Long Travel BS Thread

THIS is how the situation should’ve been handled. I don’t know all the details but it seems like they started reaching out to customers before failures happened offering replacements.

Why they don’t do that this time bewilders me. They know how it should be done, and they know what to do.

 

Oh he flat said he would replace my clevis’s if I wanted. But remained defensive on the entire situation as a whole. A new part is great, except for the fact that he flat out will not own up to what was sent to me. We spent the entire phone call running in circles on how it was wrong of me to post this.

 

It is my honest opinion, these parts should be billet. Offer money off to those who already have the fabricated clevis for billet and upgrade the kit. Done, done and done.

 

I guess what I’m getting at is that he received a call prior to a failure and was offered a replacement. And I can tell you, I haven’t gotten a call about my slide rack.

 

To make a hell if a generalization, most of the off-road industry is built on ideas, experimentation,and experience. Not engineering principals, not CAE optimization to a certain target that requires highly accurate manufacturing to achieve that target. All of these business are also small, and have a pretty small customer base, and sell according to their brand rep, which up until fairly recently was mostly word of mouth, so things like customer service and satisfaction were everything. Nowadays Instagram is everything, outreach is more than ever, and more specifically knowledge transfer is faster than ever; but the number of people building crazy trucks hasnt gone up thaaat much. Exponential growth, yes, but from 100's to 1000's, which keeps the majority of products as hand fabricated in the USA, and again most of the guys building this shit have built their own qualifications to do it. Lots of people and companies in this space are put on pedastals thru their achievements alone, and some of the things they do create industry "standards" that lots of us common folk treat as gospel or universal language, but not because its really a standard, but because its one of the only available solutions to a problem, and generally not unique enough to even qualify for a patent. The all of these products are simply a case of they tried something to solve a problem, and it worked... so now its their product! Hell Fox is pretty much the only company in the space that has and historically has had any legal IP. More than half these products would be bespoke "art" in a legal sense, only the shock manufacturers are a big enough entity to go after for significant legal action, and they are also the only ones moving enough product to have to fight any legal action rather than just close down the llc with all the liability and turn on a new one.

But these small operations WILL have to fight tooth and nail for their rep as that is sales and cash flow, and they will have to play the instagram game to make content that generates positive interactions.

I dont even know where im going with this, but it was a 2 tecates on the beach kinda post, and I'm enjoying the content and conversation either way.

Anyway, most of these products are developed by what boils down to a guy and his buddies trying something, it working and they start selling it. And since they are the only ones doing it, they are the experts!! And even as recently as 5 years ago, that was still how the top level of the industry worked.
Nowadays the top end of offroad racing is nearly a private rich boys club, even more so than any other form of racing, the few groups and companies that really implement true engineering principals and knowledge that none of us are buying their products and even the knowledge of what there products are is not very public... And the barrier to entry is in the mid 6 figures to start buying, so we are all currently using and arguing about the equivalent of the bottom tier of product quality in any other space or sport without realizing or acknowledging that fact.

I got to tour damn near the whole industry a while back for something related to my work, and thats why I'm gonna cobble my own shit together in my garage, because I have the knowledge and can learn any of the skills I dont already have, and know exactly what the limits of what I built are, and accept the risks of using my truck, and have confidence it will do what I want. Part of the fun to me is that we are so far from this sport peaking and having a winning formula for a build be defined, kept and regulated for more than a season (even at the top level) which means us at the bottom get to try all sorts of things, and some of it turns out to be shit lol, but on the bottom we are judging success by either miles of smiles or likes on Instagram, and its up to you which one you are looking for from your truck.

 

Lol perfectly what i was expecting to post next but didnt see this while typing up my ramble.

 

Also damn that formatting looks even more ass than i expected lol

 

Work on your MLA format a little bit

 

Lol my dissertation would definitely be smoother if delivered as a conversation over a beer rather than a word scramle from my phone... Over a beer.

 

i like that i stopped reading this thread for 6 months because i got tired of it being dominated by Cory talking about JDFab and promising to build a competing business with better products

and then i open it up to Cory complaining about jdfab and i imagine still no competing products

welp

 

Being a small business owner is tough. Being able to feed your family and pay your bills is directly impacted by your business's reputation. But not only that, most small business owners, and I know Jesse is one of these people, take great pride in the work they do and the products they make. I'm this way, and I'm sure @906taco is this way as well.

The problem is that when (not if) there is an issue, you take it very personally. Sometimes it's hard not to let emotions take over. Especially when the internet is here now and anything posted is there for the world to see. You can't help but feel attacked personally.

I think it's natural to be defensive. Nobody wants to be wrong. I think Cory, you know you can be pretty confrontational, and I think that can really put somebody on the defensive when they feel like they are personally being attacked, whether you mean it that way or not. It's hard to admit you did something wrong at the best of times, nevermind when you feel like somebody is out there trying to take you down. I don't know all what happened in the past, but I know when shit gets posted on the forums, it can feel like you were never given a chance to make things right before getting flamed online. It's happened to me before on a Facebook group. I was never called or knew there was an issue and this dude was just bashing us online. I don't have FB but I eventually found out, and it hurt for sure.

I know Jesse well. He actually called me asking my thoughts on how to handle this whole situation, and discussed how he has always refunded people and taken care of things the best he can (the emf debacle was a very expensive example of him stepping up). We also chatted and I said I think people would mostly want to hear about how he's going to improve their processes and make sure it doesn't happen again. He agreed and it sounded like that was the plan.

Then him and Cory got on a call and it sounds to me like things got heated and confrontational. Emotions were at a high I'm sure. I don't think that was the intent, but both Cory and Jesse have strong personalities (I think you kind of have to to be a small business owner), and there's lots of history there and things went south.

I think also Harry said a lot of things that Jesse probably wasn't fully aware of on these forums.

Really, at the end of the day, we are all just people, and we all make mistakes. I just wanted to write this out, knowing pretty well both sides, in an attempt to hopefully give a chance for everybody to cool down for a moment and try to see another perspective. If you haven't met Jesse or Dave in person, they are both awesome and super fun guys Just trying to make a living doing something they are passionate about.

 

Dude that’s the least professional email. That’s not going to solve anything. I don’t think you truly give a shit about helping anyone but only making yourself look superior by shitting on a well respected and loved company. You’re borderline blackmailing him at this point and holding his reputation hostage.

What do you want exactly? Do you want him to jump off a cliff or bow down to your egotistical ass? Get over yourself. You’ve already blasted him on forums, social etc. He’s not Monsanto and this isn’t a class action lawsuit. You’re correct, that’s a shit part. It’s an outlier for sure. All that being said- give the man a minute to see what the hell happened in his business and come up with a solution.

 

I think you’re spot on. Really do. I will always admit to a strong personality. I’m a hard dude to read online. I have a ton of people tell me that after they actually meet me in person and realize who I am.

And yeah, it comes with the territory of business 100%. Toss two of us together in a disagreement and shit is going south quick.

Truthfully, I want to have a legitimate and friendly conversation with Jesse. I have extended the offer so we can cool the shit down and figure things out.

But I still, don’t regret posting what I found. And that I’m going to stand on.

 

You would think that he would be a little more sympathetic given he's had multiple ideas that he wants to bring to market and after creating threads to get interest, not actually done so (j-arm, swingset). He's openly commented that it's almost impossible to bring a product to market with the quality he wants. That's a tacit acknowledgement that 1) it's very hard to bring a quality product and 2) business owners/product developers have to make compromises in order to bring anything at all to market.

A little sympathy and professionalism goes a long way. Reading those email screenshots makes me cringe. I hope in hindsight when he cools off that he has the self awareness to cringe at them too. If I'd sent those emails, I'd wake up in a cold sweat 5 years from now going "ugh".

 

I cringe at all of this. This shit storm was the last thing I wanted to start right now.

 

Here's my plain observations:

I think people would believe this more if you had cut the parts and sent the photos/videos to Jesse with a "hey, the part that failed, I cut it apart and found this. Probably something you should look into" message, and gone from there, instead of just posting it on the forums.

Being able to convey a message in writing, either in email or forums, in a level tone without being mis-interpretted or coming off as so confrontational is a skill. I think in all of these kinds of situations it might be something you want to work on if you don't want to be perceived that way. "this is who I am, deal with it" isn't really a good excuse IF you want to be read a different way. Just some food for thought. Reading your email, it does seem more like an attack than an attempt at reaching an amicable solution.

 

Exactly.

 

Which is precisely why I want to talk to him on the phone. Where he can hear my tone and hear me out and I can do the same. But instantly yesterday he jumped down my throat. So I won’t be making that call again.

Speaking with actual tone online is impossible when you have a strong personality. And I’m sure that’s why Jesse wants nothing to do with forum related stuff. Actually I’m about positive that’s why. Really I shouldn’t have any of it either.

 

@WormSquirts

I’ve dealt with it several times during my small business ventures too. Had guys hose off powder coated parts with brake clean then go online and absolutely shred me saying my coatings are shit. I’ve been there numerous times. It suck’s.

But one thing I’ve never done, is bitched out a customer like I was bitched out yesterday. Especially a customer that could have a credible concern.

 

Wait isn't brake clean, powdercoat friendly? Sorry for the stupid question