EDDIE BAUER THE TRUTH

[royalforest]

T Bird Thanks for your response, it means alot to me! I hope I get the same response from everyone in this forum.

[royalforest]

I wonder why Eddie is not responding to the fact we are past 90 days and not one soda machine is making $50.00 a week. Eddie, can you please explain? Can you also explain why you have $19,500.00 of my money and I only have approx 50 locations underperforming locations? Where are the other 80 locations?

[eddiebauervending]

I wonder why Eddie is not responding to the fact we are past 90 days and not one soda machine is making $50.00 a week. Can you please explain? Can you also explain why you have $19,500.00 of my money and I only have approx 50 locations underperforming locations? Where is the other 80????

last post to you rc

because you are a liar and a con man and am I really suppose to believe what s performing and not from you...yeah right.

see ya in court bro you owe me 2500 for the last 17 locations

oh and thanks to the guys who chimed in for me gvend sherlock and the others appreciate it

[royalforest]

Even though the attorney got the money back to me for the missing 80 locations, I will still come after you because you did not pay. The bank gave me the money not you. I will look to file a law suit because I do not have one making over $50.00 and for the $75,000.00 plus loss you have caused me.

[T BIRD]

why not?

If you ask 10 of my customers on here right now 8 would use my services again... no prob.

so why not?

read this full thread and see how he lies and then changes his story and then tell me again "IMO" why steve should not allow me to advertise on here?

the smart men that I know on this planet hear the  whole story and use a little caution before plurting out johny t

Because you are way too controversial IMO.  Whether you stand your ground or not is irrelevant to me.

Its amazing how screwed up this part of the industry is.  I gotta give Kickstart some props for doing a very decent job it seems since he started his locating company.

[vendy]

IMO...........VENDiscuss should not advertise this guy's services on here.

i think it says something about the admin that they allow threads like this to remain even thoough it is negative towards an advertiser.

ballsy i think.

[agrantha]

Kelly is right in a since that Royal Forest is super naive to say the least.  But I cannot speak highly of Eddie either because he should have slowed this guy down and helped him collect his brain.  He should had done a few locations at a time and checked on their progress.  Lets face it, you are going to get some weak (mentally, physically, emotionally, etc.) customers and, Eddie, it is your job to give them consultation.  Royal Forest was way in over his head from the beginning.

In this case, T-Bird and Kelly are right.  Some improvement is needed by both parties.  Do I believe Eddie does a great job?  Yes, in terms of locating.  I am sure he could help me find great locations.  Nevertheless, I am not going to put in a 10 location order, not to mention the amount Royal Forest ordered.

I do feel sorry for Royal Forest because his mental incompetency is scary.  I would hope this board could shift the discussion toward salvaging his life…not to mention vending.

Royal Forest

There is a lot of knowledge on this board.  Slow down, take a deep breath.  It is obvious who the successful vendors are on this board.  Consume their common sense on a regular basis and you will be fine.

I think you and Eddie have learned from this ordeal.  Instead of taking him to court and throwing away lots of money, a better alternative may be to reconcile rationally.  Admit to him you did not know what you were doing and he may be likely to help you.  Ask Eddie’s customers the best way to communicate with him.  If Eddie is willing to spend as much time on this board as he has, I am quite sure he is willing to be reasonable.

Eddie

I feel a little sorry for you too because somehow I think taking advantage of this ignorant soul will come back to haunt you.

[G-man422]

i think it says something about the admin that they allow threads like this to remain even thoough it is negative towards an advertiser.

ballsy i think.

     It has been Steve's policy from the beginning to not censor threads or make them "disappear" if they are not popular.  Granted, we cannot allow slandering or foul language, but for the most part  the admin and mods do not go on "power trips" and close threads left and right that they consider controversial.

     This thread is not necessarily negative toward Eddie.  Afterall, it gives him a chance to explain what has happened in this transaction, as well as letting us see that there are always challenges in this industry.

[Faith Vending]

Another great reason to self locate....

[NinnJinn]

This is going to be another top 10 read and replied to thread!

[dperry]

I wonder why Eddie is not responding to the fact we are past 90 days and not one soda machine is making $50.00 a week. Eddie, can you please explain? Can you also explain why you have $19,500.00 of my money and I only have approx 50 locations underperforming locations? Where are the other 80 locations?

It's simple to me.  He cut you off when you started moving machines before the first 30 days, as per the contract that even you acknowledged.

It's reasons like this that it's nice to have a paper trail, or even an email trail.  That would help soooo much with the "he said-he said" problem.

[mizugori]

Okay, here's my $0.02

First, I have read through all the posts so far, and I heard both sides of the story. Here are my thoughts:

1.) I simply cannot possibly fathom how someone with basically no vending experience, would go out and just buy hundreds of expensive full-line machines, rent a friggin warehouse to store them, and hire employees....?? This just makes no sense. None at all. I don't care if eddie told you there was a pot of gold waiting for you and all you had to do was follow him to the end of the rainbow, YOU and YOU alone are responsible for using your head to make reasonable business decisions. It sounds like greed made you bet the farm on this one; you wanted to become a millionaire overnight.

2.) You changed your story a bit in the middle. As I said, at first you made a big sensational headline to get people's attention, then didn't post for hours. Then when you finally explain the story, you pretty much said that he 'charged your credit card' behind your back for an extra 6k, then a little while later the story becomes 'well actually he sent me an invoice for another 40 locations and I paid it'

3.) On the one hand I can see why people keep saying that eddie should perhaps have throttled this guy, that is to say he should have advised him to slow down a bit, and take it one step at a time. But come on, this is a business! Eddie is in the business of selling vending machine locations. If you went to staples and said I need 200 computer chairs, because I'm opening up 10 new offices, do you think the salesman would say woah now, why don't you just buy 10 chairs first and see how it goes, wouldn't want you to get in over your head there, son! NO. It is no one else's responsibility but your own to manage your business responsibly.

Royal makes a lot of conjecture and tries to put words into eddie's mouth, and several times he says what eddie was thinking. This is part of what makes me feel like he's lying his golpher off. "He [Eddie] thought if I filed a lawsuit it would be expensive and take a long time that I would have a long struggle." Really? How do you know he thought that?

Lastly, you're not struggling to stay alive because of any locator, you're struggling to stay alive because you bought hundreds of vending machines, rented a damned warehouse, hired 3 employees, and thought you could do something that takes the pro vendors years, in a matter of months. And with basically no experience. Where was your exit strategy?? Did you even have one? Does it occur to you that if eddie had been hit by a bus and thus could not get you locations, you would be in the same exact state of financial ruin??

It sounds like what really happened is this guy was anxious and started checking how much the machines were making, realized they weren't pulling the numbers he was counting on, so he started screwing around moving them before the agreed upon trial period for each location was up. And when Eddie found that out he cut him off. As far as whether he paid for more locations than he received, or received more locations than he paid for, that should be something that can be determined easily enough and sorted out. But if you notice, royal isn't focusing on that anymore, now he's trying to focus on saying the locations he has aren't performing as promised. That makes me think he did get way more locations than he's saying.

I don't love the way eddie runs his business and I have openly criticized him in other threads, but in this case, I really don't believe he's the crook. I think royal went crazy thinking he could make a fortune operating soda machines and expected it to happen overnight, and made a lot of reckless decisions and squandered his money, and now that his capital has dried up he's looking for someone to blame.

[dperry]

I don't love the way eddie runs his business and I have openly criticized him in other threads, but in this case, I really don't believe he's the crook. I think royal went crazy thinking he could make a fortune operating soda machines and expected it to happen overnight, and made a lot of reckless decisions and squandered his money, and now that his capital has dried up he's looking for someone to blame.

Wow!  Thank you.  You pretty much said what I was thinking.  I think that pinning all his troubles on Eddie is a loser thing to do.  It always amazes me that people forget there are always at least two sides to every arguement.  Look at the title of this thread..... EDDIE BAUER THE TRUTH... but it seems like there is very little truth there.

[will.vend]

I would like to thank eddie and royalforest for putting my life in perspective.

[JPVendCo.]

I personally dont see how you could accidentally pay 6k twice. on the other hand, I also don't see how eddie didn't notice a gross overpayment as well.

I have stated many times that I am not impressed with eddie. But dealing with anyone means looking out for yourself and your business.

I hope you get it all figured out.

[royalforest]

I did not move machines in the first month unless the owner wanted the machine out. That may of happened once.

[royalforest]

Bottom line is I am down about 75k. I only received about 50 locations, paid for 130. I made a big mistake but will make the money back. I currently own 4 businesses so I been through turbulent times before, and I will figure a way to turn this around. I was posting so I can give you a heads up about who you were dealing with. He promised he would get me 4 locations a day (and was doing that in the first week or so) so I figured I would have my route going within 2 months. I was not moving any machines during the first month, I was trying to get the new ones out. Total to date after a year in business I may of moved 5 machines of the 50 placed.  The only locations doing great is the one my mom got me, and a small route I purchased.  Do you know what it would cost a vendor if he had to relocate 130 machines, that is why I had to start picking and choosing what to locate. Good luck in what decision you make with Eddie. It is about principle and learning about how another locator took advantage of a newbie. The good news is I stopped placing these stand alone accounts still have 80k left in the business from the 300k borrowed and I am taking my vending business into a different direction looking to recover the 75k and become a profitable vending company.

[eddiebauervending]

Kelly is right in a since that Royal Forest is super naive to say the least.  But I cannot speak highly of Eddie either because he should have slowed this guy down and helped him collect his brain.  He should had done a few locations at a time and checked on their progress.  Lets face it, you are going to get some weak (mentally, physically, emotionally, etc.) customers and, Eddie, it is your job to give them consultation.  Royal Forest was way in over his head from the beginning.

In this case, T-Bird and Kelly are right.  Some improvement is needed by both parties.  Do I believe Eddie does a great job?  Yes, in terms of locating.  I am sure he could help me find great locations.  Nevertheless, I am not going to put in a 10 location order, not to mention the amount Royal Forest ordered.

I do feel sorry for Royal Forest because his mental incompetency is scary.  I would hope this board could shift the discussion toward salvaging his life…not to mention vending.

Royal Forest

There is a lot of knowledge on this board.  Slow down, take a deep breath.  It is obvious who the successful vendors are on this board.  Consume their common sense on a regular basis and you will be fine.

I think you and Eddie have learned from this ordeal.  Instead of taking him to court and throwing away lots of money, a better alternative may be to reconcile rationally.  Admit to him you did not know what you were doing and he may be likely to help you.  Ask Eddie’s customers the best way to communicate with him.  If Eddie is willing to spend as much time on this board as he has, I am quite sure he is willing to be reasonable.

Eddie

I feel a little sorry for you too because somehow I think taking advantage of this ignorant soul will come back to haunt you.

I wish you would quit saying I took advantage of him. I had my whole staff around the clock working for this guy.

We over filled his order and I was just starting in the full line vending my self. He was a newbie a couple of yrs ago not at the time

DONT feel sorry for me ...my side of the street is clean. I am very aware of the spritual laws of this universe and the power that runs it and how it operates.

He got his money back through his paypal scam. So now he has his locations and his money. My business ins worked out with paypal.

pay pal has no defense,NO DEFENSE NO MATTER WHAT... AT ALL for crdit card reversals. If you have amx  they give you three reversals no questions asked. Other banks card do to. HE KNew this and when he got himself into the financial trouble he is in NOW I was the first target

This guy is not an idiot he is a scammer and waited untill the end of our run, when he had the max to gain and did the reversal.

google pay reversal scams THIS GUY KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING ALL ALONG.

It happend to a friend of my parents ...sold a car on ebay,guy paid with credit card through paypal brought the car back LA and did a reversal. Not only did he get his money back but also got to keep the car.

I paid out thousands paid in commisions to the guys who helped find his locations.

got this guy his locations and he has hismoney back and the locations.

OH there will be some haunting going on but it wont be around my house

[eddiebauervending]

Okay, here's my $0.02

First, I have read through all the posts so far, and I heard both sides of the story. Here are my thoughts:

1.) I simply cannot possibly fathom how someone with basically no vending experience, would go out and just buy hundreds of expensive full-line machines, rent a friggin warehouse to store them, and hire employees....?? This just makes no sense. None at all. I don't care if eddie told you there was a pot of gold waiting for you and all you had to do was follow him to the end of the rainbow, YOU and YOU alone are responsible for using your head to make reasonable business decisions. It sounds like greed made you bet the farm on this one; you wanted to become a millionaire overnight.

2.) You changed your story a bit in the middle. As I said, at first you made a big sensational headline to get people's attention, then didn't post for hours. Then when you finally explain the story, you pretty much said that he 'charged your credit card' behind your back for an extra 6k, then a little while later the story becomes 'well actually he sent me an invoice for another 40 locations and I paid it'

3.) On the one hand I can see why people keep saying that eddie should perhaps have throttled this guy, that is to say he should have advised him to slow down a bit, and take it one step at a time. But come on, this is a business! Eddie is in the business of selling vending machine locations. If you went to staples and said I need 200 computer chairs, because I'm opening up 10 new offices, do you think the salesman would say woah now, why don't you just buy 10 chairs first and see how it goes, wouldn't want you to get in over your head there, son! NO. It is no one else's responsibility but your own to manage your business responsibly.

Royal makes a lot of conjecture and tries to put words into eddie's mouth, and several times he says what eddie was thinking. This is part of what makes me feel like he's lying his golpher off. "He [Eddie] thought if I filed a lawsuit it would be expensive and take a long time that I would have a long struggle." Really? How do you know he thought that?

Lastly, you're not struggling to stay alive because of any locator, you're struggling to stay alive because you bought hundreds of vending machines, rented a damned warehouse, hired 3 employees, and thought you could do something that takes the pro vendors years, in a matter of months. And with basically no experience. Where was your exit strategy?? Did you even have one? Does it occur to you that if eddie had been hit by a bus and thus could not get you locations, you would be in the same exact state of financial ruin??

It sounds like what really happened is this guy was anxious and started checking how much the machines were making, realized they weren't pulling the numbers he was counting on, so he started screwing around moving them before the agreed upon trial period for each location was up. And when Eddie found that out he cut him off. As far as whether he paid for more locations than he received, or received more locations than he paid for, that should be something that can be determined easily enough and sorted out. But if you notice, royal isn't focusing on that anymore, now he's trying to focus on saying the locations he has aren't performing as promised. That makes me think he did get way more locations than he's saying.

I don't love the way eddie runs his business and I have openly criticized him in other threads, but in this case, I really don't believe he's the crook. I think royal went crazy thinking he could make a fortune operating soda machines and expected it to happen overnight, and made a lot of reckless decisions and squandered his money, and now that his capital has dried up he's looking for someone to blame.

AMEN andTHE END

Thanks man I'm glad some one else said it

[royalforest]

Eddie

Why don't you ask Bev at Blue moose to give the truth. After all she tried to help me get these machines out from the list you sent her. She had the list of locations you were trying to dump on me. One employee or 4 employees no traffic, what about the few florist shops you demanded I put a machine in or what about the 5 locations that was over 2 hours away from my warehouse. Do you think the 5 bucks I would collect would of covered the gas, nevertheless they were in the ghetto.

[alyssamma]

Wow, I was going to just lurk on this, but the last post made me have to say something.

First, for the record, Eddie and I have had our differences. When he first came to the forum, I jumped on him maybe more than anyone. Eventually we settled our differences and I used him as a locator.

The fact that I used him as a locator and had issues with him initially I think make me qualified to speak to this topic.

I personally wasn't satisfied at all with the locations Eddie got me. Several when I got there weren't approved by the right people and got rejected. Others were just dogs and didn't make anything. However, to Eddie's credit, he stuck with it and gave me replacements when requested.

Eventually, I realized I was spending too much time on unapproved locs and the approved ones weren't making any money. I decided to cut my losses and ask Eddie for a refund for the unplaced locs so far.

Eddie did this without any issues and we parted ways peacefully.

Since then I have seen many "I hate Eddie" posts.  Some seem to have a point, others don't. As someone earlier (Jax?) said, at least Eddie stands in here and defends himself. Many locators don't do that.

In this case, Royal, since you run 4 other businesses, I can't believe you made the mistakes you did. If you were a complete noob to running a business, as many vendors are, I can kind of understand. But you have experience.

As several here have pointed out...

1) You should have checked your PayPal acccount and/or bank account to see what had and hadn't been paid. I use PayPal all the time...this is easy to do. It is *your* responsibility to do this, not Eddie's.

2) You tried to grow way too quickly. Again, this is a common failing of many businesses and owning several you should know that.

3) You are very imprecise in your language. This will cause you a world of trouble if you really do decide to sue.

4) You are very over dramatic. Granted, you lost a lot of $ and that hurts. But you need to approach this from a business point of view and not a personal point of view. As a businessman, you should know this.

Lastly, I will say good luck suing. The reality is there is no way you can prevail here. Unless you have some serious evidence you haven't shown us, you will lose a lof of money in court costs and lawyer fees. It may be possible to recover some of that in the suit, but that depends on where you live. But you'll never get a lawyer to take a case like this on contengency, which means you'll need to front the cash.

My advice, like someone else here mentioned, bury the hatchet. Speak with Eddie offline, not in public, and reach an agreement you can both live with.

Kevin

[eddiebauervending]

I would like to thank eddie and royalforest for putting my life in perspective.

You got it bro...always a pleasure to be of service LOL

[royalforest]

Your right Kevin, I should of been watching my paypal. But I solved that problem when the lawyer recovered  the money back from the 80 locations that were not located(40 approved but not placed and the other 40 where he double booked me). I am ticked off that the recovery did not come from Eddie but from paypal or the bank. So the over booked or stealing or stupid for me missing it  is recovered. What is not recovered is the fact that he stopped locating which created negative cash flow, knew he could not find stand alone locations making $50.00 and then decided to just keep the money. He was right he got to keep the money without doing the job.

[alyssamma]

Royal, don't take this the wrong way, but I have a hard time believing you got a lawyer to recover money for you. I've never heard of a lawyer getting involved in a PayPal dispute like this.

Also, if a lawyer way involved, why didn't he go after Eddie?

None of this makes any sense.

Also, I've been involved in a few PP disputes, and also CC disputes. They always go back to the merchant.

Or are you saying you paid with PP but with your bank account?

Again, there just seems like a lot of strange things going on.

Lastly, if you really do have a lawyer who helped you with this, why even make this public before you sue? I would file the suit and then talk.

Kevin

[royalforest]

Kevin you hit it perfectly by saying:

Eventually, I realized I was spending too much time on unapproved locs and the approved ones weren't making any money. I decided to cut my losses and ask Eddie for a refund for the unplaced locs so far.

Eddie did this without any issues and we parted ways peacefully.

That is exactly what happened to me except on a larger scale. His service will not help vendors. They will lose money because of the negative cash flow it creates and the cost of delivery and time is not worth it. Buying a route or building it yourself from my experience is the only way to go. Also, do you think if your order was a total of 19,500.00, you would of received your money back and parted peacefully? Of course you don't need to answer that question.