APE

My mods came today! w00t! It took 6 months, but they're finally here. Can't wait to install them this weekend. Despite the harrowing wait, the frustration and having to drive you out by the occasional scolding, you came through, Parker. Thanks for keeping your word.

Thanks Deteacher, Please keep us informed with anything from LE...I'll do the same. StephenJ Well, it's now been over three weeks since Longhorn allegedly shipped my boards and I haven't received a thing. How about you guys?

Did you ever receive your order? Hey jaybird3rd, No, I haven't received it yet. However, shipments from the US can be extremely slow depending on the method, so I'm giving it another week or so before I start to worry. But thanks for asking. I will post an entry in the forum once it arrives.

5 and a half months? Whats your email? You should have had yours months ago. Parker Drat. I've just realised I completely missed this message reaching out to me a couple of days ago. I apologize for my outburst above, which now seems somewhat unjustified.

To keep everything fair and civil, I'd like to report that I've just received a shipping confirmation via PayPal a few minutes ago.

Anyone have issues with the bubble mailers I use? I can try to find small boxes if there are issues. You can use plastic bags, newspapers, old socks or road kill for all I care. Just get the orders out the door, please. Sorry for the snarkyness, Parker, but I'm getting sick and tired of having all my emails ignored and not being able to get a straight answer out of you. Does that email form on your site even work? None of us seem to have gotten any response to our emails for months despite how many times we've tried contacting you. Could you just please give me a clear answer to what's happening with my specific order (order made in the name of "Anders Petersen" - one 7800 and one 2600 board, both pre-assembled, in case you forgot)? One and a half months ago, you promised us that "Everyone should get there orders within 2 weeks" (sic). Well that didn't happen. Five weeks later you re-surface, telling us you ran out of parts. Wait, what? Surely you checked that before confidently promising everyone that they'd receive their orders within two weeks. I'm so bitter that this has turned into such a debacle. I was supposed to have written a review of those mods over three months ago and based on reading prior experiences in this forum I was hoping to give you some glowing endorsement as a shining example of entrepreneurship in the classic gaming hobby community. Now there's no way I could ever do that with a clear conscience. I'd simply never want to subject any reader to this experience. Listen, what you're doing for the community is awesome and your blood, sweat and tears are appreciated. They really are. But enough is enough. As I've said before, I've taken great care to exhibit good behaviour towards you since I don't want to ruin this for everybody else. Or you. I've seen plenty of enthusiastic hobby developers withdraw from the scene because of people getting nasty over missed deliveries. However, the remedy is simple: Inform your customers at every turn. What you're doing right now by refusing to answer emails and doing monthly single-sentence drive-by posts in the forums is pissing people off to great lenghts. Give your customers an explanation for the delays, stop accepting more orders when you know you can't handle them and for the love of God, change the "1 month" turnaround quote on your site; you will just get more angry customers down the road.

Longhorn, at this point I would like a refund (I have gone with another mod). I apologize for asking for this publicly on the forum, but all of my emails via your website have gone unanswered and I am unsure how else to get a response. Please email me to let me know when I can expect a refund. Thanks, Garrett gar1138 Hi Garrett. If it's not a custom job you're having made special, could I persuade you to disclose a link to the other mod? After five and a half months I've just about had enough of excuses, so maybe I want to go that route too. Kind regards, - Anders

Ok. I'm getting a little tired of being ignored now. Besides calling you out via the forum, I've sent you two emails - all of which has gone unanswered. Suffice to say I haven't received my orders either. Could you please act like a responsible merchant and talk to your customers, Longhorn? We're now fast approaching half a year since I paid you. Exams or no, that's just not reasonable in my book. Are the rest of you guys missing your orders too, or am I just being overlooked here?

Well, a month has come and gone since this message was posted and still nothing. I'll soon be celebrating my 5 month anniversary waiting for my orders.

That is so very true. It is already a rare thing for a hobbyist to actually offer prebuilt kits to interested parties, and time and time again you see those very same hobbyists having their passion quenched by their own succes. Besides these mods I'm also waiting anxiously for a 1541 Ultimate which has been in development for ... oh, just around forever. I was also a bit conflicted as to whether to bring this up in plenum, and when I decided to do so, I took care not to come off sounding too pissy. Sometimes all it takes is one troll to destroy everything for everybody. Hear, hear. I have been modding original Xboxes, installing Afterburner kits (remember those?) in GBAs and lately built my own arcade cabinet and in the midst of making my first 3-player custom control panel for said cabinet, but I have actually never learnt how to solder properly and it really shows. Watching Longhorn's speedbuild video just made it so much more apparent to me how short on skills I really am. Even though it's sped up, you can easily tell how fast it's actually going as you know how fast you have to remove the iron from a point to not overheat the surrounding components. And he doesn't flinch. For a job like that I'd have to redo each solder point at least twice to get them right and do a lot of braiding and sucking. And forget about the PCB design altogether. I have close to zero knowledge when it comes to that stuff. Oh, and by the way: I just noticed that Longhorn has updated his site with a short status blurb. Huzzah! Thanks, man.

Hi Lendorien. Thanks for the feedback. You've waited more than four months? You must have the patience of saint. Either that, or you knew about the wait up front. - Which is incidentally the point I'm trying to make. Just so we are clear: I certainly appreciate the work Longhorn is doing, and I am very much aware that these are done by hand. I did watch the speedbuild video with awe and people seem to be very happy with their mods also. The only thing I'm really discontent about is the complete lack of communication. If you're advertising a "less than 1 month" turnaround on the ordering page, then that's exactly what your customers are going to expect. However, if you do take longer than that, all it takes is a friendly email to your customer saying "Don't worry. I haven't forgotten about you. I just need a couple more weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience". And that'll be the end of it. But if you go weeks or months over time, don't inform customers about it and keep ignoring every email and message, it's no wonder customers start to feel like they've been had. I did. I mean - at least put up a quick message on the website saying that deliveries are slow. Something to ease people's minds. Any information at all would be helpful. By all rights, if I hadn't found this thread and gotten reassurance from you guys (and LH himself - thanks), I would most certainly have made an inquiry with PayPal by now. The thing is, I ordered two mods with the purpose of writing a review for a Danish geek publication in an article series on breathing new life into old platforms (among other items for review are the MiniMig - an FPGA-based Amiga, and the MMC Replay - a multi purpose module for the Commodore 64), and I would have felt really stupid if had just made the inquiry with PayPal, given up and told people that he was a crook and to avoid ordering from his site, only to receive the finished PCBs a couple of weeks later. Now I am completely assured that he is just a guy with a very busy schedule, but if I hadn't found this thread, I'd be none the wiser. Again, don't get me wrong: I know Longhorn isn't RadioShack. He's one guy with a hobby and great skills that he's been so kind to share with those of us who are less of a black belt when it comes to low voltage PCB design and soldering. I appreciate that he's pretty busy (and apparantly recovering from a nasty dog bite too, I just read - so sorry to hear about that) but I still think a modicum of common courtesy would be to keep paying customers informed. As I said, a sentence or two on the website would go a long way.

Hi Zoyx. Thanks, that is actually reassuring. From the lack of updates on his site and YouTube channel I was starting to worry that he had just uprooted his business and gone MIA completely. At least until I noticed activity in the AA forums.

Hi Longhorn. I ordered two prebuilt A/V kits with you almost two months ago. One for the 2600 and one for the 7800. I haven't received them or heard anything back from you since I paid. I've sent you 3 messages about it the last couple of weeks, but you haven't replied. I feel like I am being ignored. I used the mail form on your site the first two times and the email address from your PayPal account the third time around. Is it just a case of me being unintentionally overlooked or is there some other reason? Regards, - Anders Petersen /APE