** Drama intensifies **
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I was scrutinizing it until I realized I could just click on the image.
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I hate the black text on a red background, it makes my eyes hurt >.>
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As a complete newb and someone whose only interest is receiving his thermal one day, are the rama delays that different from any other vendor? I’ve been waiting for my Wilba salvation for at least what feels to be just as long (might just be looking for a reason to hope).
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Lemme just make this less legible real quick
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It’s the “you’ve been hacked” theme. Looks edgy, but makes you think it’s something important and you just need to read it. Or it’s just me, IDK.
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Such drama. I get not wanting to place an order with so many outstanding products, but why not tell your customers this info when you make that decision? I wasn’t in the group buy. Did Oblotzsky and others inform their group buy participants of this decision previously?
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I am not in the gb either but considering the suprise it seems nobody knew; the cancellation email was the first thing about it from what I understood.
I appreciate a lot of the designs and services Oblotzsky brought in the past but this is not a good look.
I just hope gb runners get the memo that’s not how it should be done.
IME most scammers are pretty well to do (kinda hard not to be when you’re always using someone else’s money). Also an anecdote I’ve picked up on in the contracting trade, most wealthy people are wealthy for a reason. That reason being they are cheap penny pinchers who would rather rip someone off than pay what they owe. Of course there is a threshold where someone is so wealthy money just isn’t an object to them at all, those people rock cause you never have any issues getting paid. Most people who are technically wealthy but not rich, tend to live well beyond their means to “keep up with the Jones” & try to get breaks on the price of everything. Anyways my point is just cause someone is doing good financially does not mean they can be trusted with your money.
Rama has always taken forever to deliver any product ran through his company, the delay on the Thermal/Thermal+ is not out of the ordinary with him. All the drama is though & that’s what got people worried about Thermal/Thermal+ ever getting delivered. For the most part other vendors are not nearly as bad as Rama with delays & long lead times. For the Salvation Salvun just got hit with way many more orders (like thousands more) for them than he thought he would. So the manufacturing & fulfillment processes will take that much longer. Although Salvun has most of eggs in the making KBs basket & does not have any of the drama circling him like Rama does. So I’m confident we’ll get our Salvations for sure, it’s just gonna be a longer wait than expected.
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Makes sense I’m just trying to hope.
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Completely unrelated to RAMA, but related to this phenomenon:
Most scammers want to appear rich. They do so much to appear as if they are successful and don’t need any extra money.
And the people who get scammed always cite this as one of the reasons they fell for the scam. Oh the person is so rich and successful I never thought they were scamming me
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I think something broke starting with Kara. I had pretty good experience with Rama in the past although I mainly support Wilba’s work. I imagine Kara order book was huge not only because this hobby took off rapidly around that time but also due to the pandemic. It had to be well into seven figures and posed logistic challenges for what appeared to be a small team.
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There’s hope! Updates – RAMA WORKS®
Blockquote Encasements for Thermal and Thermal+ have been completed and will be sea freighted to our Melbourne warehouse. (Images of encasements below). Concurrently, we have been informed by Wilba Tech and our manufacturing partner that the PCB assembly will be completed in about six weeks. Wilba Tech and RAMA WORKS are aiming to get every Thermal and Thermal+ keyboard fulfilled by Q4 2022.
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Also note the dedicated statement on the Wilba Tech topic:
RAMA WORKS and Wilba Tech have reached a positive agreement regarding the fulfilment of THERMAL and THERMAL+ keyboards.
Both parties wish to assure our customers that we are working together to have these keyboards in our customer’s hands by Q4/2022.
I’m wondering whether the whole HIBI RAMA Drama was partially due to disagreement with Wilba and had the positive side-effect that it allowed for a better position in these negotiations. As in a I might let your Hibi friend easier off the hook if we could find an agreement here that’s more to my liking type of deal - idk.
There is a lot of shady garbage going on with this run of the Thermal/Thermal+ that isn’t being disclosed. After a snafu with anodization, the cases were announced to be finished in December of 2021 and to be received by Rama in January of 2022 – this didn’t happen. Each new update after this said that the cases were about to ship out to Rama – obviously this didn’t happen either. PCB production was supposed to start in February as well which didn’t happen, but the May update led us to believe that all of the PCB components were in the manufacture’s hands and ready to be made. I wouldn’t think IP legal issues or not having Wilba’s blessing would have stopped them from being made in land of unrecognized western law. How is it now October of 2022 with the cases still in China and the PCB’s still in parts? Either we are being lied to directly, or Rama was posting what he hoped would happen – either way the customers were strung along being almost completely in the dark (with no updates for a entire quarter). I’ll post the timeline below (before the recent one posted this month) for others to draw their own conclusions, but in my mind it lends credence to the theory of using one GB to pay for a previous one and the manufacture(s) not releasing an unpaid product (still speculation mind you).
Mid September 2021
Tentatively, production of Thermal SEQ2 and Thermal+ is currently expected to be completed in mid-Q4.
Mid October 2021
Thermal SEQ2 and Thermal+ is currently in anodizing.
Mid November 2021
Thermal SEQ2 and Thermal+ are currently being anodized. We ran into some issues with attaining the desired rose-gold colour which has since been rectified.
Mid December 2021
Thermal SEQ2 and Thermal+ encasement are now complete after the desired rose-gold colour has been rectified. These should hopefully be shipped off soon to our warehouse and awaiting other components to fulfil our customer orders expected late Q1 2022. We will keep everyone updated as soon as we have more information.
Mid January 2022
PCB manufacturing will start in late February after the Chinese New Year festive period. Customer orders are expected to begin fulfilling in late Q2 2022. We will keep everyone updated as soon as we have more information on the PCBs completion and arrival at our warehouse.
March 2022
We are expecting these to arrive in 2-4 months. We will have a fair amount of extra units available for these.
May 2022
THERMAL enclosures are finished and are currently being assembled and packaged by our manufacturer. The PCB manufacturer has received the components (ATMEGA Chips / JST Cables etc) from our suppliers and will commence production when the units are sea freighted to our warehouse for Q.C.
June 2022
The SEQ 2 THERMAL units are in the final stages of assembly and packaging at the factory and will soon move to complete the assembly/packing of the THERMAL+ units. We will create another update when these are done and ready for sea-freight.
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I contacted support about 3 weeks ago trying to cancel my Thermal order, and this is what I got back —
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Whew that’s a long fucking email to say “no refunds”
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Can’t wait till “COVID 19”, “supply chain issues”, “component shortages” can no longer be used as a blanket statement for incompetence or neglect. I’m not saying that those things didn’t have a major impact for a good amount of time, but currently, the excuse is stretched a bit thin.
Also, did Hibi set fires in the warehouse or something, because it sounds like it 
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