How I messed up
- Missing Parts
- Unorganised when ordering and shipping. I will try my best to fulfill these orders.
- Unexpected shipping costs
- Lack of transparency
Received an odd number of wheels, didn’t come to my realisation until much later during postage process
Not putting 100% concentration in packing, stressed at school and very little amounts of sleep.
The whole system of the group buy, basing orders off spreadsheets that were difficult to read and reading DMs on the forum, inefficient and time consuming which lead to even more errors.
By no meansdid I intend for orders to be uncompleted
Lathing
- I blame myself for this one but it could have been easily avoided TLDR - Pulleys were not suitable for flywheel clones.
Designer of the pulley gave all files inc. pulleys and motor mounts. Respect to him. I did not ask, neither did anyone else if the pulley was suitable for flywheel clones. Maybe the designer was not aware of this either: Incorrect Length Screws - I only followed orders from Jlabs and Designer of pulley
Faulty BMS?
- Happened to my friend, BMS blew out. I suppose this is inevitable from untested parts from a group buy. In the future group buys I hope everyone tests all products for sale.
Long shipping time - Unorganised , Stressed and Lazy and scared to confront many angry customers.
Motor Problems?
- I only spent a couple of hours on here and saw a few complaints, I was not part of this section of the group buy, Jlabs was. I am unable to help anyone with this issue as since the start Jared insisted he had close relations with the supplier and that he would contact the motor manufacturer during all periods of the group buys. I had no control over this, he would not tell me who the motor manufacturer was from the start.
Main cause of failure
- Way too big than anticipated and I was not prepared for such task, I assumed the group buy would perform like others in the past. And of course, not being transparent, its not easy talking to many people which have a 100s of questions, I have learnt not to ignore your mistakes but to correct them
I am going to be honest.
I spent about 1 month finding every single manufacturer for this group buy (except motors), gathering prices and shipping quotes. But in the end I was not educated enough to know that battery shipping was so expensive, I tried something new and it bit me in the ass and everyone else in the group buy, I am truly sorry. I did not mean to cause grief to those who particpated in this GB
I don’t trust Jlabs anymore here’s why
## 1) Stripe Payments
- Although there isnt great evidence for this anymore since the market website has shut down which means I have no evidence of the orders, I did screenshot some things to show that there was something with the payment system on the website:
The EU Polar store received around 20 orders, 5 of which I received no money,
Jlabs returned $77.29+ $43.74 of that making 121.03 US$.
I am 100% sure that those 5 orders did not equate to a monetary value of 121 US$/£91.86.
Unpaid Orders
Order 611 payment completed via Dokan Stripe on Charge ID: ch_195tejGsv9KVRoUaLVqKs2td
Order 624 payment completed via Dokan Stripe on (Charge IDs: ch_197u8rGsv9KVRoUayKucDlOJ)
Order 642 payment completed via Dokan Stripe on (Charge IDs: ch_19B0SaGsv9KVRoUaMqt6uLOX)
Order 731 payment completed via Dokan Stripe on (Charge IDs: ch_19XEbyGsv9KVRoUaxSetCm5V)
Order 746,731,642,624,611,587
These 5 orders were fulfilled, I am not blaming Jared for this because I don’t believe he is a fraud, but there are some questions to be asked here.
But since the website is not there I am not able to support this argument with a lot of evidence. I did contact stripe during this time and they told me to contact Jared:
Email from Stripe
Hi,
Thanks for getting back to me on this.
I’m glad that you recognize the email address and you know who they are. You will need to work with them directly to understand where the funds are going. This is the account that we show as the active Platform and is receiving the payments that you have referenced in your previous email. The owner/contact information that I have is Jared Ebersole and they can be reached at [Phone No.].
If you have any other questions, just let me know—I’m happy to help.
All the best, Emma
Hi,
Sorry for your frustration here, but I can only tell you that there aren’t any future scheduled Transfers that I can see against your account.
After you’ve communicated to Jared, and things still aren’t making sense, please let us know and we can step in and help.
Best, Emma
2) The second issue here is what made me the most angry.
Here’s the situation
- I did 2 or 3 Group buys before I joined with Jared.
- I wanted to grow, spread the love
- I messaged Jlabs because I saw he had relations with motor suppliers.
- He had motor suppliers, I had everything else at that point, seemed logical to join forces right?
- We talked for a bit, I shared my suppliers etc.
- He wanted to buy some ESCs to test them out etc. I sent some money over to cover the costs $156.55 (Sept 22)
- and received $155.00 (Oct 05)
- At this point I had trust in him so didn’t seem like a bad idea
- I proposed the idea of an international group buy
- We had a plan, we had phases and on how to progress
So we started off with the first group buy, where we ordered motors,controllers and wheels, personally I didn’t want to many motors in Europe because that’s not what was needed in the market at that time and having an excess supply will just be a burden on progress. At this point, Enertion wanted to make use of the group buys I was holding and kind of act like the michaelinvegas of europe. I declined knowing that I enjoyed finding suppliers and making customers happy.
Here’s where it went wrong,
Jlabs thought process:
Here is my thought process… If you were to do this on your own, you would reinvest everything you make, like I am doing… So you get to keep a hundred euros or so and the rest can go towards paying for the motors, I can then sell the motors and buy more stock and have some sent to you. You then sell the stuff and make a nice commission. I think it’s fair for the both of us.
My thought process:
Keep growing in Europe and only invest in Europe. Eventually we will grow together through simple business mechanisms. Eventually make greater profits and move away from group buys when there is a low risk.
What actually happened:
I invested into motors in USA, because I didn’t need that many motors in Europe it would make sense just having a product where there are low levels of demand in the area you are selling. I assumed that the money would be returned similar to which the ESCs were.
I really had no choice, Jared didn’t have enough money to fulfill orders in the USA, I had profit retained from past group buys to spend on motors and that led to the decision of paying $1547.17. Where the cost of my motors was $773.00 (+ 250$ which was spent on remotes to avoid unnecessary movement of money)
At this point I was little disappointed in what happened, but Jared explained it would take 1 month to sell the motors. Here I expected a return on the money I sent to Jared which could be used to be spent on Wheels/controllers for the next group buy. But that did not happen, he avoided paying me back by saying he would return the monetary equivalent in motors in the future.
His words
I don’t owe anything!! It was not a loan! We went over this before you sent the money!
Profits in the last 3 group buys were gone, obviously I was not with Jared at this point and group buys were just a way to get parts into europe and get some money. So yeah I did spend some of it and save some for times where I need money. In the next group buy I did manage to get around 5 motors paid by Jlabs.
Say 5 motors cost 45$ = 225$ What I gave Jared = $1547.17 What I got in return = $773.00 + $200 3 months later. TOTAL $973
What am I still waiting for? $574.17+ 5 unpaid orders.
Essentially I sent 1600$ for 20 motors - In the first group buy. And then got a 200$ discount for the most recent group buy
This whole situation of me not getting back my money was based on assumptions, Jared would assume that money was going to be spent elsewhere, therefore the logical solution is to send motors, which I didn’t want since it I didn’t make sense to sell something that didn’t sell as much as Wheels or controllers.
I can allow someone to read over these skype messages if they really want, I can send screenshots. He was really unclear on the situation of the motors and the money. And given the circumstances I had little movement in choice so I decided to pay for the motors. This wouldn’t have a huge problem if I had a full time job, but that’s not the case.
At this point there was no changing his mind, he would not send money. His solution was:
I can send products to grow the business but I am not just going to send you money to spend. I never said I would pay you back because it was not a loan.
The reason I made this thread, explain how I messed the group buy. Evaluate and learn from past mistakes and to be more transparent.
What I hope that can happen next
Fufill those who were left without full service in the last group buy. Get on good terms with people from the last group buy. Hopefully continue my service on the forum as reflecting back onto this experience I am able to see what I did wrong and how I can solve it.
Thanks
Last word, this thread probably doesnt make much sense since I am typing this in an impetuous manner, it is very late now.