OLPC G1G1 Telephone Order Confustion Backup Plan

   
   
   
   
   

Did you call 1-877-70-LAPTOP (1-877-705-2786) to order your XO-1 laptop this morning? If so, is your order confirmation number repetitive? And did the sales agent mention shipping? Last but not least, has your credit card been charged yet? Or do you have an email conformation?

It seems that early OLPC Give 1 Get 1 participants may be part of a beta test for the order fulfillment system as well as the computer. They are experiencing many of these problems when using the 1-877 operators.

Luckily for you, OLPC News has a practical if non-elegant suggested workaround: Back up your initial phone order with an order online.

The Give One Get One program does have a 30 day refund policy for credit card transactions:

This refund option applies whether you make a contribution or elect to participate in the G1G1 initiative. For participants in the G1G1 initiative, should you receive an XO laptop within the thirty-day refund period, to obtain a refund you'll have to return the XO laptop(s) unopened and undamaged. To request a refund, please call 1-800-201-7144.
So while the telemarketer orders don't inspire confidence, ordering online through the PayPal interface has so far been quite efficient. And if you do get confirmation for the telemarketers later, you can just cancel one order.

Or better yet, donate your second computer to a needy child in your community.

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21 Comments

Just did this.

I may give second computer as Christmas gift to a family with two kids... or encase it in carbonite and sell it to an antique dealer fifty years from now...

-d

that's right

I ordered by phone at 4:59am this morning. It is now 7:44pm. No order confirmation email, and the money has not been charged to my account (banks closed for veteran's day?). There was no mention of shipping, I have called back the order line and customer service and representatives tell me that there is not an additional fee for shipping. When I tell them about the discrepancy on the website, they are not concerned. When I was on the phone ordering, both I and the representative where very clear what I was doing. A G1G1 and not a simple donation. My total was $798. I have to try and call customer service tomorrow and try to convince them to modify my order and charge me for shipping. I can't order online too just in case and then get a refund for the phone order as suggested because I don't have the funds to do that. This is really frustrating. I wish someone in an official capacity would explain what is going on with the shipping.

I've tried numerous times to order the OLPC G1G1 via the website and each time have been frustrated in processing the order. The website refuses two perfectly valid bank cards (one a debit card, one a credit card), via paypal, which seems to override any option to use a payment system other than paypal.

Is anyone else having these problems?
Any advice gratefully accepted.
KJ

I bought by phone. non-repetitive confirmation number. no mention of shipping. She read all info back to me; it sounded fine. Citicard has not shown any transaction today, so I wonder too.

Hi,

I tried for two hours last night to order the OLPC G1G1 computer and have been continually frustrated by the paypal system that overrides any other option of payment. Two valid bank cards--one a debit card, the other a credit card--were refused by the site. When I tried to pay via Paypay (not my preferred method of payment), that, too, was refused. Is anyone else having the same problems? These bank cards are not linked to Indonesian banks but French and American banks.

Any advice? Thanks,
Karin

I ordered via website/PayPal this morning. Got confirmation from PayPal, nothing directly from OLPC yet. Was charged $24.95 for shipping.

My DSL has been unreliable lately so I ordered by phone at 6:09 EST on Nov. 12. My confirmation number contained the same digit repeated from beginning to end. There was no mention of a shipping charge. The rep read the total ($399) to me twice. I would be happy to pay $25 for shipping but I doubt that they can legally tack that on to my order at this point. I have received no confirmation email. No transaction has been posted to my credit card (33 hrs. since I made the call). I am disinclined to place a second order online and use the 30-day-return policy as a backup. I suspect that my order will be canceled, my credit card will not be charged, and that I will get an apology . . . eventually.

I called at 7:30 am EST. My confirmation code is non-repetitive. I just called my c-card company and they have not shown a charge. No mention of shipping was made. I called 800-201-7144 and was on hold for 20+ minutes. No biggie. I gave them my confirmation number and she said all was good. The orders are lagging behind and it should show up on my c-card in couple of days. My brother had a reoetitive confirmation number but she said he should be good to go as well. I guess we will all need to wait and see.

Info about Shipping and no Credit Card charge via Phone Order...

I ordered xo's over the phone. They did not charge me shipping. I actually called customer service and insisted that they add it to my order total. The first 3 representitives did not think that I should do that, but the last couple of reps believed that I should have and allowed me to do it. So I feel better about that now that I am being charged shipping.

The reps told me that it is so busy that they have not been able to process credit cards and that they probably won't get to it until Monday. Very strange. Can't they just batch them every night? At any rate. This means that my order is not processed (no confirmation email) and so I probably will not be one of those lucky people who get their XO's by X-mas, even though I called to place my order at 4:59am on the 12th. Sucks to have picked the wrong order method.

Good afternoon,
I have just read in TIME about the XO laptop, I have two grandchildren who would benefit from these.
I live in Melbourne, Australia. Is it possible to purchase two to be sent to me.

In anticipation,
my thanks,

J B Wood

Is your laptop available in Australia

I ordered through the phone at 5:30am on the 12th. Called yesterday but still have no confirmation and the cc not yet charged. I hope they will not be ignoring the phone oreders when queing up the orders for the first come first served for Christmas shipment. That would be very unfair. I am ordering for my daughter's 7th birthday (Christmas Eve).

Karin, I'm having the same problem too. Using a Canadian friend's paypal account, transferred more than enough money to it, but everytime I try to pay it says, "This payment cannot be completed and your account has not been charged. Please contact your merchant for more information." Over and over... does anyone have any idea why this is? Are they sold out? Help!

I ordered by phone Nov 12 and did get a confirmation number, but the charge never showed up on my CC statement, nor did I get any kind of email receipt. A few days later I ordered online (for a friend in Mexico) and last night I got email and the charge did show up on the Mastercard statement.

So I called the laptop.org service desk just now. The woman said they were slow in processing the orders, and that the online ones were completed quickly. I gave my confirm. number, and she looked on the list (by last name) and found my phone order.

So I guess both orders are okay. It's just confusing to customers.

I placed a phone order Monday morning and got the same response that they will charge $399. It seemed odd from what I was reading here so I waited a few days until Thursday and called the Donor service questions line, 1-800-201-7144.

It tool a long while to get through. When they got on the phone, I explained the difference of the price online and the the call center with respect to the shipping charges. She told me the call center should charging shipping charges. I told her I called out of curiosity before I called her and they were still not charging shipping charges.

I asked if she could research my order to see if indeed it had been placed, but unfortunately she said it would take two business days for a supervisor to research it and call me back. As of a few minutes ago, I called the call center and they are charging shipping.

I'm still waiting for the supervisor to call back.

I was unable to purchase successfully using a verified US PayPal account with sufficient funds in PayPal and also in US bank account, which I used as a 'backup' payment method. Same error as others, "This payment cannot be completed and your account has not been charged. Please contact your merchant for more information."
Eventually tried ordering by phone on the morning of 2007/11/22. No verification mail, or other mail at this time. Will attempt to get ahold of customer support tonight, but I may be too late :(

This payment cannot be completed and your account has not been charged. Please contact your merchant for more information. - I get the same error MESSAGE????

I get the same "This payment cannot be completed and your account has not been charged." error on PayPal and it rejected my credit card when I tried before too. Hasn't anyone any idea what's causing this? I was going to phone in the order instead but before I could my credit card was stolen the other night so now I have to wait and hope I'll get the new card in time if paypal won't work. :(

OK I'll answer my own question here because I think I just got it to work. All of us getting this error message seem to be using computers outside the US. Paypal really is filtering non-US IPs even if the account is US. So what I did is tried using a proxy server (I used v-tunnel) and immediately after I went on PayPal and changed my password, just in case. It looks like the payment may have worked this time. Keeping fingers crossed...

The order I placed G1/G1 on 12-11-07 was charged to my Paypal acct. on 12-21-07, but I have never received any official confirmation of the order's receipt by e-mail, or any other way. I have a code number, but no instructions for using it to trace my order, making it all but useless. An additional laptop that I ordered has also been charged to my account, with no acknowledgement, either, of its receipt, or disposal. This entire project is badly in need of some official oversight, and those of us out here, deserve some quick action on our long overdue orders.

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