geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: demik on Wed, 01 August 2012, 19:42:04
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i have to ask.
are you making money out of this red mod sale? or is all the money going to SP/Melissa?
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Read the above. I/we don't know. I have no idea how I'm going to manage to sell nearly 200 red mod kits seeing as how pretty much everyone who wanted one has already bought one or more. Yeah the price decrease/refund is going to cause more people to get in on it, but I don't have a crystal ball. I am not trying to, if that's what you're asking. If I lower the selling price much lower than $20, its simply too much for me to refund. Make sense?
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Sounds like it depends on how fast the red mods sell, seems if they sell under a month then it goes to SP and anything over that he keeps?
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what im asking is.
those 200 extra sets.
how much of that money is SP getting and how much of that money is staying in your pocket.
80/20? 60/40? 100 to sp?
it's great that you want to help SP and all, but lets not kid ourselves. you don't do anything for free and you've said so yourself.
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rag, melissa almost certainly made you an offer to sell you the error keys at a discounted rate. i am asking that you tell us exactly what that offer was otherwise i will not be contributing anything to this buy.
i will, however tell mel that i am happy to buy sets directly from her if she requests that you send the error sets back.
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Its probably going to be something like 80/20. Again it depends on how many I sell, I haven't heard how much SP needs, so I can't tell you because the math problem is incomplete. I'll be sure to tell you right away to make sure it's okay, promise.
@ Mkawa. That's not how the conversation went. I suggested exactly what I've stated and the details aren't ironed out yet. Don't jump down my throat and speak for me please.
What you guys don't seem to understand is that Melissa has not told me how much she wants for the sets.
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now, that 80% is for SP right? lets all be clear here since you decided to leave the part out where you'll be making money off these "lets help SP" sales.
shame, i wanted to help out SP because Melissa seems to be a great person. But not if you're going to take a cut.
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Uhh yeah, 80% to SP. Because of course I'm sure you realize that it takes a lot of work to take all of the wrong keys out of 200 keysets and put all of the right keys in right? I find it hilarious how you guys think I'm just sitting over here doing nothing but rake in cash. That will take me ages to do, and not to mention packing up and selling all of the extras with most/all of the benefit going to SP. Keep vilifying me if you want, and I'll just stop doing nice things for other people?
Like seriously wtf guys. Every chance you get I have guys jumping all over me like I'm trying to steal everyone's money. If that was the case there wouldn't be over 30,000 keycaps sitting in my living room right now.
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Uhh yeah, 80% to SP. Because of course I'm sure you realize that it takes a lot of work to take all of the wrong keys out of 200 keysets and put all of the right keys in right? I find it hilarious how you guys think I'm just sitting over here doing nothing but rake in cash. That will take me ages to do, and not to mention packing up and selling all of the extras with most/all of the benefit going to SP. Keep vilifying me if you want, and I'll just stop doing nice things for other people?
Dude come on. People expect you to be transparent when they give you their money... nobody is vilifying you or jumping down your throat, they just want clarification.
And as far as being clear goes, you're NOT directly doing something nice for other people. You are running profitable group buys that people happen to appreciate. I don't mean to piss you off or give you a reason not to run group buys, but you sure as hell need to be comfortable stating that you make profits from these (which I believe you are) and clearly/concisely answering peoples' questions about distribution of funds (which you don't seem to be doing without a lot of prodding), or they will stop buying your services.
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I am being as clear as I possibly can though, and that's not enough. Like I get you want answers today, but guess what, Melissa went home over 2 hours ago, and I won't find out any more until tomorrow most likely. Once I figure out how much their cost is, then we can go from there.
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Uhh yeah, 80% to SP. Because of course I'm sure you realize that it takes a lot of work to take all of the wrong keys out of 200 keysets and put all of the right keys in right? I find it hilarious how you guys think I'm just sitting over here doing nothing but rake in cash. That will take me ages to do, and not to mention packing up and selling all of the extras with most/all of the benefit going to SP. Keep vilifying me if you want, and I'll just stop doing nice things for other people?
Dude come on. People expect you to be transparent when they give you their money... nobody is vilifying you or jumping down your throat, they just want clarification.
And as far as being clear goes, you're NOT directly doing something nice for other people. You are running profitable group buys that people happen to appreciate. I don't mean to piss you off or give you a reason not to run group buys, but you sure as hell need to be comfortable stating that you make profits from these (which I believe you are) and clearly/concisely answering peoples' questions about distribution of funds (which you don't seem to be doing without a lot of prodding), or they will stop buying your services.
seriously.
you're not doing "nice things for people." you're charging people for your service. we appreciate that you run these group buys. but don't act like you're doing this for free or doing us a favor.
you brought up the idea of helping out SP, but decided to not mention helping yourself out also. THAT I have a problem with.
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Oh and I need to unpack and shower still, been going non-stop for the last few days trying to get here to get this done and... well now most of the urgency is gone. *sigh of relief/dejection* (does that even exist?)
YES, please sit down and relax, have a cup of coffee sit back and catch up with what's happening in the world (other than this Group Buy).
I just realized how horrible it would be to actually run a Group Buy here. It's all the worse possible nightmares that could come true, that's why I never get angry with these poor guys trying to execute one.
If a Group Buy actually goes through without any difficulties, you can chalk that down as a minor miracle. Ragnorock has to just take it easy and keep his focus on what's important.......... keeping 'sane' throughout this process.
Nobody that has experience with SP is upset about the errors.
you brought up the idea of helping out SP, but decided to not mention helping yourself out also. THAT I have a problem with.
THIS is what people are upset about.
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It doesn't bother me if Ragnorock makes a profit
That is not really the angle of the issue we're discussing.
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I really hope not enough of these Red mods sell and I do end up doing everything for free so you can change your tune and get off my back. You obviously don't understand what I explained as to how it would work. I sell leftover sets. Once I have enough money, I issue REFUNDS, making it so everyone pays less money. Following that, I keep selling keys until SP gets its costs covered, if that happens at all. If it doesn't, that's their loss they have to eat on the mistake. Once their loss is absorbed, then I can start making money off of it, if at all. We don't know yet because I don't know how much this mistake cost SP. The odds of me making money here are actually really low, which you clearly don't understand. If you can think of a better plan, I'm all ears. If you want me to just send the keys back to Melissa, and have Melissa throw them up on SP for $27 a set, I'll do that. But we certainly can't have them selling at a lower price than everyone paid in the group buy, or else everyone in the group buy is going to be angry and crying for a refund. This way, everyone pays less for a set, and it doesn't take SP as long to recoup their loss as it would for them to try and sell red mod kits at a non discounted price. Do you follow my line of thinking yet?
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you're not doing "nice things for people." you're charging people for your service. we appreciate that you run these group buys. but don't act like you're doing this for free or doing us a favor.
you brought up the idea of helping out SP, but decided to not mention helping yourself out also. THAT I have a problem with.
Hey, this is starting to look like a some sort of gang fight with everyone drawing out knives and chains.......what the HELL.
This is just the beginning. Remember nothing is final yet you still have a way of negotiating to get what you want, but making accusations just pushes everyone into their corners ready for a knock down blood fight.
No one wins........ Ragnorock got screwed by SP's ineptitude, nothing wrong there because most companies **** up in one way or another. You need to now work out a way of tackling it, effectively.
C'mon guys.......don't get all nasty about this. Just calm down.......... take it easy and start again. Remember we are suppose to be rational beings not vicious, vindictive people.
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you brought up the idea of helping out SP, but decided to not mention helping yourself out also. THAT I have a problem with.
This is where you say: "But wait Dave, hold on a minute!" Because you're thinking if I have almost 200 sets and I'm selling them at $20 a pop, isn't that near $3000 (less refunds) that goes into my pocket? No. I will be paying most of that to SP in order to help them absorb the loss from having to remake that many keys. That way SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired. Also I highly doubt I will be able to unload 200 extra red mod kits in a reasonable time frame, if at all. SP knows they screwed up, and I'm doing them a big favor by doing this, (instead of just sending them back so they can get a couple hundred in materials costs back,) so as much as I can get them back I'm sure they'll be happy with. That also means more people get cool custom keycaps. That's the best situation I can think of, if anyone has any thoughts or ideas how I can do better, I'm all ears. Unfortunately I can't just give everyone a free mod kit, as much fun as that would be.
Explain to me how I did not mention "helping myself out," please. PLEASE.
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Can't we all just get along? The mentality that I take with these GBs is "do i want these pieces of plastic for the price the GB owner is offering them for". If no I leave the thread, if yes I buy... beyond that I don't care where money is going.
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that was a hell of a lot more detailed than your first update.
No one wins........ Ragnorock got screwed by SP's ineptitude, nothing wrong there because most companies **** up in one way or another. You need to now work out a way of tackling it, effectively.
how did he get screwed again? SP is fixing their mistake out of their own pocket. rag isn't paying anything more than what was already paid to SP.
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C'mon guys.......don't get all nasty about this. Just calm down.......... take it easy and start again. Remember we are suppose to be rational beings not vicious, vindictive people.
I don't think anybody is being nasty or uncalm. People are blowing the wrong parts of the issue out of proportion and ignoring what demik and I have been saying -- there is a demand for clarity in the distribution of funds and to whom the money from these 'extra' sets will be going to.
I understand taking care of the supplier, but I would also really like to know base costs for the keys that were made in error. SP should NOT receive retail/marked up compensation, just materials + molds because otherwise they'd be profiting off of their mistakes. But this is not my deal to make.
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Uhh, yeah I am. I'm paying the cost of fixing it so they don't lose money by making it right, that's where the money I'll be collecting from the red mod set sales goes. (In light of STP's post, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing, I'm paying what their cost, sans markup, is on fixing it, or at least that's what I think I'm doing from my convo with Melissa, as I said, it was rather frantic.)
that was a hell of a lot more detailed than your first update.
Jesus man, I'm running on 3 hours of sleep, what more do you want from me? A dissertation? It makes perfect sense to me, I'm sorry you didn't get it.
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because you want to, no? or did Melissa tell you that the only way you are getting the white mods is if you pay for it again?
I hope SP learns from this. It's ridiculous that stuff goes "missing" on their part.
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Uhh, yeah I am. I'm paying the cost of fixing it so they don't lose money by making it right, that's where the money I'll be collecting from the red mod set sales goes.
that was a hell of a lot more detailed than your first update.
Jesus man, I'm running on 3 hours of sleep, what more do you want from me? A dissertation? It makes perfect sense to me, I'm sorry you didn't get it.
Please go to bed and stop responding to posts right now, we can tell you're frustrated and need sleep :P
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The refund is that you don't get angry when I sell the accident sets for less than you paid during the group buy, in order to sell them quickly. Its the same principle with the unpaid invoices, I can't let someone pay a different price for a set than another person just because they bought it at ____ point in time. That's called price discrimination and I don't practice it.
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because you want to, no? or did Melissa tell you that the only way you are getting the white mods is if you pay for it again?
I hope SP learns from this. It's ridiculous that stuff goes "missing" on their part.
Yes I want to make it so their huge mistake is as financially small as possible, both for the GH - SP relationship and for Melissa's job security. No she didn't say that's the only way I'm getting the keys. I suggested this plan so they don't just eat the loss. Generally when someone keeps making multi thousand dollar mistakes it sortof looks bad. I don't even know what to do about the portal sets, it looks like they used the same printing setup for the first 13 keys, so everything that was a part of the original Portal set is exactly the same as it was the first time- no added colors. So what do I do now? Tell her to reprint me 110 portal sets (looking at the invoice that cost us $2560, so after their markup that's probably an $1800 mistake too.)
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oh SP.. when will you learn.
like i said, i'm all for helping SP out and keeping Melissa at her job. But for ****'s sake, they need to get their **** together.
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because you want to, no? or did Melissa tell you that the only way you are getting the white mods is if you pay for it again?
I hope SP learns from this. It's ridiculous that stuff goes "missing" on their part.
Yes I want to make it so their huge mistake is as financially small as possible, both for the GH - SP relationship and for Melissa's job security. No she didn't say that's the only way I'm getting the keys. I suggested this plan so they don't just eat the loss. Generally when someone keeps making multi thousand dollar mistakes it sortof looks bad. I don't even know what to do about the portal sets, it looks like they used the same printing setup for the first 13 keys, so everything that was a part of the original Portal set is exactly the same as it was the first time- no added colors. So what do I do now? Tell her to reprint me 110 portal sets (looking at the invoice that cost us $2560, so after their markup that's probably an $1800 mistake too.)
Melissa should not be fired over our relatively small group buys, but come on! They ****ed up both of your current group buys and you'd rather they not deal with the consequences on their own dime? Noble, but you nor the rest of the community don't owe them anything extra. That's what the money you paid for the intended product is for...
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and something to think about: rag could have been a douchbag and not said anything at all to us and just gone to another forum to sell these mod sets
lol like where? is there another SECRET keycap marketplace apart from the western worlds' largest two kbd forums (GH and DT)?
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i don't know why you guys are being so silly.
ragnorock is not obligated to give back any money to SP since it was their mistake to begin with...
technically ~85 red mod sets are rags and he can do whatever he pleases with them.
he is choosing to sell them for $20 and is being nice and is offering to donate some of the proceeds to SP since he feels bad.
lets THANK rag for being a nice person and donating any to SP at all...
i don't recall any of previous GB errors by SP getting bailed out. (this may not be entirely true but PUBLICLY it is)
now lets understand that the error made by SP this particular time is more harmful than the previous errors but this is probably also the SAME REASON that rag is even offering to donate proceeds in the first place...
and something to think about: rag could have been a douchbag and not said anything at all to us and just gone to another forum to sell these mod sets
sp was most likely going to offer those 85 sets at a discounted price. like they did with the riddlers gbs. there is nothing wrong with the sets, it just wasnt what people ordered. so i dont know what the hell you're talking about.
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OCN...
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Yeah I'm sure there are no members of GH that are also on OCN in any meaningful way... coughreapercough
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W
because you want to, no? or did Melissa tell you that the only way you are getting the white mods is if you pay for it again?
I hope SP learns from this. It's ridiculous that stuff goes "missing" on their part.
Yes I want to make it so their huge mistake is as financially small as possible, both for the GH - SP relationship and for Melissa's job security. No she didn't say that's the only way I'm getting the keys. I suggested this plan so they don't just eat the loss. Generally when someone keeps making multi thousand dollar mistakes it sortof looks bad. I don't even know what to do about the portal sets, it looks like they used the same printing setup for the first 13 keys, so everything that was a part of the original Portal set is exactly the same as it was the first time- no added colors. So what do I do now? Tell her to reprint me 110 portal sets (looking at the invoice that cost us $2560, so after their markup that's probably an $1800 mistake too.)
Melissa should not be fired over our relatively small group buys, but come on! They ****ed up both of your current group buys and you'd rather they not deal with the consequences on their own dime? Noble, but you nor the rest of the community don't owe them anything extra. That's what the money you paid for the intended product is for...
Yeah, its like, okay I've got all the keys for the portal gb. Nothing's missing, defective or damaged beyond use as far as I can tell. They're perfect except some of them are missing the added color changes I did, (that's obviously production's fault for going "Oh hey, even though they paid $80 for new legends, most of them look the same, so we'll just use the printing paper from the last round and save ourselves some money by only having to print only the 3 new keys.)
Is that sort of mistake worth making SP eat an $1,800 loss over? Nah not really, the keys still look fantastic, and I'm pretty sure just about everyone is going to be super happy with them. That said though, we are victim to their incompetencies yet again, and who knows when enough will be enough. I'll point it out to her and say something like "hey, this is messed up too, we didn't get what we paid for, but its not that big of a deal and I know you've got a much bigger issue you're dealing with, just wanted you to know that we noticed it." That goodwill is extremely valuable, much more than a lot of people understand. A simple way to put it is "Yes, the customer is always right, but the reasonable customer is much more likely to be welcomed back in the future."
I could go on and tell a few stories about this from my own experience but that'd be the sleep deprivation making me ramble on. You know how I can do that sometimes. (Order thread OPs LOL)
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Is that sort of mistake worth making SP eat an $1,800 loss over? Nah not really, the keys still look fantastic, and I'm pretty sure just about everyone is going to be super happy with them. That said though, we are victim to their incompetencies yet again, and who knows when enough will be enough. I'll point it out to her and say something like "hey, this is messed up too, we didn't get what we paid for, but its not that big of a deal and I know you've got a much bigger issue you're dealing with, just wanted you to know that we noticed it." That goodwill is extremely valuable, much more than a lot of people understand. A simple way to put it is "Yes, the customer is always right, but the reasonable customer is much more likely to be welcomed back in the future."
I agree with your position on being a decent customer but group buys, on the whole, are probably at least a full percentage of their business when you include korean buys. They can afford to make mistakes when dealing with relatively small individual orders but, as a member of the larger group of GB operators, you are allowing them to abuse their monopoly. This is why their QC has gotten not better, but worse. I'm also curious to find out how much of that $1800 is profit to SP above and beyond operating costs.
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i don't know why you guys are being so silly.
ragnorock is not obligated to give back any money to SP since it was their mistake to begin with...
technically ~85 red mod sets are rags and he can do whatever he pleases with them.
he is choosing to sell them for $20 and is being nice and is offering to donate some of the proceeds to SP since he feels bad.
lets THANK rag for being a nice person and donating any to SP at all...
i don't recall any of previous GB errors by SP getting bailed out. (this may not be entirely true but PUBLICLY it is)
now lets understand that the error made by SP this particular time is more harmful than the previous errors but this is probably also the SAME REASON that rag is even offering to donate proceeds in the first place...
and something to think about: rag could have been a douchbag and not said anything at all to us and just gone to another forum to sell these mod sets
sp was most likely going to offer those 85 sets at a discounted price. like they did with the riddlers gbs. there is nothing wrong with the sets, it just wasnt what people ordered. so i dont know what the hell you're talking about.
how stupid are you? the 85 sets are not SP's anymore.
they are rags now so i really don't know what the hell YOU'RE talking about...
You must be ****ing retarded.
They are not rag's, because that is NOT what rag ordered. SP is sending rag his missing keys. What is there not to get?
Same thing happened with the Riddler's key GB. SP did the wrong row, fixed the problem and asked tsangan if he wanted to buy those keys at a discounted price.
Rag is offering to help SP sell these, because there seems to be interest in them anyway. If he would have said no, they would have taken it back. 85 perfectly fine sets.
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ok look, SP isn't going to go out of business, melissa isn't going to get fired, and i don't care who loses what money. again, not speaking as an official representative of geekhack, but personally you're not going to get money out of me by trying to pull on my heartstrings or portraying this as a means of supporting the community in any way. legally, you have two choices with the defective merchandise which you are in possession of. note of course that you do not own this defective merchandise, as you presold it to other people. ok, choices:
1) return the defective merchandise en masse to the manufacturer, make them fix their mistake and provide the buyers you represent with non-defective merchandise
2) accept the defective merchandise, implicitly or explicitly accepting the merchandise rendered as making you and the buyers you represent whole; send the merchandise to the buyers who paid for it and currently own it, let them grumble.
any options that deviate from the first two are probably legally some form of theft and the very least clearly exploitative of your position as a proxy buyer. i will personally continue to choose not to participate in this transaction, and i personally encourage others not to as well.
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ok look, SP isn't going to go out of business, melissa isn't going to get fired, and i don't care who loses what money. again, not speaking as an official representative of geekhack, but personally you're not going to get money out of me by trying to pull on my heartstrings or portraying this as a means of supporting the community in any way. legally, you have two choices with the defective merchandise which you are in possession of. note of course that you do not own this defective merchandise, as you presold it to other people. ok, choices:
1) return the defective merchandise en masse to the manufacturer, make them fix their mistake and provide the buyers you represent with non-defective merchandise
2) accept the defective merchandise, implicitly or explicitly accepting the merchandise rendered as making you and the buyers you represent whole; send the merchandise to the buyers who paid for it and currently own it, let them grumble.
any options that deviate from the first two are probably legally some form of theft and the very least clearly exploitative of your position as a proxy buyer. i will personally continue to choose not to participate in this transaction, and i personally encourage others not to as well.
(http://rlv.zcache.com/oh_dip_tshirt-p235023676446353014envm8_400.jpg)
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ok look, SP isn't going to go out of business, melissa isn't going to get fired, and i don't care who loses what money. again, not speaking as an official representative of geekhack, but personally you're not going to get money out of me by trying to pull on my heartstrings or portraying this as a means of supporting the community in any way. legally, you have two choices with the defective merchandise which you are in possession of. note of course that you do not own this defective merchandise, as you presold it to other people. ok, choices:
1) return the defective merchandise en masse to the manufacturer, make them fix their mistake and provide the buyers you represent with non-defective merchandise
2) accept the defective merchandise, implicitly or explicitly accepting the merchandise rendered as making you and the buyers you represent whole; send the merchandise to the buyers who paid for it and currently own it, let them grumble.
any options that deviate from the first two are probably legally some form of theft and the very least clearly exploitative of your position as a proxy buyer. i will personally continue to choose not to participate in this transaction, and i personally encourage others not to as well.
Okay well I'm not sure everyone else agrees with that, but if that's what the community wants me to do, I'll return them to SP, and then potentially buy them later or whatever. I recognized from the start that I am not entitled to free red mods to do with what I please, and have at no point made any indication that I feel otherwise. I am simply attempting the most logical path I have been able to come up with. We do it your way, and everyone pays more for the red mods, I don't have to deal with doing refunds or selling a couple hundred leftovers, and SP loses out on more money than they would my way. Hell, that sure sounds like a good deal for me, less work and I only bought 1 red mod set for myself, and I could care less about the $7 difference. Your move guys.
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ok look, SP isn't going to go out of business, melissa isn't going to get fired, and i don't care who loses what money. again, not speaking as an official representative of geekhack, but personally you're not going to get money out of me by trying to pull on my heartstrings or portraying this as a means of supporting the community in any way. legally, you have two choices with the defective merchandise which you are in possession of. note of course that you do not own this defective merchandise, as you presold it to other people. ok, choices:
1) return the defective merchandise en masse to the manufacturer, make them fix their mistake and provide the buyers you represent with non-defective merchandise
2) accept the defective merchandise, implicitly or explicitly accepting the merchandise rendered as making you and the buyers you represent whole; send the merchandise to the buyers who paid for it and currently own it, let them grumble.
any options that deviate from the first two are probably legally some form of theft and the very least clearly exploitative of your position as a proxy buyer. i will personally continue to choose not to participate in this transaction, and i personally encourage others not to as well.
Okay well I'm not sure everyone else agrees with that, but if that's what the community wants me to do, I'll return them to SP, and then potentially buy them or whatever. I recognized from the start that I am not entitled to free red mods to do with what I please, and have at no point made any indication that I feel otherwise. I am simply attempting the most logical path I have been able to come up with. We do it your way, and everyone pays more for the red mods, I don't have to deal with doing refunds or selling a couple hundred leftovers, and SP loses out on more money than they would my way. Hell, that sure sounds like a good deal for me, less work and I only bought 1 red mod set for myself, and I could care less about the $7 difference. Your move guys.
It's not OUR move, it's YOUR move. You just need to be prepared to deal with the consequences of your decision.
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(http://www.strangecosmos.com/images/content/167278.gif)
notice how her boob slightly jiggles
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No... I'm asking you guys to tell me what the hell to do. I figured everyone would be all like "Yay Rag, thank you so much, you rock" and obviously that isn't the case. I want everyone to be happy, that's all I'm trying to accomplish here. So tell me what you're happiest with, or suggest something you like better.
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I'm still staring at her arm touching her boob...and again...and again...
Rag, either way you do it, I don't care much as long as I will recieve my keycaps. Now or later doesn't matter. Sort things out as simple as you can.
People will be happy with their keycaps on their boards.
(http://i.imgur.com/blIOc.gif)
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1) return the defective merchandise en masse to the manufacturer, make them fix their mistake and provide the buyers you represent with non-defective merchandise
2) accept the defective merchandise, implicitly or explicitly accepting the merchandise rendered as making you and the buyers you represent whole; send the merchandise to the buyers who paid for it and currently own it, let them grumble.
any options that deviate from the first two are probably legally some form of theft and the very least clearly exploitative of your position as a proxy buyer. i will personally continue to choose not to participate in this transaction, and i personally encourage others not to as well.
+1
We cannot continue to bail out SP every time they mess up. Not to mention we all know that these 200 sets of modifiers will be sold for materials cost which will be very minimal. Return to SP and let them fix their mistake we must not continue doing this. This affects every future group buy.
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I don't think SP's discounted price would be their cost price. I feel as if (as low as it'll seem to us), it'll still contain some profits for them.
Anyways, to me it looks like some people just have something personal against Rag. He's being a good sport by letting us know what's going on. Give it a day or 2 for him to sort everything out with Melissa. I feel as if his original plan wasn't all that bad. A lot of people end up getting a set for cheaper, a lot more people that missed out (or didn't feel like grabbing a set back then) can get a set at a very attractive price. SP appreciates our effects (hopefully). By the way, without drilling him for more details, I instantly understood what he meant by what he said originally. Maybe that's why I'm not angry at the situation at all.
By the way, does mkawa's 2 scenarios even cover what Tsangan did with the Riddler keys? I feel as if this is a very similar situation. Tsangan bought them all at a discounted price. He sells them at a decent price. He loses out on the first however many caps. He'll eventually break even as long as they slowly sell (tho since paypal screwed him over, this probably won't happen for awhile still), and any extras are profits for him. While there was a lot of discussion about it then as well, most the senior members were ok with it. Why is this any different?
I personally appreciate Rag's work. He keeps us updated, he's trying to keep the majority of people happy (on both sides). He's getting us more caps. We pay a very decent price (basically exactly what it costs any ways, since most his profits are probably from the leftover sets any ways). I don't really have much more to say. Just wanted to chime in, give my opinion and my support.
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tsangan was given 3 options by mel:
1) return the defective merch, get it all replaced with non-defective merch. this would naturally cause a delay, but no harm no foul.
2) keep the defective merch as substitution for the merch he very clearly ordered. send out people's orders with defective parts, let them work it out.
3) pay a discounted price for 100% of the defective merch in addition to the cost paid initially for the ordered merch, receive ordered merch at a later date
he opted for #3, paid for the defective merch completely out of pocket, and slowly sold it to try to make up for the cost of buying it. i don't believe he has managed to reach that goal, especially since pp froze 2k of assets on him in the middle of his subsequent gb.
at no point did he imply that melissa would be fired for making a mistake, say anything as vague as "i don't know, the math is incomplete", or avoid direct questions. further, he stated exactly the options he was given, including exact pricing, cleanly stated that he was willing to take the risk and took it. the gb proceeded as normal except for the delay and the additional availability of the defective caps.
rag can obviously opt for option 1, and everything proceeds as normal, with no additional risk to rag or the GB buyers.
option 2 is already out the window, as he's asked for replacements.
if he is willing to take the risk of #3, he can ask for a discounted price from mel and pay for some a priori fixed percentage of the defective merch out of pocket. he must recognize that he is taking that risk and it is his own to take, no one else is responsible for him taking that risk or at any obligation to help him recover the money or labor he invests in the defective merch. BUT before he sells a single one of these discounted caps, he must purchase them directly from SP, as he rejected them as defective the second he ordered free replacements, and hence they are still the property of SP.
what he seems to be intimating is that he wants all the potential gains of option 3 without taking any of the risk. he would like to set a retail price that moves as much of the defective merch as possible without first purchasing it from SP, deciding on manufacturer pricing, or deciding how many units he wants to purchase from SP.
i suspect the reason why the conversation was tense was not because mel was so afraid of "screwing up" or "being fired", but because rag would not commit to one of the above options. she either needs the defective merch back or she needs him to purchase it, all or in part, from SP at a fixed rate. further, he needs to decide now, so that she can either work on moving the inventory of defective parts herself, or so that she can compute a price for him to purchase the parts he is currently in possession of.
obviously the current GB members don't really care how much risk rag takes, so no rag, it's not their decision. you either purchase the defective items now, or you send them back. pick one please, do it now, and then work on getting these people their caps asap.
again, further vacillation on this reflects poorly on you, and i will personally not be doing business with you in the future, nor will i recommend that others do business with you.
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I don't think SP's discounted price would be their cost price. I feel as if (as low as it'll seem to us), it'll still contain some profits for them.
Anyways, to me it looks like some people just have something personal against Rag. He's being a good sport by letting us know what's going on. Give it a day or 2 for him to sort everything out with Melissa. I feel as if his original plan wasn't all that bad. A lot of people end up getting a set for cheaper, a lot more people that missed out (or didn't feel like grabbing a set back then) can get a set at a very attractive price. SP appreciates our effects (hopefully). By the way, without drilling him for more details, I instantly understood what he meant by what he said originally. Maybe that's why I'm not angry at the situation at all.
By the way, does mkawa's 2 scenarios even cover what Tsangan did with the Riddler keys? I feel as if this is a very similar situation. Tsangan bought them all at a discounted price. He sells them at a decent price. He loses out on the first however many caps. He'll eventually break even as long as they slowly sell (tho since paypal screwed him over, this probably won't happen for awhile still), and any extras are profits for him. While there was a lot of discussion about it then as well, most the senior members were ok with it. Why is this any different?
I personally appreciate Rag's work. He keeps us updated, he's trying to keep the majority of people happy (on both sides). He's getting us more caps. We pay a very decent price (basically exactly what it costs any ways, since most his profits are probably from the leftover sets any ways). I don't really have much more to say. Just wanted to chime in, give my opinion and my support.
Thanks, and yeah that's exactly how I feel, vendettas against me and all. Or at least if the drama of the last couple of pages isn't evidence of that, I don't know what to think. Its not my fault you guys misinterpret my intentions constantly, that's just you guys being untrusting. I'm pretty sure I've done nothing to warrant that sort of treatment. Yes I make moneys off of these group buys, it pays my rent. It buys me a few keysets or keyboards here and there, but it doesn't make me afford a new car or anything like that. I'm not rollin the dough and doing it according to what Melissa and I worked out isn't going to change that in the slightest. The most likely result is me putting a bunch of time into that plan and having nothing to show for it, not even gratitude since that's apparently in short supply today.
As for this vs Riddler, I don't see how its really that different at all. The only real difference is that instead of sending them back to SP until I have the money to buy them (which I don't right now) I get to sell them to make the money to pay for them later. But hey, I went and showered and had breakfast at 9:30pm, and I feel a lot better, as well as having plenty of time to mull it over. If its a toss up on what everyone wants to do, I'll just send em back because its saves me a big pain in the ass I don't have time for and I don't have to sit and be judged by the mods constantly over whether I'm making a dime or not. -.- Then Mkawa can buy them and sell em and make the money instead... which seems like what he wants to do. Since he'll probably donate most of it to GH, I'm cool with that. For the record I'm not insinuating that Mkawa or anyone would do anything dishonest, I'm just going off of what he said earlier. I feel like I need to explain everything now so there is 0 misinterpretation.
Edit: @ Above:
Going with option 1 for now, will purchases sets later (option 3) if I can eventually afford it. Also you're officially a tool, since I'm just a guy trying to make the majority happy. I was never given ANY options from Melissa, so no, I had no idea what they were or what I should do, so I came here with a tentative plan and asked for input. You made assumptions and have been very critical of me this entire time. After this, I'm not sure why I'd want to deal with you either. I don't get it guys, what the hell did I do wrong?
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you should get a vendor subforum
Yes I make moneys off of these group buys, it pays my rent. It buys me a few keysets or keyboards here and there, but it doesn't make me afford a new car or anything like that.
and that is why.
if you want to make money off the community, take the risk yourself and invest in the product.
boilermaker did it. keyboard story did it.
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The only real difference is that instead of sending them back to SP until I have the money to buy them (which I don't right now) I get to sell them to make the money to pay for them later.
what you're asking for is called a bridge loan, and SP has no obligation to give this to you. you either purchase them from SP now at a pre-negotiated price, or you send them back. if, for some reason, mel gave you a bridge loan without proper underwriting, and then you defaulted on it, yes, mel might lose her job, but it would be because she did something improper by giving you the short-term financing, not because she has done anything improper up to this point.
now, speaking as a moderator, i'm happy to give you a vendor subforum. it's what we do here.
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I didn't ask for any sort of loan, hell I'm not even sure what the plan actually constituted at this point. I thought what I was doing was perfectly acceptable and a nice favor for SP. Clearly that's not okay with you guys, so out of respect for the community I'll do what you think is right. That's all I've ever done...
I don't need a vendor subforum. Maybe later.
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purchasing them outright is a nice favor to SP, and if you'll recall, it's what tsangan did. asking for financing to sell them is not a favor in any way.
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She was the one that said I didn't have to pay for them immediately...
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you should get a vendor subforum
Yes I make moneys off of these group buys, it pays my rent. It buys me a few keysets or keyboards here and there, but it doesn't make me afford a new car or anything like that.
and that is why.
if you want to make money off the community, take the risk yourself and invest in the product.
boilermaker did it. keyboard story did it.
Because buying 1500 blank PBT keys from SP to ship to Imsto before even putting up an order thread isn't risky at all? Because that's not what I'm doing or anything... Or what about how I bought $1200 worth of keysets for people who hadn't paid their invoices, (most of which never did,) just to get the group buy in on time. Or how I'm trying to produce a Starcraft 2 themed dyesub set that includes race (and maybe Blizzard) logos sourced from China in advance and dyesubbed spell keys that cost me hundreds to have multiple proofs run so that they actually look good when I go to have them run. Unfortunately due to cost increases its pretty unlikely its even going to work because even at the 100 tier price the base TKL keysets are $100 not even including the spell keys. So I'll probably be out hundreds on a failed group buy that gets no orders. But hey, that's not what I'm working on at all over here... or what I've been spending practically my entire summer on when I'm not fulfilling other obligations.
Yeah I invest in the product. I put the money I make to good use doing and making things nobody else is doing on here. I'm sorry I don't have the time or the money left to put up my own website and do whatever you think I should be doing. Its funny because last year, when I actually had the resources available to have a website made, I suggested it before everyone else did it (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=24645.msg464616#msg464616), and guess what? Hazeluff shot it down, only to start up KeyboardStory less than 6 months later. Last time I checked I don't HAVE to do what you say, I usually just end up doing it so you stop b!tching at everything I do. Everyone else here makes money off of doing group buys, quit picking on me because I'm more open about it.
Its funny how once you guys tell me what I should do, I do it, and apparently that makes me a flip flopper and not someone people should be doing business with. I ask, how am I not consistent in what I do, offer, and deliver? How are you not making a good guy greg pic of me for trying to get everyone lower prices for everyone, keep SP happy, and provide (clearly desired, I've had a half dozen PMs for them since I sold out) keysets to those that missed out? So Melissa was going to give me keysets to sell on consignment, what of it? I mean that's what it is. I sell them for SP and they get the vast majority of any proceeds. From the start I stated it was doubtful I would end up making any money at all, and yet you guys jump all over me like I'm some evil keycap monger out to peddle overpriced keycaps to you addicts. Sorry, but I really don't care what you try to paint me as, I know plenty of people that think you both are out of line. Its also funny how I think you're both ****s but I'm going to do what you said because I really don't care to go through all the work of doing what I planned now. Grats, you win, now go away.
/rant
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ok, look, against my better judgement, i'm going to post one last time here. again, this is my personal opinion and does not reflect that of this website or management except _exactly_ where noted.
first off, i'm getting a better idea of the conversation that you had with mel. you said "i didn't order base sets with red modifiers, i ordered base sets with grey modifiers." "oh well crap, looks like you're right, that sucks. well what do you want to do" "well, i don't have enough cash to buy these error sets from you guys so..." "well, i can give them to you on short-term financing if you think you can move them, and if you can recover the entire cost for me, that would be fine with me" "ok, but i'm not sure how many i can move" "well... let me run this by management and why don't you ask around and see how many you can move"
then you come here and post about how SP's made a huge mistake and mel could possibly be fired you want to sell as many of these as possible so she doesn't get fired. then you say "i don't know exactly how many i need to sell or at what price i need to sell them to help her but if i don't sell these SP's going to have to take a huge loss and mel could get fired"
here's what i would have said instead. "look dudes, SP's made a huge mistake again and i don't have enough money to buy the error keys from them, even though they look great. mel's offered me a short-term financing deal but we haven't worked out terms yet. if anyone has a chunk of cash and wants to either move these or help me move them, let me know. otherwise, i'll get back to you guys when i know the terms."
notice that the first is an appeal to emotion that's incredibly opaque on what the actual state of the transaction is, while the second is a completely transparent accounting of events and prognosis. notice that even though they both ask for help from the community, the second does so in a perfectly transparent way, while the first does not. now, i'm going to keep saying this, but speaking personally, i've seen you do two of these set gbs and both times you've come back to the community with an emotion filled appeal for more money in some way. the first time, you failed to account for sorting costs, "but hey you guys i negotiated mel down to a price i can pay out of pocket, but now i have no margin and this suckssss so please chip in if you can" (note that, if anything, that got mel into more trouble than her taking back these error keys will get her into).
also notice that every time you're criticized you come back with a martyr defense. "oh you guys just don't like me." no, i don't like the fact that you've become increasingly opaque in your dealings, are constantly appealing to emotion, and are consistently toeing the line between proxy buying and retailing despite calling yourself "the group buy guy".
you should get a vendor subforum
Yes I make moneys off of these group buys, it pays my rent. It buys me a few keysets or keyboards here and there, but it doesn't make me afford a new car or anything like that.
and that is why.
if you want to make money off the community, take the risk yourself and invest in the product.
boilermaker did it. keyboard story did it.
Because buying 1500 blank PBT keys from SP to ship to Imsto before even putting up an order thread isn't risky at all? Because that's not what I'm doing or anything... Or what about how I bought $1200 worth of keysets for people who hadn't paid their invoices, (most of which never did,) just to get the group buy in on time. Or how I'm trying to produce a Starcraft 2 themed dyesub set that includes race (and maybe Blizzard) logos sourced from China in advance and dyesubbed spell keys that cost me hundreds to have multiple proofs run so that they actually look good when I go to have them run. Unfortunately due to cost increases its pretty unlikely its even going to work because even at the 100 tier price the base TKL keysets are $100 not even including the spell keys. So I'll probably be out hundreds on a failed group buy that gets no orders. But hey, that's not what I'm working on at all over here... or what I've been spending practically my entire summer on when I'm not fulfilling other obligations.
ok, so you tried something risky on your own and apparently it didn't work out. yep, that's risk. sucks, but that's what business is about. my personal problem with this is that it sounds like you risked and possibly lost money that was sourced from other people for a GB that you had not yet delivered on by presumably using margin from the RA gb on this starcraft thing and yet you somehow think this is something that redeems you.
and then, because you lost this money, you're now complaining because you don't have enough money to cleanly take on additional risk now that SP's inevitably made a production mistake. and then on top of this, you want to take this risk on anyway by taking a bridge loan. and then on top of this you use your usual appeals to emotion and are completely opaque and irrationally defensive when questioned about it.
Yeah I invest in the product. I put the money I make to good use doing and making things nobody else is doing on here. I'm sorry I don't have the time or the money left to put up my own website and do whatever you think I should be doing. Its funny because last year, when I actually had the resources available to have a website made, I suggested it before everyone else did it (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=24645.msg464616#msg464616), and guess what? Hazeluff shot it down, only to start up KeyboardStory less than 6 months later. Last time I checked I don't HAVE to do what you say, I usually just end up doing it so you stop b!tching at everything I do. Everyone else here makes money off of doing group buys, quit picking on me because I'm more open about it.
yes, it's sure a good thing that the administration team puts their own time and money into giving everyone a free advertising platform to make money with, isn't it? (except for that ***** mkawa, man i hate that guy :/).
Its funny how once you guys tell me what I should do, I do it, and apparently that makes me a flip flopper and not someone people should be doing business with. I ask, how am I not consistent in what I do, offer, and deliver? How are you not making a good guy greg pic of me for trying to get everyone lower prices for everyone, keep SP happy, and provide (clearly desired, I've had a half dozen PMs for them since I sold out) keysets to those that missed out? So Melissa was going to give me keysets to sell on consignment, what of it? I mean that's what it is. I sell them for SP and they get the vast majority of any proceeds. From the start I stated it was doubtful I would end up making any money at all, and yet you guys jump all over me like I'm some evil keycap monger out to peddle overpriced keycaps to you addicts.
this is a silly immature rant. selling something on consignment is equivalent to short-term financing. look it up in the business textbooks you're constantly referring to.
Sorry, but I really don't care what you try to paint me as, I know plenty of people that think you both are out of line. Its also funny how I think you're both ****s but I'm going to do what you said because I really don't care to go through all the work of doing what I planned now. Grats, you win, now go away.
i told mkawa the administrator this and he said "all the time i spend working with the rest of the team to keep geekhack up is lost time and money for me, but if i go away then this guy and the other vendors won't have their opportunities to grow the keyboard community, so no i'm not going to go away, i'm going to do it anyway"
personally, i don't recommend doing business with you because you're immature and have consistently shown that you're not very good with money. in addition, you've accused me in this very thread of trying to steal business from you by buying these error keys you can't afford and selling them for a profit. i find this to be personally offensive because it's something i can't afford to do and wouldn't want to do anyways because, among other things, my administrator alter-ego is too busy losing time and money helping stand this site up. what i said i would do and will be doing is telling mel that if she feels her job is in trouble, i am happy to buy a couple sets directly from her for personal use to support signature plastics and their awesome customer support team.
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^ mkawa, are you an attorney, a law student, or a contracts administrator by any chance? Sorry for the threadcrapping, but I am just curious.
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no. that contingent of our userbase has been wise enough to stay away from this thread
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Yet another assumption based on limited information. Good job!
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Yet another assumption based on limited information. Good job!
its what GH does best apparently :-)
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I'll stick my two cents in.
I'd be sad if the groupbuy organiser didn't make a little bit of money as they have to do so much work behind the scenes. I understand that it is for the community but you can't expect people to run these things without some compensation for doing so.
Great job so far Rag, thanks again.
There is nothing wrong about making money doing this.
But when it's your main motivation, **** you and get a vendor forum.
Take the risk yourself (SK, boilermaker and niqmods did) and stop trying to hide behind this bull**** "I do for the community" act.
Rag has stated that it he "doesn't make a thousand it's not worth it".
Yet he continues to nickle and dime whenever he ****s up by giving you some bull**** sob story.
I honestly don't understand why people don't get this.
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My responses are in bold
ok, look, against my better judgement, i'm going to post one last time here. again, this is my personal opinion and does not reflect that of this website or management except _exactly_ where noted.
first off, i'm getting a better idea of the conversation that you had with mel. you said "i didn't order base sets with red modifiers, i ordered base sets with grey modifiers." "oh well crap, looks like you're right, that sucks. well what do you want to do" "well, i don't have enough cash to buy these error sets from you guys so..." "well, i can give them to you on short-term financing if you think you can move them, and if you can recover the entire cost for me, that would be fine with me" "ok, but i'm not sure how many i can move" "well... let me run this by management and why don't you ask around and see how many you can move"
Again, you're making wild assumptions and statements that directly contradict what I have explained previously. That is not AT ALL how the conversation went. The words "short term financing" or "if you can recover the cost for me" and well honestly, none of the quotes you said are at all accurate aside from "oh well crap, looks like you're right, that sucks." The actual conversation went like this: (As detailed as I can remember)
D: Hey Melissa, how are you today?
M: Good, you?
D: I'm alright but better than you're going to be in a minute, we've got a big problem with the red alert order, all of the base sets have red modifiers instead of all red on white keys
M: Oh no! We must have gone off of the image you sent depicting the red modifiers as the base set. I'm so sorry.
D: Yeah, I know that's a pretty big mistake and I want to try and figure out a way that it both gets fixed but you guys don't lose a bunch of money over fixing it for us, so here's what I was thinking. Since I know that the keys are worth a lot more in their current form to the keyboard enthusiasts out there than they are in raw materials, shipping them back to you so you can regrind a few hundred in materials costs doesn't make sense. Instead I think we should try and sell them at a reduced cost, something like $20 or so, to move the merchandise and hopefully I can sell enough of them to recoup most or all of what its going to cost for you to make the new keys
M: Okay, yeah that'll work, you don't even have to pay for them now. I can send you the new keys and when you sell enough to pay for the accident sets, you can pay for them.
D: Okay yeah that sounds fine, I'll go see what the guys on GH think and if you could let me know as soon as you can when production will be able to have the replacement keys by that'd be great, thanks so much Melissa.
M: No problem, again I'm really sorry this happened, I was supposed to send you a proof of what we were going to run before we did.
D: No worries, mistakes happen and I want to make this one as painless as possible for you since you help us out so much. I'll talk to you later
And that's it. I made the assumption that Melissa could potentially lose her job, because I figured that was a reasonable assumption at the time. From the email I received today, that certainly doesn't seem to be the case, so w/e on that front.
then you come here and post about how SP's made a huge mistake and mel could possibly be fired you want to sell as many of these as possible so she doesn't get fired. then you say "i don't know exactly how many i need to sell or at what price i need to sell them to help her but if i don't sell these SP's going to have to take a huge loss and mel could get fired"
As you can see from the conversation above, we didn't figure out how many I'd need to sell or at how much. After I got off of the phone I worked out that I would need to offer a refund in addition to contributing to SP, but what that amount could be calculated relatively easily, I didn't have their info on costs, whether it be per set or overall. Thus I just went and proposed the plan with what info I had. Again that was probably a bad decision, but I blame the feeling of urgency from discovering the mistake and wanting to let everyone know right away.
here's what i would have said instead. "look dudes, SP's made a huge mistake again and i don't have enough money to buy the error keys from them, even though they look great. mel's offered me a short-term financing deal but we haven't worked out terms yet. if anyone has a chunk of cash and wants to either move these or help me move them, let me know. otherwise, i'll get back to you guys when i know the terms."
That probably would have been a much better way to put it, though it never even occurred to me that it was "short term financing" (because she wasn't going to be charging me anything) until you told me it was. I still disagree that it actually is, but if you want to interpret it that way I can't stop you (clearly.)
notice that the first is an appeal to emotion that's incredibly opaque on what the actual state of the transaction is, while the second is a completely transparent accounting of events and prognosis. notice that even though they both ask for help from the community, the second does so in a perfectly transparent way, while the first does not. now, i'm going to keep saying this, but speaking personally, i've seen you do two of these set gbs and both times you've come back to the community with an emotion filled appeal for more money in some way. the first time, you failed to account for sorting costs, "but hey you guys i negotiated mel down to a price i can pay out of pocket, but now i have no margin and this suckssss so please chip in if you can" (note that, if anything, that got mel into more trouble than her taking back these error keys will get her into).
If you want to talk about emotional appeal, okay yes, I convey emotion in my posts, it helps get the point across. I'm not sitting here begging for money, and any transparency you think is veiled by emotional appeal is flat out wrong. I've never ever tried to use emotional appeal to sway others from doing the exact logical thing they should do. The sorting fee for the Ragnarok group buy was a shining example of how great this community is. Don't tarnish it's memory by saying I took advantage of people's pity in order to get a bunch of money out of everyone, that's so horribly rude. Several users went above and beyond the call of duty because I was suddenly forced to pay about $400 out of pocket and I asked anyone who was willing to contribute their share of the sorting fee if possible (~$2.) When the donations came rolling in I told everyone to stop when I got close to the goal because I didn't want people sending me money for nothing. I haven't forgotten who those people were either by the way. They all get gold stars in my book. I'm pretty sure whenever something like that happens for someone else on here, I'll be one of the first to contribute, and I'm sure you'll be right next to me doing the same.
also notice that every time you're criticized you come back with a martyr defense. "oh you guys just don't like me." no, i don't like the fact that you've become increasingly opaque in your dealings, are constantly appealing to emotion, and are consistently toeing the line between proxy buying and retailing despite calling yourself "the group buy guy".
What in the hell does that mean? How have I not been transparent about everything? Yeah I get defensive, and I certainly have good reason to be if I think you and Demik are in here calling me dishonest to try and discourage people from participating in my group buys. I get extremely upset when people accuse me of being dishonest or inconsistent. I'm not a retailer in the slightest. I buy leftovers just like everyone else does. I also go the extra mile to give everyone full disclosure on every step of the way. That has been one of the hallmarks of my group buys and you act like that isn't the case. You're accusing me of being "opaque" over and over again, but where have you caught me not telling the truth or witholding information? Where Mkawa, where? I'd dearly like to know because I haven't been hiding anything or misleading anyone. Each time I ask you to provide proof to back up your position, you don't. Don't go using your assumptions again either, because that doesn't work. If you're right I'll eat my words and profusely apologize for not being as entirely up front as I possibly can.
you should get a vendor subforum
Yes I make moneys off of these group buys, it pays my rent. It buys me a few keysets or keyboards here and there, but it doesn't make me afford a new car or anything like that.
and that is why.
if you want to make money off the community, take the risk yourself and invest in the product.
boilermaker did it. keyboard story did it.
Because buying 1500 blank PBT keys from SP to ship to Imsto before even putting up an order thread isn't risky at all? Because that's not what I'm doing or anything... Or what about how I bought $1200 worth of keysets for people who hadn't paid their invoices, (most of which never did,) just to get the group buy in on time. Or how I'm trying to produce a Starcraft 2 themed dyesub set that includes race (and maybe Blizzard) logos sourced from China in advance and dyesubbed spell keys that cost me hundreds to have multiple proofs run so that they actually look good when I go to have them run. Unfortunately due to cost increases its pretty unlikely its even going to work because even at the 100 tier price the base TKL keysets are $100 not even including the spell keys. So I'll probably be out hundreds on a failed group buy that gets no orders. But hey, that's not what I'm working on at all over here... or what I've been spending practically my entire summer on when I'm not fulfilling other obligations.
ok, so you tried something risky on your own and apparently it didn't work out. yep, that's risk. sucks, but that's what business is about. my personal problem with this is that it sounds like you risked and possibly lost money that was sourced from other people for a GB that you had not yet delivered on by presumably using margin from the RA gb on this starcraft thing and yet you somehow think this is something that redeems you.
and then, because you lost this money, you're now complaining because you don't have enough money to cleanly take on additional risk now that SP's inevitably made a production mistake. and then on top of this, you want to take this risk on anyway by taking a bridge loan. and then on top of this you use your usual appeals to emotion and are completely opaque and irrationally defensive when questioned about it.
Did I say I lost money? No I didn't. I said it might all be for nothing, which shows that I assume risk, which is what Demik was asking for evidence of. I haven't been complaining about not being able to afford to buy the red sets up front, again this is a flat out untruth you've fabricated. Melissa offered me a courtesy because I offered to do her a favor, there was no discussion on whether I was taking on additional risk, because there was no risk to me in doing it, there was no risk to me in the deal we arranged or I wouldn't have proposed it. You're following a delusional sequence of events that didn't happen, and you're attempting to crucify me for no reason. I wasn't being opaque, for the 5th time I told everyone everything I knew about the situation, which isn't hiding anything, it simply reflects incomplete information. Information you wanted, asked me for, and I didn't have. I never lied and said I didn't when I did, that's what being opaque would be. As for whether I used margins from the RA group buy on the SC2 thing, I used my profits, I haven't touched the money I set aside to ship everything. Its all there, waiting for me to ship everything out. I even made sure I had enough money to ship everything out by diverting some of the money I have made into covering the unpaid invoices, of which there are still about $300 of that I'm about to go cancel. Yeah I'll get that back when I sell the sets that never paid, but again that shows I assume risk. Again all you're doing is making base assumptions and judgements without any facts. Of course at this point anything I tell you you aren't going to believe anyways, so I'm not entirely sure why I'm bothering... oh wait its because you're spreading falsehoods about me. Better clear those up.
Yeah I invest in the product. I put the money I make to good use doing and making things nobody else is doing on here. I'm sorry I don't have the time or the money left to put up my own website and do whatever you think I should be doing. Its funny because last year, when I actually had the resources available to have a website made, I suggested it before everyone else did it (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=24645.msg464616#msg464616), and guess what? Hazeluff shot it down, only to start up KeyboardStory less than 6 months later. Last time I checked I don't HAVE to do what you say, I usually just end up doing it so you stop b!tching at everything I do. Everyone else here makes money off of doing group buys, quit picking on me because I'm more open about it.
yes, it's sure a good thing that the administration team puts their own time and money into giving everyone a free advertising platform to make money with, isn't it? (except for that ***** mkawa, man i hate that guy :/).
You have my thanks for getting geekhack back up and running, though it would be nice if you kept at it, the forum is basically the same as the day it went back live, and it still needs a ton of work. I recognize how much time and effort it took to do though, so really you can delete that last comment, I really don't hate you, I just hate how you're treating me.
Its funny how once you guys tell me what I should do, I do it, and apparently that makes me a flip flopper and not someone people should be doing business with. I ask, how am I not consistent in what I do, offer, and deliver? How are you not making a good guy greg pic of me for trying to get everyone lower prices for everyone, keep SP happy, and provide (clearly desired, I've had a half dozen PMs for them since I sold out) keysets to those that missed out? So Melissa was going to give me keysets to sell on consignment, what of it? I mean that's what it is. I sell them for SP and they get the vast majority of any proceeds. From the start I stated it was doubtful I would end up making any money at all, and yet you guys jump all over me like I'm some evil keycap monger out to peddle overpriced keycaps to you addicts.
this is a silly immature rant. selling something on consignment is equivalent to short-term financing. look it up in the business textbooks you're constantly referring to.
It isn't if there is no charge to me to do so. Short term financing requires me to take ownership of the materials, which I wasn't. In addition, I would have to pay some sort of installment or fee in order for it to be financing... so I'd have to send SP some money at some point for letting me hold on to and sell the materials. Finally, if I was to take ownership of the materials, I'd have to provide some form of consideration in exchange for the keys otherwise they're a gift to me. Since there would be no money transferred, the closest thing it comes to is gifting, which has no legal binding. What it IS is a favor, I do her a favor and she does me a favor. In a legal sense I was offering to work for SP for free by selling their merchandise on behalf of them. I wouldn't have owned it at any point, but I would have had it in my possession while I was selling it. Lots of drop shipment sellers do something like that.
Sorry, but I really don't care what you try to paint me as, I know plenty of people that think you both are out of line. Its also funny how I think you're both ****s but I'm going to do what you said because I really don't care to go through all the work of doing what I planned now. Grats, you win, now go away.
i told mkawa the administrator this and he said "all the time i spend working with the rest of the team to keep geekhack up is lost time and money for me, but if i go away then this guy and the other vendors won't have their opportunities to grow the keyboard community, so no i'm not going to go away, i'm going to do it anyway"
personally, i don't recommend doing business with you because you're immature and have consistently shown that you're not very good with money. in addition, you've accused me in this very thread of trying to steal business from you by buying these error keys you can't afford and selling them for a profit. i find this to be personally offensive because it's something i can't afford to do and wouldn't want to do anyways because, among other things, my administrator alter-ego is too busy losing time and money helping stand this site up. what i said i would do and will be doing is telling mel that if she feels her job is in trouble, i am happy to buy a couple sets directly from her for personal use to support signature plastics and their awesome customer support team.
Again I said at the very moment I wrote it that I wasn't saying you were the slightest bit dishonest, which is what stealing business would be- dishonest. That's great you'd buy a few sets from Melissa too, that's what I'm going to do in order to provide leftovers for guys like Elrick that didn't get in. I was hoping that you were planning on buying a significant portion of them since we've obviously determined that I can't right now. I wouldn't care in the slightest even if you were "stealing business" from me because one way or the other SP gets some money back, which was my main goal anyways. Its not stealing business if my goal wasn't to make money off of doing it. Anyways, if you were to buy a bunch of red mod sets, Business Dave would expect that you would sell those you don't need so that administrator mkawa could help fund Geekhack improvements. Sounds like a good guy greg thing to do to me. I honestly meant nothing offensive in what I said, you just interpreted it that way. All I want you and Demik to stop doing is making statements based on falsehoods and misinterpretation and portraying me as someone I'm not. I just won't stand for that. Its not immaturity, its irritation. Also because this has gone on far too long, I'd like to be done with this. I still haven't even gotten to taking pictures for Dan because I've been so busy keeping you from defaming me.
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@ Demik: Clearly you don't know how to read because I just explained, in detail, how I take plenty of risks. I guess none of that counts? Get a life dude, I'll get a vender subforum when I'm ready, which was going to be soon but now I don't want to just to piss you off. I also never said money was my main motivation for doing this, you did. Last time I checked, you're not me (thankfully) and you don't get to speak for me. You also don't get to speak for me and then tell me what to do based off of it. Only time I ****ed up was when I didn't know about the sorting fee, and Melissa never told me. So that's once, and it wasn't all my fault either, that's why she didn't charge me the full sorting fee. Pretty sure I'm allowed a mistake or two, I'm human too, and we allow SP to all the time. I didn't give a sob story, but you'll call it what you want, everyone there already knows the truth, and those that don't can go look at the thread as long as nobody's abusing their mod powers and editing anything. (Again not saying you would, just saying)
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Yeah I invest in the product. I put the money I make to good use doing and making things nobody else is doing on here. I'm sorry I don't have the time or the money left to put up my own website and do whatever you think I should be doing. Its funny because last year, when I actually had the resources available to have a website made, I suggested it before everyone else did it (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=24645.msg464616#msg464616), and guess what? Hazeluff shot it down, only to start up KeyboardStory less than 6 months later. Last time I checked I don't HAVE to do what you say, I usually just end up doing it so you stop b!tching at everything I do.
Hey mate, KeyboardStory is something me and sherry made to Sell keys. It's a store, where we bought up keys with our own money to resell.
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I didn't say it wasn't? You did something other than what I was suggesting, which is why I never got mad about it. I brought that up because Demik keeps telling me I should become a vendor when I already abandoned that path.
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Mmm... drama! I didn't participate in this GB, so i'll just stay out of it :x
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How many of those risks came out of pocket and not from the nickle and diming you do? Or from the buying up to the next price tier while charging everybody the more expensive price?
You can do whatever the **** you want, just stop playing this bull**** martyr role.
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Rag, you just made that whole "Melissa could get fired" up to jerk our tears? I am thoroughlly disappointed.
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I can certainly do that, as long as you quit trolling me every chance you get.
Rag, you just made that whole "Melissa could get fired" up to jerk our tears? I am thoroughlly disappointed.
What? No I didn't. I thought she could so I said I thought she could. I don't make stuff up man, thats the other guys' job.
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I didn't say it wasn't? You did something other than what I was suggesting, which is why I never got mad about it. I brought that up because Demik keeps telling me I should become a vendor when I already abandoned that path.
Well then, I don't see why I needed to be called out. =='
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You thought she could be fired? You said it over and over again, and used that as the reason you are going to resell the keys to pay back SP so you could save her job that you think she is losing, when the word "fire" was never said or implied in your conversation with Melissa? That is a lie to try to con people into buying the the wrong keys as charity.
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Oh god. You guys aren't going to believe this. I'm home. I have the keys. All 3 giant boxes of them. I open them up to sort through everything, and SP... made every base set with red modifiers instead of white. So that 1st picture you saw before, of the whole keyset including what we all thought was the red mod kit instead to show how that looks... that's what we got for base sets. I just got off the phone after a fairly painful phone call (particularly for Melissa I'm sure) and they're going to make all the red on white keys that should be there... but that means I now have 200 red mod sets (not including the spacebar.)
What does that mean? Well first off it means I'm not going to get them mailed out this week like I planned, which sucks because I know everyone wants them yesterday and I kinda just drove 8 hours to do it. That also means that effective today, this accidental red mod set will be price adjusted to $20 so that I can off them as quickly as possible. I will refund the difference to those orders who paid the group buy price of $27 and the leftover price of $35 (I haven't sold any leftovers that weren't on sale, so none at $40.) If you do the math, that's about $1000 that I don't have right now since I have to keep money on hand to ship them. Once enough proceeds are made from selling the extra red mod sets, I'll be able to refund them. So now is a GREAT time to buy them as contrast set for another keyset or if you didn't get one in the group buy.
This is where you say: "But wait Dave, hold on a minute!" Because you're thinking if I have almost 200 sets and I'm selling them at $20 a pop, isn't that near $3000 (less refunds) that goes into my pocket? No. I will be paying most of that to SP in order to help them absorb the loss from having to remake that many keys. That way SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired. Also I highly doubt I will be able to unload 200 extra red mod kits in a reasonable time frame, if at all. SP knows they screwed up, and I'm doing them a big favor by doing this, (instead of just sending them back so they can get a couple hundred in materials costs back,) so as much as I can get them back I'm sure they'll be happy with. That also means more people get cool custom keycaps. That's the best situation I can think of, if anyone has any thoughts or ideas how I can do better, I'm all ears. Unfortunately I can't just give everyone a free mod kit, as much fun as that would be.
The main question that remains is when they'll be able to get me the keys by. I've got an extremely busy schedule these next few weeks leading up to school on the 20th, and I've gotta go back up to Canada in about a week. That means if they can't get them to me by then (I can swing a day or two, but I do have to go back up there before school) then they won't ship out until I get back on or around the 14th. Melissa is talking to production right now trying to see if they can get it done but I haven't heard back yet. Considering the differing sizes etc, it may actually take them a week just to make them, even if they put everything else on hold. We'll see.
^Disregard, Melissa says they think they can get them done by next Thrusday, overnight them to me so they'll be there on Friday, and hopefully I can get them all packed and shipped out by Saturday. I will have every box labelled and ready to go in order to do it as quickly as possible. I dropped everything once I found this out so I could get it fixed and let you guys know, so give me a bit to finish unpacking, pay my rent, and I'll get some pictures taken of what we have so far in a bit.
One final note to all SP group buy organizers, SP will now be sending out some form of template showing exactly what production is going to run before they make it so that there are no more mistakes like this... That also likely means that if you don't catch a mistake, you may be SOL, as the burden of correctness now lies on you once you give the go ahead.
Dave out
Nono, Melissa/SP owned up to their mistake. They're willing to just replace them and eat a multi thousand dollar loss, but its generally good business practice to take care of your supplier whenever possible. I guess that's the Supply Chain Management class I took talking. There shouldn't be any problems with what she proposes, every manufacturer I've ever studied does it that way because its simply the right way to do it. Why check for mistakes after things are made? Obviously if a key is manufactured wrong and QC didn't catch it they'll still be fixing that- that isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about major inconsistencies with what we've ordered such as this. So they missed an arrow on a backspace key? Yeah they'll fix that like they always do? Crooked S? Yeah no problem. What you mean you wanted purple legends instead of orange? Well on the image we sent you they were orange and you said it was correct, so that's what you get.
... That's what I'm referring to. Make sense?
I haven't determined that yet, I still need to work that out with Melissa. We basically had a crisis management conversation where we tried to figure out the best possible path of action and then ended the call so we could inform our respective parties. I will make sure all of your contributions from buying extras goes to them, no worries. Like I said above, its likely that I'll end up paying them a fixed amount that gets diluted down the more sets I sell. For example if I only manage to sell 100 sets, then it is likely that all of the proceeds will go to them... and I'm stuck with a bunch of mod sets that nobody wants to buy, but if I end up selling 1 a month, I get that money. Woo $20. Again, I'm doing this to keep SP from losing a lot/all profit they made off of running these keys for us, not for myself. If I do only sell 100, then it likely won't even cover how much SP is out on this round, but at least the loss won't be NEARLY as significant as it would had I just said "F(&K guys, can't you get anything right? I need this fixed ASAP, get it done." Also, even if I'm stuck with a bunch of inventory at the end of this, I'll just sit on them, I won't be lowering the price to $10 or anything out of fairness.
just quoting in case of ex post facto editing
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You thought she could be fired? You said it over and over again, and used that as the reason you are going to resell the keys to pay back SP so you could save her job that you think she is losing, when the word "fire" was never said or implied in your conversation with Melissa? That is a lie to try to con people into buying the the wrong keys as charity.
Uhh no. You're taking my words out of context, but its clear I miss-worded it. The reason I was going to sell the keys was to keep SP from eating another loss on our behalf. If you look at this post:
because you want to, no? or did Melissa tell you that the only way you are getting the white mods is if you pay for it again?
I hope SP learns from this. It's ridiculous that stuff goes "missing" on their part.
Yes I want to make it so their huge mistake is as financially small as possible, both for the GH - SP relationship and for Melissa's job security. No she didn't say that's the only way I'm getting the keys. I suggested this plan so they don't just eat the loss. Generally when someone keeps making multi thousand dollar mistakes it sortof looks bad. I don't even know what to do about the portal sets, it looks like they used the same printing setup for the first 13 keys, so everything that was a part of the original Portal set is exactly the same as it was the first time- no added colors. So what do I do now? Tell her to reprint me 110 portal sets (looking at the invoice that cost us $2560, so after their markup that's probably an $1800 mistake too.)
I said the underlined part to clarify that nobody stated she might lose her job, I just thought it was a reasonable possibility given the history of mistakes SP has had. I'm sorry for any confusion, I was not trying to say that I had to sell these keys to save Melissa at any point. I get how that could be misinterpreted now that you've pointed it out, and you have my apologies. Yesterday was kindof a mess if you haven't noticed.
@ Mkawa, please highlight the parts you think I'm being "opaque" in, or at least I think that's what you were trying to do. All I see is my posts which I think are just fine.
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SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired.
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In the post above I just admitted its clear I miss-worded it, what more do you want? Or did you not read my post before you posted that maybe?
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i need cliffs. i ordered a RA base set, and would like a red mod set to go with it. how much do I have to pay extra? Also, an extra numberpad set as well..
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Cliffs is a bunch of people are mad at me for trying to give everyone a partial refund on their red mod sets and sell the extras to cover that, SP's cost on fixing it, and potentially if enough sold, some in my pocket for sorting/selling all of them. Instead I'm sending them back with the exception of 10 of them, which I bought to sell as leftovers. Being as how I don't think I should sell them for $40 now, I'll just offer them at $35 for good since that's the only leftover price I sold at, and won't have to give any refunds. I think I still have a spare 104 kit, but I still haven't gotten back to unpacking because of all the drama.
Look for my leftovers for sale thread to be updated later today, its here: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=27740.0
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the only effect this will have on your order is time to delivery. there are no extra red mod sets. exactly what was ordered will be delivered; there will just be a delay. if rag ordered extras you can contact him directly to inquire as to the price of them.
finally, i have direct word from melissa that her employment is not in danger in any way shape or form, that they are in the process of recovering the error keys, and that they are still deciding what to do with them. if one would like to inquire as to availability of these keys, the signature plastics site @ http://www.keycapsdirect.com/ contains their contact information.
thanks folks. this post will end my involvement in this thread, and most likely in any future thread of rag's.
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Cliffs is a bunch of people are mad at me for trying to give everyone a partial refund on their red mod sets and sell the extras to cover that, SP's cost on fixing it, and potentially if enough sold, some in my pocket for sorting/selling all of them.
Let me restate, for the record, that people are mad at you because you are a liar and a sneak.
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Let me restate, for the record, that I am not, and take great offense to that comment. I also find it awfully suspicious that neither Mkawa or you are participating in this group buy, yet you were compelled to go well out of your way to threadcrap for days.
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sth has at most 3-4 replies since this happened.
You also forgot to mention in your cliff notes the sob story you tried to use in the beginning when you had no idea if Melissa was in trouble or not (thanks kawa for clearing that up).
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Learn to count, there's 15. If that's your definition of a sob story, I worry about your reading comprehension.
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You must be ****ing retarded.
They are not rag's, because that is NOT what rag ordered. SP is sending rag his missing keys. What is there not to get?
Same thing happened with the Riddler's key GB. SP did the wrong row, fixed the problem and asked tsangan if he wanted to buy those keys at a discounted price.
Rag is offering to help SP sell these, because there seems to be interest in them anyway. If he would have said no, they would have taken it back. 85 perfectly fine sets.
Yeah, but what would they do with them? Who would buy them? They don’t gain anything from taking them back, which is why they sometimes don’t even bother doing so. So it definitely is nice to buy them. But the same as for the “Tsangan incident”, even if you don’t want to make profit of it, it’s hard to do so. No one forces you to buy either, and I didn’t get the impression that Rag pulled all triggers to make us sad and wanna save Melissa/SP (lol). And by the way, Tsangan did even less so, and he got pages of *****ing, too.
Speaking of bothering, why did I bother reading the last pages of crap? Jeez. Some people here just love *****ing around. Drama on the internet!!1 Is this story really worth writing dozens of posts about it and ruining the atmosphere here? Am I the only one who thinks WHO ****ING CARES?
I’m not even in this GB, but I’d take one of those red mod sets, I think. ISO shifts available? My rag set is more and more turning into some sort of carnival festival (billiards xD), so it would actually fit very well, lol. I’ve got some time to decide until you ship my portal/whatever stuff, right? ;P
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You must be ****ing retarded.
They are not rag's, because that is NOT what rag ordered. SP is sending rag his missing keys. What is there not to get?
Same thing happened with the Riddler's key GB. SP did the wrong row, fixed the problem and asked tsangan if he wanted to buy those keys at a discounted price.
Rag is offering to help SP sell these, because there seems to be interest in them anyway. If he would have said no, they would have taken it back. 85 perfectly fine sets.
Yeah, but what would they do with them? Who would buy them? They don’t gain anything from taking them back, which is why they sometimes don’t even bother doing so. So it definitely is nice to buy them. But the same as for the “Tsangan incident”, even if you don’t want to make profit of it, it’s hard to do so. No one forces you to buy either, and I didn’t get the impression that Rag pulled all triggers to make us sad and wanna save Melissa/SP (lol). And by the way, Tsangan did even less so, and he got pages of *****ing, too.
Speaking of bothering, why did I bother reading the last pages of crap? Jeez. Some people here just love *****ing around. Drama on the internet!!1 Is this story really worth writing dozens of posts about it and ruining the atmosphere here? Am I the only one who thinks WHO ****ING CARES?
I’m not even in this GB, but I’d take one of those red mod sets, I think. ISO shifts available? My rag set is more and more turning into some sort of carnival festival (billiards xD), so it would actually fit very well, lol. I’ve got some time to decide until you ship my portal/whatever stuff, right? ;P
Hum, look who's talking...
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i wish i understood what exactly he was asking/trying to say/disagreeing with/agreeing with so i could reply.
but none of that makes any sense whatsoever.
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i wish i understood what exactly he was asking/trying to say/disagreeing with/agreeing with so i could reply.
but none of that makes any sense whatsoever.
I dunno, all I heard from that was
(http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/9407/herpderpfacesfunny33.jpg)
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Ranting about rants in ok, unlike ranting about this nonsense here. :P
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so much n00b support...
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<-- Not exactly a n00b...
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You n00bs are so gullible.
Fool n00b once, shame on you. Fool n00b twice, shame on n00b.
And in this case, n00b as in n00b in life, not n00b on GH.
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n00b is so 2005...
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I read through all the shenanigans throughout the last several pages and I think I can simplify what happened.
Information was stated that was not fact but conjecture. Opinions were formed and assumptions were made off of incomplete data leading to attacks and more incomplete data being spread.
Lessons to be learned:
Do not post anything until you have all the information.
Do not form opinions or make assumptions on what you think is incomplete data.
Here is my own lesson that I've learned as a consumer for the last how ever many years I've been buying things (almost 30 years old as of this writing):
If a company screws up, let them fix it. If they want help fixing it from you as the consumer they will ask.
In this situation if Melissa thought her job was in jeopardy she would have asked if they could be moved before that idea being proposing to her.
I fully support Ragnorock and understand what he was trying to do, but sometimes you have to let people or companies fall flat on their face or they will never be responsible. Maybe the next person would be 100x better and jump as high as we tell them to, maybe they would suck until being replaced. Not our call or position to mettle with.
On a side note I think it is crazy to think that someone who does a group buy is expected to break exactly even on product acquisition and shipping supplies/cost. If the community wants that to be the case then we need to rotate who does group buys. Or the amount of profit the community is okay with needs to be declared.
Maybe none of this is suitable for me to comment on, but after reading it all I felt compelled to respond.
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Making money as a vendor disguised as group buy organizer aside, you made up stories to convince people into buying the wrongly made keycaps.
I don't have a problem with you making money as a vendor. I have a problem with you lying to us.
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=31887.msg631055#msg631055
Red and bold is mine. You said as a matter of fact that due to the mistake, Melissa will be fired.
Oh god. You guys aren't going to believe this. I'm home. I have the keys. All 3 giant boxes of them. I open them up to sort through everything, and SP... made every base set with red modifiers instead of white. So that 1st picture you saw before, of the whole keyset including what we all thought was the red mod kit instead to show how that looks... that's what we got for base sets. I just got off the phone after a fairly painful phone call (particularly for Melissa I'm sure) and they're going to make all the red on white keys that should be there... but that means I now have 200 red mod sets (not including the spacebar.)
What does that mean? Well first off it means I'm not going to get them mailed out this week like I planned, which sucks because I know everyone wants them yesterday and I kinda just drove 8 hours to do it. That also means that effective today, this accidental red mod set will be price adjusted to $20 so that I can off them as quickly as possible. I will refund the difference to those orders who paid the group buy price of $27 and the leftover price of $35 (I haven't sold any leftovers that weren't on sale, so none at $40.) If you do the math, that's about $1000 that I don't have right now since I have to keep money on hand to ship them. Once enough proceeds are made from selling the extra red mod sets, I'll be able to refund them. So now is a GREAT time to buy them as contrast set for another keyset or if you didn't get one in the group buy.
This is where you say: "But wait Dave, hold on a minute!" Because you're thinking if I have almost 200 sets and I'm selling them at $20 a pop, isn't that near $3000 (less refunds) that goes into my pocket? No. I will be paying most of that to SP in order to help them absorb the loss from having to remake that many keys. That way SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired. Also I highly doubt I will be able to unload 200 extra red mod kits in a reasonable time frame, if at all. SP knows they screwed up, and I'm doing them a big favor by doing this, (instead of just sending them back so they can get a couple hundred in materials costs back,) so as much as I can get them back I'm sure they'll be happy with. That also means more people get cool custom keycaps. That's the best situation I can think of, if anyone has any thoughts or ideas how I can do better, I'm all ears. Unfortunately I can't just give everyone a free mod kit, as much fun as that would be.
The main question that remains is when they'll be able to get me the keys by. I've got an extremely busy schedule these next few weeks leading up to school on the 20th, and I've gotta go back up to Canada in about a week. That means if they can't get them to me by then (I can swing a day or two, but I do have to go back up there before school) then they won't ship out until I get back on or around the 14th. Melissa is talking to production right now trying to see if they can get it done but I haven't heard back yet. Considering the differing sizes etc, it may actually take them a week just to make them, even if they put everything else on hold. We'll see.
^Disregard, Melissa says they think they can get them done by next Thrusday, overnight them to me so they'll be there on Friday, and hopefully I can get them all packed and shipped out by Saturday. I will have every box labelled and ready to go in order to do it as quickly as possible. I dropped everything once I found this out so I could get it fixed and let you guys know, so give me a bit to finish unpacking, pay my rent, and I'll get some pictures taken of what we have so far in a bit.
One final note to all SP group buy organizers, SP will now be sending out some form of template showing exactly what production is going to run before they make it so that there are no more mistakes like this... That also likely means that if you don't catch a mistake, you may be SOL, as the burden of correctness now lies on you once you give the go ahead.
Dave out
When wkawa pressed, you restated your conversation with Melissa. At no time did you or Melissa explicitly or implicitly said that she would be fired because of this.
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=34434.msg631736#msg631736
D: Hey Melissa, how are you today?
M: Good, you?
D: I'm alright but better than you're going to be in a minute, we've got a big problem with the red alert order, all of the base sets have red modifiers instead of all red on white keys
M: Oh no! We must have gone off of the image you sent depicting the red modifiers as the base set. I'm so sorry.
D: Yeah, I know that's a pretty big mistake and I want to try and figure out a way that it both gets fixed but you guys don't lose a bunch of money over fixing it for us, so here's what I was thinking. Since I know that the keys are worth a lot more in their current form to the keyboard enthusiasts out there than they are in raw materials, shipping them back to you so you can regrind a few hundred in materials costs doesn't make sense. Instead I think we should try and sell them at a reduced cost, something like $20 or so, to move the merchandise and hopefully I can sell enough of them to recoup most or all of what its going to cost for you to make the new keys
M: Okay, yeah that'll work, you don't even have to pay for them now. I can send you the new keys and when you sell enough to pay for the accident sets, you can pay for them.
D: Okay yeah that sounds fine, I'll go see what the guys on GH think and if you could let me know as soon as you can when production will be able to have the replacement keys by that'd be great, thanks so much Melissa.
M: No problem, again I'm really sorry this happened, I was supposed to send you a proof of what we were going to run before we did.
D: No worries, mistakes happen and I want to make this one as painless as possible for you since you help us out so much. I'll talk to you later
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For the 5th time, you misconstrued the wording. Again, as I said previously, I recognize the ambiguity in that sentence and apologized for it. I wrote it in a more conversational style than I should have. However, it should be obvious that I wasn't speaking in absolutes though, since it is OBVIOUS that SP wouldn't go out of business due to this screw up. I didn't make up any stories or fabricate any truths. I will not back down from that fight, because I simply haven't. I'm sorry you have an extremely sensitive witch hunt trigger (if you hadn't been so brazenly accusational in Changdrew's group buy people could have been patient enough for him to show back up and calm everyone down.) but you're barking up the wrong tree. I am not a liar, and I have never made up any stories to get people to buy keycaps.
I'm not exactly sure what makes me a vendor and not a group buy organizer. Are you trying to say that anyone that makes money off a group buy should be considered a vendor and should be spending their own money and taking the risk instead? That's retarded. Sort of like this picture posted above in response to one of your other posts:
(http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/9407/herpderpfacesfunny33.jpg)
Finally, you should also have the cognitive ability to understand that there is no way that I could post an exact transcript of the conversation. I also stated at the time that it wasn't. After I got off of the phone, I was concerned about her job security. That's a fact. Whether it was justified or not is beside the point. By the next morning when I received a response from Melissa, that concern was removed. Its pretty damn difficult to convey that in a conversation summary. If you are an expert and would like to teach me, some lessons would be greatly appreciated. ::)
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who else makes enough money to "pay their rent" doing these group buys?
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Is this about "JELLY" things....?
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Its about trolling me until I start doing group buys for free or not at all. ::) ::) ::)
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Amen~
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It's not simply about people making money off of group buys or not. Nobody argued that it was.
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Rag, if you don't remember what you wrote, take a look at what I quoted you. And I will quote you again:
That way SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired.
Then when wkawa asked you again, you finally said that Melissa didn't say she would be fired. So what is it? What is the truth of the day?
You know exactly what you are doing. You tried to paint a story that if you didn't make the wrong keys available for purchase and if we didn't buy them, Melissa would get fired. You said it in the quote above. You wordsmithed it into your thousand-word essay. You painted a sob story for us to read. You did it because you saw that as another profitable opportunity. And used the possibility of Melissa losing her job as the tear-jerker. Well played. Until people asked questions, then you back paddled, as your last few posts have indicated. It is all available for everyone tor read.
As for group buy versus vendor, the differences are simple.
Group buy: a large group of people get together, PAY IN ADVANCE, to get a a lower price. The group shares the risks, organizers volunteer their time to organize and try to break even get a few free keys.
Vendor: vendors pay for the goods up front with their own money, assume all the risks, and get a large pay back when it pans out. This is what i3oilermaker, Keyboard Story, and a few others have been doing.
Meanwhile, you use the large group to get the buying power, you assume no risk, you get a bridge loan from the group buyers, and you make a lot of money (in the thousands) from other people's risk. Not only that, you buy up to the next price tier without sharing the discount with the rest of the group. You take advantage of that and you make additional money from selling extra stock. You may say you take risk by buying more. But you already made enough from the original orders and anything else on top of that is just plain gravy.
It may not be clear to newcomers or non-groupbuy organizers. But to anyone who has run group buys, they know exactly how it works.
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Rag, if you don't remember what you wrote, take a look at what I quoted you. And I will quote you again:
That way SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired.
Then when wkawa asked you again, you finally said that Melissa didn't say she would be fired. So what is it? What is the truth of the day?
You know exactly what you are doing. You tried to paint a story that if you didn't make the wrong keys available for purchase and if we didn't buy them, Melissa would get fired. You said it in the quote above. You wordsmithed it into your thousand-word essay. You painted a sob story for us to read. You did it because you saw that as another profitable opportunity. And used the possibility of Melissa losing her job as the tear-jerker. Well played. Until people asked questions, then you back paddled, as your last few posts have indicated. It is all available for everyone tor read.
As for group buy versus vendor, the differences are simple.
Group buy: a large group of people get together, PAY IN ADVANCE, to get a a lower price. The group shares the risks, organizers volunteer their time to organize and try to break even get a few free keys.
Vendor: vendors pay for the goods up front with their own money, assume all the risks, and get a large pay back when it pans out. This is what i3oilermaker, Keyboard Story, and a few others have been doing.
Meanwhile, you use the large group to get the buying power, you assume no risk, you get a bridge loan from the group buyers, and you make a lot of money (in the thousands) from other people's risk. Not only that, you buy up to the next price tier without sharing the discount with the rest of the group. You take advantage of that and you make additional money from selling extra stock. You may say you take risk by buying more. But you already made enough from the original orders and anything else on top of that is just plain gravy.
It may not be clear to newcomers or non-groupbuy organizers. But to anyone who has run group buys, they know exactly how it works.
You're more patient than I am at this point. Thanks for spelling this out yet again.
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THIS right here, is hilarious.
Uhh no. You're taking my words out of context, but its clear I miss-worded it. The reason I was going to sell the keys was to keep SP from eating another loss on our behalf. If you look at this post:
how the **** is lit taking it out of context when ITS WHAT YOU SAID.
miss-worded until somebody called you out on it and the bs sob story you tried to make up.
and i find it pathetic how all these people ****ing sit here and act like you're a saint for "helping" sp but clearly ignored the part where you were taking a cut from the beloved company and person you wanted to "save"
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Rag, if you don't remember what you wrote, take a look at what I quoted you. And I will quote you again:
That way SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired.
Then when wkawa asked you again, you finally said that Melissa didn't say she would be fired. So what is it? What is the truth of the day?
You know exactly what you are doing. You tried to paint a story that if you didn't make the wrong keys available for purchase and if we didn't buy them, Melissa would get fired. You said it in the quote above. You wordsmithed it into your thousand-word essay. You painted a sob story for us to read. You did it because you saw that as another profitable opportunity. And used the possibility of Melissa losing her job as the tear-jerker. Well played. Until people asked questions, then you back paddled, as your last few posts have indicated. It is all available for everyone tor read.
As for group buy versus vendor, the differences are simple.
Group buy: a large group of people get together, PAY IN ADVANCE, to get a a lower price. The group shares the risks, organizers volunteer their time to organize and try to break even get a few free keys.
Vendor: vendors pay for the goods up front with their own money, assume all the risks, and get a large pay back when it pans out. This is what i3oilermaker, Keyboard Story, and a few others have been doing.
Meanwhile, you use the large group to get the buying power, you assume no risk, you get a bridge loan from the group buyers, and you make a lot of money (in the thousands) from other people's risk. Not only that, you buy up to the next price tier without sharing the discount with the rest of the group. You take advantage of that and you make additional money from selling extra stock. You may say you take risk by buying more. But you already made enough from the original orders and anything else on top of that is just plain gravy.
It may not be clear to newcomers or non-groupbuy organizers. But to anyone who has run group buys, they know exactly how it works.
You see that part in bold? That's horsesh!t. Apparently I was incorrect in my assumption that you had the cognitive reasoning required to comprehend the basic facts I stated previously. All you're doing is making yourself look like an ass to everyone but the little circlejerk you've got going on here. I'm not going to continue arguing 4v1 when dozens of people have come out in threads and PMs telling me to shrug the haters off and keep doing what I do because they get it and you don't. All I smell here is butthurt and I'll just let you, Demik, Kawa, and Sth deal with that. If it isn't already abundantly clear, I'll spell it out for you: I'm done dealing with the lot of you and you're no longer welcome in my group buys, comments or otherwise. If this is a problem to you, go read the rules some of you helped create, hypocrisy yo.
I know other guys make hundreds and thousands off of their group buys, they just try to keep as low a profile as possible to try and keep this **** from happening. Go pick on someone else.
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You see that part in bold? That's horsesh!t. Apparently I was incorrect in my assumption that you had the cognitive reasoning required to comprehend the basic facts I stated previously. All you're doing is making yourself look like an ass to everyone but the little circlejerk you've got going on here. I'm not going to continue arguing 4v1 when dozens of people have come out in threads and PMs telling me to shrug the haters off and keep doing what I do because they get it and you don't. All I smell here is butthurt and I'll just let you, Demik, Kawa, and Sth deal with that. If it isn't already abundantly clear, I'll spell it out for you: I'm done dealing with the lot of you and you're no longer welcome in my group buys, comments or otherwise. If this is a problem to you, go read the rules some of you helped create, hypocrisy yo.
HOW IS IT HORSE**** IF IT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID MULTIPLE TIMES
Please stop crying hypocrisy if you can't accept responsibility for lying, and please stop resorting to namecalling when you run out of excuses for your sh!tty behavior.
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. I'm not going to continue arguing 4v1 when dozens of people have come out in threads and PMs telling me to shrug the haters off and keep doing what I do because they get it and you don't.
can't help the ones that love to over pay and then get nickle and dimed over some bull**** story.
Yeah it looks like they didn't do an inverse GH key like I asked, but imo no big deal.
**** it, right? i mean you already charged everybody for it and the money is in your pocket. NO BIG DEAL.
how the **** are people defending this ****?
I know other guys make hundreds and thousands off of their group buys, they just try to keep as low a profile as possible to try and keep this **** from happening. Go pick on someone else.
sure you do.
now, who is running gb's big enough to make "thousands" again?
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You see that part in bold? That's horsesh!t. Apparently I was incorrect in my assumption that you had the cognitive reasoning required to comprehend the basic facts I stated previously. All you're doing is making yourself look like an ass to everyone but the little circlejerk you've got going on here. I'm not going to continue arguing 4v1 when dozens of people have come out in threads and PMs telling me to shrug the haters off and keep doing what I do because they get it and you don't. All I smell here is butthurt and I'll just let you, Demik, Kawa, and Sth deal with that. If it isn't already abundantly clear, I'll spell it out for you: I'm done dealing with the lot of you and you're no longer welcome in my group buys, comments or otherwise. If this is a problem to you, go read the rules some of you helped create, hypocrisy yo.
I know other guys make hundreds and thousands off of their group buys, they just try to keep as low a profile as possible to try and keep this **** from happening. Go pick on someone else.
You see that part in bold? That's the comeback you have? I was correct in my assumption that you don't have enough brain required to pull off tricks like this all the way to the end and get away with it. All you're doing is making yourself look like an ass to everyone but the newcomers who don't know how you came on GH in a big way http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=20564.0 (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=20564.0). You are not going to continue arguing with people who put you on the spot and quoting statements from you to support their arguments, and all you can do is say our arguments is horsehit? Well, then you just proved our points. All I smell here is butthurt because we told the rest of the community what you tried to pull over our eyes. If it isn't already abundantly clear, I'll spell it out for you: We are done dealing you and your so-called group buys, and we will no longer use our money to fund your money-making venture so we can pay your rent and buy your 34DD girlfriend steaks and lobsters. If this is a problem to you, go re-read your made-up sob story about how Melissa is going to get fired if you don't go rescue her, hypocrisy yo.
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.
can't help the morons that love to over pay and then get nickle and dimed over some bull****
I've read through this whole thread and see both sides,yet no one has yet strayed too far off path. But calling anyone who doesn't side with you a moron is a bit uncalled for. Very easily could have just said people love to over pay and it would have been a relatively funny and sarcastic comment, but you more than likely offended a bunch of people fueling the fire of this chaos even more. Yay for 10 more pages!
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(http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/005/342/129969639840.gif)
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xJaPax, your reply's quote tags are off.
morons is a strong word. I would like to think people who are not familiar with the situation and how this evolved just don't know about it and it is worth our time to make it clear to them what is happening.
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I cant even muster up a response looking at that damn chicken lol, you win this round sir.... we'll see what happens when the bird isnt around!
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no you're right, i take it back. it was in the heat of the moment. it just ticked me off how people can sit there and defend him.
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As for group buy versus vendor, the differences are simple.
Group buy: a large group of people get together, PAY IN ADVANCE, to get a a lower price. The group shares the risks, organizers volunteer their time to organize and try to break even get a few free keys.
Vendor: vendors pay for the goods up front with their own money, assume all the risks, and get a large pay back when it pans out. This is what i3oilermaker, Keyboard Story, and a few others have been doing.
Meanwhile, you use the large group to get the buying power, you assume no risk, you get a bridge loan from the group buyers, and you make a lot of money (in the thousands) from other people's risk. Not only that, you buy up to the next price tier without sharing the discount with the rest of the group. You take advantage of that and you make additional money from selling extra stock. You may say you take risk by buying more. But you already made enough from the original orders and anything else on top of that is just plain gravy.
It may not be clear to newcomers or non-groupbuy organizers. But to anyone who has run group buys, they know exactly how it works.
You see that part in bold? That's horsesh!t. Apparently I was incorrect in my assumption that you had the cognitive reasoning required to comprehend the basic facts I stated previously. All you're doing is making yourself look like an ass to everyone but the little circlejerk you've got going on here. I'm not going to continue arguing 4v1 when dozens of people have come out in threads and PMs telling me to shrug the haters off and keep doing what I do because they get it and you don't. All I smell here is butthurt and I'll just let you, Demik, Kawa, and Sth deal with that. If it isn't already abundantly clear, I'll spell it out for you: I'm done dealing with the lot of you and you're no longer welcome in my group buys, comments or otherwise. If this is a problem to you, go read the rules some of you helped create, hypocrisy yo.
I know other guys make hundreds and thousands off of their group buys, they just try to keep as low a profile as possible to try and keep this **** from happening. Go pick on someone else.
No argument there, huh?
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xJaPax, your reply's quote tags are off.
morons is a strong word. I would like to think people who are not familiar with the situation and how this evolved just don't know about it and it is worth our time to make it clear to them what is happening.
From someone relatively new here and not having much background on members, after reading all 11 pages, in summary - my interpretation: rag tried selling the modifiers that were incorrectly made under the pretense that it was helping SP and helping mel keep her job. I admittedly skimmed the large posts, but i dont remember seeing rag ever say he was helping at no cost, although some may have thought it implied. His beating around the bush didnt help his case, and did from read make it seem like he was trying to sneak one by. But from reading, a few of you already know rag as someone trying to make money off of GBs, so why are you so shocked that he was profitting off this? I guess that you are trying to stick up for the average user that doesnt know this, and more than likely believes hes doing this pro bono. Again, all purely my.speculation and intetpretation.
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Ragnorock ended up clearing everything up, right? Are we getting the key caps we paid for? Alright then.
Is anyone attacking 7bit for charging people for many months without producing any real product? Ragnorock didn't do much bad here, and what he did do he cleared up pretty quickly.
I don't see why you guys have to keep harping on when he clearly worked hard to clear up any untruths/half truths/or comments that weren't thought through.
Time to let stuff lie and move on. You don't have to like Ragnorock or be in his group buys, but please keep a sharp eye out still for those of us that don't care about the small details. I appreciate it when people speak out.
And I would have said something if we didn't get what we paid for or if the comments about SP and Melissa weren't cleared up.
But don't listen to me, I'm just some random guy that doesn't contribute anything around here :D.
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Seriously, post some more before interjecting so rudely! Try giving away tons of keys and keyboards like that guy in the off topic thread, i cant remember his name... :D
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Try giving away tons of keys and keyboards like that guy in the off topic thread, i cant remember his name... :D
Is it demik? He gave away a lot of free keycaps and donate money from his group buys to Geekhack and various other non profit and stuff.
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Nah some dude who just posted a thread for his gf to be featured.on a blog. Still isnt coming to me, oh well, it will forever be a mystery :P
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Try giving away tons of keys and keyboards like that guy in the off topic thread, i cant remember his name... :D
Is it demik? He gave away a lot of free keycaps and donate money from his group buys to Geekhack and various other non profit and stuff.
Yeah, demik is the man! I love that guy like a fat person loves raspberry cheesecake.
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Mmmmm cheesecake
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Duuuuuuuuuuuuude, shut off the tapatalk sig already.
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Mmmmm cheesecake
Sent from my Galaxy S III using tapatalk
Wife and I are getting some now :D . Last post with irrelevant info from me in this thread ;).
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Mmmmm cheesecake
Is this you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jap
If so, you should change your screen name.
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Tapatalk sig removed , my bad
Gliss, pretty pissed you have cheesecake and i dont, just saying
Mmmmm cheesecake
Is this you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jap
If so, you should change your screen name.
Lol, not sure how to take this? Is THAT me? no, lol. Am i a japanese american, ya. Jap's been my nickname since i was a teen. It sure as hell doesnt stand for jewish american princess haha. If youd like to chat more.about it pm me, ivr wasted enough thread space here :)
On topic, hope things get.cleared up if they already havent. I cant wait to get my red alert keys
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People be getting trolled hard in this thread.
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People be getting trolled hard in this thread.
you coming to get some? ;-)
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Sitting back with some popcorn. I watch movies, I ain't an actor =)
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I prefer cake
(http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6789/1343224605181.gif)
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I leki cake too
(http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110314152018/mlpfanart/images/7/7b/Pinkie_Pie_devouring_a_cake.gif)
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Well, rag is using the "waaaa, there are four of you vs one of me, I can't cover up my lies, I want my mommy" excuse to avoid any argument or answering any question. For example, he does not say why he should be able to continue to run group buys but not as a vendor, or why other people front should front the money and take the risk for him to profit, or why he made up that "firing" story.
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ah son of a ***** we are banned from his group buys?
now who's going to nickle and dime us :(?
oh wait, there are other sellers making hundreds and thousands! let me go find them so i can hear their sob stories to get my money.
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No no it's not about nickel and diming. He just doesn't believe in aliens or something.
No joke, I told the guys in the trolling thread to screw themselves because I simply don't have time to put up with their conspiracy theories and bs anymore.
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The argument about vendor vs. group buy is a good one; imo anyone who is able to "pay the rent" with proceeds shouldn't be passing any risk along to the buyers.
I realize that this would raise costs and increase workload by introducing financing fees and would also make it more difficult to balance supply and demand, but these issues could be addressed fairly easily with pre-order deposits and a revolving line of credit.
I recently read a very informative post from one of our Korean members who explained the many limitations to opening KBDmania gb's to us, and one of the points he brought up is that at KBDmania gb organizers are "not supposed to make profit". This was a result of frequent flame wars between members.
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damn asians always making us look bad being so kind and helpful to eachother.... now where did I leave that bigmac....
on a serious note, WRXchris, do we as buyers actually incur any risk outside of the normal consumer risk? We pay upfront to have something made for us, we give profit to a middle man and the producer, and hope that the product we receive isn't defective. At least here, the GB runners are willing to mitigate any conflicts and make sure we get what we ordered ( in general). At least here we have someone who is going to do that, and discuss with us options to move forward with. It's just like buynig a monitor from newegg and having it come with stuck pixels, except the GB leader is QCing them before sending it to us, which we can't say for your normal retailers (it would be impossible i know). So instead of us figuring out something is wrong , having it ship it back, and hoping the retailers fixes our issue, the issue is being fixed by the "retailer"(GB leaders). I guess comparing people who run GBs to retailers is bordering on making my whole rant contradictary, but to me there really isn't much difference. I guess the only major differences between a retailer and GB runner is acceptable profit % and risk taken by said entity, which are relatively subjective in my mind(although paying rent with GB money to me is quite a bit of cash for something that is supposed to be a community project).
as for having people run GBs for free, I almost wouldn't want that. Granted making near thousands on a group buy is way to much, but I don't mind seeing the person slightly compensated for their idea/planning/time with ~$50-$100. It's not an arduous task by any means, but time is money :p
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Sitting back with some popcorn. I watch movies, I ain't an actor =)
Hope it's not that movie popcorn with the artificial butter flavor. I've been reading articles that butter flavor has been linked to an increased risk of dementia:
Artificial butter flavoring ingredient linked to key Alzheimer's disease process
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-artificial-butter-flavoring-ingredient-linked.html
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Yeah but I counter it with #4! (http://i.imgur.com/rCz6C.jpg)
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What exactly does clocking deposits do?
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you should get a vendor subforum
Yes I make moneys off of these group buys, it pays my rent. It buys me a few keysets or keyboards here and there, but it doesn't make me afford a new car or anything like that.
and that is why.
if you want to make money off the community, take the risk yourself and invest in the product.
boilermaker did it. keyboard story did it.
Maybe I'm missing something important, but can you explain the difference between what i3oilermaker and what Ragnorock do to me? (besides the Red modifier screwup thing)
Most of the keys i3oilermaker sells on his homepage origin from group buys where other people paid upfront too, as far as I can see.
This is by no means meant negative towards i3oilermaker, just something that confused me over the last pages here.
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afaik i3oiler orders extras because single keys are dirt cheap in large quantities. to my knowledge, he has never straight up lied to customers either.
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Is this about the red alert group buy? I was going to do this group buy till I found out it was going to cost me $52 so I backed out because I didn't have the money. Here is the price of that GB: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=31887.0 (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=31887.0)
I was looking for keycaps on the Classified section and I found that he was selling the same set so I was going to buy them since I had the cash and didn't have to worry about tuition. Now what I don't understand is how the price got raised?
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=27740.0 (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=27740.0)
Did I miss something of why this increased. I'm sorry if you guys are talking about a different group buy. I just don't see a reason why the sets would go up in cost other than for someone to make profit.
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The price has increased because the group buy is over and the sets Rag is selling at a higher price are extra ones he ordered.
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^^ Which he chooses to charge more in order to pay his rent (and other things) as he's already stated.
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That's the point I was getting at. I think its bs that he does that, considering the keys already cost a lot of money to begin with.
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That's the point I was getting at. I think its bs that he does that, considering the keys already cost a lot of money to begin with.
Then please do buy a RA set from a cheaper source.
You think that it's bs him making a little bit of money out of sets that he ordered as extras? Why? Should he give all of his time on the GB for free?
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I don't think making enough money to pay his rent is a "little bit of money".
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I don't think making enough money to pay his rent is a "little bit of money".
I very much doubt that he is going to make enough money pay a whole months rent and even if he does, who cares? The guy is running a group buy for a cool set of keys, pay the price if you think that they are worth it. Or don't.
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There are two issues that people are disgusted by rag and different levels. They are not the same thing. One is rag uses group buy money to buy stuff cheap and make more money and he doesn't assume any financial risk. While other people who want to make some money by providing service to the keyboard community, they front their business with their own money and they assume the financial risks. People may or may not agree and we can keep on arguing if making thousands of dollars is within group buy definition.
The second problem, which is a bigger problem, is rag made up sob story to try to get people to buy the wrongly made caps. He lied about Melissa would be fired for the mistake. But in fact "firing" was neither implicitly nor explicitly covered in his conversation with Melissa. And it was independently checked with Melissa.
Rag saw a profit opportunity in the wrongly made keys, but realized that it would be a hard sale, a difficult decision for people who are in the group buy already and would need to pay more to buy them, more enough to make it worth rag's while, so he made up that story. So he LIED to all of our faces, thinking he would get a way with it.
That, I, and many others, have a huge problem with.
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I don't think making enough money to pay his rent is a "little bit of money".
I very much doubt that he is going to make enough money pay a whole months rent and even if he does, who cares? The guy is running a group buy for a cool set of keys, pay the price if you think that they are worth it. Or don't.
Rag said it himself he made enough money to pay rent.
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There are two issues that people are disgusted by rag and different levels. They are not the same thing. One is rag uses group buy money to buy stuff cheap and make more money and he doesn't assume any financial risk. While other people who want to make some money by providing service to the keyboard community, they front their business with their own money and they assume the financial risks. People may or may not agree and we can keep on arguing if making thousands of dollars is within group buy definition.
The second problem, which is a bigger problem, is rag made up sob story to try to get people to buy the wrongly made caps. He lied about Melissa would be fired for the mistake. But in fact "firing" was neither implicitly nor explicitly covered in his conversation with Melissa. And it was independently checked with Melissa.
Rag saw a profit opportunity in the wrongly made keys, but realized that it would be a hard sale, a difficult decision for people who are in the group buy already and would need to pay more to buy them, more enough to make it worth rag's while, so he made up that story. So he LIED to all of our faces, thinking he would get a way with it.
That, I, and many others, have a huge problem with.
i'm just going to quote this so that people are more likely to read it.
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I don't think making enough money to pay his rent is a "little bit of money".
Either way left over sets are always more expensive. Either get in on the group buy initially or expect to pay more once it has ended.
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longweight, making money aside, are you OK being lied to by rag? Do you feel good paying him for getting away with a scam?
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I don't feel like I have paid for him to get away with a scam, the original group buy prices were fine and I was happy to pay them (still am glad that I did). No one likes being lied to, hopefully he has learnt the lesson and will be more transparent in the future.
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This has to have been one of, if most, interesting thread I've ever read in a forum.
Please forgive the rhyme, it wasn't intentional.
Cheers,
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Summary: Several people here have a problem with the way Ragnorock runs his group buys. They used this incident where SP messed up the modifiers as fuel for their fire against Rag.
1. Ragnorock makes money from group buys.
Which group buy organizer doesn't? I think it is implied that whoever organizes the group buy is entitled to at least cover their costs, plus a little extra. Is their time and effort not worth something? Rag said, "Yes I make moneys off of these group buys, it pays my rent." He never said that the profits from this ONE group buy was covering his entire rent. I'm pretty sure Rag has a couple GB's going on at one time.
2. Ragnorock "LIED to all of our faces, thinking he would get a way with it."
At the time of this incident, Rag had been traveling and was tired. He stated that he was operating on about 3 hours sleep. He came home to find that SP had botched the order. He notified Melissa, and proposed a plan to deal with the situation, which Melissa was okay with. He wanted to get the information about what happened to us members quickly, so he posted his proposal in his exhausted state. I personally believe, that at the time, Rag genuinely felt that Melissa was in danger of being fired and/or SP going under, due to several mistakes they had made recently on group buys, etc. He never said it was a certainty, or that Melissa had conveyed that to him. I think his concern was construed as a boldface lie. Again, all this by GH members that already have a problem with Rag for the way he runs his GB's.
I choose to give people the benefit of the doubt. Have I been burned by that? Yes, from time to time. But I would rather have faith in peoples' good intentions, than to go through life with the cynical attitude that everyone is out to get me. I try to stay informed of peoples' actions, and base my decisions on my own experience with someone.
In the end, reader, the choice is yours. Thanks for taking the time to read my little post and for letting me express my feelings here.
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Benefit of the doubt? How about this benefit of the doubt (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=20564.0)?
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Yes, I read that thread already, but thanks for posting the link. Seems like everything worked out in the end. Since that was over a year ago, and Ragnorock is still an active member, I guess enough people could see past his (stumbling) entrance to the forum.
To be completely honest, I had never joined a forum like this before I joined GH and DT. When I first joined, I was under the mistaken impression that the Classifieds section was a place where you would try to make profit from items you were selling. I didn't try to sell anything right away, and soon came to know how this community functions, but I can see how others might think the same way, at first.
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stumbling LOL!
trying to **** a company over isn't stumbling.
it's being a ****ing crook.
a bad one at that since the idiot got caught then tried to save face by saying "oh i was just kidding! LULZ!"
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People who have been here for a while have given rag plenty of benefit of the doubt. Only new members who haven't been following rag's activities would give him benefit of the doubt.
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People who have been here for a while have given rag plenty of benefit of the doubt. Only new members who haven't been following rag's activities would give him benefit of the doubt.
IMO, seems like people should just do whatever they feel. By that I mean participate in his GBs or don't, or simply interact with him or don't. All the antics are now on the record, so maybe it's time to close down shop (this thread) and if anyone questions what happened just refer them to the quotes? Letting it fester is only bad for the community.
Cheers,
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besides lets be honest, majority of the people in classified section are out to make $$ or at least recoup the $$ they spent on the keycaps (myself included in this generalization)
I got ragged on last year for trying to sell brand new keyboards at prices similar to prices from amazon for some odd reason
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besides lets be honest, majority of the people in classified section are out to make $$ or at least recoup the $$ they spent on the keycaps (myself included in this generalization)
I got ragged on last year for trying to sell brand new keyboards at prices similar to prices from amazon for some odd reason
Did you offer warranty? Didn't think so.
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Because you can return it to a retailer if there are issues. Buyer's take risks when they buy from individuals.
edit: Yeah what he said ^^ (multitasking FTL)
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People who have been here for a while have given rag plenty of benefit of the doubt. Only new members who haven't been following rag's activities would give him benefit of the doubt.
IMO, seems like people should just do whatever they feel. By that I mean participate in his GBs or don't, or simply interact with him or don't. All the antics are now on the record, so maybe it's time to close down shop (this thread) and if anyone questions what happened just refer them to the quotes? Letting it fester is only bad for the community.
Cheers,
Uh, no, people pulling the kind of **** Ragnorock has pulled and letting people get away with it is bad for the community. Encouraging this kind of 'if you don't like it, close your mouth' attitude does nothing but imply that ****ty behavior should go unnoticed and unchecked in the community. I don't want to see that happen.
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besides lets be honest, majority of the people in classified section are out to make $$ or at least recoup the $$ they spent on the keycaps (myself included in this generalization)
I got ragged on last year for trying to sell brand new keyboards at prices similar to prices from amazon for some odd reason
Did you offer warranty? Didn't think so.
Because you can return it to a retailer if there are issues. Buyer's take risks when they buy from individuals.
edit: Yeah what he said ^^ (multitasking FTL)
But again, why does it matter?
I sold them at $5 or $10 dollars cheaper than Amazon prices if I recall
Also Amazon was sold out on MJ2 TKL MX Blue base models
All they had for MX Blue TKL were the Yellow Caps, so you couldn't get it from amazon.
And besides, was I threatening people to buy my keyboards?
This is the attitude I was talking about. I had the same discussion in my actual thread, noone could link to me where to buy that keyboard on amazon (cause it was sold out and not offered).
They just kept linking the Yellow key version
How much is an ABS Filco set from people? $25? $20? what if someone wanted the black one
I dunno i personally thing if its a Classified, if you ain't buying, you really shouldn't be sticking your nose into someone's classified if its not anything to assist in the sale.
I just find that its a form of threadcrapping.
People who have been here for a while have given rag plenty of benefit of the doubt. Only new members who haven't been following rag's activities would give him benefit of the doubt.
IMO, seems like people should just do whatever they feel. By that I mean participate in his GBs or don't, or simply interact with him or don't. All the antics are now on the record, so maybe it's time to close down shop (this thread) and if anyone questions what happened just refer them to the quotes? Letting it fester is only bad for the community.
Cheers,
Uh, no, people pulling the kind of **** Ragnorock has pulled and letting people get away with it is bad for the community. Encouraging this kind of 'if you don't like it, close your mouth' attitude does nothing but imply that ****ty behavior should go unnoticed and unchecked in the community. I don't want to see that happen.
i'd think more drama and awareness should be paid to someone like Changdrew who still hasn't shipped out 1 of his GBs, and has over $1k from multiple members on this forum
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Hey...most of you know that I've had a rough time this last year, and especially the last 4 months (see "Stalker Drama") I've been slowly coming out of the slump, but have had some setbacks this last month and am very concerned about my next 4-6 weeks regarding employment and my living situation. I have not manipulated anyone or anything to my advantage in any way what so ever. I've even thrown myself under the bus on the few items I have not performed 100% on with customers/employer/creditors. I've not made any excuses for my shortfalls. I've conducted myself honestly and openly with all. And in some ways I've paid the price.
If there are people that have lied, used smoke and mirrors, made excuses (there's NEVER an excuse), or in any way not been entirely above board with all dealings....I say STAY AWAY. If someone even is close to being in question, they should cease and let someone else do the job. Any questions or doubt is unacceptable, and someone doing the group buys should have the integrity to realize they are bringing the community down, even if they didn't intentionally do anything that they think is inappropriate. Just the appearance of improper conduct is enough justification for this to end. This is not an issue of defending someone that may or may not be guilty...they should let the GBs go and retain their dignity. That's the right thing to do. If they don't then that shows they are in it for the money primarily...and that makes me suspicious. Now, if people continue to choose to do GBs with 'tainted' individuals...they are also contributing to the lowering of the community standards, and are in affect, one in the same.
You must conduct yourself beyond reproach. Period.
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People who have been here for a while have given rag plenty of benefit of the doubt. Only new members who haven't been following rag's activities would give him benefit of the doubt.
IMO, seems like people should just do whatever they feel. By that I mean participate in his GBs or don't, or simply interact with him or don't. All the antics are now on the record, so maybe it's time to close down shop (this thread) and if anyone questions what happened just refer them to the quotes? Letting it fester is only bad for the community.
Cheers,
Uh, no, people pulling the kind of **** Ragnorock has pulled and letting people get away with it is bad for the community. Encouraging this kind of 'if you don't like it, close your mouth' attitude does nothing but imply that ****ty behavior should go unnoticed and unchecked in the community. I don't want to see that happen.
Hey now, I think you're reading into something that isn't there. In no way was my post condoning or encouraging past behavior. My point was thus: The community hath spoken. If the issue needs to be revisited or if someone wants to challenge what has already occurred, then they can be referred here. But to keep going on and on about this issue is meaningless. I think it's bad when the news focuses on a single topic for weeks on end (Michael Jackson's death for instance), when there is other, meaningful events going on. This community, to me, should not behave in a similar fashion. Sth, your point has been made. Those who want to see it and read it can do so. Why keep going, drilling the same thing over and over? What are you going to prove which you haven't already?
I'm not criticizing you, I'm not defending Ragnorock. Please don't assume I have a position in the argument past. Its details doesn't really concern me on a personal level(I have no real interaction with the man). I just don't want to have it occur where one "side" makes a post (potentially aggressively) and the other then feels the need to retaliate, initiating an endless cycle. I do hope I'm being more clear, let me know if there is anything you find confusing or want me to clear up. Otherwise I'm getting out of posting in this thread.
Cheers,
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OrangeJewce:
Nice avatar!!
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OrangeJewce:
Nice avatar!!
Thanks a lot. Shoutout to the person who provided inspiration (its based on an icon drawing, which I'm using in the ErgoDox project) which I imbued my name and changed the color of. I'll add that persons username on the official product and in the credits. No hero will go unsung!
(srsly last post in thread. couldn't resist because nirvana is an awesome guy.)
Cheers,
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This has been beaten to death and there is no point letting this go on. Topic locked.