They're not incompetent, I think they deliberately lie & mislead their customers and prospects. I mean deliberately, as in shameless and unethically. Here's why I've come to this feeling apart from all the other things I've talked about.
Read these 2 threads (one, two) on Conclave right now (before NI quietly removes them, which they do sometimes), the first, waiting for over 3 months and then another one, citing similarities. In each of these cases NI responded at some points saying they were being taken care of. They weren't, and they've paid money.
2 screen shots below, source: Notion Ink Support Forum
Here's the thing, the CEO of Notion Ink, Rohan Shravan, has gone on record more than once, saying he had beefed up his support team/setting up operations centers in many countries (a misleading statement, but anyway)/support team bigger than developer team/doing 100+ interviews/More than 90 employees and so on. If that is true, why is it so hard to resolve issues of users who have been waiting for months? Why is it that let alone solve the issue, no one even responds in time?! One would think a "startup" (the fanboy defense) would respond with great speed on issues like this and keep their members informed.
Why is there no clarity on tactuslabs which is the authorized US service center? There was a thread where a NI rep responded saying "there were technical issues..." technical issues on tactuslabs end? do they exist? what happened to the users' Adams? Why isn't NI coming out transparently on that. It's not like they've sold millions of tablets and are swamped! I asked NI_Chief on Twitter more than once, no response.
Here's what I think: I think Tactuslabs is gone. They hedged their bets on NI and it was a bad bet (go to www.tactuslabs.com/index.html which still shows up, and you can see the NI focus - and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that their business was unsustainable on such low volumes), their Amazon store has 0 products. If NI was communicating with them the same way they did with their users, no wonder that company had to bail out. There is no excuse for NI not giving clarity on this issue.
This to me is a hallmark of a third rate company that's deceiving its users. This isn't a one off thing, it's been happening for months while the CEO talks of great future, it's ridiculous.
Notion Ink employees are probably worried about where they work and ashamed of how their company's management works.
They seem like theyre more into the business of cheating people. Almost everything of their business strategy is that way. What you say about TactusLabs makes a lot of sense, if so, how come the CEO keeps coming on his blog and posting comments that the support team is increased and they have n number of support systems in each country. Its obviously a plain white lie.
ReplyDeleteHow are they paying their staff? More promises?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, here's Notion Ink's LinkedIn page, listing a total of 40 employees, 5 of which are new hires. Srinivas, the person who linked the (TR-donated) HoneyComb ROM on Conclave is an Android Developer with them.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.linkedin.com/company/473388?trk=tyah
All people seem to be very young and fresh. I didn't think the IT services sector in India was in so bad a slump. Time to build some shorts?
Oh hi, sorry to pile on like this, but you oughtta see this!
ReplyDeletehttp://freedune.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/i-have-an-infraction-on-conclave-shudder/
Hey Awesome post, haha, I especially love the infraction bit. Well, it seems the Big chief doesn't like people saying bad things or complaining about the Adam or Genesis. Even if you are paying good money for their products and the promised hopes and dreams as peddled on his blog.
ReplyDeletenow the question is? is notion ink more evil than apple?
ReplyDeleteor is it like what Napoleon said:
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
I don't think they can be compared at all from a "evilness" perspective. One could argue that Apple's evilness comes from choke-hold on the market, keeping competitors out using strong arm tactics etc. Notion Ink's evilness, if we should call it, is pretty much about "how do I take customers money and keep him happy with words", there's no comparison at all. I like what Napoleon said, and that's what I believed...until recently that is.
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that I'm literally "banned" from posting on conclave or their blog. I was never abusive but clearly I'm not a fan. Any comment or post of mine goes into moderation and never comes out. So there's all my dear posts somewhere in the NI holding cell ;)
ReplyDeleteOf course! Stop insulting them you idiot. Go back and sing some praises about visionaries and changing curve of conversation with technology etc. I love their vision statement, I wonder how many degrees the curve is right now...
ReplyDelete