Not Happy with ShipIt

[paul cooke]

On Monday 18 July 2005 16:35, Al Gordon wrote:
> Has anyone other than me not received their Hoary CDs yet?  I'm
> starting to give up hope on this one particular aspect of Ubuntu
> Linux.
>
> I ordered 100 CDs to distrubute to my user group, right around the
> time that Hoary came out.  A month or so later, I finally got
> confirmation that they were shipped, by logging into shipit and seeing
> that they were sent on 2005-05-26.  An email notification would have
> been nice.
>
> So, they've been in-transit for about 6-1/2 weeks now.  Or, at least,
> that's what it says on the site.  I have no way of verifying this,
> like with a tracking number or something.  They were ordered about a
> month or so prior to shipping.  At this rate, I feel that I'll be
> running Breezy before I get Hoary discs.
>
> Email to info at shipit.ubuntu.com has gone unanswered.  I specifically
> wanted info on getting CDs for our next installfest.  We've scheduled
> for October so as to (hopefully) be able to provide Breezy.  Do I need
> to push that back to December?  Or even January?
>
> I realize that the CDs are free, and that I should not complain
> ("beggars can't be choosers"), but Ubuntu's ShipIt program has set
> certain expectations, and has not met them.  People in my user group
> who were excited about installing Ubuntu, and distributing it to
> friends, etc., are becoming less and less interested as time goes on.
> It's hard to extoll the greatness of Ubuntu Linux when the one
> tangible thing that I tell people they do isn't happening.  I really
> hate saying "It'll be here next month. Maybe."  In the meantime,
> people are going out and buying SuSE Pro, or whatever.
>
> If you want someone who's on the fence about trying out Linux to try
> it (even a LiveCD), handing them a self-burned CD and telling them
> "it's safe" doesn't exactly invoke a warm, fuzzy feeling.  It's really
> vital, I believe, to be able to hand someone a professionally pressed
> CD if you expect them to get over the fear of what "something new"
> could do to their computer, and their precious data.
>
> I really don't mean to rant or complain.  I just want my CDs, or some
> idea as to when they'll arrive, so that I can distribute each and
> every one of them, to help promote Ubuntu Linux.
>

so let me get this right... this is a free service from Canonical... and 
you're complaining???