SURVIVE! Ellie said:
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I admitted long ago, and several times since, that the Starter campaign and subsequent preorders were not the finest moment in SURVIVE! history. However, we did exactly what we said we were going to do at the time. We bought steel, equipment, invested in larger production run sizes, and contrary to what some people have claimed we even set funds aside to cover expenses during production. We also invested in the future of the business by making a down payment on the building, in hopes that we could soon move away from renting a finite space to owning somewhere with room to grow. This down payment was roughly equal to one third of an average production run. We still have over $60,000 of that steel, over $100,000 in equipment, several hundreds of knives worth of materials and several large deposits in to our vendors.
Read - Yes we funneled money from one business venture into a second. Survive LLC --> Seiferd Holdings LLC. That's going to bite you.
In addition to the above and money spent on bolstering run sizes, operating expenses, and refunds, PayPal is currently holding on to $21,000 (and growing). They say this hold is meant to be in case of refund requests, but then they won’t let us use the funds for any of the refunds that I issue. So it just sits there growing with each new PayPal purchase, until they start trickling some of it back to us in a few months. Here is a quote from the email we received from them:
“The decision regarding your reserve setting was based on our review of the level of risk associated with your account. We looked at several factors to determine the high level of risk associated with your account. These factors include:
· Delivery timeframe - Extended length of your delivery timeframe.
· High risk industry - You are selling merchandise or services in what we consider to be a high risk industry.
· High risk or changed business model – There has been a change in your business model or your business model is considered high risk due to one, or a combination of the following (list is not all inclusive) – how and when items or services are delivered, items or services being sold, or inventory management.”
We are curious to see what happens once the SK Series is fully operational, fixing the delivery timeframe and high risk/changed business model issues. Based on conversations with some other folks and the “high risk industry” statement, we are concerned PayPal may be sending the knife industry in the same direction it went with the gun industry. Time will tell.
Read - Due to the large volume of complaints and chargebacks Paypal has limited our account due to selling products that have no specified delivery timeframe other than 'someday'. Of course that is not our fault so we are blaming Paypal for their risk mitigation policies (How dare they!) and the knife industry in general.
Good luck getting that limitation removed. It took 127 faxed documents to Paypal's internal fraud department.
As far as what our plan is to fix the ordering issues, we covered that here:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/the-new-survive.1501589/
Introducing the SK Series will help offset demand, so that we can focus exclusively on GSO Knives while folks can still get a really nice version of the same designs.
The SK Series is still a product that needs to be made by people, it will be made more quickly but it still needs to be produced. We announced it ahead of production because we wanted to let folks know what our plan was to get out of the preorder rut. It also allowed us to get a better handle on how much interest there was so we would have a better idea of how many to order. If we don’t have enough they will sell out quickly and then we will all have to wait months for more. If we make too many we are going to have more money locked away in inventory.
More of the same ol same. Read our recycled monthly updates - Coming Soon!.
Things are starting to settle back in after the fire so we will be back in the workshop regularly again. We haven’t had a chance to update the delivery wording on the website yet but will be working on that over the next couple of weeks. I will make sure the refund requests are all issued by the end of next week. We will also hold off on adding any new weekly sales until we are caught up on those existing orders.
One would think you guys put out the fire and cleaned up the mess yourself with all the time off.
Bladeforums is an area that is meant to be a more relaxed and fun community environment. Because of the regular accusations that have already been addressed and the random spamming, Guy won’t come here right now. He beats himself up enough, he doesn’t need you guys to do it for him. He did talk with Lance and when he mentioned making a post Guy hoped that would be enough to help appease some of the concerns.
The GBU is littered with people who use the bury the head in the sand approach.
We do provide regular updates and have been up front when we have encountered issues that will lead to further delays, including when it is something of a personal nature. We answer the phone any time we are in the office and Jordyn replies to every person’s emails and voicemails.
This part is the most laughable. Yes we answer everyone's email and calls right up until they ask for a refund. Then the runaround begins and you force your previously loyal and now lost customer to file a chargeback and deal with the aggravation of getting back their money. Besides losing them you also lost anyone they come into contact with.
Since this is more of an informal environment, we encourage anyone with questions or concerns to send us an email to our official inbox:
info@surviveknives.com.
Read - Quit complaining on the forums where everyone can see. We want to keep it private to keep new orders flowing.
Survive! is a textbook example of how to take a great idea and sink it due to Inexperience, incompetence, under funding, mismanagement of assets, absurdly poor customer service skills, lies, and excuses.
