That was at the beginning, when the campaign was still running and I mentioned to him that it's impossible in my eyes to meet the deadline even close (I was thinking of April if things went good).
Information for old customers
- Thread starter notaz
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Godmil
Active Member
There's a lot of talk of punishing Craig, but surely all his businesses going down in flames is bad enough.
Are you sure all of his business are going down in flames, or just the pesky pandora customers which he failed to serve?
Yep, that was old GBAX, which has been closed down due to Sony sueing all UK distributors who imported PSPs before the European launch.
That's why GBAX is not being run bei it's own company... it's either Craig himself, OP Ltd. or iCP Ltd... but it's probably unknown which, unless he states is somewhere on the invoice.
vcoleiro1
Hardcore Member
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- Jan 23, 2011
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If the items are being sold by OP Ltd , then he violates the 3 month no trade condition for the termination request.
If he transferred the items to himself or ICP Ltd , then there is obvious issues with that.
If he sold them to himself or ICP Ltd some time ago, then that might be ok unless of course he sold them for less than they are worth . Raises the question however, of what happened to that cash .
If he transferred the items to himself or ICP Ltd , then there is obvious issues with that.
If he sold them to himself or ICP Ltd some time ago, then that might be ok unless of course he sold them for less than they are worth . Raises the question however, of what happened to that cash .
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WizardStan
Mega GP Mania
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Obviously he sold the parts to himself at fair market value and then paid himself a bonus for finding a substantial bonus for finding a buyer for all the parts the company couldn't sell.
eazrael
Member
Here are information for OpenPandora Ltd.:
https://www.duedil.com/company/06513352/openpandora-ltd
Here are the other companies of Craig:
https://www.duedil.com/director/913105847/craig-joseph-rothwell/directorships
You can navigate thru the pages and names to get a complete picture. If the Popup asking you to sign up comes, klick on the sign up link below the red button. Then in the dialog you can click on the cross to close the popup.
It looks like there is only another company is running "I Control Pad Limited". But again, more liabilities than cash. There is a "Openpandora Usa & Canada Distribution Limited" but it's marked a non trading has no reports filed.
And these are only 1GBP Limited Companies. Each of the "directors" has only a stake of 1GBP. So if they did it right, even a dying company would make them loose only 1 GBP each. But of course they may have put money into the companies which is part of their liabilities. But they are at advantage here, they have full information.
And it's not to punish to Craig himself. It's just to end the whole story. Even if this happened this way due to bad luck, incompetence or even due to malice (i doubt it). Looking backwards, this all was some kind of ponzi scheme. The delivered pandoras were sold too cheap when it was clear that each unit cost more.
I can accept that OpenPandora Ltd. just sledded into this .For a "community project", i would expect more transparency, and playing with open cards in any state and then I can be more merciful. From a company, i can accept if the whole thing is more opaque. But sorry, then it's okay for me to take off the gloves and take legal actions. And from the lack of new all the time, it's more the company thing.
A few weeks ago, after i got my Pandora from ED i choose not to take my OpenPandora LTD order for the discount at ED's shop. After some thinking i decided to set a final dead line, and after this i would send a order for payment (this is done via courts, but very cheap). Then OP Ltd. could either pay, reject the claim (which would end in a lawsuit) or declare declare insolvent. (Disclaimer, this is based on my limited knowledge of german laws, applied to europe). It was clear meant to get either my money or to end it here.
https://www.duedil.com/company/06513352/openpandora-ltd
Here are the other companies of Craig:
https://www.duedil.com/director/913105847/craig-joseph-rothwell/directorships
You can navigate thru the pages and names to get a complete picture. If the Popup asking you to sign up comes, klick on the sign up link below the red button. Then in the dialog you can click on the cross to close the popup.
It looks like there is only another company is running "I Control Pad Limited". But again, more liabilities than cash. There is a "Openpandora Usa & Canada Distribution Limited" but it's marked a non trading has no reports filed.
And these are only 1GBP Limited Companies. Each of the "directors" has only a stake of 1GBP. So if they did it right, even a dying company would make them loose only 1 GBP each. But of course they may have put money into the companies which is part of their liabilities. But they are at advantage here, they have full information.
And it's not to punish to Craig himself. It's just to end the whole story. Even if this happened this way due to bad luck, incompetence or even due to malice (i doubt it). Looking backwards, this all was some kind of ponzi scheme. The delivered pandoras were sold too cheap when it was clear that each unit cost more.
I can accept that OpenPandora Ltd. just sledded into this .For a "community project", i would expect more transparency, and playing with open cards in any state and then I can be more merciful. From a company, i can accept if the whole thing is more opaque. But sorry, then it's okay for me to take off the gloves and take legal actions. And from the lack of new all the time, it's more the company thing.
A few weeks ago, after i got my Pandora from ED i choose not to take my OpenPandora LTD order for the discount at ED's shop. After some thinking i decided to set a final dead line, and after this i would send a order for payment (this is done via courts, but very cheap). Then OP Ltd. could either pay, reject the claim (which would end in a lawsuit) or declare declare insolvent. (Disclaimer, this is based on my limited knowledge of german laws, applied to europe). It was clear meant to get either my money or to end it here.
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This is definitely not a Ponzi scheme. The units were sold too cheap early on in large part because CC had failure rates that were much higher than they should have been, not to mention the other set backs. Had they gone with the company that's doing it now, they likely would have been much closer in terms of cost and price. They definitely weren't sufficiently transparent, at least as far as Craig's bit of the business went, but this was definitely not a scam, at least not as far as we have evidence to support it.
I'd love to hear what was really going on behind the scenes over at Craig's operation, but who knows if we'll ever know.
I'm curious as to why you didn't take the discount. It's hardly a secret that Craig has no obvious assets to place a lien on, at least not as far as the LLC goes, and barring some actual illegal activity, you wouldn't be getting any of his personal money. I realize that there are apparent discrepencies in the amount of money that Craig claims to have, but given his record keeping prowess, I'm not sure that I'd count on any of it being there.
I definitely feel for the people that aren't getting their units, but at the same time, it's not like this hasn't been coming for some time.
I also don't think Craig wanted to scam anyone... he just is not able to calculate realistic prices.
He made the sales price before having all quotations. He didn't plan any safety money in.
That's not a big deal with small things (losing a couple of hundred Euros), but it adds up when you have thousands of orders where you lose a bit.
When he was running GBAX, he bought and sold things. Nothing else.
He was good at that and made a lot of money. He's pretty good negotiating.
When buying things, the price doesn't suddenly go up, especially not before you sell something. That's a lot easier than producing things...
He is not capable of thinking things through on the long-term.
He can only buy stuff and sell it for a higher price.
He made the sales price before having all quotations. He didn't plan any safety money in.
That's not a big deal with small things (losing a couple of hundred Euros), but it adds up when you have thousands of orders where you lose a bit.
When he was running GBAX, he bought and sold things. Nothing else.
He was good at that and made a lot of money. He's pretty good negotiating.
When buying things, the price doesn't suddenly go up, especially not before you sell something. That's a lot easier than producing things...
He is not capable of thinking things through on the long-term.
He can only buy stuff and sell it for a higher price.
eazrael
Member
Sorry if my english is too bad to explain complex things. And I prefer refering to "OP Ltd." than Craig. Makes this a little bit less personal.
For me this is a Ponzi scheme if you use money from later preorders to fulfill earlier orders, knowing that this will leave the later entrees empty handed. And this may happened by accident and not on purpose. And I said I doubt this happened on malicious purpose.
Looking back (which is always easy) at the point where it became clear that each device costs more than the price OP Ltd. took from the preorders, they should have asked the orderers to send in additional money for the real price of the Pandora or get the order canceled. For sure this would have pissed off a bunch of people. But doing nothing and hope for a miracle was certainly the wrong way.
Let's resort to incompetence (harsh word..) and bad luck. And bad luck for the later preorders, they entered too late the scheme.
A couple of thoughts:
- Didn't want to take money from donors or ED (I hope the 240€ for the refurbished ones is cost covering)
- Didn't want to pay 450€ (330€ OP Ltd. + 120€ DragonBox) for a device "luckier" people got for 300€
- Didn't want to see ED rescue OP Ltd.(don't ask me why)
- Some urge to end the thing here. Losing a 1GBP Ltd. is not so devastating for the stake holders
- Some urge to achieve getting money and/or a reaction from OP Ltd where others failed
(Shorter version, the previous version was destroyed when I hit some browser hot key. Btw. where can i recall this auto-saves?)
Craig seems to have serious issues, but I have a hard time believing that he intentionally set out to screw people over. I get this kind of feeling like one of those old sitcoms where something bad would happen, then the kids would spend the rest of the episode trying to fix it, making things worse in the process.
But, without information that neither you nor I have, it's really hard to say for sure.
It's a technical thing, it's important because running a ponzi scheme is illegal, but incompetently running a business into the ground isn't. I'd love to hear details of what was going on inside of his business, but at this stage there's no reason to believe that it was anything other than an ineptly run business.
As for the choice of not upgrading, I can understand that. I opted to just bite the bullet and throw some good money after bad, and that seems to have worked out for me. I should have received my unit by now anyways, but who knows, I would have thought that with a queue number like 1500-1600 that I would have received mine at least a year earlier anyways.
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