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Many who bought XO notebooks during the Give One Get One promotion still don’t have their notebook

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization was formed to provide low cost notebooks to developing nations. The OLPC has had more than its share of problems and competition from similar devices has proven fierce for the OLPC XO notebook.

The sterling image of the OLPC began to tarnish a bit early on when it first announced the price for its XO notebook would be $100. Price increases soon became increasingly common eventually pushing the price of the XO notebook to $188.

After the price increases, production delays plagued the OLPC and left many wondering if the notebooks would see the light of day. Despite price increases and delays the OLPC was able to begin taking orders, with Peru placing one of the largest orders for 260,000 of the XO notebooks. The OLPC also found that its XO notebook would face stiff competition for other similar notebook’s like the Intel Classmate.

During the holiday season the OLPC ran a Give One Get One promotion that allowed ordinary Americans and Canadians to buy one XO laptop for personal use and give one to a child in a developing nation for $400. According to MIT, about 80,000 customers placed orders during the promotion.

PC World reportsthat the production delays that DailyTech covered in the past have come back to haunt the OLPC and its holiday season promotion. OLPC spokesperson Jackie Lustig told PC World, “There have been delays in getting the laptops to those who generously donated to the program. And we are sorry.”

For many of the people who bought the OLPC notebooks during the promotion apologies don’t help much. Customers are complaining that they have to wait on hold to get tracking information on their shipments for up to two hours. Other buyers are reporting that the OLPC has partial or invalid shipping information and that when they update their shipping information the OLPC fulfillment system fails to complete the process resulting in further delays.

Lustig says that the OLPC opted to send the available XO notebooks to developing countries rather than fulfill orders in the U.S. and Canada. She also points out that the OLPC never made promises of a specific delivery timeframe for buyers. The OLPC has offered a special toll-free number for customers who ordered the XO notebooks and now prefer to get a full refund because of all the delays.

Many wonder if the delay in shipping 80,000 XO notebooks in two of the most developed nations in the world is this bad, how will developing nations fare in getting hundreds of thousands of XO notebooks. According to the OLPC shipping XO’s in bulk to developing nations is much easier than shipping 80,000 individual units out.

OLPC wouldn’t comment on its ability to fill the large bulk orders placed by developing countries.

dailytech.com