Monday morning Steorn sent the following e-mail to customers who had ordered an OCube:
Dear Customer,
First of all we would like to again thank you for your order and your interest in Orbo technology. We are contacting you to provide you with an update on the current situation with respect to product design, production and shipment.
As you may know we have been investigating a charging issue with the initial batch of products we shipped, specifically the charge controller board used and consequent under/over charging.
We believe that we have now developed a solution to the issues caused by the charge controller board failure. Testing is underway on the redesigned system, and assuming that the new approach meets our test parameters, we will then move on to the production stage of the process.
While we are eager to get your order to you as soon as possible, we have to establish that the work we have done to address the issues we encountered is capable of delivering the high-quality product you are entitled to expect. As such, it is currently not possible to say exactly when your order will ship but please rest assured we are doing everything we can to minimise the delay.
We will be in touch again shortly with further updates as work progresses.
Best regards
The Orbo Team
Both Frank Acland and I received this e-mail in response to having asked Steorn about the OPhone that had been promised to OCube customers. If you recall, in their March 4th update e-mail, Steorn offered OCube customers either a refund or an additional OPhone at no extra charge. That OPhone, they said, would ship within 10 business days — which brings us to last Friday. However, Monday’s new update e-mail doesn’t contain so much as a mention of the OPhone, that was supposed to have already shipped by that time. It appears that Steorn has gone from making a new commitment to their customers, to forgetting that it ever happened, over the span of two weeks. Why did they even bother in the first place? After failing to follow through on their promises so many times over the years, why manufacture a brand new commitment only to fail to follow through on it, mere days later?
There is also an unconfirmed report from a customer who did ask Steorn for a refund, and nine days later still hadn’t heard back from them.
On a positive note, at least Steorn is still providing updates and responding to queries about the status of orders. Because their Facebook page has been inactive for several weeks now, even allowing spam and negative comments to build up that Steorn previously would have removed, it appeared possible that they had given up entirely. Instead, they sound confident that they’ve finally solved the problem with the charge controller board and will be able to begin production of the revamped OCubes. Soon.
Tech journalist Mats Lewan has been following a different alternative energy story: the one about Andrea Rossi and Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer, or E-Cat. I believe that Lewan was once asked what he thought Rossi’s biggest weakness was, and Lewan replied that it was Rossi’s belief that capitalism is so perfect that a good product sells itself in the free market. Of course, this is not true, as is evidenced by the numerous times in history when better products and services were beaten out by inferior products and services. I believe that Lewan also said that, for some reason, a lot of inventor types have this same mental deficiency. If the Steorn dudes really are still confident that they are going to win this one, then it seems that they may have this same deficiency. In reality, the Steorn dudes should be WORRIED. It’s entirely possibly that they could be getting themselves into a “boy who cried wolf” kind of situation, where they have stumbled so many times that they may be causing almost everybody to disbelieve them, even most of the people who would, otherwise, give them a chance. If that happens, then it is not going to matter whether or not The Orbo Effect is real, at least with respect to their business. You can’t run a successful business if almost everybody disbelieves you, regardless of how well your product works. I agree that it is somewhat good that these guys THINK that they have figured out a way to sidestep their past problems, but I’m not willing to have a terribly high level of respect for what these dudes THINK, Add to that the fact that they previously said that, if everything goes well, they were going to ship Orbo Phones in ten business days, and then everything did not go so well, because now they are saying that it is impossible to estimate when the Orbo Phones and Orbo Cubes will ship. This feels like one step forward, two steps back. As I also posted on E-Cat World, we may want to try to amp up our reverse engineering and/or replication attempts. Don’t get me wrong – even in spite of all of the incompetence of the Steorn dudes, I’m still hoping that they pull it off, in the end. However, if the increasingly likely possibility that Steorn is going to torpedo itself happens, then it would be nice to have a backup plan.
I actually forgot about Steorn for over a month and just came back now.
They have had 15 years to come up with a semi viable demonstration in a new market with zero competition. If there was one iota of truth in their claims, they could be billionaires by the weekend. Instead we see this drunk man stumbling both in the bar and in business year after year.
This time he’s taken purchase orders and money from the public and still not delivered. This is not sadly duped investors, but verifiable contracts with money paid and no consideration and funds to return the money.
He’s not in a good position, sitting in a boat with no rowing utility.
I can actually envisage a class action being commenced shortly, initiated by duped customers who made advance payments for something that never existed other than in the minds of some very clever entrepreneurs (to put it politely). Although I’d be guessing they’ll not have much hope of ever seeing their money again if the Steorn piggy bank is empty.