Ethical Locators Update

[Beer980]

Here is an email I got from Ethical today.

Dear Customer,

This is a broadcast email to all customers to update on what is going on, why we have found ourselves in a mess and how long it will take to fix.

first what is going on and how did we get in this mess.

Some of you are aware that life changed radically for Ethical Locators when we were required by the State of Washington to pay what is mockingly called a "living wage" minimum wage to locators who should (and we have now proven can only ) be commisioned sales people. We began to pay $9 an hour and soon found no shortage of people willing to come to work for us at that rate.

At first everything looked wonderful as the new people in their massive numbers began pouring out "locations" by the dozens. We began to percieve at this rate we would have no back log and could litterally start any customer's project within days of signing them up, making us the only locating company I have ever heard of that could do that.

So we opened the floodgates and signed up dozens of new customers. Why not? We were producing over 70 locations a day weren't we? It turns out that we weren't. Normally if I send a customer 10 locations I can expect that customer to install somewhere between 3 at the worst and 8 at best. In December and January our customers installed one location for every 10 we sent out. The bad news is it took weeks to detect this dismal result because many customers with the holidays upon them weren't getting out to places we sent them to right away.

So, here I am with a customer list 50 names long at least half of whom have locations they have paid for and have not yet recieved when the boom finally hits. I have been paid thousands of dollars in deposits to secure locations, "locators" have been paid their "living wage" out of these deposits to serve these customers and customers have received barely 1/3 the locations that were already paid for from these "employees" who no longer had incentive to ensure their work was installable. the bottom line is this, locators got paid to deliver about 200 locations but produced only about 70 and I am holding the bag for the rest with not a penny left to do anything about it.

I have been trying to get help to get these locations taken care of but who will help me locate when they are not going to get paid to do it? Certainly not the people who already got paid. I have no idea where any of them are but they certainly aren't available to help.

In the meantime I have about 3 dozen customers who are understandably furious. the rest are not so mad because they at least got enough locations to cover their deposits. The catch 22 is i have to secure all of these locations myself because their is no one with enough generosity to help me. I have one guy helping me do my post paid work but he isn't free and he isn't cheap so he can't and won't help on the prepaid stuff. In the mean time I have to eat and pay child support.

In the past few weeks I have been desperately trying to trickle out a few locations here and there to as broad a group as I possibly can. It hasn't been working because for some people the trickle wasn't fast enough and for some people the trickle didn't quite reach them and with no locations at all they are furious.

In the meantime I have no money coming in to pay the rent, to pay Laura and Ashley or to keep the phones on. It all came to a head last week. Our phones were shut off, we were evicted and every bill collector in the world is trying to find my address. (Right now I don't have one and am lucky to have friends and family willing to put up with me until I can sort all this out)

I have been in such a daze I have barely achieved anything at the level I am used to. Its hard to be productive when you have dozens of people putting pressure on you to do something for them or pay them money all of which is demanded to happen "today". Its not just customers, I have employees demanding back pay, I have service providers presenting me with bills I can't pay and a land lord quietly wondering if he will ever get the rent he evicted me for not paying.

So where do we go from here? I want to stress to everyone that if you paid me for a location you will receive it. I will be doing all the locating myself in an attempt to maintain some portion of my reputation but it will not all be done tomorrow. There is just too much to do and by definition prepaid means there is no new funds coming in when it is done.

I can not refund anyone unless they are willing to wait a long-long time. My only hope is to work my way out of this hole but I have to do it differently than I have been.

First, I can't communicate with anyone on the phone right now unless I call you. For weeks I have been getting slammed all day long from people wanting updates and this does three harmful things: 1) It keeps me off the phone getting new locations and 2)it keeps me in such emotional turmoil that I can't possibly get as many locations as i would under normal circumstances. 3) It has me talking to so many people at once I can't keep up with everything I am trying to do or am promising to do.

The old saying is true that a desperate salesman is a dead salesman.

Second, I can not work several customers at a time anymore. I need to concentrate on one or two at a time so I can actually begin to clear people off my plate. I can probably complete 3-6 customers a week if I handle them one at a time but I am not completing any trying to cover dozens all at once. thats making the stress and sense of desperation worse.

Third, I will need to do a few post paid locations while I am working this massive prepaid mountain down because I have to continue to eat and meet my child support obligations. I will also need to get my cell phone paid up and turned back on and have money to travel to field jobs. But I can not do mountains of post paid work because if I do it will take me longer to get through all the prepaid work (which will result in even more people wanting refunds and hounding me for money I can't pay). This is the biggest reason it is impossible to refund anyone right now.

Fourth, I will be doing some of this work in person. I have accepted a few post paid field jobs because they pay better and make it possible for me to keep hacking away at all this work I still owe.

Finally, I need help. I need customers to realize that I am aware of how bad this is and that I am doing the best one man can do for a task that properly should be done by half a dozen or more. I need customers to be patient because I will not leave anyone unserviced but there is no way for me to get help with this until I can find a way to pay that help. I need the possibility of some post paid work that can be done in person that will help me to finance all of this.

I will be working a few hours a day on the phone and the rest in person.

Right now I have plans to go to Several Central Time states in April and the Eastern time zone and Canada in May. I can use more work in or near those states if anyone has it to help keep me going. If you have a few extra machines beyond what you already paid for and would be willing to let me do the work I owe you in person and the extra work to finance the trip you will probably find your project would be done sooner.

I am a field locator and can get a dozen locations a day in person for most items so its definitely faster to do it in person. But there is no way to do it without some new work to finance the effort and keep me alive in the meantime. And if anyone has a spare couch, corner or even a tent I can sleep in while I work it greatly reduces the number of post paid machines I need to keep the whole thing doable. Provided I have the funds to get to you I am even willing to complete an entire pre-paid project in person if I don't have to worry about food and shelter while I am there.

I want to stress again. I will not abandon anyone's project. it will take me weeks to get all this done but I will get it done and live the life of a vagabond while I am at it. If there is anyone who thinks I will be living comfortably during all of this I hope those of you who will meet me in person in coming weeks will testify on my behalf.

In the meantime let us all communicate by this email address.

Thanks and my next update will be an expected production schedule so you will have a realistic idea of what to expect. I expect to hear from everyone but I could really use some emails from customers willing to have me come out to them under the conditions I have mentioned above.

Robert Frederiksen CEO-Ethical Locators

[caserri]

All I can say is.... WOW!

Very interesting email. I must say that I too am on that prepaid list but I didn't get this email.

Steve

[T BIRD]

Whew! What a post that was.

[Beer980]

I used them to locate my first machine for me and I still have that location. It is my 2nd best one still to this day. Sorry about the length but I just did a copy and paste. Another victim of success, let's hope he can dig out of this hole to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

[g_r_vending]

What was the email address, If he is in my area one day I could throw him some new business and therefore some cash. I still need 15-20 more located.

[T BIRD]

I can really use him also. I have machines and racks to place.

[Beer980]

ethicallocator@hotmail.com

[davidsurvz]

I got this email too. I have used Ethical on and off since I started things back up with a route. I have always gotten good service from Ethical and Robert was very good to work with and very responsive. #1 #3 and #4 of my top 5 locations came from Ethical. #2 and #5 came from Kickstart.

[tooldini]

He went BYE BYE again and doesn't return e-mails  LOL  glad I didn't have to pay

[lurtsman]

Interesting case. I bought a few post-pay locations from him,  and that worked out well. KS is about the only place I feel comfortable giving my money before the service is provided. The interesting case here is that he hired on so many locators so quickly. It kept him from having an opportunity to realize his "locating staff" was being lazy and not producing the locations they were paid for.  I would love to hear from Kickstart how he manages to run such a large operation. Clearly it will have to do with paying for locations on commission only. I am shifting away from the charity model, however I still have many machines that need locations and will buy them as quickly as KS places them. (They have completely flooded the zipcodes for about 20 miles from me. They had a price where I could get a reasonable ROI.) I doubt KS will divulge their business strategies for handling the business. It's one of his strongest advantages.The other is that he responds to e-mail in a timely fashion and takes on losses to retain happy customers.

KS, if you're reading this, will you comment on how things should have been done? If you prefer not to divulge, I think we will all understand.

[whaletail116]

Are you positive that he hired on additional locators?  I had a short stint with Robert and it seemed as if he was doing all his locating himself.  He sent me four locations in a very timely manner but then disappeared.  The locations were shoddy to say the least.  Very remote with very few employees.  I accepted one (the last he sent) only because I felt bad turning down each of the first three.  It was about a month or so ago and I plan on checking it sometime this week.

Other than his shoddy locations, he seemed to be a very nice guy. 

[sherlock]

I think there is some confusion whaletail.

All but the last couple of posts above are over a year old.

I am thinking those last couple of posts here are mixing up the original Ethical and the re-launched Ethical... the original subject of this thread was BEFORE the first collapse of Ethical.

But, yes, that re-launch was "interesting".

I got several locations from the re-launched Ethical.

All of them post-pay so there was little (if any) risk on my part.

The locations I got from him before he started to "re-fail" were all as good or better than what KSL has gotten me, so I have no complaints either way.

My only issue with him, is that the "re-failure" wasn't announced.

I guess he felt it was OK to just leave people hanging because all locations were post-pay.

But, I disagree...it would have been nice to get a notice of some kind since many of us were still waiting for locations from him.

Still, a couple of my best charity locations are thanks to the re-launched Ethical.

[sbishop]

..."re-fail"

LOL he said "Re-Fail"

I wonder if there will be a RE-RE-Launch?