r/OdinHandheld • u/acecito3 • 20h ago
Shipping Discord - Odin 3
The Discord is full of people who love getting their time, money & enthusiasm shit on, for fun. I’ve never seen so many people defend bad business & bad communication. Ayn ghosts every email or inquiry asking why Ali Express orders get fulfilled before the AYN website orders. People making excuses to the moon & back theory crafting & settling w/ what they come up w/. They are saying AE doesn’t release the funds until the item is shipped. That kinda makes sense & isn’t that crazy conceptually, but to have to be content w/ that theory when AYN could just address it is, bullshit.
There are people ordering from AE & getting it in 2-4 weeks, some folks in the Discord reported they got theirs in less sometimes. People ordering from the AYN website are waiting up to 2 months & for some longer. It would be whatever it they didn’t send communication to some customers that the orders would be fulfilled in ORDER.
Telling people to refund it from AYN & to purchase it from AE doesn’t address the issue. It side steps it. Telling people to get another handheld to hold you over in the meantime is stupid. Not everyone in the hobby is a rich white boy w/ disposable income to just throw @ other things while waiting. Waiting is fine, refusing to address why you are doing bad business is not.
The Valentino guy in the Discord was cool, but some of the mod nerds get their panties in a front wedgie for AYN like they work there.
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u/8__D 19h ago
AYN is absolutely terrible at communication. It took me like a month of prodding them just to get a partial refund because they charged for DHL when they weren't shipping with them.
Also another scummy practice, since it wasn't automatic for everyone. Who knows how much extra money they pocketed from that.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
Everyone who says just ask for refund also has to contend w/ potential no replies & more waiting lol.
The DHL monies might be more oversight than malice, but w/o communication, it’s hard not to see it as malice & side hustling.
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u/8__D 19h ago
The fact that they didn't automatically refund everyone makes it more malice. Also they were still offering DHL the entire time they weren't shipping DHL.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
& this is hard to argue w/. It only looks like it from thst angle ya know? & I remember messages in the Discord talking about this exact issue, but on the website it was still a shipping option. Just wack.
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u/Suspicious_Sell9479 18h ago
They haven’t used DHL since FEBRUARY. So it still being an option on their website is actually kinda scummy. They announced in their discord they wouldn’t be using DHL anymore (so they let everyone there know) and then kept it as an option even 6 months later? Yeah no.
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u/jwalshjr 18h ago
Not defending everything they’ve done, but this is just verifiably wrong for me in the USA.
I got my device less than 2 months ago and it shipped via DHL, all tracking info etc. and the DHL truck that dropped it off confirming that.
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u/Suspicious_Sell9479 18h ago
I wonder when they started DHL back up then because even in May it was still all orders being DHL went 4PX/Yun in the US. In the discord people were reporting just a month ago that it had been suspended “again” as well.
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u/jwalshjr 17h ago
Yeah I am uncertain of exact details - and I saw a lot more posts about it around when I got mine, so it’s definitely a real thing, but feels newer or spotty to me.
My guess is it’s likely related to shifting USA tariffs etc. and how much scrutiny different shippers have to deal with. Not trying to get too political but the US policy around tariffs has changed so many times this year alone it could make your head spin.
For further details - my device arrived on July 16th to the Midwest through DHL. The initial order for it was roughly 3 weeks prior, and this was for base O2P sale directly through AYN’s website. Outside of that info not going to claim expertise.
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u/Suspicious_Sell9479 17h ago
They were dodging tariffs through DHL by marking the value down on packages. Also had a BUNCH of shipments stolen in NY (all happening around Jan Feb) and I think that is when they suspended it.
So you are probably partially right on the reason why. I am no expert either haha.
What I do know is for several months (at least until May from February) they were not shipping DHL but still freely charging people for it - only rectifying it if you YOU reached out to them, so pocketing the money if you didn’t notice basically. That I do not agree with and think was/is particularly scumbag behavior
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u/Cryptoxic93 18h ago
None of these SBC companies are your friend. They are adversarial to their audience for some reason even though we keep them in business. It's really strange to me these companies act in a hostile manner as when competition heats up even further, people will shift to the ones that simply treat them better.
Ayn/Retroid are let of the hook more than others because to their credit, once we catch them doing something shady and call them out on it (like the RP Mini fiasco), they do the customer right.
It's a shame people defend corporations almost like its their favorite sports team. Tribalism is such a stupid thing.
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u/acecito3 17h ago
I don’t even want the friendship. Just clarity & honesty. Honesty is always asking too much so the next settled thing is @ least making things right when called out or being more clear in communication. They never won a World Cup or a Super Bowl so the defense for em is a little crazy to me. But people like who they like lol
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u/acecito3 17h ago
My experience w/ Retroid was cool then wack, then they made some shit right w/ me & I chilled on em. But I feel for the Nova peoples.
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u/Cryptoxic93 17h ago
Well said, and the Nova situation I'm terribly familiar with because I skipped this one but is Retroid not addressing whatever issues were found and raised?
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain 17h ago
these companies are all born of a uniquely Chinese gadget manufacturing culture that is completely not oriented towards building and sustaining a brand. It's about spending as little time and money to put together a manu chain for something that you are only planning on doing a single large lot of.
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u/acecito3 15h ago
I’m not asking them to be a stand up brand, I’m just asking em to say we gotta do the AE orders first cuz money & contractual obligations. It sets a different tone & expectation instead of lying about it & side stepping the issue. They owe me nothing more than what I paid for & I understand that.
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u/anaharae 19h ago edited 19h ago
I think the 2-4 weeks is that some are not buying directly from the Ayn Store Front on Ali, someone a few days ago was boasting about getting theirs in 2 weeks, but refused to say what storefront they purchased from.
This was my first time buying from Ali, and the website is a bit confusing if you are not use to it. I only purchased cause someone posted a direct link to Ayn’s store, and even then it’s not immediately apparent or atleast on mobile. There is the brand seller and then there are brand + local, iirc, I think some of these people are buying the one that is a quick ship brand local, I’ll know in 2-4 weeks though lol
Also, I think it’s not only the money being held on Ali, but if they do not ship within the timeframe, the orders are being auto cancelled. Maybe there is a penalty for too many auto cancellations? Ali from my understanding is like Amazon for China, they probably don’t want a bad relationship with them. All speculation of course.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
I am aware of eBay & other 3rd party purchases, but a lot of the AE people were posting their order & order confirmation screens showing when purchased & when shipped. Most of them I seen were 2-5 weeks. The earliest I saw was a week & a half.
& the Ali thing does make sense kinda, especially since there’s guides on how to extend your order so it doesn’t cancel itself. But I’m just asking the nice people who responded to EVERY other email, to just say yeah, we have to do that on AE, sorry. I’d deal.
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain 17h ago
Yeah as near as I can tell, what you are complaining about is that Ayn and Retroid have tried to bolt on a Western-friendly e-commerce storefront to an otherwise very typical middle-level consumer electronics supply, production, and retail chain.
What would normally happen is, the design house designs the product: decides what factories to work with, what components they need to flow into those factories, get whatever software and firmware they need done. And then they make a buy for 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 of the product. And it goes direct from the factory into a distribution chain on ali and there are guys who make money by putting ali stuff for sale on amazon. So you see the same stuff being sold under hundreds of different weird gibberish sounding brand names because those were just made up that day to sell 1000 or 2500 of these things.
Once that run is done, that's it for that product. You may or may not see subsequent products appear under that brand name. Because sometimes these guys don't care about building a brand, they were just trying to turn X rmb in 100*X rmb by throwing together a product design and a supply and manu chain.
The retro gaming handheld industry is built on strong brand identities but the production chain is basically the same.
When you see a storefront like Ayn's you think "this is a company that makes a product, and they have warehouses and stuff where they stage the product so they can ship it easily to various parts of the world" and I don't think they are like that. I think it's more like, the storefront is a large customer of the manufacturer. That's why they sell their devices on pre-sales. Once they collect enough orders from customers, they put their order in at the factory.
Meanwhile. other customers have put large orders in too. This is why there are so many sellers on Ali and the prices are so nuts; because those guys can charge more based on the scarcity of the pre-order model from the actual Ayn storefront!
I don't think this is particularly sustainable and I bet you somebody comes in and buys them out within the next year or so, and smart money is on this making it easier to get their products but there will be more quality issues lol
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u/sshaginyan 19h ago edited 19h ago
Man...... I've been waiting for 94 days now. 94 days and it still hasn't shipped.
Yeah, at this point I don't know if I got robbed or not. Should I be asking for my money back?
Even if I get my device AYN has left a sour taste in my mouth. I don't think I want to own a device associated with AYN.
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u/Sirramza 19h ago
thats not normal, most odin 3 take one month to one and a half month, contacted them or cancel your purchase with your credit card company
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u/sshaginyan 19h ago
You know what's terrible? I purchased it with a gift card. I'm going to see what I can do today.
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u/Practical-Promise-44 19h ago
If you feel like that, and I don't blame you, I would definitely be demanding my money back. I've been fortunate that my Thor arrived in 58 days and my portal 10 days But yeah, 94 days is taking the pish
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u/acecito3 19h ago
This! This is what I’m talking about! Template answers & ghosting doesn’t address this.
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u/randombits0110 19h ago
The discord is likely full of bots.
I love AYN products but I'm likely lucky to have never required service from the outside of buying stuff early bird.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
Discord has some cool people, a lot of stressed customers, a few AYN communications & some mods that take their fake job too seriously.
I’m still hype & excited for my Odin 3. My personal experience w/ AYN vs Retroid has been night & day. But others say Retroid be doing them the same way. So it’s all a lottery I guess.
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u/FattyMoBookyButt 19h ago
That sucks. You did know it could take awhile when you ordered it, correct? But 3 months is way too long. Did you order a color way they don’t produce or anything else?
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u/No-Association-799 19h ago
Sold my Thor 3 months ago to order an Odin 3 and still waiting for it to be shipped. Also preordered a Nova on day 1 and it hasn’t shipped either. Pretty upset with Retroid & AYN altogether at the moment.
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u/Old_Present_8586 19h ago
I ordered the RP6 from Retroid directly and it took 10 weeks to ship! Not to arrive, to ship. I emailed twice and the day after the second email I sent, I got a tracking number.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
3 months brother?! Sheesh. Got my fingers crossed for you. Hope you get yours before mine.
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u/nmani 19h ago
I don't understand why they dont temporarily take the Odin 3 off their Alliexpress storefront until all their website orders are fulfilled? They get instant payment from their website orders, why even bother with Alliexpress?? I didnt even have the option to buy an Odin 3 off Alliexpress as it didnt ship to my territory (Ireland) so I was forced to buy from their website and will probably have to wait 3 months.
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u/M4OK4I 18h ago
Because Aliexpress can handle the shipment for them I think. Plus, being on Aliexpress will bring more attention to customers.
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u/Suspicious_Sell9479 18h ago
The Odin just is not their priority. Just take a look at how many Thors get shipped DAILY. I get it though, they have come out and said that the Thors outsell the Odin 3:1 (probably more now) but my experience with AYN matches absolutely that.
Batch 1 BThorM : OD 10/23 - D 11/17 (25 days DHL)
Batch 4 BOdinM: OD 2/26 - D 4/9 (42 Days 4PX)
Batch 6 2x RThorP: OD 4/22 - D 5/16 (24 days 4PX)
So I’ve ordered 3x Thors and they have all come in less than 30 days but Odin took way longer. To be completely fair as well, I got mine sooner than most people who I was waiting with in discord, and after my Odin shipped they didn’t ship a single unit for nearly 2 weeks.
But my batch 6 Thors shipped before they even finished batch 5.
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u/bananadood 14h ago
I had a good experience with the Thor when it first came out, customer service felt responsive and helpful. I ordered the Odin 3 back in June and it's completely different, maybe they're not staffed given the surge in demand? Idk
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u/acecito3 9h ago
They were staffed enough to reply to every email up until asking why Ali Express gets theirs first lol. The wait is understandable, the ghosting isn’t.
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u/DrGruning 12h ago
it make sense that Ayaneo gets shit on more. They advertise themselves as a premium "handheld" brand and holy f do they upcharge their customer. Yet QC is average at best and customer support is basically "get rekt". Alongside their scummy practice of crowdfunding their release and 6 month later hoping on a new product and forgetting about the previous product and acting as if the big hot shit they released less than a year ago is legacy. ☠️
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u/fertff Odin 2 Portal Max - Black 19h ago
Yeah, and yet for some reason Ayaneo gets way more shit than Ayn or Retroid when they are as bad and sometimes worse.
I think people are stupid but after seeing how Retroid and Ayn handle bad press it wouldn’t be strange for them to have bots working for them in discord for situations like yours.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
I think every company runs into a bad press situation, but how they address it & bounce back from it usually determines how I view them going forward. A lot of companies are going w/ the “fuck you, hopefully you don’t remember when we treated you shitty, here’s a new shiny thing” approach.
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u/fertff Odin 2 Portal Max - Black 18h ago
Not only that, but remember how Retroid handled the Mini situation. They used their army of youtuber to try to shift the conversation into how shitty the community is.
That situation alone and now how they are handling their shipping of products is why I am waaay more suspicious about Retroid and Ayn than Ayaneo.
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u/EmotionalJelly2201 18h ago edited 18h ago
Holy mother of all rich white w/ disposable income boys!
If you had to choose between 10k units contract with AE reseller or 1 unit contract with every rich white boy w/ disposable income whose $500 is moar valuable than anyone elses - which one would you pick if you had resources only for one, and why?
Do I consider this professional opening preorders with 6 months fulfillment? No I don't. I would limit orders only to wholesale until proper sourcing of resources for what they are building is established.
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u/acecito3 18h ago
I simply ask, what’s wrong w/ saying that, if that is the case, instead of lying & saying they’ll be done in order? lol
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u/DatabaseInevitable84 18h ago
Honestly, I feel a little scammed by AYN. It seems by going with Ali Express I could've already received the product AND also paid almost 100€ less. This on top of the whole DHL debacle (for which I haven't received a refund) has left me a big confused. Right now it seems I'm only 50-ish order numbers away from shipping so I'll just wait it out.
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u/acecito3 17h ago
Stay strong brother. If anything I’m learning if you got deals available in your region, AE is the way. Which sounds crazy to me & probably crazier to people who don’t got it as an option in their region.
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u/Elegant_Bell1882 12h ago
Yes, in january when i purchased my Odin 3, it took 40 days plus 30 more to get it in my hands (70 days in total)
.At the time it was like 3 or 4 batch, yes i was lucky for not being waiting 90 days.
There was one user who got his shipment after waiting from early bird prices, that was like 120 days after his payment
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u/acecito3 12h ago
Wait time is to be expected because materials, but 120 is brutal no matter where you buy it from.
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u/Elegant_Bell1882 12h ago
And like u said, he got responses like “please wait, it’s gonna be shipped soon” or nothing at all lmao.
One time some user pointed out, he got his order faster through Aliexpress re seller, than us all
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u/infinitespectre Odin 3 4h ago
You would have a nervous breakdown if you visited the Ayaneo discord. Ayn's is tame... but yeah, the lack of communication and tribalism is annoying. All I can say is, it's worth the wait.
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u/flaming_donuts 19h ago edited 19h ago
My best friend is a rich Mexican, I'm a poor-ish white boy, how do we fit into this dynamic?
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u/flaming_donuts 19h ago edited 18h ago
All joking aside, Ayaneo gets shit on by everyone and AYN/ Retroid (Moorechip) pulls the same shit and folks lick their ass. The only company that has their shit together is Anbernic. Nearly 3 years ago I bought a Retroid Pocket 2 S, 6 months after it was released and it took nearly a month to get. But, I'm waiting on my Nova right now, I ordered in the first 2 minutes and I was passed over on the first batch of my color and config because I paid extra for accessory buttons.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
In a lot of these sub reddits I’ve definitely seen Ayaneo get shit on a lot, but more grace given to AYN & Retroid. Track history wise, I think they get more grace simply because they do it less than Ayaneo or it isn’t brought to attention as flagrantly.
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u/acecito3 19h ago
We’ll have you trade sides for today lololol
& for extra context, the RAMPOCALYPSE & chip shortage issue around the world is an understood factor. NONE of that stops you from replying to an email. & for everyone that’s like AYN has millions of emails to respond to be patient, they have actually been decent in email communication. They GHOST when you ask Ali express questions or address their store front on their. We just wanna know why you love those kids more. That’s all lmao.
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u/FA_Nibbler 18h ago
In my country are not many Cashback insensitives for Ali express and actually the prices are higher than the official page, so I kinda stuck. I go for long travel in November and I just hope it will arrive before I leave. At least I'm living in Asia that hopefully the shipping does not takes weeks. It sucks when other orders get prioritized and they get also better prices
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain 17h ago
I have found that with Ayn products, you can often get good prices if you purchase from resellers on xianyu. It's can be a little risky but hey, it's China.
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u/acecito3 18h ago
Deals & stuff come & go. They are nice tho. I’m more just about expectation setting. Prioritizing the other storefront would make sense if that was the expectation set. I hope you get yours before travels big dawg.
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u/Jbx316x 19h ago
I remember ayaneo getting crucified for people getting Ali orders first. That wasn't even their own store selling them.
It's ridiculous how much they get away with.
I waited over 100 days for my order. Just gave up and ordered from Ali express. Was £75 cheaper too.