Drop + Tokyo Keyboard Tokyo60 Keyboard Kit Discussions | Drop

Jan 7, 2020

KevinThanks for the update Kevin. For those who haven't seen it can I add that @tokyocoffeenerd has just made an update to say that the production sample pcbs have now arrived in Japan and are en route to him and to QuadCube. It would be great to get further updates a) when they actually receive them and then b) when they have an initial diagnosis and an idea of the way forward (some of us are waiting quite impatiently at the moment because we are considering either ordering an alternative pcb from another supplier or pursuing a potential DIY solution). Also, and I'd like to emphasize this quite strongly, could you please send out an email to everyone who is part of this drop making them aware of the situation. As far as we can see this problem affects all of the boards in this drop. Not everyone is aware of this discussion page. Everyone who discovers this problem will probably be spending several hours of their time head-scratching trying to work out why they can't get the board into boot mode, assuming that they themselves are making some kind of mistake. To be honest, even if you are aware of this page, it's extremely inconvenient to continually check it for updates (I nearly missed the latest @tokyocoffeenerd update because it's buried in an edit to a previous update). Ideally could we have a sticky at the top of the page with the latest updates, and please, please, please can we get an email sent out to everyone on the drop?

Jan 7, 2020

Jan 7, 2020

davidfriarApologies... I now see that the @tokyocoffeenerd post is in fact stickied. The point about ending an email out still stands though.

Jan 7, 2020

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Jan 7, 2020

davidfriarAn email update was supposed to have gone out last friday, I'll check to find out whether it did or not, or what happened.

Jan 7, 2020

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Jan 7, 2020

KevinThe only email I received from Drop on Friday was one which said "Thanks for purchasing the Drop + Tokyo Keyboard Tokyo60 Keyboard Kit V3! If you’re enjoying your purchase, spread the joy by sharing photos of your new stuff in action." ...which I guess is kind of ironic.

Jan 7, 2020

lunias

108

Jan 7, 2020

KevinNo email here either. Just unhelpful, generic support responses (which you've already addressed). Thank you for the update. I REALLY appreciate it.

(Edited)

Jan 7, 2020

K05M0NAUT

Jan 7, 2020

KevinI am not sure who runs the drop_official reddit account but I would give them feedback that this is an appropriate response and not the one they made yesterday that said " Not sure why posts coming from us would be considered better than posts from the designer? The designer is working on solving the problem, and once it’s solved, we will implement the solution. The designer is providing timely updates that they’re working on it. We’re waiting for that to happen before we can do anything." This is what we were asking for. We just wanted drop who is ultimately responsible for money, shipping, and production of the product to acknowledge the issue and assure us that it would be resolved. It should have come days ago, but this is the proper response we should have gotten. Thank you.

Jan 7, 2020

Jan 8, 2020

KevinNo email was sent, but it is nice to see Drop finally being accountable. Where were you a month ago? Do you see how the handling of this situation so far shines a light on Drop's absolutely horrible customer service and communication? Things should not progress to this state, and yet Yanbo, the community lead, lets it. On top of that you have some idiot employee on Reddit making ridiculous comments. Kinda sounds like Drop's current culture is pretty toxic when it comes to handling its customers. What will be done to change this?

(Edited)

Jan 8, 2020

Jan 8, 2020

guyleplaceI’m a very senior person at Drop and am working on the frequency and details of the updates that we provide, particularly when there are specific and functional problems associated with a product. Yanbo’s primary role is to make products come to fruition, not give community updates. I assure you he’s working incredibly hard on solutions to various problems. Long story short, you’re right in that we, as a company haven’t taken updates and community management seriously enough. Communications regarding the Toyko60 rev3 project and it’s associated fix will be better going forward.

(Edited)

Jan 8, 2020

Jan 8, 2020

KevinI guess I have to ask, whose job is it to provide community updates then? Clearly tokyocoffeenerd never had a production unit on hand and was completely caught off guard by Drop's mistake, so it's not like he could have helped in this regard when issues were first reported, especially since this is precisely something Drop should be handling in the first place since it is their vendors that messed up. I mean, it's not like this is the first instance of these sort of issues that from everything I've seen span back years. Where is your support exactly, why are they almost always late, absent, and misinformed (even you admit to this), and how are you working to improve support specifically? I mean it's nice and all that after a month of complaints on this thread a senior member is stepping in with a few assurances, but that hardly passes as acceptable support. Will future projects have a member of staff handling the community and updates so things like this don't happen anymore? If not, what are you actually going to do to make things better? Also, do you honestly feel it is a good look for Yanbo to disappear the second something goes wrong when he pretends to be such a large part of the community on here and Reddit when he has something to promote? To bring this point home, the dude is not only known for his frequent disappearance acts on Drop (discovered when conversing with similarly burned users of this site on Reddit), he's also known for his day-of-shipment delays without prior notice, which he did with this very project (a signature move?), among many others. It's kinda hard to claim to be the MK community lead when you are nowhere to be found when things go wrong and only fill people in on delays the day something is supposed to ship, don't you agree. This attitude comes off as extremely smarmy, and I am definitely not the only one that is hesitant to deal with him since his only relationship with the community is clearly one-sided. Oh, and do you mind explaining how the PCB shipped without a bootloader. Considering this isn't even the first time a PCB has shipped without one, makes me truly wonder what is wrong with your vendor chain and QC. This is an amateur mistake, not testing the product, especially after an extended QC delay. Seems your support isn't the only thing that needs fixed around here. What's being done to address this? I'd also like to add that I find it extremely despicable that Drop has left tokyocoffeenerd to fend for himself, leaving him to the wolves for a month to handle support for what is clearly Drop's mistake, on Drop's site no less. You guys don't even treat your partners well, which I suppose is just another issue in a long long line of them, but distasteful all the same. In summary, something seems very rotten about how your entire company is run, and I doubt empty promises about better support will change any of this, though I'd love to be wrong. Maybe another name change will do the trick?

(Edited)

Jan 8, 2020

Stewiedk97

Jan 8, 2020

guyleplaceYou're right to feel disappointed and it's completely fair but replying a page long rant repeating the same statements in every comment in this forum isn't going to make it better and is also annoying for people reading this thread... People apologized for this and are working out the issue so it'll be alright

Jan 8, 2020

Jan 8, 2020

Stewiedk97Your attitude is exactly why nothing changes around here. :(

Jan 8, 2020

Planeodds

Jan 8, 2020

Stewiedk97Speak for yourself. He's asking all the right questions and airing concerns on behalf of the community so we don't have to, and so hopefully protocol is improved; call it being proactive. If his/any other members' post annoys you, click the three dots on the bottom right of said post and select 'hide member's posts'.

(Edited)

Jan 8, 2020

Jan 9, 2020

guyleplaceYour criticisms are mostly accurate and I appreciate you bringing them to our attention. The only way we'll improve is by being reminded about what we're doing wrong. In regards to community management, it's currently not in a state that I consider acceptable and I'll be working on a series of changes that will make it better. Talk is cheap, so you can see how things play out over the coming weeks/months and decide for yourself. In regards to manufacturing products, I want to quickly mention that bringing a product from idea to fruition is extremely complicated with thousands of places for errors. The group-buy model makes this complexity, and the accompanying mistakes, particularly transparent (I've seen companies scrap million dollar production runs, and delay products for months, but all of this happens out of the eyes of the public). Companies of all sizes fuck up all the time (see Google Stadia's launch: They literally have infinite money and talent and failed to send out activation codes on time.) This is no excuse for mistakes, but it would be genuinely insincere of me to say that we won't make mistakes in the future. We absolutely will. You will see them. But, it's unacceptable for us not to be communicating and acknowledging these mistakes in a timely manner, as well as discussing and implementing the solutions.

Jan 9, 2020

Feb 3, 2020

Kevin@Kevin I'd just like to point out that:

Drop support do not seem to have been informed about the $50 refund offer. Yesterday I received an email from them offering me $20.
There has been no update email sent out to everyone on the Drop informing them about the options available, so how is anyone who is not spending there time on this forum even going to get to know about it?

I don't easily jump to taking a hostile position about things like this, but really I do have to say that Drop's communication and customer service around this has been f*cking abysmal.

Feb 3, 2020

Feb 4, 2020

davidfriarRe: 1) I'll have a CS manager reach out to you. There's a workflow in place for people asking customer service about Tokyo60, but your ticket/query must have been miscategorized or answered by someone who was unaware of the special handling for this product. Re: 2) I'll be sending an email out to everyone fully communicating the options once it has been determined what options are available. I posted an update to my comment on Friday Jan 31st, and today is Monday Feb 3rd, so I think our communications are actually improving compared to what you've seen in the past.

Feb 4, 2020

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amycs

101

Admin User

Feb 4, 2020

davidfriarHello, Amy here with Community Support. I apologize for your experience. As Kevin mentioned below, your ticket was miscategorized but eventually routed to the correct team. We have CS tools that we use to capture the tickets associated with workflow, but it is somewhat limited in that it does require the support form drop down to include full transaction details in order to be routed to the team dedicated to handling this. We apologize for this. I have gone ahead and took proper action as you have requested, and will send you a confirmation email. Thanks for your patience.

(Edited)

Feb 4, 2020

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Feb 4, 2020

amycsThanks Amy (and thanks to you too @Kevin)

Feb 4, 2020

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Raiistar

101

Feb 4, 2020

amycsIt's been like a month. Do we have an update to when we get to fix our PCBs?

Feb 4, 2020

Feb 15, 2020

KevinComing up on a month of silence, yet again. Is this that awesome change in support you were telling me about? Do you ever get tired of lying to your customers? What I find most concerning is that it's clear you don't want any of us to come back as customers. How do you still have a job? Must be nice to be able to blatantly rip people off and lie constantly without any repercussions. Last I looked you still have all of our money. When the fuck can we expect to actually have working keyboards? This is absolutely fucking ridiculous at this point. How about actually fucking making things right for once, instead of sitting on your ass while you lie to everyone that you've stolen money from. Maybe it's about time you explain how the fuck these boards shipped with zero QC after we were lied to about a month-long "QC delay" that was conveniently revealed the day the boards were supposed to ship. I'd also love to hear your excuse as to why our PCBs aren't being replaced, and instead you are forcing everyone to fix the damn things themselves through an extremely convoluted method that has yet to actually materialize. How cheap can you idiots be while still holding all of our money? Is there a particular reason customer satisfaction does not matter to Drop whatsoever? Clearly the only conclusion to be made from your and every other employees behavior so far is that the site is clearly a scam.

(Edited)

Feb 15, 2020

Feb 17, 2020

guyleplaceLast time I replied to you, I apologized and promised that we'd improve our communications. Since then, substantive updates have been posted to this forum on the following dates: 1/10/2020, 1/14/2020, 1/23/2020, 1/27/2020, 1/28/2020, 1/31/2020, 2/4/2020, 2/6/2020, and 2/14/2020 I hardly think that counts as being silent for a month.

Feb 17, 2020