How laptop delivery breaks

This page explains current issues that are known, or believed to be, the major causes of XO Laptop non-delivery.

For an explanation of how laptop delivery was hypothetically supposed to work, see How laptop delivery works.

This page is NOT necessarily complete or 100% accurate. Support-gang volunteers (some of whom have limited or no direct contact with OLPC) are working to keep it up to date, clean it up, and verify what's here for accuracy, but the information here is not yet 100% settled. Keep this in mind as you read.

Please make sure any edits conform to the topic of this page: the current laptop delivery systems, how it may go awry, and the general responses of Give One Get One donors to these problems. Venting, discussion of individual circumstances, or instructions to OLPC or its contractors all belong in the community forums or in other Wiki pages

Potential causes of shipping delays and "lost" orders

The shipping address contained more than one address line

An severe bug in the fulfillment software (of unknown origin, but certainly in code written for the G1G1 program by OLPC or its contractors) caused many Give One Get One donors who paid via Paypal and other indirect means to have their shipping addresses truncated in the customer service and shipping databases. This happened if the street address had more than one line - as, for example, anyone who tried to ship to their work address "care of" their company's name. This apparently affected a huge number of donor's orders.

For example, a hypothetical G1G1 Donor "Nick" might have had his normal work address transmitted from Paypal to OLPC as:

Nick Blancoputty
c/o Laptops Aren't Us, Inc
1234 Scrod Lane
Boston, MA 10506

But in the OLPC database, as originally sent to PatriotLLC, their order processing and customer service contractor, and therefore in the actual database that Brightstar is attempting to ship from - it would have been recorded only as:

Nick Blancoputty
c/o Laptops Aren't Us, Inc
Boston, MA 10506

...which obviously is not a valid shipping address. The problem can also manifest in other ways, more subtle. For example, an original address like:

Maria Lee Jetson
4567 Pixel Place
Building 4, Apartment 123C
Chicago, IL 60609

...would have been recorded as simply::

Maria Lee Jetson
4567 Pixel Place
Chicago, IL 60609

While this last address likely will pass validation as "shippable", it's missing vital information (building, apartment, or suite number; or corporate mail stop number). This may cause the package to be lost, or rejected, as the simple street address alone could reference be a high rise apartment or office building with hundreds of tenants.

Donors affected by this issue have little recourse other than to contact PatriotLLC to attempt to get a shippable address in the system. There have been reports that this process has been successful for some, but not for the majority, of those in this category. (See (5) below.)

Internal OLPC/Patriot/Brightstar database errors may cause updates to be lost

The databases at one or more of OLPC itself, OLPC customer service (Patriot) and/or the shipper (Brighstar's) databases are known to have internal integrity issues, such that order changes - most importantly, corrected shipping addresses - may be overwritten and therefore lost by subsequent updates or syncronization activities. (The databases are reportedly Microsoft SQL Server, but would be controlled and populated with custom programming by OLPC, Patriot and Brightstar).

Many donors affected by issues the two issues above have called or emailed customer service at Patriot numerous times to provide corrected information (such providing as the lines that were dropped from their shipping address - see above), but the original data would later mysteriously reappear in the database, with the later changes lost. Patriot representatives have insisted they are following correct procedures to update customer information; if this is true, then it may be the fault of the custom programming or the way the database is managed. For example, an operational or programming procedure that would cause partial or complete overwriting of records in one database (e.g., Patriot's) with older or simply different information from the other database (e.g., OLPC's or Brightstar's) would explain these observations and continuing issues.

Note that PatriotLLC representatives have claimed they are only using data provided by OLPC and are not responsible for the database errors; similarly, Brightstar claims they can only ship units based on confirmed and shippable provided by the OLPC and Patriot. There is, unfortunately, no sure way to know from the outside whether these claims accurately describe the true situation between the three entities. It is clear, however, that whatever the accuracty of the original data sent by OLPC to PatriotLLC, later database corrections taken by Patriot customer service staff by phone and email from donors have been lost on a vast and continuing basis.

Donors affected by these issues may have no recourse but to keep contacting Patriot by phone (reportedly more effective than email, which may or may not be acknowledged or processed by them) in the hope that one of the changes will eventually "take" and the order will be sent to shipping.

Order changes may be lost between the fulfillment contractors

Changes and corrections to orders taken by customer service (Patriot) may not have been received or processed by shipping (Brightstar). OLPC's customer service contractor, PatriotLLC, and their shipping contractor, Brightstar Inc, reportedly do not share a common database or have access to a common order fulfillment system, as would be the industry norm. Order changes, such as corrections to shipping addresses, taken by Patriot have been reported by some to be provided to Brightstar by the sending of single email messages, one email per change. There are obviously a large number of places such a system could fail and the corrected address not be processed by Brightstar, similarly to section (4) above.

Donors affected by this issue may have no recourse but to keep contacting Patriot by phone (reportedly more effective than email, which is rarely answered or acknowledged by them) in the hope that one of the changes will eventually "take".

Order status emails may have been intercepted by donor spam filters

There are numerous reports that mails originating from OLPC and/or PatriotLLC relating to order status or problems appear abnormally "spammy" to many ISP junk mail filters, for unknown reasons, but that could be related to their content or the nature of the mailer or incorrect setup of OLPC and PatriotLLC's DNS (especially SPF) records. Affected mail handlers have even included Gmail - often considered the "gold standard" of spam filtering - which marked some of the 21 January 2008 emails as junk/spam.

Donors who have not received recent emails relating to their unshipped orders would be advised to check their "spam" or "junk" folders to see if any lost OLPC mails are there, and also to whitelist all senders with addresses at "laptop.org" or "laptopgiving.org".

The initial shipping address was a PO Box

Brightstar's contract with FedEx doesn't permit shipping to PO Boxes. When it was realized that Paypal orders could legitimately have PO Boxes as their shipping addresses, and that many Give One Get One donors had used these, the response by OLPC was that Patriot call center staff (already busy with normal customer service activities) should call or email the affected donors to get a non-PO-Box address. Needless to say, many of these donors were never contacted, and those who were may not have had their corrected addresses updated successfully and permanently in the Brightstar shipping database (see above).

The second, and apparently current, solution was for Brightstar to open a special account with UPS (some reports say USPS), which will be able deliver to PO Boxes. Shipping the remain PO Box orders via UPS/USPS will presumably fix the problem for these donors.

FedEx delivery may have failed without the donor being aware

If the laptop is returned by FedEx as "unable to deliver" (for any reason, which may or may not have to do with the donor-provided shipping address), or it is being returned under an RMA (Return Material Authorization - a defective unit replacement request), it is shipped directly to the Brightstar warehouse. Unfortunately, Brightstar reportedly doesn't have any donor email addresses, nor the ability to send out messages to one or all donors. Notifications about the returned shipment must go back to PatriotLLC, hopefully then being sent out to the donor in question. This takes a long time, and there are a number of bottlenecks and detours in the information flow where the information could get lost along the way.

The FedEx address verification tool may incorrectly indicate an address is unshippable

There have been reports that the FedEx-supplied address-verification system being used by Brightstar and/or PatriotLLC (1) is much too sensitive to small, ultimately inconsequential variations in addresses, (2) has a high "false-negative" rate (i.e., flagging an address as unshippable when it's actually fine), and (3) is only intended by FedEx to be used as a tool for address correction, not as a bright-line test for whether an address can truly be shipped to by FedEx or not. These reports are only speculation, but if true, the use of this system for other than its originally intended purpose could be explained by Brightstar's unfamiliarity and relative inexperience with delivery of products directly to single end-user addresses via common carrier, rather than to large distribution facililities.

Donors affected by this issue may be able to resolve their problems by specifying an alternate shipping address that the verification tool approves of, even if it's not their preferred shipping address.

Dedicated customer service phone for resolution of address issues

OLPC or PatriotLLC sent some donors an email message on Friday, 19 January 2008, saying "We are in the process of setting up a 24 hour dedicated phone line for donors". The purpose of this dedicated number is apparently limited only to correction of address-failure issues. The number given is 800-883-8102 and was operational as of Monday 21 January 2008. Donors are also invited to email their shipping information to service@laptopgiving.org [1] if they prefer.

Donors who have called the number report it appears only to be a secondary means of getting updated address information into Patriot, and that no help, new information, investigation, or order status updates are available to callers using it.

The same email message also includes an offer for a partial refund (the $199+shipping "Get One" portion of their donation) if the donor prefers this over continuing to await shipment of their XO.

Criticism of OLPC by Donors Due to Order Fulfillment and Shipping Problems

Criticism of OLPC

There has been much comment online concerning the above order fulfillment problems, especially among the donors whose shipments were or still are affected by them. It is commonly held that a majority of issues were "self-inflicted" by the OLPC Foundation and especially, by its order fulfillment contractors. Many donors believe these problems were foreseeable, easily preventable, or at the least could have been corrected many weeks earlier in the shipment process.

An officially reported 10%, or about 8500, of US donors' orders were unshipped as of 1/19/2008, but independent estimates of these numbers (derived from automatic scripts that test all possible confirmation numbers on the shipment tracking page) have put the percentage higher, perhaps as much as 20%, or 17,000 orders. In either case, the magnitude of the systems failure is so great that OLPC's claims to not have known order fulfillment problems existed until very recently is understandably difficult for many donors to fathom. This has added fuel to the already extensive online commentary among those same donors that OLPC has been almost willfully oblivious to the problems: far too slow to recognize that they even existed, unwilling to expend internal resources to resolving them quickly, too trusting of their third-party order-fulfillment contractors (PatriotLLC and Brightstar) to deal with them properly, and ultimately, unwilling or unable to exert oversight and pressure on these same contractors to resolve the issues. Some have speculated that internal politics have played a role in creating this situation, as these same contractors are also members of the OLPC Board and are providing at least some of their services on a pro bono basis.

Because of inconsistent or absent communication by OLPC concerning order fulfillment issues, and responses seen as failing to acknowledge problems or "blaming the victim", many unshipped-to donors currently perceive OLPC as being aloof, uncaring, and defensive. Many have also said they would be greatly more patient with the absence of their laptop if the organization had been truthful and forthcoming in its responses and willing to take responsibility for the mistakes it and its contractors had made.

Criticism of third-party contractors

Compounding these perceptions were numerous missteps by Patriot LLC - the order processing, fulfillment, and service contractor - in their design and implementation of their support and communications infrastructure. One example of this were the "confirmation" emails sent to many early donors in early December, which did not include the internal order number from the Patriot system. This left donors in this group that had "lost" or "stuck" orders with no viable means to track them or reference them to Patriot's customer service representatives.

Other examples include Patriot's installation of a touchtone phone call routing system that was not tested and did not actually accept any touchtones for over a week after it was announced and publicized, or their "track your shipment" web page, which only returned useful information after the donor's order had shipped, and otherwise returned an "invalid reference number" message. This of course which did not assist the donors that had "stuck" orders which were not considered shippable by Patriot's database. Others have criticized the customer service representatives hired by Patriot, noting many broken promises of returned calls (by the representative themselves or "a supervisor") and the wildly varying order status and shipping information given out to the same donor by different representatives on different days - or sometimes even during the same day.

(An example list of some of these issues as discussed at length by affected donors, many weeks before first acknowledged by OLPC, can be found on community forums such as this.)

Effects on donors' perception of OLPC and its mission

Numerous donors affected by the order fulfillment problems have complained in online forums concerning them, and the OLPC's handling of same. The general perception is that such fundamental failures and missteps, such as not being able to correctly handle an order with a two-line address:

• should not have existed in any reasonably-designed rder-fulfillment system in the first place;
• should have been automatically corrected by OLPC, PatriotLLC, and Brightstar more quickly after they were found (e.g., by going back to the source Paypal confirmation data to retrieve the missing address fields from the orders);
• if not correctable, should have been proactively reported to each affected donor immediately;
• should not have been blamed on the donors themselves (e.g., by claiming all address issues were caused by the use of PO Boxes);
• should not have required repeated calls and emails to customer service representatives to correct problems and to receive accurate order status; and
• should have been quickly and officially acknowledged by OLPC, Patriot, and Brightstar.

Because of the problems and a perceived near-total lack of communication by OLPC (as donors were rarely contacted to explain and correct the issues with their orders), many were left wondering and waiting, with no idea anything was wrong with their order except that their XO laptop had not yet arrived. In fact, the lack of accurate, timely, and transparent information from OLPC is often cited as the greatest source of frustration for the affected donors - many of whom where the greatest proponents of the OLPC's mission and goals, and were among the first to donate via the G1G1 program.

Reportedly the G1G1 program delivery failures have cost OLPC potential new sponsorships and orders; for an anecdotal example, see forum postings like this. In the end, a number of donors have questioned the ability of OLPC to carry out its primary mission -- the shipment of millions of laptops to children in developing countries -- needs to be reexamined in light of the logistical failures seen in the much-smaller North American distribution program.