Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post

Red Arrow has had a VERY shady reputation for online sales for a LONG time now. Personally I wouldn't buy from him online because of his practices, which seem to be, that you order A, B, and C, but he only has C in stock. He won't ship ANYTHING until A and B arrive from the supplier. If B gets there in a week, he will sit on the order until A arrives, and if it doesn't show up for a month or two, so be it. If you call and get ahold of him and raise sand, he *might* send B and C out to you with a promise to send A later, which you might see in a few weeks or month's time. I know some folks do business that way; Spacecraft Films is another vendor that operates that way and it's maddening, and IMHO EXTREMELY POOR business practice. If you can't fulfill the order in a timely fashion, you should AT LEAST communicate with the buyer and give them the option for a refund, partial shipment, etc. Dave doesn't do that.

From the facebook link, apparently Dave has a lot of legal problems and problems in general. Thing is, folks spending money with him aren't buying into his problems-- they're buying PRODUCT. If he cannot or will not ship product, then how is RAH shutting down a BAD thing?? How many people have to get ripped off by someone before it's a bad thing?? I can sympathize with his problems, apparently he's in tons of legal problems over supposedly legal marijuana, and had his trailer stolen loaded with product, yet at the same time there were posts on the facebook page talking about the new store location and in the other posts about storage for excess inventory... So what gives??

Sounds to me like typical stoner behavior... got the inventory and put forth enough effort to keep the money rolling in (keeping the website and paypal going) and happy enough to take the money, but could give a rip less whether or not anybody ever receives anything, let alone when or if... It's sad, but it happens. Look at Sheri's Hot Rockets (which Dave spent a lot of money buying out her remaining stock and what remained of her "business" at the time, after Sheri stiffed a lot of people for a long time, taking orders she never fulfilled and never gave refunds for.... seems to be a pattern developing don't it??)

I posted a thread here one time about my last visit years ago to Red Arrow's store... I drove up into Michigan one day on a lark from my MIL's home in northern Indiana to see his store and get some black cherries... I finally found his store, and it looked like an old appliance store. When I went in the front door, which was propped open with a concrete block or chunk of concrete, the entryway to the store was filled with tons of boxes going out. In a tiny office at one end of the entryway opposite the door, was a small office bulging with paperwork at which a harried-looking woman was sitting at the desk working on paperwork, with kids running around. I turned right into the store's sales floor and found that despite it being a nearly 100 degree day, there was NO air conditioning in the building, and VERY few lights on-- just one over the center of each aisle and over his computer area at one end of the counter in the SW corner of the store about 20 feet from where I entered. Despite it being stiflingly hot in there, I looked around and actually bought a few kits, looked over the selection of parts and stuff and the aisle of homebrewing supplies for giggles, looked at the tools and supplies, and inspected the motor casings and loads in an old-timey glass top showcase across the south side of the showroom, taking in a bit of hot air wafting in from outside through an open door at the end of the glass case. I talked with Dave for a bit; he was very personable and actually showed me some of the Sheri's Hot Rockets stuff he bought-- at the time (this was at least 6-7 years ago) he was telling me how he was having to have the SHR tooling all reworked-- he showed me a master that he had a friend making to make molds to cast Gemini capsules for the Gemini Titan kit, the first of the SHR kits he planned to revive. He also told me why Sheri didn't fulfill the orders on the GT and finally all her other kits... the beautiful turned aluminum rocket nozzle motor retainers in the SHR kits were made "at cost" by a buddy of her former husband. They went through a messy divorce, and the buddy told her to pound sand, and quit making them for her. So, when she ran out, she quit delivering kits (but she didn't quit accepting money for them online and then stringing people along). Her suppliers dried up and her quality went to crap, as he showed me one of her molds she was STILL USING to make Gemini capsules-- it had all the detail COMPLETELY rubbed off on one side from extracting the nosecones from the mold! He told me he had to have them all completely reworked, as they weren't the proper scale anyway, and the new masters would have tons more detail in the proper scale than hers had anyway. He also told me he was searching high and low for someone to turn the aluminum nozzles for the kits, but everybody he talked to that had metal lathes and did turning, even as a hobby, simply wanted too much on per-piece basis to ever be able to afford them for the kit-- like $40-80 dollars for the aluminum nozzles alone in a Gemini-Titan kit. Until he could find someone to make them for like $20 a piece, he couldn't sell the kits and make any money off them... he'd be losing money at the higher price and didn't think raising the price of the kit to cover the difference would fly either. Anyway, after a nice chat, and me asking if he ever participated on the forums (to which he quickly said no he didn't) I paid for my purchases, looked around a bit more, and left.

Nice guy, very friendly, but that doesn't necessarily make one a good businessman. There were rows of boxes behind the counter open, being filled, with printouts taped to them showing what was already in the box checked off and what still needed to go in the box before it shipped. He was working on the computer with orders when I was there.

Anyway, it's been a number of years ago and there were plenty of complaints then. Sounds like things have ONLY GOTTEN WORSE in the intervening years, and from the sound of the thread on the other forum, it appears that little/nothing is being shipped, yet money is still in his possession for product not delivered... and it's not an isolated occurrence, either... sounds like virtually everybody is getting stiffed now, just like what happened with Sheri's Hot Rockets about the time she FINALLY folded up shop (and subsequently sold out to Dave at Red Arrow a few months later).

It's a shame, but honestly, when you don't take care of business, what do you expect to happen??

Later! OL J R : )