I don't think anyone has ever suggested it is a 'conspiracy' that you are holding back on international customers!? Even I at my most cross in a previous comment have only stated that we 'seem to have been forgotten' which given all the exciting things happening on the main thread and lack of updates here is reasonable. From all the comments I've read on this thread (and I check every day) people here seem to be supportive and patient and it's only in the past week or so that the international community have started tearing their hair out...
This is kind of understandable given you completed your domestic indiegogo orders nearly a month ago- which to clarify means everyone in the US has had a working evo for weeks while ours haven't even been assembled or tested yet. It is also difficult not to be irritated that US customers can now purchase straight from your website and receive their evo within days while us indiegogoers, who took the leap of faith and supported your new venture right from the start, are still waiting with no end in sight.
Parts for international orders have been at customs for nearly two weeks. I realise that this is out of your hands but a quick update every so often, even just to tell us that they are still stuck at the border, would be appreciated. I think that the part of the frustration comes from (to quote an previous post) 'we have been three weeks away for what feels like months'. The girlfriend is now thoroughly sick of me saying 'ooh it should be here in a few weeks!' for the past three months.
Why can't Vapexhale offer us a US evo? I myself would probably still wait for the 220-240V version given that it's probably (hopefully!) only a few weeks away but as this has been the case for months it might be an idea. An adapter wouldn't be too hard to find.
I don't want this to come across as completely negative- I am hugely impressed with Vapexhale and as a company your ethics and customer service are fantastic. I have never for one minute regretted investing money in your campaign to create the worlds greatest vape nor ever doubted I would receive one when you guys were ready. It's just getting a bit hard watching all the US lot loving their evos while ours don't seem to get any closer...
I wasn't directing this to you in particular, just a broader statement. If anyone want to look at PMs that have been directed to me (and the foul, abusive language used), you will see that there are plenty of people accusing us purposely holding back international units for a variety of reasons. Instead of addressing people specifically, it seemed much easier to broadcast a generic method.
We didn't offer you guys a US EVO because we already got a shit ton of negative feedback from folks that said they don't want to use an adapter or they were just concerned with inverter issues. One thing people need to realize is that decisions that are made are always done for the greater majority. There will always be people that feel wronged by some decision we made that may benefit a broader group of folks other than themselves. For every person that said yes to US EVO with plug, there were at least 5 people that wanted a 220 version. So we went with the majority surveyed.
If we rushed US units to you guys and you had to send them back at some point, the shit storm would would be much crazier. Our brand had a rough 2013 and we couldn't risk having something negative happen. We wanted to avoid that at all costs and send you guys the best EVOs we could possibly make. We know everyone is anxiously waiting for their unit and we want to be as quick as possible. We are still a 5 person team and we didn't think "it is still in customs" was an appropriate update ourselves. We wanted to update when we had some visibility into when it would actually be released.
Because of our small team, time management is very important. When I'm not evangelizing the product, I'm doing work to get units out to the right people. I don't think there is ONE member of this team that puts in less than a 14 hour day. All of this takes crazy amount of coordination (since we are all remote) and while updating every social channel/forum that we are on might be optimal, ultimately people want their units sooner than later and sometimes when we are knee deep in production, updates don't occur as often.
We also need to be careful about what we say and what timelines we are on but people aren't satisfied with vague answers so when they hold our feet to the fire and we give a date, that is the date that looks most likely based on the data that we have at that time. If anyone has ever run a business, they will know that shit happens. Which is why I gave a vague date until we actually test out this component to make sure it works right.
I'm not here to argue, defend, or have discourse on this topic. I'm just here to let you know that we are all super anxious to get you guys your units but we're not gonna rush and do it wrong. We all want your first experience with this unit to be your best vapor experience and given the development cycle of the EVO starting from August, by any manufacturing standards, we are moving at a blistering pace. Ideally, we would've like a full year to test and push stuff out but life didn't afford us that luxury. All I want to say is that we are doing our best, and that is all we can give.
Thank you.