Status Update of Shipment and Refunds, August

by Eskil Nordhaug August 10, 2017

I wanted to update you all again on the status of things, the difficult times we have been struggling with, and how we are trying to work through to resolve it. It's no secret that we are still way behind on shipping many orders that were supposed to go out to many of you a long time ago. As creator and company owner - I have always tried to be transparent and honest with everyone, and those who have reached out to me personally via social media or elsewhere have appreciated my honesty.

For many months now, we have been dealing with a true logistics, supply, and eventually a cash flow nightmare that has really put us to the test and stretched our limits emotionally and financially. Sometimes life or business hands you unforeseen events that can create a bump in the road. But in our case - this has been a long long series of unfortunate events, one after another now for months. And it has been extremely, extremely tough to deal with. Luckily, I am one of the most persistent and dedicated people you will ever meet - and I will see this through - absolutely no matter what it takes.

It has taken time, and the challenges are not over yet, but StayblCam as a company will recover, and we will prevail.

I know the main question you have is; Where is my order?

For the longest time, I was given hope, "dates" or time frames as to when it looked like production could resume, or when certain milestones for deliveries were supposed to happen. So naturally, time and again I told my customer service staff to share these promising updates with you customers who asked us. You were told "we're shipping soon", or "next week", or "end of this month". Things like that. Because those statements were actually true each time based on the knowledge that we had. We didn't make them up just to keep people calm. They weren't "excuses" - but facts as we knew them, and therefore shared. What looked like realistic delivery time frames were based on what we could go by.

But of course, weeks pass and months pass, and I'm here left pulling my hair out in frustration, losing my appetite, and hardly sleeping properly anymore. The massivestress and guilt of not delivering my product to customers is emotionally painful since of course - ultimately it is my product, my company, and all my responsibility.

It hurts even more when people don't believe me or believe us - and call us 'scammers' or 'liars'. This is the furthest from the truth as to who we are and who I am as an individual.

I fully understand that it must get old and probably sounds less and less believable to many of you when you keep on getting told the same things over and over from customer service. You can only hear "your order will ship soon" so many times before you start questioning if you're being fooled. But we're not trying to fool or trick ANYONE. We honestly and sincerely have only passed on what we ourselves even thought would be true - that production actually could resume on this or that week, or certain dates. Frustrating for customers, but even more frustrating for us, because we know we are letting down and disappointing SO many people, and all we can do is try to keep them having faith in us.

To add salt in the wounds - our website has been up and down as we have tried to manage 3rd party bills to Shopify, and to services like our 800-phone number, live chat, and support staff.

This undoubtedly has made things worse - with comments like "you have taken off with people's money and will never ship" (as some people have accused us of). But that's not the case.

So WHEN will we resume shipping?

As far as actual shipments - I will again be honest and say that as of right now - I still do not have a clear time frame as to when production can resume but it will most realistically be in September. This is based on the fact that we are raising outside capital through investments so that we can get the train back on its track. With investor help, we can finally get the funding needed to;

A) ship out EVERY delayed order
B) handle refunds to those who are waiting on that

I can swear on my heart and promise you 100% that production WILL resume. I just do not know exactly when. From early September - it might be a couple of weeks, one week, or four weeks, I wish I knew exactly. I'm afraid to even suggest time frame estimates anymore because I have been burnt so many times (and as a result so have you of course). The next time I have a realistic ship date for the backlog we have of orders - I will probably not even post it publicly, but instead let it be a surprise when everyone finally gets their StayblCam order in the mail!

Status of refunds

The other question we get asked of course is from those who cancelled and requested a refund, wanting to know when we will reimburse them. We have tried our best to repay refunds ongoing, but day by day right now - our cash flow is extremely low. As much as I am dying to take care of the remaining refunds - we really just have to take it day by day and work with what we have. With what happened to us last summer and fall, the downward cash flow spiral was an inevitable side effect of that - with sudden huge expenses and also waves of large refunds or partial reimbursements that we took care of back then.

So what actually happened and - why are you still in this situation?

I've written a little bit in previous emails and on social media about what happened to us last year - but it can be summed up like this;

first, one of our major part suppliers and manufacturer messed up a hugecustom parts order that they could not fix or replace for us in a timely manner, forcing us to try to salvage the parts manually by hand. A VERY time consuming process when there are thousands and thousands of them
on top of this, our manufacturer ran into staffing issues several times, and had trouble keeping up with the parts salvage work - and regular assembly and production work to meet the huge demand we had coming in. They also forgot to order in enough assembly materials such as adhesives according to schedule, setting us back time and again. It was beyond frustrating.
this started causing a great setback in delivery of units, leading to a growing backlog
we realized the manufacturing would take longer and longer (and cost us more and more) to get fully resolved, but already by that time the snowball had started rolling downhill and grew bigger
eventually, more and more customers became impatient (understandably so), leading to an increase in cancellations, refunds, and chargebacks (and negative feedback on social media). A true nightmare for any startup!
continued inability to ship combined with customer chargebacks triggered Paypal to temporarily freeze our account, which held a very large portion of our funds! These were funds that were supposed to go to pay our manufacturer and handle refunds!! As of this day, most that money is still locked away from us so we are unable to access them
of course, this really hurt our inability to pay all our dues on time, and to make matters worse - preventing us from doing Paypal refunds - further upsetting those customers even more, who then accused us more of being "thieves". For us it was insult to injury.

The bad parts supplier has since been replaced, and we have discussed the whole situation and past problems with our manufacturer so that this should not happen again. We also invested in more efficient equipment that cuts down on assembly time, but we have not been able to use them yet.

So what are we doing about all this?

These days we are getting ready to secure funds from investors who will help us recover and get back on track fully with everything the way it's supposed to be. This outside funding will give us a boost so we can resume production, get caught up with refunds, and begin building up a large inventory again. We can never ever allow this to happen again. It's certainly not fair to customers, and it's not fair to us.

Can I still contact you?

Of course. But please keep in mind everything I have explained above, and that we won't be able to immediately assist with shipping or immediate refunds until we have our investment funding taken care of.

With that being said - if you still need to talk with us about something else, you can contact us through;

Facebook messaging
Instagram direct message
Twitter direct message
Email to stayblcam@gmail.com
Skype me at eskil.nordhaug
I can also call you to talk things through over the phone if you prefer, but in that case - send an email asking for me to call you, at what time and what number. Just remember, I can't resolve shipping or refund issues today (as much as I wish I could!)

Please know that YOU ABSOLUTELY WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF. Whether you want your order delivered, or a refund paid back. WE WILL TAKE CARE OF IT THE MOMENT WE CAN. That is my promise.

Thank you again for your continuned patience and understanding!

Eskil Nordhaug - StayblCam Creator & CEO