AllegedlyAlienated@AllegedlyAlienated It saddens me to find that you are disappointed by your experience so far.
Could you elaborate on why though?
So far the shipping schedule is way ahead of schedule, and we've been providing updates along the way as promised. Is there anything we could do more to make it better for you?
nelsonErr. I'm pretty happy with the stuff I've done here so far, but I will point out you did list a date with an "or sooner" that we'd hear from you and then you blew your deadline. You know, no big, just. People probably went to bed on the day you said you'd have told them what's up by and you'd been verru quiet.
They missed it by a day. Also I've only seen them meet those deadlines a couple times. And in the grand scheme of things (waiting 4-8 weeks for most products) a couple days isn't a big deal. Bear in mind they're still a small company doing big company things.
BergyAgreed, but every other drop I've been a part of has shipped a lot sooner and we got our updates on time. I don't really have a problem waiting, but it'd just be nice for things like that to be posted on time or even a bit before, if it's possible. If it isn't, I'd like to know, when the update is due, that they're having whatever issues and the update is pushed back or whatever. Again, no big deal and I'm not upset or anything, but it'd be nice.
We are operating in San Francisco, so we go by Pacific time zone. And all the update definitely do happen before the promised date.
We'll do our best to post more updates more often whenever we can.
nelson"And all the update definitely do happen before the promised date."
Just to get it out there up front -- this is meant in a constructive manner, but I'm not so good at articulating things clearly sometimes. My apologies in advance if it comes across wrong. This isn't particularly focused on this thread; I've observed this happening on a lot of drops, and I'm hoping I can provide some useful data.
In many of these types of comment threads, it feels like we've all been talking past each other. I don't think anybody is particularly irritated, but here's what I see going on: The impression given by promising an update "on <date> or sooner" is that the update MIGHT come early. The dissonance comes, in my limited experience, from the fact that drop updates that are early are an expectation, but when they're met at the last minute, it somehow feels like a violation of that expectation.
Human psychology being what it is, even when updates come early, if there's one that somehow feels like it's late (even though it's technically not), that one psuedo-late update taints the whole thing.
Let's take the update post on this very drop as an example. An update was promised "on 1/15 or sooner." The expectation is that the update might get here early, 1/15 at the latest. The update was provided on 1/15 -- at 11:48 PM. I'm in the same time zone. I was actually up when it came in.
12 minutes left in the day. Yes, that meets the letter of what was promised, but even though you're doing exactly what you promised, it doesn't *feel* like it.
The only solution I've been able to come up with is to instead say, "Expect an update at the end of the day (PST) on 1/15." That way, if you're early, we're all delighted, but if it comes in at 11:48 PM, we're not disappointed.
Does that make sense / help?
arithonVery helpful @arithon, really appreciate your feedback on this. Keep more of them coming.
We certainly are not trying to use technicality of time zone difference to be correct. Our intention is to do our best to provide as many updates as we can so everyone participating in the drop can follow the progress along the way. Admittedly, we are not quite there yet. We've already have a few plans in the pipeline that we think will substantially improve the experience throughout on Massdrop. Stay tuned :)