<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (JonGTR @ Feb 15 2007, 04:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I'm not going to wait, I sent in my complaint: https://www.ic3.gov/ mad.gif

If you won't talk to us, then maybe you'll talk to the FBI.
And I'll be calling his local Police Department later: http://www.ci.upland.ca.us/asp/Site/CityHa...mbers/index.asp

Police Dept
(909) 946-7624
Watch Commander</div>

im all for getting stuff moving, but thought we were going to give him until the end of the month?

 

I guess since he was active on the site a few days ago and made no PMs to anyone or made a post on this page that they just decided to move ahead now.

 

well the way i see it i guess, and the way jon, and obviously redz sees it, the end of the month is WAY to long.. it has already been over a year of BS updates, and no progress on many different projects.

nothing personal against chris, but i have talked to him via phone, PMs, IMs, etc. everytime i get the warm fuzzy talk of how hes gonna update us, and how things are looking up for flyryde, and stuff is going to be back to normal soon..

and nothing ever happens, and i always tried to have hope that he would update, or would fix things, or come through on his word, and its always the same thing.

the way he does business is crap also.. for example read rixsharks problem. and then there is nightsharks problem.. i know vic personally and hes a really good guy. he got his EVO rd1 CF hood and it looks good on his car, but from 10 feet away you can see scratches, gouges, chips, etc. and chris promised him a new hood 8 months ago.. he has no new hood, and a 600$ showpiece hood that looks like junk closeup (no offense vic) thats shitty business. he should have gotten one made, shipped it to him on his dime, and paid for shipping on the hood back or just let him keep the damaged hood, since no one would ever use it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Rixshark @ Feb 15 2007, 03:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I ran into a financial mess and couldn't ship my "old" VDI kit back in time, then when I finally could he told me it was too late and pretty much that I was SOL. I was the one that originally told him that it wouldn't work properly. He said he would send me the parts to make it work, still haven't received them. So I'm sitting with a $1500 kit that I'm going to have to pay even more for it to fit, if it will at all.</div>

Have you contacted VDI directly?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tibby01 @ Feb 15 2007, 05:42 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>im all for getting stuff moving, but thought we were going to give him until the end of the month?</div>

Word, same here. Guess some folks here don't want to work as a group (definately easier) or are just impatient.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (REDZMAN @ Feb 15 2007, 04:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I may just file mine when I get home.</div>

^^^^

You're one of those folks...

 

I said may.

I didn't. I'm going to wait the appointed time.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (REDZMAN @ Feb 15 2007, 08:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Have you contacted VDI directly?</div>

Yeah, they said "Thats between you and the distributor. It has nothing to do with us. Obviously he sent you the wrong hinges, and you have to deal with him."

I was under the impression that it was a direct bolt on, but even Chris said it has to be modified for RD2s. The other thing is that we're supposed to sit back and be patient with his financial woes, but I had one as well and couldn't afford to ship the kit back across the border, and pay for shipping on the correct end. I would have done it if the option was still there, but what I want to know is if there was an exact number of kits to be replaced...what happened to my replacement?

 

also, at no point at ANY time should anyone who buys something FROM flyryde, have to contact the manufacturer. EVER.. your issue should be fixed by flyryde, or whoever you deal with.

thats just a typical way how business should be handled. distributor deals with ALL problems, questions, concerns that the customer has. the customer should NEVER have to try and get things figured out themselves through the manufacturer of whatever they bought.

just like the fact the two of my MEGAN racing gauges have flaws in them. and the first thing i was told, BY chris.. 'MEGAN RACING doesn't make very good gauges, about 1 in 4 have something wrong with them'. his first advice, before offering for me to send them to him, and get it figured out was 'call megan racing' i dont think so.

 

Man I tried to read all of that before I posted, and I just wrote Socks saying I'd post tomorrow.

You guys are still the homies, and have made everything possible that I've had going for years now. So here's an update. You guys know you can ruin me right? I'm sure you do, and have given up so much hope that you feel thats the only thing you have left to do. Think about the comment about CNK. I was in that. I've been with you guys for a long time. Now here's how it went down since this thread is pretty gritty already.

So a few years ago I had a over 15,000 invested in my project car. No debt, just tons of money spent. Then I met Andy from Iceman Intakes, got totally inspired, and decided to start a business selling aftermarket parts. I sold Andy a table from our factory, and in return he gave me two racing seats, and a bunch of "stock" in Iceman. So basically, I could pick up intakes for like 43% off, and sell them for retail. That was pretty cool. Too bad Iceman never finished our intakes, our TBs and shortly after went out of business.

So we're still in 04 I believe. Move on to 2005. I was running Haloz.biz for side cash, no real job, and FlyRyde wasn't even a name quite yet. I came up with the name, got a resale license, and business license. I started talking with my asshole sister about websites, because at the time, she was building a online parts store website. She helped me out by getting some ghetto template laid out. Then she got me on an online programmer search engine called RentACoder.

I had a few people work on my stuff for a while. They made the lame template look better. They pitched a few ideas, and I still didn't know how it all worked. I was barely learning about databases. I didn't know how I wanted anything to work, I just knew I needed a website. Finally I met a programmer named Venkat. He worked with me on the site just after I had decided on my first layout. He basically tied up all the pieces that the other programmers made, and somehow got it fired up to run in a kind of limp mode. That was finally launched, and usable back in 05, about 4 months after I got married. Some of you remember this. I was stoked. I was waaay behind on haloz orders, and I was just starting to work with VDI to make a kit for Tiburons.

I finally got my haloz out months late, and slowly started learning about new features I could put into my website. I came up with the sponsorship program, that would work with promo codes. That whole system was only about 2 or 3% launched. I never did anything with most of it, flaked completely on sending out packets that were all ready to ship. I kept running out of money, and couldn't afford to ship them UPS. Then I realize its only a few bucks to ship them USPS, and still only maybe 20 went out. Now the site is screwing up all over the place, loosing info, really really hard to run, but it worked at least. I got through the holidays that first year being married, and I was almost out of steam completely. I didn't know where to take FlyRyde, or how to get my bills paid.

Let me back up about 6 months now. About 3 months before I got married, I got a loan from a family member, so that I could get a house. In Southern California, thats basically impossible for somebody making less than 60Gs a year. Anyway, I'm 1 day over 21, and I land myself in a house, and a whole new world of growing up. I had 3 months till my wedding, and this new company I was working on. Now when a 21 year old has thousands of dollars for VDI kits sitting in his paypal account, it seems like he's rich. That was were most of my problems arrised. I didn't know how to manage the money. AT ALL. I didn't spend it on nice dinners, or car parts for myself. I used it for new products for you guys. I slammed out some fenders, a new CF hood, the Evo Bumper. I started the account with import trenz thinking I'd get the same service I'd recieved in the first couple months the whole way through. That didn't happen. Projects started to stagnate around october. I had done some work on the house before the wedding, and some leech of a jackass "friend" of my dads was helping us get everything painted. My soon to be wife got some money from a modeling job, and bought us some tile, and the guys son helped us with that too. This dude also managed to get me suckered out of at least 1500 bucks in money that wasn't mine to use in the first place. I was stupid, young, and inexperienced with business, but very ambitious.

Fastforward now to my drowning in the debt I created towards the end of 05. I was almost out of ideas, my site sucked and was way boring with the orange background (if any of you remember that). I was driving one day in December, and came up with an idea to call a guy I met through some car shows. I saw this guy everywhere, and he was a cool guy in the industry (he worked for MA Audio). While I'm thinking about this, the dude calls me up. We chated for a minute, and just before we hung up, I just said screw it and asked what he was up to, and if he wanted to get together for dinner to talk about business. The next day he was my new business partner. I was almost dead with FlyRyde, and I got some new life in the first days of 06.

Now keep in mind I'm still way in deep to the hole I dug the year prior. I have the projects stacked up and falling all over each other. Import Trenz had my CF hatch in the works, but wasn't even started come January, when I gave them the hatch in October off a customers car. Smiley my new partner and I were working about 16 hours a day for months. We were trying to get some new life to the company. We raised 3000 and openned an account with Sun Automobile. By raise 3000, I mean we gave out products at our cost just to acquire the account, and we borrowed about 1400 bucks from a loan shark in LA at 50% interest. Which meant we owed him back not 1400, but about 2100. We got the account, thought we'd be making big money, and realized we were scammed by a bad salesman who pocketed 800 dollars of our cash, and left us without products shipping, and a ton of hardship for nothing. We basically never used the account again. This was the start of 06.

Come March, I had been brainstorming on what the hell to do with this company. I had people supporting me, but I looked at it like a big time bomb. If I didn't get something figured out quick, everyone would loose faith, and I'd go under for sure. NT.com was getting pissed as hell that I didn't have the hatch, everyone started doubting me, and I was very close to the bomb going off. Then the CF Hatch came out and I was everyones Hero again. Meanwhile I was speaking with Venkat again about how to use the same functionality of FlyRyde.com to build a whole new site from scratch in Microsoft .NET language. We figured the cost, I didn't have it, I agreed to it, and he started paying his people to build this new site for me.

I at this point had had my black car, my pride and joy, sitting on a lift at Hotshot Headers since October 05. I was waiting on headers, strut bars, rad pipes, exhausts, roll cages, etc. Even GT28RS turbo kits like Hotshot already had for the SR20s back then. Everytime I called, John was all nice, telling me it'd all be ready soon, no prob. I took 1000 dollars in prebuys (I hate that word now) and forked it over to John. To sum up that whole story, I was starting to have to pay back people for the equal length headers coming out, paying for VDI kits that were never adjusted quite right from the factory yet, and paying for about 5000 dollars in costs from the Carbon Fiber Hatches on NT.com. I got some orders for some V6 headers from Hotshot, and they didn't have them in stock. They promised me they'd be ready soon. I get another order, then another. They keep saying they'll be ready soon. Meanwhile, that money went to pay for VDI kits for people from the original 1000 dollar GB. After over a year of my car being at Hotshot, I find out, not only are the V6 Headers not ready, but I need to come pick up my car right away because they're selling the location. I go assemble the car, and have to drive it home with nothing new on it besides a few bad dents, some scratches, and ruined sun soaked custom paint. The next week I find out they've cut all dealers and are going customer direct now. Which means I have to refund money thats not even there anymore, plus any profits that came with it. It translated to about 3600 dollars.

At this point, Import Trenz was pissed because I hadn't paid off my full 5000 dollars to them. They'd get a payment for 1500, then be cool for a month. Then they cut me off totally near the end of 06. Venkat finally finishes the site that I've been waiting for to launch my advertising for FlyRyde. I figured, if FlyRyde looks like ass, and runs like ass, then if I ever advertised how it is now, somebody would come by, take one look, not find anything for their car, and leave, never to return. So I've waited. Venkat has the site up, but wow, wouldn't you know it, I cant pay the 2250 I owe him what with my other 10,000 dollars of debts that keep relocating to different companies. It was a huge juggling act. Then, boom, my family almost looses their business. Their multi million dollar business thats almost 50 years old. They desperately need somebody to help with turning the company around, and I'm basically pushed out of FlyRyde against my will so that I dont end up loosing my house, and the same for the rest of my family. Well, that at least did work out well. I did great, and in the process of setting up a ton of new marketing for them, I learned a ton about databases, more graphic design skills, and I for the first time in 3 years had the money to pay my bills. I could finally start making money with FlyRyde to kill the debt monster that was on my ass everyday. I was just trying to get the company off the ground.

Come the first of the year in 07, I got health insurance and dental for the first time since I was 17. At 22, I had over 10,000 in debt still, and my site still wasn't launch. The reason being was that we still needed to add to the software. In my relations with Venkat, I started a new company, or rather named my capabilities to get this stuff set up. I named it StreamLyned Multimedia. I was also running the marketing department at Darafeev Furniture, and finally getting back to FlyRyde.com to take care of 3 month old orders. All at once, the time bomb I'd been dreading, blew the F up right in my face. Everyone was tired of waiting, assuming I'd run off like other companies in the past. I knew I couldn't avoid it unless I got FlyRyde into some profits before it all happened, but I failed at that for sure. I was also slammin out Haloz on ebay to support the little debts I could get refunded. Figure for every one person I refunded, there were about 10 poeple that didn't get refunds yet, super pissed off. Also orders that were never shipped when I was ripped off at Sun Auto, my Hotshot probs, Import Trenz wasn't shipping until they got a payment. I started a GB for bumpers just to give Import Trenz some money. I called to pay one day, the basically said dont bother, its not enough. You can pay us, but we wont make anything, or ship anything. My new CF diffusers had just come out as well. Yet another prebuy that could have gone wonderful if I had no prior debt with import trenz left over from the hatches. I owed them 2100 at this point.

Come the end of January, I was looking at selling off the tiburons, and being done with the debt. I didn't know what else to do. My partner was basically keeping the accounts alive, which really should have all been shutting down from inactivity. I thought I'd be advertising in mags in 06, and it never happened. My partner wasn't making us any money though, and I was finally paying off about 3000 in personal debt with my steady pay from Darafeev Furniture. I finally had the money management way in check, and was doing great, but too little too late for most to accept. The bomb had gone off, and I was sitting looking at the pieces of the company, just pushing everyday to some sort of break to come my way to let me get this off the ground. Well, it finally occured to me that I was endlessly paying off one debt with the little money I was bringing in, only to be left with 10 other debts getting worse and worse. I took 500 bucks that I was going to send Import Trenz, and I finally hit up Venkat with the first payment in over a year and a half. He had built my site despite the fact I had no payment to him. He flew from India to the US, visited me, came to my house, and still didn't hate me for the fact I couldn't pay. I had got him involved in a project with a wealthy friend of mine in LA, and we had planned to fly him back out again soon.

Basically, after a few great sessions chatting with Venkat, I finally got a plan worked out that would solve the rest of my problems in a systematic way, unlike the endless toilet bowl I had been circling down. I paid Venkat, enough to get the site up. We're expecting it to be fully functional and live as off April 1. We were shooting for Jan. 1 but I didn't even pay him till Feb. The situation with the site, is that when it launches, it is going to have a full new look, feel, and great back end suitable for handling hundreds of orders a day with ease. Its all new in .NET and it has been changed from our crawling MS Access database to SQL based database. It will also be on a dedicated server with dedicated hosting to be about to serve instant info to all visitors. We're working on it everyday. Import Trenz has been a huge problem because I have pending orders, they wont budge, and they're just waiting on oney stupid payment. That account could have been making me money all this time, but I owed them a few grand that made that impossible, and you can also understand why they dont do very hard work for me; cause I'm a horrible customer to them.

I have been working on a few new projects with Darafeev Furniture, that have made it possible to get a loan that will cover my debt, a new mold for the RD2 Evo hoods, and the first 5 that I owe everyone. This also means the Type S bumpers that they wont ship, will ship. The diffusers will ship, and I'm also dropping my price on the CF Hatches, from 1200 plus shipping, down to 800 plus shipping, just to get them sold and moving. I'm going to have the site up soon enough, which means I can finally get my advertising going, and I've been selling angel eyes at about 2000 dollars a month. This means in the current rate of growth, I should be clear of all debt in 3-5 months. All debts though, personal, business, everything. To start with, I have to get import trenz making me a few grand to pay off any projects that fell through with stupid Hotshot. I have some money I'd like to send APE, who just moved locations, from a tiny 1000 sq. ft. garage, to a full maching shop with 3000 sq. ft. of work space and 2500 sq. ft. of storage. I have the black car back, which is ready to race in Time Attack finally. I wont sell it now that I've accomplished one of, actually my biggest goal for this year...

My friend in LA has been helping me get all of my plans together into one huge business model. I have at least 3 fully different companies right now, and they need to all work together. So as of two weeks ago Friday, I got the papers ready to Incorporate. I signed my articles of incorporation on monday the following week, and I'll be picking them up tomorrow. This means that FlyRyde is now a subdivision of my Corporation, and I have 100,000 shares of my businesses to use with investors, and partners. I'll also be working on my franchising which I've been speaking with several people about. I have everything lined up for the first time in my life, where its not just a dream, its actually happening in front of me. I'm in now way out of the woods yet, but I just typed this story for an hour and I have to wake up tomorrow in just under 5 hours to work a 10 hour shift to raise some overtime cash to get everything finished up before I leave Darafeev Furniture.

StreamLyned, Haloz Lighting, and FlyRyde are all now part of Darafeev Enterprises Incorporated.

FlyRyde is about to go live with over 500,000 products to the whole industry selling products that are already made, sitting in a warehouse, needing an address to be shipped to. Import Trenz is finally about to be slamming out my products, and I'll be making my payment to them with the loan TOMORROW, which is when I had planned on updating everyone. I've been busy as hell with all of this, this past week, but I should have stopped by at least to answer some important questions.

I also posted pics of the fenders that never came out way back, because I pushed a friend of mine to make them happen for you guys. I also busted out some Haloz skilz on the tail lights Patreezy sent me a friggin year ago to mod up. I thought it wouldn't work, but they kick ass, and totally work well to mod. I posted those pics up too.

GUYS, PLEASE!!! I'M LITTERALLY BEGGING YOU ALL, JUST GIVE ME A SMALL AMOUNT OF TIME TO MAKE ALL THIS CRAP WORTH IT TO YOU. DONT CALL THE FEDS, DONT CALL BBB. If you want a number to call to yell at someone about me, call me 909 770 2915. I'm doing everything I can think of to make this faster. I dont party, go out, NOTHING right now. I just work every day to make all of this happen. When I get new orders, they go out as soon as my supplier has them ready. That will get faster as I land a shop which I've chosen a great place for, as cheap as I can find. It's all finally coming together, and I know the time bomb went off already, but I can heal, and make it well worth it all for you guys. I just dont keep you all in the know, half the time because I feel so bad I just dont post. When I log on for a minute, I get slammed with people saying they saw me logged in and want their money, want an update one something I dont have good news on, or simply want to know whats up. I straight up wuss out sometimes because its got so bad I cant contain it all. Look at this forum, its spilling out the sides because I didn't do it all right from the beginning. I'm almost 23 now. I'm young as hell, and I've never met somebody in my life with as much going on as I do. I'm not saying i'm something special, I just believe in myself. Just like any athlete who pursues their dreams of going pro, I'm chasing down my dream. I learned tons of lessons, from successes and failures, and from that I've become a better man, a better husband, and a better student in life.

I'll do you all proud, and I KNOW that. Its not some line to feed you so I can suck money out of you guys. Money is the last reason I make parts of the Hyundai crowd, and when I have plenty of money one day soon, it still wont be the reason I'm the number 1 place to go to hook up the crooked H. When I have a showroom, I'll be inviting everyone to come out to the California Speedway and to the shop for a big BBQ and to smack me around for taking so long to get all of this setup.

Sometimes, its just hard to keep up the moral when it hasn't happened yet. But its my 3rd real year of business, and thats about the average for companies to actually survive long enough to bring in their first profits. I know I'll be there soon, and with the past two weeks progress, it'll be sooner than I could have hoped thanks to my friend who helped me get incorporated. He listened to all of this, and even put up over 1000 dollars to get my paperwork setup and sent off expedited for me. I'll be starting a corporate line of credit with a bank for business very soon, and from that point, I'll never have to rely on someone, or something to get a new product made up, marketed, stocked, and lastly sold with quick shipping. It's all a process, and since I've had no overhead for 3 years, I actually survived long enough to learn so much.

So please, dont let me have your hard earned cash, I know you all work hard just like I do. Dont let me run off and quit cause it got too hard and I couldn't face you all. Dont think for a second that this is what comes with the little bit more lenience I'm asking for. I HAVE TO pay back everything. No bank would have ever loaned me money when I started FlyRyde, because I was friggin 19 with no credit. You guys have been that bank, and sadly there has been a much lower return to you all in parts that actually came out, than in the money invested. IT WILL ALL BE MADE RIGHT. SOON. I tried to get all the debts paid off before 07, but I just couldn't push through in time. I hadn't made a written plan, and I didn't have it in motion. NOW I DO, SO PLEASE GUYS, again, as lame and embarrassing as this is, with my pride in the dirt, JUST PLEASE HANG IN THERE FOR ME. I'll update you guys everyday if you let me work through this and dont crucify my first. I know I dont deserve this, but I'm begging for it anyway. Thank you.

 

I have kept quiet through everything going on even with my own monetary interest in it all because I wasn't sure what to say or what I wanted. Now, I read all that...

...and I still don't know what to say about everything that's going on. I guess I just want my parts.

Now that you've spilled all that stop being afraid to post updates even if it is to say "nothing new" or "slept all day and did nothing" ok?

I'm sure others have their own $.02 to throw in.