Can I get a refund on my Librem 5 campaign order

There was some confusion related to our Librem 5 refund policy, this FAQ should help clarify.

Purism had an overwhelmingly successful crowdfunding campaign raising well over the $1.5M goal within days after launching. Like most campaigns, we continued to offer the opportunity to invest in the Librem 5, PureOS, and the creation of an alternative to Android/iOS from our website all while releasing our dev kit, early versions of the phone, and through the five iterations toward mass production. The purpose of the campaign and all pre-mass-production funds was to invest in free software for the benefit of the general public aligned with Purism’s Social Purpose, and we did that. The phone was a possible (but not a guaranteed) reward for participation in the campaign before holding stock.

A small amount of early supporters assumed our previously published regular in-stock product refund policy applies to them. While we disagree with this position because the entire intent of early backing is to fund the research and development with the goal of product delivery, we do understand the source of the confusion and in a few instances agreed to honor a the refund requests which were approved by us in the past. Any refunds hurt the forward momentum of the project. Since then, we changed our refund policy for the Librem 5 project and our general product refund policy and do not accept any new refund requests. Refunds are not applicable to crowdfunding campaigns nor pre-orders related to them and therefore we view them as a rare exception. All the money raised during those campaigns was invested into component hardware to manufacture the phones and into free software development and the Linux ecosystem that we have developed and released, which is currently available for all and is widely used by the Linux community.

We cannot withdraw money from the fully released software that has been published. This means that any Librem 5 refund requests that we have previously approved, will be funded by our other business in the future.

As we currently have all liquid funds allocated to physical assets and to hardware we are unable to process any remaining previously approved refund requests at this time. However, we do offer two alternative options to those early supporters who requested refunds that we made the exception to approve:

1. The Librem 5 phone, running PureOS (with all the latest investments and enhancements) which they have backed and we are now delivering.

2. A store credit equal to the amount of their investment + 20% courtesy increase which allows an exchange for any other product at shop.puri.sm.

We have your phone, and we will ship all the phones to those who have confirmed their mailing address, with the store credit available to the rest.

We would like to apologize for any inconsistent messaging or any confusion around our refund practices.

Crowdfunding innovations are an immense challenge and Purism has consistently delivered on revolutionary inventions, and we appreciate everyone who supports us. We will keep delivering products which are available to all and we firmly stand behind our values. We exist to fulfill our mission to create hardware, software, and services that respect people’s privacy, security, and freedom. We sincerely thank everyone who shares this journey with us.