alt Hacker NewsHard no on giving Jolla a cent. Jolla rug-pulled [1] people who crowd-funded [2] their tablet in 2014.
Jolla used the crowd-funding campaign to butter up VCs for their next funding round [3] and then decided the Asian LLC handling the crowdfunding would go bankrupt, leaving backers with no tablets and most with no refund. [4]
The real kicker was that the tablets were ALREADY manufactured by their ODM, Jolla just never paid them. Took backers money and stiffed their manufacturing partner too. For a while after the campaign folded you could buy Jolla branded tablets (running Android, it was just an ODM model they flashed Sailfish on) on eBay or Taobao [5]. I just checked and there's a Jolla Tablet listed on eBay right now. [6]
10 years later, it looks like they're trying the same thing. Maybe they think the internet has forgotten, but I have zero interest in supporting their next hardware rug-pull endeavour.
[1] https://together.jolla.com/question/97695/information-regard...
[2] https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/jolla/jolla-tablet-wor...
[3] https://jolla.com/content/uploads/2017/02/46_JOLLATABLET_STR...
[4] https://blog.jolla.com/second_phase_refund/
[5] https://old.reddit.com/r/Jolla/comments/3x2s7e/jolla_tablets...
Replies
afaik the tablet was in development hell for much of 2015, by the time it was ready it was no longer profitable and Jolla couldn't afford to buy more than about 600 units without going bust.
> leaving backers with no tablets and most with no refund.
I'm pretty sure we eventually all got refunds after they got the Russian cash. My refund came a couple years later iirc, with a check for half the amount coming a few months before the check for the second half.
As someone that's contributed to the Jolla tablet foundraiser, I mostly got refunded when they canceled it. It took a long time, it was not directly the money I contributed, but I wasn't left with nothing, and I don't feel like I've been cheated. YMMV, of course, it sounds like you're talking from experience.