I think the bloke on IG is taking it lightly. You would be very pissed off if you parted with your cash and invest in that company when you could have gone elsewhere, to now be messed about like that. Just the arrogance of 1- sending the wrong shit in hope the customer would be satisfied, 2- not giving a toss to reply. I’m surprised it hasn’t gone more public yet.

You would be very pissed off if you parted with your cash and invest in that company when you could have gone elsewhere, to now be messed about like that. Just the arrogance of 1- sending the wrong shit in hope the customer would be satisfied, 2- not giving a toss to reply.

This is it in a nutshell

It’s the whole “investing in the company” thing that I don’t get. If you are a customer you pay for a frame and it should be sent to you in a reasonable time frame. Investing in a company is a very different thing and should involve contracts or shares (don’t know exactly but it ain’t buying a product!).

“investing in the company”

Sounds better than ‘taking on all the risk’, doesn’t it.

For anyone waiting on undelivered goods.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-wrong-with-a-purchase/if-something-you-ordered-hasnt-been-delivered/

I’d be interested to know if that applies to crowd funded stuff. As what you effectively do is give money to the company and instead of equity or shares, you get a reward.

.

I’d be interested to know if that applies to crowd funded stuff. As what you effectively do is give money to the company and instead of equity or shares, you get a reward.

It doesn’t AFAIK. If you read the Kickstarter t&CS then they make it clear that they’re just middlemen, and if you lose your money then they will do **** all.

I got screwed for £100ish on there. Deleted my account. **** 😆

Just seen that a friend has posted some pics of a new bike on Strava, and it appears to be a Sick! frame.
So they’re obviously sending some out.

Don’t know when he got it though, might have been a few months ago, and he’s only just built it up.

if you lose your money then they will do **** all.

This… they are happy to send the pledges cash out but couldn’t care less if its misappropriated.
CC might help, but theres a time frame withing which they’ll help.. if you’ve been waiting a while, then CC’s propably out of time!

It doesn’t AFAIK. If you read the Kickstarter t&CS then they make it clear that they’re just middlemen, and if you lose your money then they will do **** all.

What if you pay with a CC though? Would they say ‘well, you’ve given them the money, that’s what you wanted, right?’ Or would they do a chargeback if you didn’t get your reward?

Or would they do a chargeback if you didn’t get your reward?

Kickstart being another way for investing, you are not buying something you are investing and that is a key difference

That’s what I thought. Makes me laugh when companies, sick included, go on about how it’s a low risk option on the Kickstarter and indigogo pages. Yes it is for the project as the investors assume it all. But they don’t mention that…

Kickstart being another way for investing

Dont think you’re investing as you don’t receive any shares or any return on the “pledge”.
I’d call it advanced purchase in most cases.

But in the cases that most people would go for you are getting a product first, at a discount. I’ve not looked back in a while but most good cases were giving a decent pitch as ti where they were.

Dont think you’re investing as you don’t receive any shares or any return on the “pledge”.

The product is your return, as you get it cheaper, supposedly, and sooner than the rest of the market. The value of investments can go down as well as up.

Maybe Sick are the people behind the Cyclotron bike/scam also on Kickstarter?

The comments section is interesting reading.

The product is your return, as you get it cheaper, supposedly, and sooner than the rest of the market.

Well, I guess there’s inherent risk with all investments… not getting the product being the risk.

Dragons den is investments.. Kickstarter is a massive opportunity for fraud imo

I “invested” in Dashbot.. $100 out of my pocket, $265k raised.. no pledgers saw anything.
Dashbot
This scenario is not unique to crowd sourced fundraising projects unfortunately.

I “invested” in Dashbot.. $100 out of my pocket, $265k raised.. no pledgers saw anything.
Dashbot
This scenario is not unique to crowd sourced fundraising projects unfortunately.

Spanish friend of mine took me round the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona once, Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece. I asked him when they would be finished renovating it and he burst out laughing. Never, as then they’d have to stop asking for money for it…

The computer game Star Citizen is another infamous one – 200 million (!) crowdfunded and no game after six years, but enough parts of a game, and plastic toy spaceships, to keep people on the hook.

Maybe Sick are the people behind the Cyclotron bike/scam also on Kickstarter?

Tbh I think it was obvious from the beginning to any ‘proper’ cyclist that the Cyclotron was vapourware of the highest order.
If they do actually deliver I’ll eat my bike.

At least Sick have actually delivered sone frames in the past (though that’s cold comfort to those not getting anything now)

im Certainly not a hater. Actually quite like the look of a few of their frames haven’t followed this since the beginning I’m just really surprised no one had questioned the word experance in the title!
Or is deliberate..,

^This is a trend here that I have obliquely commented on before. It is bizarre, given how ready people are to have a pop at each other generally, that there is a code of omertà when it comes to spelling and grammar.

<blockquote^This is a trend here that I have obliquely commented on before. It is bizarre, given how ready people are to have a pop at each other generally, that there is a code of omertà when it comes to spelling and grammar.

err its good internet etiquette to not pick people up on spelling and grammer TBH.

err its good internet etiquette to not pick people up on spelling and grammer TBH.

It’s good…

never heard of it, looked it up, saw a picture of the bike, then read this ‘A big thank you to Guillaume Bout for the amazing renders’

there is no (gnar) spoon

I think the bloke on IG is taking it lightly. You would be very pissed off if you parted with your cash and invest in that company when you could have gone elsewhere, to now be messed about like that. Just the arrogance of 1- sending the wrong shit in hope the customer would be satisfied, 2- not giving a toss to reply. I’m surprised it hasn’t gone more public yet.

Anyone got the link?

https://instagram.com/grizzlygnarcissist?utm_source=ig_profile_share&igshid=3oypfoyyd6nr

grizzlygnarcissist reads this thread so post any comments on your dealings with Sick or contact him via IG

I think this thread deserves a link to the Duffbags thread, simply because I just re-read that and I’m now crying with laughter at my desk at Davidtaylforth’s posts 😀

I was personally promised (at their Stanmer yard sale thing) they physically had Ti bars in stock and they’d be on sale in early December so I could have a pair as a Christmas present.

Never seen a word of them since on any of their social media accounts, they’ve stopped replying to requests for status updates and I didn’t get a Christmas present.

At least I hadn’t handed any money over, I guess.

My guess is they were promised things by suppliers that the suppliers only had a very small chance of delivering on time and on budget. But they’ve taken the money from customers, paid it to these overseas suppliers and now they’re stuck with no money and no products. And they’re now playing for time hoping the suppliers might come good and relying on new orders to keep them afloat.

I’m not even convinced the Cyclotron thing is a scam but a project led by a team that is lacking either anyone with bike knowledge or anyone that’s a competent mechanical engineer. Delusional.

Found this one.. most of their stuff is now discounted.

If playing for time means ignoring everyone then they are doing it well.

And they’re now playing for time hoping the suppliers might come good and relying on new orders to keep them afloat.

Or any number of things, but yes most likely involving not enough capital to execute their plan

Wow that guy on insta is angry! Followed him and he has been commenting on all my posts telling me how angry at sick! He is

i reckon grizzly bloke is a clever marketing ruse…oj bumped his wife off and got loads of PR from it

you know what they say theres no such thing as bad publicity

err its good internet etiquette to not pick people up on spelling and grammer TBH.

Grammar, not grammer.

Those on the Sick! mailing list have just had an email. Interesting reading. On the mobile at the moment so won’t attempt to post, but they’re certainly still here and looking to the future.

Been too.busy at the post office?

**COPIED FROM THE MAILING LIST EMAIL**

At some point we had to answer the whispers that are going around.

Once I’d heard that I had secretly quit Sick, I knew it was time for a mailout.

In actuality, the opposite has happened.
From the 1st March, I’ll be working at Sick full time.

The short version is I’ve spent the last few weeks working with other manufacturers and under mentorship from larger bike companies to get better at doing this. To step up and lead the whole Sick team. So some changes are coming and I’ve outlined them in detail below. It’s a long one, and there is heaps to take in.

TL:DR We will be writing to ALL customers with a delayed frame, within the next 48 hours with an accurate time of delivery as updated from our manufacturers, we’ll build in customs clearance time. (This will include any crowdfund frames or items we are waiting for)

Our customers have had to be very, patient; if it included you, thank you. We do appreciate it.

It’s incredibly frustrating to not get this on track yet, we’ve worked hard and dedicated a lot of time an energy and we ARE getting there.

We are NOT businessmen, we are a handful of riders who wanted to make cool bikes, and although we are new to this, we are learning. And we are honoured you are on this journey with us. There are alot of people that want to see us fail, but thankfully, far more people want us to succeed.

Pre-orders allowed us to get the price down so people could afford it, that was our primary goal.

It’s very unpredictable and that’s a hard lesson to learn.

What’s changing?

I will be working full time on Sick from March, I’ll have a more production and logistic based role ensuring frames get to the warehouse and to the customer on time. Whilst this has been one of my focusses, I’ve been responsible for a lot of other jobs too, it’s been hard to balance.

Joe will be taking over the entirety of the clothing side of the business and a large amount of it will be moving in-house, allowing for even more control.

Some of our staff will be moving on from more casual roles in to larger part-time positions, allowing me and Tim to focus on the business as a whole.

We’ll be taking on additional customer service staff and utilising Zendesk ticket system to more effectively manage timely responses, this will help customers stay informed and stop some of the duplication we are getting which is slowing things up. 9/10 problems are delays or missing items, we are confident once we overcome this teething period. These will dramatically reduce.

More Suppliers, larger capacity, no more pre-orders.

We were just as surprised as anyone that the Wulf and Deathwish sold so well, we overwhelmed our manufacturers and needed to take a break for them to catch up, even with extra staff onboard, even with the 60 day break, they were still swamped. Overselling is a good problem to have but very much a problem. The challenge is you can’t rush handmade frames, a rushed frame is going to be a bad frame, quality and safety is incredibly important to us. We are valued for our strong frames.

I have spent the last 6 months working with various established, larger manufacturers, negotiating and working towards a process where we can meet demand for frames without pre orders.

We now have 5x more production capacity than we did 2 months ago. Whilst we have made great steps, it will take a bit of time to kick in.

We made mistakes.

We communicated badly, it was embarrassing to say, “it’s going to be late, again”, even if it wasn’t our fault, because when you boil it down, we are responsible for delivering on time in full. We were so fixated on solving the problems, we didn’t have the time or energy to communicate that’s what we were doing. This worried people and kept them uninformed. That ends now.

We didn’t put any focus on profit, we all had full time jobs already, so getting paid wasn’t a big deal, but as we scaled up it became clear that we had to take it seriously. That this couldn’t just be a hobby when it was taking up 7 days a week, we would need to pay the staff too.

We got tripped up on eCommerce, when it works well, its amazing, but we had to fight paypal and banks for double charges and CC fraud, we had to spend a huge amount of time getting some frames found after they were stolen from a courier. We didn’t have the hours in the day to do it. There was very little contingency if something had gone wrong.

Alot of manufacture lead companies (YT and Canyon spring to mind) get a lot of heat for holding ‘scams’ (take a look at the Trustpilot reviews and they are quite something). All of our payments are bound legally to deliver. The customer is ALWAYS protected. But communication of that protection is important to.

Inevitably pre-order manufactured stock is subject to delay. It’s one of the reasons the price is low because the risk for the manufacturer and client is lower. The crux is no one shouts when their bike is early. We have a saying, “No one remembers a late delivery, but they would remember a bad one.”

International Frame Shipping

We will be discontinuing our automatically fulfilled global shipping on frames. Please note clothing and components will be unaffected, anything that has already been ordered will be unaffected, we will manually cost out international frame orders. This has been a drain in terms of money and time, we have unhappy clients from the delays this causes, but it also tends to end up a net loss for the business. By dealing with shipping outside of the UK/EU on a case-by-case basis, the customer will have a better understanding of the costs and time involved. In short, we will ship globally, but you’ll need to speak to us first.

It’s important for us to communicate to you, we’re not going away anytime soon.

We never take your support for granted.

Jordan, Tim, Zam, Lee & James.

P.S.
I took a break from social media for a variety of reasons, my phone breaking was a bit of a blessing in disguise, I realised, it was nice that I could touch base with customers in real time, but I was dedicating a lot of time to that when I needed to be focussed.

It meant it was easy to make personal promises, I would run out of time to handle and let people down, that doesn’t feel good.

Hand on heart, I want to help everyone, but as the business grows, the demands on the team does too, I’m constantly reminded to stay in my lane and focus on the big tasks I have.

Not having my phone forced me to focus on emails during office hours, to keep a tight rein on my productivity. It has meant people have thought I have dissapeared, but I’ve been offline less than two weeks, it’s important to note, I’ve done a live stream three to four times a week for the last two years.

The second reason, well, it’s not nice. The team, our employees, including our close family, and in some cases, our children, have been targeted by a pretty nasty campaign by an unhappy customer and his friends. I’m sure you guys have seen it on social media or in the comments of articles. Some of the threats were serious enough we needed to file a police report. They requested we took some downtime away from face to face contact whilst an investigation was held. In due course, I’ll return to social media. I miss you guys and will be back when I have a handle on this. I know you guys know me well enough.

Jordan