kristof65 Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 Well, apparently Barry's ghost may have been listening to me rant about him. The current owner of the original show case site that I dealt with him on just emailed me asking for a quote on a replacement teller because someone totally destroyed one of the tellers. I'm told someone took a two by four to it and knocked it off it's base trying to break into it. 1 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 20 minutes ago, TGP said: No tracking number? It's not needed. It's in town, just needs re-delivery as I was asleep when they came yesterday between 1030am & 2pm. Today, it's whenever + it's a signage delivery. My wife isn't home as she is with daughter at her folks working on daughter's cos-play for a local con this month. My son is home, but he wasn't sure yesterday that he could sign for it + he didn't know it was coming anyways. Currently I'm kinda sleepy, but overall I'm good to go for anther few hours. It's the waiting for them to get here so I can get on with my life, is what is getting to me. 20 minutes ago, Pegazus said: I don’t honestly remember. I will go ask my squirrelfriend and find out. 2 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGP Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 10 minutes ago, kristof65 said: I'm told someone took a two by four to it and knocked it off it's base trying to break into it. Rough business washing cars; never would’ve guessed. 18 minutes ago, kristof65 said: Well, apparently Barry's ghost may have been listening to me rant about him. He sure is a mean Poltergeist! …swinging 2x4s at things. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegazus Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 Kronk was what I was going for. 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteWulfe Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 4 hours ago, buglips*the*goblin said: Ah, Tom Scott, but now I'm curious why the screenshot from the Computerphile series... 3 hours ago, Pegazus said: Squeak squeak squeaky squeak squeak. 1 hour ago, haldir said: Nuohhh, I got beaten to the reference. Oh well, world doesn't end 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 30 minutes ago, Pegazus said: Kronk was what I was going for. I need to watch ENG again & soon. It's been too long since I've seen it. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 4 hours ago, Pegazus said: Squeak squeak squeaky squeak squeak. Is that you , Death of Rats? GNU Sir Terry Pratchett GEM 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 3 hours ago, kristof65 said: I'm thinking that the lawyer was actually a decent lawyer, considering how fast the entire situation went away after that email. Like he sat Sam down and told him "look, you have no case, pay the bill and let it go." The site was sold shortly after that to a guy in the area who buys sites and runs them until he can sell off the property for redevelopment into something else. Mr Sketchy would submit equipment Purchase Orders with the wrong prices on them, then play it off as a typo and beg us to honor that price because "I already quoted the customer that price - I'll have to eat the difference." If he did it occasionally, sure, but he did it with EVERY single purchase order he submitted to us. His rep was so bad that we had minimum three sets of eyes check over his purchase orders before accepting them. In fact, that's how I learned about him - I was asked to be the third set of eyes within a couple of weeks of starting that job. Fortunately, Mr Sketchy left the car wash business - last I heard he was selling some sort of dubious cell phone gadget. There are a bunch of dubious characters in the car wash industry, sadly. I've talked a bunch about the customer types I have to deal with, but I've had to deal with some outright crooks. There was this one guy - we'll call him Barry* - who would move from one state to another, find someone brand new to car wash to partner with, and build a really nice site. His deal with the partner is that they would run the showcase site, while Barry worked on building a distributorship. Barry would then line up a few more customers brand new to car wash and start building sites for them. He would sell them equipment with all the options, but order just basic equipment from the manufacturers. He would always build multiple sites at once, get them to the point the equipment was delivered and mostly installed, then take off, leaving his partner holding the bag. Because the distributorships were set up primarily under the partner's name, it was hard for manufacturers to realize they were dealing with him until it was too late. He was able to do this more than a few times in the 80s/90s, but the rise of the internet and forums started slowing him down. We got burned by him twice. I mean, we got paid for the equipment that was purchased from him, but we were left trying to sooth & support customers who said they had paid for features he never ordered. The final time was on his showcase site with a new partner. The sales guy was new and had only been dealing with Barry's latest partner, but when I got pulled into the situation, I wound up talking to Barry and threw a huge fit with management asking why we were dealing with this guy again. When that came out, demands were made of Barry to pay up for the last mess he had left behind, and the whole situation caused a rift between him and his new partner. The partner was an idiot I still had to deal with for multiple years afterwards, but at least Barry was out of the picture. *Barry is his real name. I used his real name because a) he deserves to be publicly named and b) he died over 12 years ago. I still have his obituary bookmarked, as well as a link to his name at corporationwiki dot com, which tracks publicly available corporate registration data. I check that link a couple times a year to make sure that his son or any of his partners don't pop up with some new company I need to be aware of. My couple of decades in Coin-Op Equipment led me to the conclusion that cash businesses tend to attract an inordinately high percentage of Fly-By-Night personalities. All of your War Stories only tend to reinforce that opinion. It was not common knowledge, but well enough known that I was aware of it, that a certain fairly large west coast vending machine business was controlled by the Palm Springs branch of the Mafia. Their "control" of the vending business in SoCal was cracked open when Pac-Man hit and the video game craze exploded beyond their ability to control the new market. GEM 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 5:00 pm, time UPS rolled up in front of the house........ Package is delivered, that is all that matter. (New phone Samsung S23 Ultra, figured it was time for a trade up (S10)) Just waiting for dinner & then I'm crashing out for the day. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 When life gives you lemons, be very, very careful: GEM 2 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pezler the Polychromatic Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 On 2/28/2023 at 6:28 PM, Marvin said: I dunno, Cobra Commander looking pretty cute lately. 🤔 Wait, did you just call @buglips*the*goblin cute? 1 5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sumbloke Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 55 minutes ago, Green Eyed Monsty said: 5 hours ago, Pegazus said: Squeak squeak squeaky squeak squeak. Is that you , Death of Rats? GNU Sir Terry Pratchett GEM Nah, he squeaks in all caps. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 15 minutes ago, sumbloke said: Nah, he squeaks in all caps. Well Spotted GEM 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sumbloke Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 1 hour ago, Green Eyed Monsty said: Well Spotted GEM That's Death of Dalmatians. 😁 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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