Current Status

We have been putting 100% effort into DEFCON preparation the last week, but we have made great progress in QCing and processing the progressive shipments of aluminum that have been arriving to us. We received a very large amount of boxes a few days ago containing what we expect to be the entirety of the encoder kits, tenting kits, and extra lower piece kits. We haven’ t had the chance to comb through the entire shipment yet, but it seems to be good so far. PCBs are in transit to us and proxies, and should be arriving within the next week or so pending any unforeseen events, they are shipped by air and are prepackaged.

If there has been any confusion regarding proxies receiving lulus or having their shipments already, we are sorry about that. Basically, yes, proxies have received parts of their orders but that is because different parts of the product are shipped at different times or in different batches. In other words, some proxies have already received tenting kits and encoder kits along with desk mats and wrist rests, but that doesn’t mean they also have PCBs and aluminum cases. We have shipped different product from different vendors in stages to the proxies. If any proxy said they have lulus it is just a miscommunication, they don’t have the entire kits ready to ship and they aren’t intentionally sitting on them or waiting to ship. We still need to ship out their aluminum to them even if they do have all other components. We did explain this initially but of course months pass and people forget things, if anyone said they have lulus it’s just an honest mistake. When you see 20 boxes from Boardsource and know you need lulus it’s easy to assume it’s everything you need.

We will be done with DEFCON August 14th, and truthfully we probably need one day that is a ‘half day’ to take it a bit easy. It’s been non stop lulu QC and DEFCON prep for weeks, and while we love it and it’s what we sign up for, I can’t say we will return to work in full force that same Monday. We will likely return to lulu QC and packaging around the 15th and it will take us about 1 week to complete we think. When QC and packaging is complete we will start by shipping proxies their aluminum (via air) and that should complete their shipments and they can take over from there and complete the customer fulfillment. When proxy orders are shipped and in transit we will begin shipping US orders to our customers. It is probably viable to do 75-125 lulus per day since it’s all prepackaged already. Orders are not necessarily sent out in the order they were received, they will be done in batches of colors. If you need to change your address please do so by Submitting a Ticket on the website. We will service the requests for address change in the next week and send an email back to you confirming the change was made.

Space Grey Delay

DISCLAIMER: We do not know the EXACT impact of this until we run some calculations post-DEFCON. We are giving you all the information we have at this time and our current plan.

There is a batch of ~160 aluminum pieces that were machined improperly. We had the option of accepting the units as it, having the manufacturer attempt to fix the issue by hand and re-anodize, or have the pieces re-machined (completely redone). We opted to have the pieces re-machined and completely re-done and feel it was the only real option laid out in front of us. The issue caused the top aluminum case to not sit flush/align properly with the lower PC pieces. Please note, this has nothing to do specifically with the color, it just so happens that the units with the issue were set to be anodized in Space Grey, it does NOT mean Space Grey units in general have a problem or the color is flawed somehow.

These units are still set to be shipped to us this month, and it really won’t cause too large of a delay we feel, and it can’t be helped. These things unfortunately happen. A portion of these units can be attributed to extras, which of course don’t matter in terms of GB fulfillment, but we need to do some number crunching and physical counting to really figure it out and we just won’t have time for a few days.

Here is the plan we have:

We are going to do a full inventory of all Space Grey units we currently have, and hope that it covers the entirety of proxy (non-US customers) orders. Because proxies have to wait additional time for shipments to arrive to them from us, we feel it’s best to get them the Space Grey we do have already so they can get going on their end. If this isn’t possible we still try to complete as many of their orders as possible so there are the least amount of units lagging behind waiting to be shipped.

We will ship non Space Grey orders (as well as any Space Grey units we do end up with if any) as normal following the schedule above as closely as we are able to. We will not delay the entire Group Buy due to having to wait some extra time for the Space Grey units. It puts a large strain on our system and speaking plainly it aggravates 100% of the people instead of 20% of the people. The Group Buy process is extremely mentally taxing, and we really want to get these out the door. I truly understand that this is frustrating for Space Grey customers, but sadly it’s luck of the draw (or bad luck of the draw) and we would have of course made the same decision had the units been Silver, Charcoal, or Maroon, we promise it isn’t Space Grey hate!

At this time we only think this will create a ~2 week delay in Space Grey units compared to the date other customers receive their product. We felt it was best to re do them entirely and accept this delay instead of attempt to have them fixed by hand. If fixing the units by hand failed or we weren’t pleased with the result when we saw them in person it would have only caused even longer delays. We have asked our manufacturer for an updated timeline and we’re told we will get feedback within a day or so, if the facts change we will update accordingly.

Regarding Transferring GB Order / Selling Your GB Reservation

This is something we previously didn’t have to deal with, but apparently in the last month or so it has become somewhat popularized. We definitely haven’t had a large amount of requests but we still want to make it known that we do not facilitate these types of transactions. We are of course happy to change the address on an order if the request comes from the original purchaser, but we will not transfer the Group Buy to an entirely different person. It creates far too much work on our end to have manual touch points on specific orders like this. Again, the number of requests we’ve gotten so far is minimal but if it’s a trend that may catch on to flip your GB prior to even receiving it we want it to be known we are only able to change the address on an order, not the name, and only if the request comes from the original purchaser. In addition to creating manual touch points from requests like these, we have already uncovered a scam by investigating some of these requests. Please do NOT try and buy a “GB Spot” or “GB Reservation” from someone, there will be plenty of extras you don’t need to buy your spot in line. Any sort of private sales must happen directly customer to customer after the product has been shipped to the original purchaser, and advertisements or discussions related to this cannot happen in our Discord. I know this may seem harsh but sadly we’ve already seen someone lose out on some money and don’t want it to happen again to another customer :/

See you at DEFCON if you’re there. Stop by for some stickers and to say hi <3 8)