IceTV and the Skippa pre-order disaster

I pre-ordered my Skippa back on 2nd June, like many others. Looked like a fantastic unit, based on initial suggestions. Hence I put up the money to be an earlier adopter.

IceTV wasn’t overly forth coming with an exact delivery, however we would get updates every so often.

Below is a timeline of updates that progressed along from the initial purchase along with some of the marketing emails they sent that includes specials for the units.

If you click the dates, you’ll get an image or pdf of the email in question.

• Apr 3rd – Skippa Announced.
• May 22nd – IceTV sends email “We’re bouncing with excitement!”
• May 28th – IceTV sends email “Good bye ads, good bye subscriptions – hello SKIPPA”
• Jun 2nd – Ordered unit
• Jun 4th – IceTV sends email “No ads, big savings, act now”
• Jun 5th – IceTV sends email “No ads, big savings, act now”
• Jun 12th – IceTV sends email “Last 100 Left”.
• Jun 19th – IceTV sends email “Skippa Update”
• Jul 2nd – IceTV sends email “Now you can choose” – Pricing changes to shift more units?
• Jul 16th – IceTV sends email “By popular demand, but not for long”
• Jul 24th – IceTV sends email “Missed the boat?”
• Jul 25th – IceTV sends email “Missed the boat?”
• Jul 31st – IceTV sends email “Two new horses in the stable” – Delays
• Aug 18th – I change my delivery address as the unit is likely to come while on holidays.
• Aug 21st – IceTV sends email “First Skippa review published”
• Aug 28th – IceTV sends email “Your SKIPPA Pre-Order”
• Sep 11th – IceTV sends email “SKIPPA Shipping” – Note Heinz (CEO) clearly says Mass production of SKIPPA remains on schedule.. guessing this was a fib.
• Sep 14th – Support ticket raised to ask where is my Skippa. Response from Leon (Customer Support) – Could be upto a week and a half before your skippa is posted.
• Sep 25th – IceTV sends email “First steps with SKIPPA” – Be nice if they just delivered what we paid for.
• Sep 30th – Support ticket raised to request update on my Skippa. Dave (Customer Support) responds “Sorry for the delays. Your Skippa will be posted tomorrow or Friday… etc”
• Oct 2nd – IceTV sends email “SKIPPA Update” – Heinz (CEO) still not indicating any lack of stock to supply demand. But still no unit shipped.
• Oct 6th – No email from IceTV or anyone indicating unit I ordered shipped. Was very annoyed. Voicemail left and email sent off my last query of where is my unit.
• Oct 7th – No return call from IceTV regarding the voicemail left yesterday. Only an email again, this time detailing that they won’t be delivering unit at this time. However, look what is published on IceTV when you try to order one. Seems they telling public they are out of stock of SKIPPA. Oh really.

You can’t seriously tell me that this all unfolded just this week (i.e. Oct 6th first day of work post public holiday Monday). I find that impossible to understand myself.