The OLPC Donors Get Angry With Their Missing Laptops

Although the "Give One, Get One" program has been launched back in November last year, many of the donors are reporting that there are serious shipping issues. The "Give One, Get One" program entitled donors to obtain a XO sub-notebook for $399 (the cost of two sub-notebooks).

The program had some issues since it first began. There was the busy shopping system that prevented the XO from entering mass production, continued with a notebook crisis that prevented the OLPC foundation from delivering the units to the donors. However, the organization stipulated that the laptops will be delivered on a " first-come, first-served" basis, and there might be some prolonged delays, just like in the case of any device that is experiencing high demands on the market.

The bad luck continued with a software malfunction that messed the delivering addresses of some PayPal donors. It seems that Patriot, the company that handles the order processing, is to be held responsible for the incident. However, blaming it on anyone does not fix the incident. This delayed the delivery of the already late notebooks to the entitled donors, which made them - obviously - angry. The PayPal orders are processed and fulfilled by Patriot and Brightstar, respectively.

The donors' addresses have been truncated as a result of the two companies having synchronized their databases. Many of the OLPC subscribers had to repeatedly call Patriot to provide them with an accurate delivery address, that added insult to injury. The OLPC estimates that between 10 and 20 percent of its donors did not receive the desired XO notebook yet.

"All I can say about my OLPC experience is that I am utterly disappoint[ed] and have lost nearly all faith in this organization. I contact FedEx this time because dealing with OLPC is too slow and try to get the address changed to a friend that lives near by. I find out OLPC provided FedEx with inaccurate address information in the first place, but after confirming the original address they said they still couldn't deliver there, and they wouldn't let me change the delivery address because it was out of the postal code," reads the forums of the OLPC News website.

The delivery problems the organization is experiencing is just one of the problems. The project also had to face slow bulk sales or production and development delays. Moreover, Intel is becoming more and more aggressive in promoting its Classmate PC, while Negroponte's initiative is nailed to the ground by the Nigerian LANCOR company, a notorious patent troll.

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