine address as you have. Where is the problem with sending money to me?
    Wladyslaw Jalowiecki

    • Avatar

      Hi!

      Thanks for commenting. If you still have not received your refund, please contact our care and submit a request. They can check everything and solve your problem.

      Cheers,
      James

  25. Avatar

    Hello Jolla,

    The paypal account I have created for receiving the refund through the gate way you have provided, for some reason is not fully functional. I request you to allow me to replace with the account with a functional one.

    Thanks

    • Avatar

      Hi!
      Could you please open a ticket on our zendesk regarding the issue?

      Cheers
      James

  26. Avatar

    Still have not received my Jolla Tablet refund, and I just noticed the Zendesk ticket that I created to try and resolve this was automatically closed.

    • Avatar

      Hi!
      Please try and re-open the ticket!

      Thanks!

  27. Avatar

    For when we have the second refund?

    • Avatar

      Hi!

      The next batch of refunds is scheduled for a year after the first half received received.

        • Avatar

          We will update you with the dates when the budget allows us 🙂

          Cheers

  28. Avatar

    At the end of this year 2016, that was promised! But who care, I’m not surprised of your answer James. Seems you are quick in learning how people at Jolla works.I’m just waiting for rest of my money and never ever buy a product with Jolla inside.

    • Avatar

      Well, from when I know, it was planned to be paid a year after the first batch of refunds. Even if you check our latest press-release, it says the same thing.

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      @sailmich:

      > that was promised!

      Source?
      All the communication from Jolla I read concerning the refund clearly stated that part 2 is to be expected 1 year after part 1. That’s Q2 2017, not by the end of 2016. – Also, I’m pretty certain the 2nd part was never ‘promised’ as you claim it was. They always said that they’d *maybe* pay the 2nd half. Maybe not, depending on the circumstances.

  29. Avatar

    @ ossi1967 Q1 first and second within a year. Source “The captain” here in his post from 28 January 2016.
    OK within a year could mean 365 days or in 2016 but at least Q1/2017;).Goodbye enjoy your Tablet and Phone.

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      @sailmich: I don’t see how “within a year” could possibly be translated to “during 2016”. Plus, you conveniently ignored the important part: “within a year, our financial situation permitting”

      So, again, your claims about “promises” are wrong.

  30. Avatar

    OK ossi you are right. Und ich habe meine Ruhe.

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      @sailmich: Of course I’m right. Don’t you think if I were wrong I’d know it?

  31. Avatar

    My paypal account does not receive a refund, will refund a problem?

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