Bandersnatch
Member
Got a similar email last week and have just received a shipping notification for order no 5191 from January
Vakaros
- Thread starter Clockwork
- Start date
WCB
Super Anarchist
That bums me out. I've been chatting with them a little about the refund for donating to a non-profit. I got the refund after explaining what Clay had told me they could do and shortly after they sent the refund. That said, I'm 5100 and I don't have a shipping notification.
atnan
Member
WCB
Super Anarchist
This isn't a good look for them given the delays. No offense to Bandersnatch but skipping the orders in a hundred before isn't right.
atnan
Member
After seeing orders after mine had shipped, I reached out to Vakaros on the 24th and asked about the status of my order, along with a loaded ”do you intend to ship them in order?” They replied saying it had shipped (didn’t say when), and that I should have received an email notification. I emailed them again today saying I’d received no shipping confirmation or shipment, and the support person replied with a tracking code.
So my order has shipped and is currently in Vegas waiting to be redirected to California. I’m pretty sure my email on the 24th prompted them to push my order through, at least according to the package history.
To this day, I’ve not received a single email from Vakaros after my initial order confirmation on December 1st. Nothing about delays, nothing about shipment - just silence for 7 months.
Emailing support seems to be the only way to make progress. Squeaky wheels get the grease.
WCB
Super Anarchist
Ditto.
I emailed Will last night after he and I had talked about my donation credit last week, which he did take care of promptly. Same result for me. Today he sends me an email that my order has shipped and here's the tracking code from UPS but when tracked, UPS doesn't have it in the system yet so it's clearly sitting on the shipping table.
Not a big deal ultimately.
It was kind of funny actually. This past weekend we had a race and we didn't have the Atlas and I didn't have anything else on board. It's Bear Lake so it's just a large lake but not open water ocean. After a race or two people realized that we were up front in the racing without knowing heel, direction, speed...etc and we didn't have a tablet on board to determine location of the marks. People were confused how we could be fast and confident in our tactics. I've never liked a compass as a crutch and it was funny how many people do use it as a crutch and seemingly don't want to function without one. Sailing with feel is so important.
atnan
Member
WCB
Super Anarchist
Good point...I didn't even think about that. UPS would be 1Z.... USPS is 9... which this is.
i got mine a little while ago, and as a device it is really quite good... the display clarity when put aside other instruments is just amazing in all light conditions... its readability is bar none, the data dampening is really outstanding as well. the cool start screen showing your boat is borderline useless (in reality), but awesome that they even tried to do it. How anyone could try to look at the tiny representation of their boat while fending off even just two other boats is beyond me. and the backlight is awesome as well.
The software on the other hand is... somewhat less than polished - the whole profile thing is a mess, and updating pages is already a pain followed by what i would politely describe as ... spotty... at best when actually saving new configs to device. basically had to do a full factory reset once it became clear my device was muey no bueno unhappy.
buddy of mine got a atlas 2 as well at about the same time - we had them both on (side by side) for a distance challenge at our club and his headings were WAY off (mine were fine)... the LED functions seem buggy and still in the mostly experimental phase... but they are really cool when dialed in... and quite unique.
For all appearances... this is clearly a stressed company with an amazing product. thankfully they do continue to update and work at product features both new and promised... problematically it feels like they may have bitten off more than they can chew and sort of got themselves in too deep with feature creep (bloat).
Race sense is supremely complicated, and an utterly unnecessary product... a solution in search of a problem we didn't have. racesense require EVERY BOAT in an event to have an atlas 2 RELIABLY connected to ALL the others (how???) AND for race committee and the pin to also have atlas 2's.... i LOVE this device... but if you think im gonna convince everyone in my class, or my club, or my region, or a single RO to have enough WORKING units to do even a simple affair... LMFAO... (at a thousand dollars a piece no less!!)
clearly their whole goal with racesense was to make the device "sticky", and to basically enforce additional sales as it would become a requirement (which OMG you'd get some pretty angry feedback)... but if you cant reliably make/deliver the product in first place... and if its not good enough for me to safely recommend without being worried whomever i recommend it to is gonna get a faulty/buggy unit lacking features... or a year long delay... woof... not gonna work out
every potential man-hour they spend on it (which is a giant amount).. is an hour not spent on their product and distribution issues.
I REALLY hope they sort their organizational priorities out while they still have a chance. cuz theres no way promon, velocitek and even novasail aren't shitting their pants with plans to get their own minimal viable competing product into the space
The software on the other hand is... somewhat less than polished - the whole profile thing is a mess, and updating pages is already a pain followed by what i would politely describe as ... spotty... at best when actually saving new configs to device. basically had to do a full factory reset once it became clear my device was muey no bueno unhappy.
buddy of mine got a atlas 2 as well at about the same time - we had them both on (side by side) for a distance challenge at our club and his headings were WAY off (mine were fine)... the LED functions seem buggy and still in the mostly experimental phase... but they are really cool when dialed in... and quite unique.
For all appearances... this is clearly a stressed company with an amazing product. thankfully they do continue to update and work at product features both new and promised... problematically it feels like they may have bitten off more than they can chew and sort of got themselves in too deep with feature creep (bloat).
Race sense is supremely complicated, and an utterly unnecessary product... a solution in search of a problem we didn't have. racesense require EVERY BOAT in an event to have an atlas 2 RELIABLY connected to ALL the others (how???) AND for race committee and the pin to also have atlas 2's.... i LOVE this device... but if you think im gonna convince everyone in my class, or my club, or my region, or a single RO to have enough WORKING units to do even a simple affair... LMFAO... (at a thousand dollars a piece no less!!)
clearly their whole goal with racesense was to make the device "sticky", and to basically enforce additional sales as it would become a requirement (which OMG you'd get some pretty angry feedback)... but if you cant reliably make/deliver the product in first place... and if its not good enough for me to safely recommend without being worried whomever i recommend it to is gonna get a faulty/buggy unit lacking features... or a year long delay... woof... not gonna work out
every potential man-hour they spend on it (which is a giant amount).. is an hour not spent on their product and distribution issues.
I REALLY hope they sort their organizational priorities out while they still have a chance. cuz theres no way promon, velocitek and even novasail aren't shitting their pants with plans to get their own minimal viable competing product into the space
Jaspergbr3075
New member
Order number #5167 just received in the UK from order placed end December.
Dispatched last Thursday.
Dispatched last Thursday.
WCB
Super Anarchist
I just got my Atlas 2 today.
PitPater
New member
Had mine for a coupe of months now, worked fine until a week ago ... it stopped recording the telemetry data ...still see live data on the boat but no new sessions showing up ... memory issue? Tried a factory reset but no change
So the vakaros atlas 2 finally arrived. Just testing, managed to get it to connect to wind sensor but it seems to randomly disconnect, however more concerning is that it crashes by just pressing a few keys, see video here:
solosailor
Super Anarchist
People are paying them and donating more time to help develop the product. Looks great in theory.
Bodenkontakt
New member
The idea behind the product and its (theoretical) features are really promising and would mean a leap forward in this segment. BUT: what we‘ve seen so far - and yes, I am waiting for one as well - is killing any positive experience before even receiving a unit.
A while ago Vak implemented a customer service function. Sara writes nice emails and apologizes for inconveniences but does not give any information that holds up to her own promises. My list of broken announcements concerning the shipping of my Atlas is quite long already. The last one was from last week where I (after asking for the status of my order again) received an appology that the wind sensor is out of stock currently, but the Atlas would be shipped last monday upfront. Requesting about the tracking data yesterday (4 days agter they wanted to ship) she asked for 24-48h to clarify if the Atlas can be shipped upfront without the wind sensor at all. This was their proposal… Looking forward to receiving a reply to my last, a bit more straight forward mail to the customer support and Clay Babcock in copy.
I‘d love to see things sort out and to see the device live up to the promises that have been made, but (even though I am a positive person) I start doubting that I made a good purchase. This is something I never experienced before I even had a product in my hands. I still hope I am wrong, the product will be awesome and surprise me simply by being what they advertised. Or even 80% of that…
I‘ll keep you updated as well.
Regards Klaus
A while ago Vak implemented a customer service function. Sara writes nice emails and apologizes for inconveniences but does not give any information that holds up to her own promises. My list of broken announcements concerning the shipping of my Atlas is quite long already. The last one was from last week where I (after asking for the status of my order again) received an appology that the wind sensor is out of stock currently, but the Atlas would be shipped last monday upfront. Requesting about the tracking data yesterday (4 days agter they wanted to ship) she asked for 24-48h to clarify if the Atlas can be shipped upfront without the wind sensor at all. This was their proposal… Looking forward to receiving a reply to my last, a bit more straight forward mail to the customer support and Clay Babcock in copy.
I‘d love to see things sort out and to see the device live up to the promises that have been made, but (even though I am a positive person) I start doubting that I made a good purchase. This is something I never experienced before I even had a product in my hands. I still hope I am wrong, the product will be awesome and surprise me simply by being what they advertised. Or even 80% of that…
I‘ll keep you updated as well.
Regards Klaus