Hey, Benn..

[WolfeMacleod]

I actually at one point wanted to save up some money and go visit Wolfe and talk pickups and try to learn more of the black art of winding but now i'm not so sure about that. Oh well, this is the end of my posting.

Ben, if you should happen to come out here, I won't bite, I promise.
I may seem like I'm coming off hard, am I am...but I only do it because I care. About you...and your customers. And the indusrty as a whole, and I don't want to see that tarnished.

[Zhangliqun]

I do very, very low volume so for me it's obviously still part-time work. I have a few basic models but it's about 95% custom work so it's pretty rare when I have something on the shelf to ship out to a customer right away. (That 95% means I have to build the pu after receiving the order. I prefer to have customers really zero in on what they want, especially those who have a good working knowledge of pickups.)

I come from the point of view of a player who always wanted a pickup with this or that combination of specs that you just couldn't buy off a shelf and got sick of never being able to find what I want -- which is how I got into winding. Even though I don't make a lot of pickups, typical turnaround time is 2-4 weeks because I prefer to encourage customers to let their imaginations run wild (within reason) so I'm almost always doing custom work.

[mick]

+1 , I prefer to let the customer have lot's of input too , it's kind of cool for them being involved plus it's great experience for me interpreting what people want..

Mick

[madialex]

Ben, if you should happen to come out here, I won't bite, I promise.
I may seem like I'm coming off hard, am I am...but I only do it because I care. About you...and your customers. And the industry as a whole, and I don't want to see that tarnished.

Cool no biting, only if it infects me with more pickup knowledge I would like to get out there and visit you, Jason and at some point even possum. Not sure what a flight out there would even be. If I ever get rid of my POS wife or ex so to speak I may just get out that way. Long story there.........

[badstrat]

Ugghh, I’d love to remain silent on this, but I can’t, I’m way too involved to let the truth get blurry. I know Wolfe through email and common acquaintances. Some friends of mine have dealt with him and swear by him. In my personal dealings with Wolfe I have found him extremely knowledgeable, helpful and straight forward. Wolfe did not poach nor did he seek out Benny’s customers. One of Benny’s most disgruntled customers sought out Wolfe and kinda sucked him in to this web by sending Wolfe some Truetone pickups for repair. I know this from both parties; the disgruntled customer and I had a couple of email chats about the situation we both faced with Ben. The disgruntled customer, BD, was very angry and a bit over the top with that anger from reading some of his posts on another forum. I hate getting played for a sucker and ripped off too, but threats are completely out of line.

I know Ben from several previous dealings with him, some good, some so so, some very bad. Of all of the pickups I bought from Ben over the years about 50% were excellent, 30% were average, with about 20% being substandard. I recommended Truetone to several people right around the time his customer service went in the toilet, I ended up looking like a schmuck for it.

Ben’s customer service started off absolutely brilliant. It quickly deteriorated to average and declined further in to an absolute nightmare. He’d make all kinds of promises and meet none of them and when he jerked you around to the point where you were really pissed off he just stopped answering your emails. I’ve been lied to by Ben on more than one occasion.

He recovered from his first round of customer service nightmares briefly about a year ago and then quickly fell right back in to the exact same pattern and is currently still in that phase it seems (my first round of problems, delays and tall tales with Ben were in 2005...we ironed it out in early to mid 2006 and the same pattern returned in Nov 2006). He blames it all on his personal problems, most of which I know but out of respect to his privacy will not publish. We all have personal problems to some degree, some of us much worse than Ben. But we don’t all use them as a crutch to treat people poorly and jerk them around while wasting tons of their time. Personally I have sympathy for Ben’s personal issues, but that in no way gives him the right to impose his problems on his customers by wasting hours of their time, taking their money and not delivering pickups.

Ben is still not being completely, ahem, forthright with everyone here. When he tells you all he has not wound a pickup in 6 months, well that would mean the set he sent me in early November 2006 (just over 3 months ago) was made by magic pickup winding pixies ;-)

Just to touch on acceptable wind time, whatever you advertise as your wind time up front, whether it’s a week or two years is acceptable if you stick to it. Unfortunately Ben would tell people 2 weeks or a month and take 6 months or more, this is absolutely unacceptable and dishonest.

Ben, I hope you really are doing the best you are capable of to fix the situation you’ve ended up in, but it’s currently just not good enough. You need to shut down sales of any kind until you’ve filled all your backlogged orders. In fact I’d suggest pulling down your website and going in to “re-tooling” mode for 6 months to a year. You made some good pickups, and some bad pickups so you do have some potential. But you’re just not a great businessman and should probably think of taking on a partner to run the business while you wind pickups. Spending some serious time under an established pickup winder to “hone” your craft would likely not be a bad idea either. I truly don’t mean this as a shot, we all can learn and better ourselves.

All things being equal, I’d be much happier if I had never met Benny…and I’d have about 5 hours of my life back I’ve spent chasing him and being ignored by him for pickups I paid for and were either months behind their promised delivery or just not delivered (I hope you really are going to fix the latter Ben).

I did not post any of this to be vindictive, just to shed a little more light on the truth and as to why Wolfe may seem to be calling Ben out. Ben's not completely beyond hope, but Benny you've got to come clean with everyone, then get to work on fixing the damage you've done not only to your reputation but to small pickup winders as Wolfe mentioned. In business honesty is just as important as customer service and a good product. If your customers can't trust you...you're screwed.

[Zemaitis]

+1 I'll have to say, I have been given the run around... I was told the pickups were wound, but in storage, and they'd be out asap... that was over 6 months ago

The P-90's that Benny wound for me were great... and I really bragged them up... Then I asked for some overwound PAF's to match some originals I use to own... and you know what... I was going thru a hard time myself, but went out and collected aluminum cans to recycle so I could get 'em, could'nt wait to show them off to my friends, cause if the P-90's were great... the PAF's had to be as good or even better...

Needless to say, my buddies have stopped asking if they came in yet...

And I learned a costly lesson..... Sorry Wolfe and you others... but I shy away from the small builders. I did order some Tim's, but he dosn't take your money until your name comes up and he is ready to ship...

As for Benny, I hope you get it together, you wound a great pair of pickup for me... but, looks to be the only pair.... Hope you enjoyed my money...

[Ruel]

Well, in my opinion, it looks like everybody should be concerned more with undelivered promises instead of low-priced pickups out there. For me, bad reviews on several small winders will pull everybody down the drain, more so than low priced merchandize.

I don't know you Benn, I don't even come from your part of the world but hey, I pray that you pull out of this rut and get your act together. Seems like you got a lot of making up to do with your disgruntled customers. You can do it man!

[Stan H]

Here we go again...

Hang on guys, it's gonna get rough...again

[NightWinder]

LOL......Oh Shit!!!

[badstrat]

Hang on guys, it's gonna get rough...again

In all seriousness, why does it have to get rough? Truths have been told and pretty much everyone, myself included, is pulling for Ben to recover from this mess. Nobody is picking on Ben unfairly, this thread looks more like an intervention to me. Balls in your court Ben, do you want to fess up and get to work repairing this mess?

[Spence]

Rule Number 1 :

never instigate an offer to fix anyone else's pickups

Rule Number 2 :

never shoot a dying man in the back when he's in the same army

Rule Number 3 :

never! never! never masturbate when you look at yourself in the mirror

[Stan H]

In all seriousness, why does it have to get rough? Truths have been told and pretty much everyone, myself included, is pulling for Ben to recover from this mess. Nobody is picking on Ben unfairly, this thread looks more like an intervention to me. Balls in your court Ben, do you want to fess up and get to work repairing this mess?

I'm all for Ben getting his shit back together too. I've heard some very good things about his work...That being said, you apparently never saw the old forum.

[NightWinder]

Well said Spence. Short and sweet. Rule #3 has me stumped....I thought.....

[Zhangliqun]

I don't know Ben from a hole in the ground and I have nothing to say about him one way or the other.

But I remember the slugfest at the old forum and one thing I know for sure is the "BD" guy, apparently a dissatisfied customer, was just flat-out nuts. The guy was just a deranged obsessive. For one thing, there was no aspect of his beef with Ben (or anyone else) that he wouldn't turn into a screaming rant about Bush. He would screech and rip and 'roid rage over the $50 refund he wanted. He even jumped all over Wolfe and a few others who intervened, if I recall correctly, and we all took turns slapping him down because he was just so waaaay out of line.

Even if every bad thing said about Ben's work is true, nobody deserves a customer like that.

[Spence]

For one thing, there was no aspect of his beef with Ben (or anyone else) that he wouldn't turn into a screaming rant about Bush.


I'm starting to think BD is the brother Possum doesn't talk about