The sad thing is that someday a book will be written about this, which will be the encyclopedia of how to fail a good hobby business.
Besides doing a number of deceptive things that Mike Hines would never have done, which drew a number of complaints, they failed in other major areas. I think they have no idea how much the customer complaints hurt them, which NEVER occurred when Mike Hines ran the place. I read the complaints, and saw the things that occurred, after he left. I think business owners don't seem to understand how upset modelers get, when they see their friends involved in an unethical transaction. We consider it as if it happened to us, as it could have been. For that reason, every poor treatment of a customer is like 30,000 events. At one point, the concept of accurately representing stock, versus "buy now" on everything on the site, was brought up often. They would beat around the bush, NEVER giving anyone a straight answer to their question. Think this stuff doesn't matter? Well I think they finally realized it did, but it displayed an attitude which people did notice. I hope nobody from there becomes upset at these comments, because they represent sound advice and not rants. The businesses that heed these comments as good advice, do not have them surface.
Another main failure of many businesses, touched on previously in this thread, seems to be a proprietary attitude. At one point, they had the opportunity to become the first major distributor of a few good and reasonably priced Chinese lines. I think they were looking for highest margins and margin percentages, without considering the entire ball game. A few other distributors picked up on the Dynam (I believe good Jeti design copies) and Pentium speed controls. People tend to stay loyal to the business that first became the large distributor of a product line. Hobby Lobby was still trying to push their own special lines, like Atlas Black ESCs, and at a higher price and with no stand alone/above the competition reputation that I know of. Other product lines tell the same story. Like 'em or not, Raiden was smart in finding a good lipo supplier Gens Ace, at a good price. HL just couldn't have been that smart. I would imagine Raiden makes both small margins and small percentages from Gens Ace, but it encourages people to PLACE THE REST OF THEIR ORDERS THERE. It's called formulating a winning product line, which HL has been clueless at in recent years.
At this point in the market, I have to find proprietaries like e-rc to just be irrelevant, whether any good or not. Giving them to the RCG reviewers will not do the trick. I've had too much success with lower priced Pentium and Dynam, let alone similarly priced TBird ESCs, than to even consider bothering with e-rc. The same pretty much goes for motors. Just too late in the game to launch proprietary product lines, with no outstanding quality or prices that I am aware of.
As for the unknown poster here, I will say that I have found rumors to be at least as accurate, as the comments made by rc companies, in the past. Can't take their word at face value.
Who comes up with this stuff? Seriously? Admin, how about removing this lie from your website?
100% NOT true!
For a website called "rctruth.com" = FAIL.
http://www.hobby-lobby.com/?gclid=CKX9ocG_z6sCFYEj7AodFyJ6TQ
AND how about not blocking my link above to the real www.hobby-lobby.com?
I saw all those characters after your link, and was afraid to touch it. I would have blocked it also. Anything other than hobbylobby.com looks suspicious.
In a way I'm sorry to hear that.....
I actually am too. Businesses seem to get the impression that people are only bashing them. I think it is sad to watch a business go downhill, along with seeing customer issues surface that hadn't in past years.
