Any news on Honeycomb Charlie pedals?

[teletom 98]

Shouldn't they be already on sale?

Thanks, Tom

[fppilot 4,381]

1 hour ago, teletom said:

Shouldn't they be already on sale?

Thanks, Tom

Same for the new version of the Alpha Yoke??  

[Victoroos 205]

1 hour ago, fppilot said:

Same for the new version of the Alpha Yoke??  

New version of the yoke? 

[fppilot 4,381]

51 minutes ago, Victoroos said:

New version of the yoke? 

Announced a few months back. Bit different design and hall sensors.

[Khashoggi 24]

Crickets!

 

Saw the Charlie pedals at Flightsim Expo in San Diego, they had the best overall feel (real world piston/jet/helicopter pilot) and the Honeycomb guys said they would be out 1Q 2022, so delayed, but till when?

[Mikeingreen 139]

They are now available for pre-order. Delivery will be aroound June 30, 2023

[Zachary 0]

Just received letter from Honeycomb. They still don’t have the shipment for the hall-effect sensors. Best case scenario pre-orders will start shipping within 3 months. Worst case scenario, they are predicting Q1 2024. 

[Khashoggi 24]

Here’s the latest excuse email received minutes ago-

I flew to Hong Kong as soon as possible, to meet with the factory and my now soon-to-be ex-partner to find out what was really going on. As I suspected, things were bad, but I managed to negotiate a deal between all three parties, where my partner and his companies would no longer handle sales and distribution and I would also handle the factory partner directly. As part of the agreement, I was committing to help the factory recover the outstanding invoices by paying a significant premium on the existing stock as well as on the Charlie production. In exchange, the factory agreed to manufacture the Charlie, despite the outstanding debt, but I had to pay for the injection tooling as well as 50% deposit of the production cost upfront. Last month, all parties finally signed the agreement, and I have been able to find buyers for the majority of the existing inventory already. I used the slim margins left from the inflated cost to make sure that Honeycomb staff, who were also owed money by my partner, were getting paid. Some salary payments are still outstanding, but everyone should be fully up to date by next week. Unfortunately, this has left me unable to pre-pay for the tooling or deposit required to start the production of the Charlie right now. You can argue that the customer comes first and I should have prioritized the Charlie production but in my book, people come first, they have mouths to feed and rent to pay. Since it is highly unlikely that I will receive the payments for the pre-orders from my ex-partner, I am currently working on several finance deals to be able to start production as soon as possible. How I pay it back is not clear yet, but I am determined that all customers receive the product they paid for, regardless of the financial impact to myself. Ultimately, it is my responsibility that we are in this situation, and I can’t expect anyone to carry the financial burden but myself. I am incredibly sorry to everyone who has been caught in the middle of this and hasn't received their Charlie order as promised. I really appreciate everyone who have stuck around despite the extended delays, but I think it’s my duty to tell you that you might get the product faster if you cancel your order and reorder it from one of the official resellers once they have a confirmed that the shipment is on the way. Funding an order that is tied to an invoice is a lot easier than financing one that I have to pay out of my own pocket and while I will do everything in my power to ship the pre-orders first, I might not be able to do so. If you do cancel your order, you need to be aware that you will have to dispute the charges with your credit card company to get a refund. Shopify will not issue a refund to you. (explanation below). Call your credit card company before you cancel the order, to be sure it will be refunded. For those of you who have already cancelled your Charlie order but have not received a refund, you will have to do the same. I am really sorry for the inconvenience, but there is nothing I can do about the matter, I have tried. I will still send a Honeycomb hat to everyone as promised, cancelled or not, just have a little patience with me. The online store, which as mentioned, runs through Shopify and also manages our faulty return process, is controlled by the Honeycomb entity in Hong Kong, which is owned by my former business partner. When Shopify didn’t receive payments for the cancelations, they blocked further refunds and we lost our ability to send out return labels for faulty products and ship new replacement units back. Not that it mattered much, because the warehouse handling the returns had already stopped shipping out replacement products before that, due to, you guessed it, outstanding invoices. You can argue that I should have seen the writing on the wall much sooner, but I kept getting promises, that it would get sorted “next week” and sometimes it did, which restores some faith, but most of the time it didn’t. For the last two months, I have been trying to get units shipped from Europe to replace the faulty products, but my ex-partner has control of the inventory, and I have so far not been able to get him to cooperate on the matter. I am working on a solution with the factory, and they have promised to supply me with the replacement units once I've paid for the tooling on the Charlie, which should be soon. The one bit of good news is that we have reached an agreement, that he will sell his assets in Honeycomb if I can find a new partner to buy him out. That’s where I’m currently at…  I’m talking to several great companies, that not only have the financial means to accelerate Honeycomb's growth but also the technical expertise to help me develop even better products in the future and I’m very optimistic that one of them is going to come through. Honeycomb is a great business opportunity and while there are some housekeeping items to be dealt with, the solutions are easily executable. Deliver the Charlie as promised, replace the faulty products, and make sure that all creditors are paid before the remaining purchase sum is paid out. Once that’s out of the way, we can focus on the future.