Status of Fulcrum and Orders

[Warthog64 7]

1 hour ago, billium01 said:

Yoko doesn't have 180 degrees of rotation like a real yoke. It looks like it's rght around 90 degrees of roll rotation. That for 1500 bucks? No way! Looks like the yoko neo does have a proper travel but it's closer to 2k. Yikes! 

Yikes is right. My current yoke is similiar to that. It's a Precision Flight Controls Cirrus from 2008. It's very smooth and precise, for yokes that don't have Hall Effect sensors. Unfortunately it doesn't have much in the way of travel on either the pitch or roll access. Roll is around 160ish degrees, and pitch is very small at no more than 2 inches from center in either direction. That's one of the reasons I wanted the Fulcrum. Anyway, didn't mean to highjack this post on merits of other yokes.

[Stuwy 2]

PayPal still haven’t had a response from Chris in relation to my refund request. 
 

if there is no response from him soon then it will be an immediate refund and PayPal will strike his account.

 

have any of you had any comms back from your emails ??

[Patpoe 0]

Nope, nothing, nada….

I paid the yoke with Ideal straight into Chris’s Paypal account. I’ll contact Paypal and see if i can get at least some money back. 
To keep this Fulcrum website in the air, and misleading potential new customers , separating them from their money, is very low.  Something is going on, and only Chris can shed some light on this mystery. 

Edited July 28, 2023 by Patpoe

[Warthog64 7]

5 hours ago, Stuwy said:

PayPal still haven’t had a response from Chris in relation to my refund request. 
 

if there is no response from him soon then it will be an immediate refund and PayPal will strike his account.

 

have any of you had any comms back from your emails ??

Nope. I sure haven't. I've heard absolutely nothing. I've sent them two correspondence (which I'm sure you've already read about), and I just sent out a cancel order requests, one via the web site support page, and one via email. I've heard nothing. In the cancel order request I stated I'd be ok to continue the order IF they could ship the unit in three weeks, which gives them an additional week and a half past their stated four weeks. I've heard nothing from them. I'm not cool with this silence. It's unprofessional, unbusiness like, discourteous to customers, and just flat out rude, so I'm starting a PayPal dispute (PayPal charged my card right off the bat). I was going to wait until the four weeks were up, but this ghosting of customer concerns is just flat out wrong. As Han Solo would say, "I've got a bad feeling about this". I guess he got his money and doesn't much care if folks have been on order hold for eight months?

[F737MAX 5,738]

1 hour ago, Warthog64 said:

I guess he got his money and doesn't much care if folks have been on order hold for eight months?

Given the level of customer service offered previously, I don't believe that at all.

Much more likely (and far less cynical and tinfoil hat-like) is that the business is between a rock and a hard place. IIRC, he's mentioned trouble with a supplier not delivering components that meet the necessary spec and as such cannot put them into the peripherals he has fabricated.

Customers' money has been spent on components, manufacturing, and labour. He is in possession of hundreds of units that are work-in-progress, but he hasn't received the replacement parts and (IMO) is living on a prayer that if people wait long enough, the supplier will come through.

As a small business owner, I can appreciate the difficulties faced when a supplier causes significant issues. However, his duty is to his customers. Both the payment companies and authorities will not look kindly on him for stalling and being incommunicado like this.

[Ron Attwood 3,504]

I pretty much agree with everything MAX has said except 'the supplier will come through'. Chris has been a victim of his own success. I'll bet he never thought, in his wildest dreams Fulcrum would be so in demand. I think the whole thing has got on top of him and he's probably hiding in a cupboard gently sobbing.

Hindsight etc. etc. It might have been better to close the order book for a while then re-open it when he'd caught up.

Too much for one man, and a very nice man to, to hang on, given the sh*t years we've had.

EDIT: I also believe his gear was under priced by quite a lot. The more I look at my yoke the more I think '£350! No way.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Ron Attwood

[Patpoe 0]

26 minutes ago, Ron Attwood said:

It might have been better to close the order book for a while then re-open it when he'd caught 

I agree: that should be the way of doing things. That…plus some customer friendly communication.
 

He could have doubled his prices easily. His much wanted gear would have stil sold. Then he would have been able to put somebody in the office to take care of all the customer related stuff he apparently never had time for.

[Warthog64 7]

1 hour ago, F737MAX said:

Given the level of customer service offered previously, I don't believe that at all.

I may have been a little harsh with that last comment, but since I don't know the guy, and he's ghosting me and several others, what else are we to think? If others have had great customer response from him, that's terrific. I have not. But that doesn't excuse him from simply checking his emails/support submissioins/forum posts, and then providing a little communication to folks that have had zero correspondence from him concerning their orders. Heck, I never even got a "Hey, thanks for ordering one of our yokes, here is some info on what you can expect". If he's a victim of his own success, like Mr. Atwood said, close the books for new orders until you're caught up and have sufficient supply to move forward. Seems like common sense. As for me, he's lost my trust. I'm out and will be pursuing a cancellation of my order and a refund to my credit card, one way or the other. You just don't treat customers this way.

[Ray Proudfoot 9,044]

11 hours ago, F737MAX said:

Much more likely (and far less cynical and tinfoil hat-like) is that the business is between a rock and a hard place. IIRC, he's mentioned trouble with a supplier not delivering components that meet the necessary spec and as such cannot put them into the peripherals he has fabricated.

I suspect that’s the problem. When you’re a small company you have to take your place in the queue for parts. Big ones take precedence. With dozens of different parts it only takes 1  not available to stop the process. And let’s not forget this business was starting up in 2019 and then the pandemic started and the whole world was affected.

Please exercise some patience. I’m in the same boat waiting for the TQ.

[F737MAX 5,738]

12 hours ago, Ron Attwood said:

'the supplier will come through'.

That was only a description of what many a business owner thinks/hopes for in such circumstances, usually unrealistically.
Hope is a powerful drug.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I pretty much agree with everything you said.

 

10 hours ago, Warthog64 said:

If he's a victim of his own success, like Mr. Atwood said, close the books for new orders until you're caught up and have sufficient supply to move forward. Seems like common sense. As for me, he's lost my trust. I'm out and will be pursuing a cancellation of my order and a refund to my credit card, one way or the other. You just don't treat customers this way.

Correct. And I think you are more than entitled to take the course of action you are—plenty of patience has already been shown.

It's at a time like this where you need to be even more transparent with your customers, even if it means refunds.
You can maintain goodwill and keep most of your customers if you're open, describe exactly what is happening, and when you expect the next step in the process will occur. You keep repeating this pattern with openness and honesty until customers orders are caught up or you have to close-up shop.

[Warthog64 7]

Well, yesterday I pursued a refund via PayPal. I just couldn't overcome that bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was amiss. Since they didn't even blink, so to speak, about refunding my card the total amount, I can only conclude that PayPal is possibly having issues with Fulcrum Sim as well. I should have my refund credit hit my card in 3 - 5 days.

It's too bad, though, that all this could have been avoided by Mr. Tutthill if he'd just taken a common sense approach to his business practice, and improved his communication skills. I do wish him all the best, and hope he gets things under control. For those of you that have the yoke (or throttle, etc), I hope the wait you've endured was worth it, and that your're enjoying the product. All the best.

[Stil550 0]

Logged in just to chime in on this.  I ordered the yoke in April.  No communication, not a single reply to my emails in regards to the order.  Then this whole threads and a complete comms blackout from the seller.

I consider myself a patient man.  This is not a life necessity for me so I would be a lot more comfortable waiting if the seller would just come out with regular updates to the current status of the orders. This ghosting of his customers however is a big no-no and a huge red flag.

I've purchased it using PayPal's "Pay in 4" option.  Just got my refund from the PayPal after opening a case and them investigating. Really unhappy about this as I really wanted this yoke, the price is great and the quality seemed to be good, at least based on the previous reviews, but whoever is running this shop is digging their own hole deeper and deeper.

[billium01 11]

So was talking to PayPal, and they said if you bought a yoke using PayPal, there is only 180 days from your purchase date to get a refund. I fortunately used my Visa card and have an open charge dispute with Fulcrum. I hope they can refund my money back being that it's been 8 months! 

Edited July 29, 2023 by billium01

[Stuwy 2]

8 minutes ago, billium01 said:

So was talking to PayPal, and they said if you bought a yoke using PayPal, there is only 180 days from your purchase date to get a refund. I fortunately used my Visa card and have an open charge dispute with Fulcrum. I hope they can my money back being that it's been 8 months! 

If you open a visa charge back they should do as a protected payment clause.

I wasn’t prepared to risk my PayPal buyer protection and Chris does start dispatching units I’ll purchase again once his turn around time isn’t more than 6 weeks and units are actually leaving the shop. 
 

but until then I’ll keep my funds in my account and let it earn me some interest too 🙂 

[kemilss 0]

Yikes. I ordered mine about 10 months ago. Sounds like we've all been had I guess.