How do you get them? You don’t. Probably.
If you are not already in the pipeline, it may be a very long wait, or as they apparently did with me, they might steal somebody’s place in the present que if you’re important enough and make the other guy, like me, wait a little longer. Not counting the couple of years of talking about talking about getting them made, my actual wait time from first placing the order was roughly 8 months. Others claim to have ordered months past the deadline, and only waited a few weeks. Everything about vPipes seems to be a definite probability maybe, at some point in the future we think.
Originally, in the long-awaited availability announcement they published a complicated set of instructions for transferring your deposit money from your account into theirs. There was a strict and urgently worded order-cutoff deadline. […] The deadline for this transaction opened on 21 December 2009 and closed 15 January 2010. I don’t know why this narrow window and date was chosen. I assume they celebrate Christmas in Spain and likewise have the usual year-end tax or billing expenses. But having got this notice after many years of waiting for same announcement, I had no post-holiday funds immediately available by the deadline.
I ultimately negotiated essentially a full-retail payment with the makers a few weeks later with tax return money but by then instructions for transfer had been redacted from the site. I then started a negotiation to send funds via PayPal, which they said they were set up to do. Also, after research, I saw that PayPal inter-currency transfers were allegedly free if sent between personal email accounts, which vPipes said they had set up. For over two months I was stalled off a final price because they could not calculate shipping or duties or something. Finally I was given a solid figure and sent it in total as agreed via PayPal. PayPal seized some 3% from vPipes as if it had been an online auction. This, I had to pay again to vPipes, only this time, after a call to India, I discovered that the default “Goods” selection in the PayPal “reason for transfer” box automatically stole this fee from the seller as if it was an Ebay purchase. Any other selection, “Owed” or “Gift” etc, was in fact free to both parties. I sent the large pointless additional payment to vPipes and it went over without any transaction fees as promised.
After much screen time and another […] phone call, PayPal claimed all vPipes had to do was refund the initial large payment, which would be free, and then I could resend it using the proper checkoff feature, and this time it would go over without the 3% fee. That was the only way to correct the matter. vPipes were quite helpful and desirous of correcting this error, and claimed they would do this within the 50 day time limit to do so, but never did. They in fact forgot entirely about me and our particular arrangement and had me put in the que three months late, based upon the date the PayPal transaction cleared with the total sum they finally sent to me rather than the date we digitally shook hands on the deal.
My initial email of concern for not having received any pipes after 8 months to our Mr. Castro of vPipes, was greeted with a boilerplate response to somebody who’d gone the original route with a deposit on the standard discount deadline deal, and they’d forgotten entirely our separate deal, or any particulars or dates or funds we’d agreed on. He told me to wait for a billing invoice to appear for the rest of my payment and they hadn’t got to the late April purchase date of my order in the que yet. Had I not emailed and whined a second time spelling it all out, I would still be waiting in the que.
I also requested information on how a second backup set could be purchased and have had no response to this item of inquirey so far. Other more indirect statements however, indicate that vPipes have no intention of any modification, correction, or production of the current version in the immediate future. For practical purposes then, the vPipes are only available to those already in the que, with as I have been led to understand, the exception of a very few additional units assembled in the run for any very unexpected VIP future customers or other circumstances of sales demo, evaluation, or warranty etc. They are also scheduled to be exactly as they are for the forseeable future.
The price of the discounted initial run was fairly reasonable, some 980 Euro, and the retail price, which is largely academic at this point, 1290 Euro is not unreasonable for a very custom, very obtuse digital plaything. I will refer you to their web site for more data on prices and availability.
Having said this: I got mine. Getting yours is your problem.
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