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Gotway factory communication problems


9Bot1

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These transactions sound like too much hassle for what it's worth.  When I bought my second EUC for an upgrade, who I bought it from and the ease of transaction and level of support and service counted a lot in my choice.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Adel said:

These transactions sound like too much hassle for what it's worth.  When I bought my second EUC for an upgrade, who I bought it from and the ease of transaction and level of support and service counted a lot in my choice.

Agreed, and I did not mean to advertise that option to anybody else. My reasons: local dealers felt unable in 2015 to import a Mten for me and in summer of 2016 I was too impatient to wait for the newly released Msuper V3 for another 3 month to become available through local dealers (although I can't argue their sense of reason to shy away from buying first production run wheels). Bought my Msuper V1 and mcm4 from http://www.electro-sport.de and those were the most painless transactions ever :thumbup:.

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:thumbup: For painless transactions! :popcorn:

I hope everything gets sorted.  Gotway look like a major player right now, they don't want to fall back due to something like this.  US sales could take off soon with the designs maturing in aesthetics and safety.  

 

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@Tilmann

As always from you:

great post..great input..especially the point with the "rivalry" between the two woman...i also sensed that in some messages from one of them....

Point is that all that "china-boss-2woman-language" problem can not be run on a customers back.

If they are not able to proper manage a bank account or direct delivery to customer...they just should not do it! (i know even as it is christmas..those wishes will not happen :-) )

Must be horrible for 9bot1...they have his money since one month, all others received their wheels, he did not even get an answer anymore?

 Btw: He copied the bank transaction dates from another group buyer where all went well...so i think that that one word can not be the point...

 

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21 hours ago, Tilmann said:

Hi @9Bot1, I can relate to your irritation - been there twice. I purchased a Mten from Jane in summer 2015 and a Msuper V3 from Linnea in August 2016. 

I paid for those purchases via Western Union into Lin's personal account. Both transactions went through a phase of 10 days each, when WU insisted the payment was completed and Jane or Linnea would not confirm receiving it. Instead, I got all sorts of confusing questions and requests. In both cases, the successful credit to Lin's account was confirmed after about 10 days and the respective wheel was shipped shortly after. With both shipments, GotWay prepaid EU import duties and taxes, so I incurred no additional cost on delivery.

Comparing your bank slips, I noticed one difference: apparently, your payment was addressed to CHINA CONSTRUCTION BANK, BEIJING. I was specifically instructed to address the payment to CHINA CONSTRUCTION BANK, GUANGDONG BRANCH (postal address: Tianhe District, Guangzhou Pearl River New Town, China on the road south power dispatch communications building 1).

I visited GotWay in May 2016 in Shenzhen and met Linnea and Lin in person (Jane was not in the office at the time).

So much for my knowledge of facts, all the rest is second hand info or speculation:

  • It does not seem to be unusual for smaller Chinese companies to use the bosses personal account for payments. Many such small enterprises don't have a corporate account. Neither Jane nor Linnea seem authorized to make inquiries regarding this account. If for any reason Lin is not available or "busy",  you're stalled.
  • While Linnea is in good command of english, I don't think Lin is. On my visit, the conversation with him did not go far beyond "Hello". When corresponding with Jane or Linnea I doubt, the sense of urgency I put into my requests to clearify the transaction on the receiving side ever made it to Lin. My impression: "respect for the boss" makes it inappropriate for an employee to push a superior into action.
  • Jane has been exclusively in charge of GotWay's  international market and customer communication throughout 2015, Linnea joined GW in April 2016 having worked for an EUC dealership before. I sense a certain rivalry between the two. As nobody else in the company seems to speak english, the resulting contradicting messages to the outside world are likely not realized and nobody interferes. I don't think that's strategy, but two uncoordinated individuals with different personalities and different approaches to business.
  • Apparently, there is quite a bit of bureaucratic red tape in the Chinese banking system. That includes restrictions to receive payments in foreign currency. A lot of the delay with my second payment seemed to be caused by the fact, that I sent a Euro amount, but the credit to Lin's account needed to be in RMB. In the end, it probably just took one phone call from Lin to authorize the currency change and the money was credited. Before that, we went through all sorts of drama to change the currency from my end or reverse the transaction and initiate a new payment in RMB (all impossible with completed WU transactions).

Bottom line: I don't think, GW is intentionally trying to cheat you. They're just incredibly onerous to deal with and probably don't even realize the amount of frustration and loss of credibility this causes with their international customers. 

What can you do? I am optimistic, your payment can be cleared from the receiving side if the required requests are made to CHINA CONSTRUCTION BANK even though your payment may have ended in the wrong branch office. Only Lin can initiate this. I believe your best option would be to send him an email in Mandarin with all the details and urge him to act appropriately. Better than google translate would be some translation help by a fellow wheelie who speaks Chinese (there are some in this forum). I think, Lin's email is donald_gotway@kebye.com, but I'm not 100% sure. (Edit: Thanks to @Cloud for correcting me on that one)

If you want to compare account no. and SWIFT codes with my payments, please PM me your regular email address an I will send those infos to you (the data is in .png format and I don't know how to send that by PM).

Cheers & good luck!

PS: I had some trouble with a flawed battery in the Mten purchased from Jane. GW paid in full for a repair in country through 1RadWerkstatt under warranty!

Thank you for the detailed info! I used the swift code they gave me so I'm sure it's the correct branch, but you never know. I called Lin yesterday and will call again today and send an e-mail.

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Just wanted to give you guys an update! I just spoke with Lin and he found the payment. He was looking for a payment for $1,411 USD, which is what I sent from Bank of America but the amount deposited on 11/17 by China Construction Bank was $1,333. They're sending me an extra PCB, and tube and tire for the delay. So I'm very happy about that! Will post an update when I receive everything.

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3 minutes ago, 9Bot1 said:

Just wanted to give you guys an update! I just spoke with Lin and he found the payment. He was looking for a payment for $1,411 USD, which is what I sent from Bank of America but the amount deposited on 11/17 by China Construction Bank was $1,333. They're sending me an extra PCB, and tube and tire for the delay. So I'm very happy about that! Will post an update when I receive everything.

Congrats, it would be even great if you get it by Xmas :)

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51 minutes ago, 9Bot1 said:

Just wanted to give you guys an update! I just spoke with Lin and he found the payment. He was looking for a payment for $1,411 USD, which is what I sent from Bank of America but the amount deposited on 11/17 by China Construction Bank was $1,333. They're sending me an extra PCB, and tube and tire for the delay. So I'm very happy about that! Will post an update when I receive everything.

Great news, glad to hear it!

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Well, since all is fine after all, and after much anger and accusations have been expressed by people with competitor-sounding nicknames such as "9bot1" and "KingSong69", it may be fair to edit the title of the topic to something like "Gotway factory ripped me off (Edit: Didn't, after all)".

Because it's clearly not their fault, and they made up for the confusion.

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I would say adding "- Resolved" to the title would be appropriate. There was still poor communication, and these things should not take a month to resolve and so much leg work from the buyer. This thread may have helped get attention to the matter  

Gotway is a respected manufacturer, and is definetly appreciated by many. 

Great to hear it appears to be resolved and shipping can commence. 

 

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8 minutes ago, FreeRide said:

I would say adding "- Resolved" to the title would be appropriate. There was still poor communication, and these things should not take a month to resolve and so much leg work from the buyer. This thread may have helped get attention to the matter

True, it's not great that, as it seems, 9bot1 had to do all the digging by himself. Still, it's really not a ripp off, and poor communication shouldn't be qualified as such.

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40 minutes ago, Reivax said:

Well, since all is fine after all, and after much anger and accusations have been expressed by people with competitor-sounding nicknames such as "9bot1" and "KingSong69", it may be fair to edit the title of the topic to something like "Gotway factory ripped me off (Edit: Didn't, after all)".

Because it's clearly not their fault, and they made up for the confusion.

Just for the fact: i am bashing KS as well if they are doing such shit...

Until last week i had that in my signature, that my name has nothing to do with the company. But no need to put it back as SOME people, take their assumptions, by whatever is standing there (owning Gw) or on the left side of the board, hah?  it would be very hard to post 1200 posts and that reps by just bashing Gotway or other brands!

 

Beside that i find i totally normal to choose Euc names in an Euc forum....

So before taking any totally wrong assumptions ....take some more informations!

Btw: reivax is standing for a shoecreme in my country! you are Welcome!

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1 minute ago, KingSong69 said:

So before taking any totally wrong assumptions ....take some more informations!

 

I don't know where you saw assumptions. I just said your nickname sounds like a gotway competitor, that's a fact.

It's also a fact that if you felt at some point that you had to add a kind of disclaimer in your signature, it's that you are aware it may have people wonder.

So, you chose it, now deal with it :)

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Cool it guys - this ain't a "Jumping to conclusions" contest :popcorn: Fell guilty of that myself (http://forum.electricunicycle.org/topic/827-worried-my-gotway-mten-purchase-may-go-sour/#comment-8124) and stood corrected.

Let's try to analyze a bit more systematically, what we learned from this incident:

To me, there are 3 major categories for manufacturers to differentiate themselves:

  1. Product innovators - GotWay clearly positions its brand here,
  2. Price competitors - search "electric unicycle" on aliexpress and you find gazillions of those. A TG-T3 still delivers impressive value for its price (<$200),
  3. Customer service - I don't find any manufacturers in this category yet. So distributors like @Jason McNeil and Speedyfeet are struggling to make up for manufacturers shortfalls.

I believe, the recipe for success is to stand out in one of those categories without falling below average too much in the other two. While I love GotWay for leading the pack with performance EUCs and keeping the price affordable, they are at risk to drop below acceptable standards in the "Customer orientation" category on a regular basis. 

I think it is legitimate for a community like ours, to provide that feedback to those, who make our wheels and to interested "newbies" to make the right choice for starting their EUC experiment with the best chance for a joyful, satisfying and lasting experience. That includes admitting to myself, that striking the best deal in all three categories at once is not a very realistic expectation.

 

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6 minutes ago, Tilmann said:

I think it is legitimate for a community like ours, to provide that feedback to those, who make our wheels and to interested "newbies" to make the right choice

Very true, but you know how the forum works: the titles are read first, obviously, and sometimes readers stop at titles. Then when a discussion has many messages, many readers don't read it all.

It's extremely frequent in technical forums that once an issue has been sorted out the title is edited to reflect this.

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28 minutes ago, Reivax said:

Very true, but you know how the forum works: the titles are read first, obviously, and sometimes readers stop at titles. Then when a discussion has many messages, many readers don't read it all.

It's extremely frequent in technical forums that once an issue has been sorted out the title is edited to reflect this.

Well, yes, so? Those, who stop their research at the headlines will probably walk away with the impression "GotWay is not for me". Even as a GW fanboy, I'd say: good! For the time being, GW wheels make a poor choice for uninformed buyers. They could either break their neck speeding beyond reason or find their wheel disintegrating under their feet when they happened to buy a first batch model of a new product :pooping: 

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31 minutes ago, Tilmann said:

GW wheels make a poor choice for uninformed buyers

This is a ridiculous statement. ANY wheel is a poor choice for uninformed buyers.

Beside, my request for editing the title is precisely to help buyers not get wrong information, so I don't see why you would object, unless you just like to contradict.

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6 minutes ago, Mono said:

+1 for editing the title to better reflect the current/final state of events.

How do I do that??? Tried it with my historic thread (http://forum.electricunicycle.org/topic/827-worried-my-gotway-mten-purchase-may-go-sour/#comment-8124) and failed miserably. Is it even possible for a mere mortal forum member to edit a thread title?

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5 minutes ago, Tilmann said:

Is it even possible for a mere mortal forum member to edit a thread title?

Even I could do it on my thread... I edited the first post, then saved :

But may be there is a delay after which it's no longer possible ? 

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