>Roy you are playing with fire. You might consider beeing more careful,
>if the substance of your "disagreement" with Peter ever goes public it
>might be not very favourable for you.
No I am not playing with fire at all. I refused point blank to pay Peter
some money I owed him. I agreed that I owed it to him and I refused to
pay him. On the face of it this looks pretty bad doesn't it ? But then
you only know what Peter chooses to tell you. After many attempts to get
Peter to face up to some kind of support for his product when Tony
Firshman had over half the boards not working and customers who had paid
for them and did not have them I decided to refuse payment until he
sorted it out. We went to Eindhoven to meet him to talk about it and
show him some non working boards. He spent the entire show nuzzling up
to TT and did not address the problem. We made him take the boards with
him so we could find out about the problem. He took them and 18 months
later he had made a few comments about a few parts which were not very
good but these were not necessarily the root of the problem. We have
found since that a lot of the problems were down to faulty video ram
which he supplied. I wanted to use new parts. They would have cost more
but the chance of problems would have been reduced. He said that, if I
raised the price of the product to cover the cost of new, instead of
second hand parts, he would raise his license fee. Tony and I agreed to
take only 30 pounds per board as a profit. Peter took 250 DM (at the
time 100 pounds). What price free software now ?
I do have an ongoing dispute with Peter because, when I closed my shop,
I was practically bankrupt. I have struggled to keep Q Branch going and
to support the users. I told Peter that I would pay him the money I owed
him because I was quitting the Q 40 and accepting the loss I had made on
it but he had to wait until I had fulfilled my obligation to the general
users and I gave him a date on which I would do that. I was a little
late in the payment but I paid him most of what he was owed. There was a
small matter of 1200 Dm outstanding at the time which he admitted to me
in a letter. Part of the payment was to be the delivery of three working
Q40s. At the time he still had the three boards and processors. When he
took delivery of the three boards one did not work he just sent it back
and accused me of trying to cheat him. I had never seen these three
boards they came directly from Tony Firshman himself and were working
when they were sent out. He returned the board and sent an email
offering me to pay him 1200 to close the affair. This was timed neatly
to expire before I came back from the US show. By the time I had read
the email he had sued me for much more than he said I owed him. He won
the case because I, incompetently, misread the date on the letter giving
the court hearing date and trusting made an offer to mediate without a
hearing which was ignored. I have seen many emails Peter has sent to
other people in which has threatened many things. At the recent
Manchester show none of the traders would talk to him and the feeling
was so bad that he pulled out of the planned meal. I have no objection
to this being out in the open. I have kept it quiet because I felt it
would not be good for the QL scene for these matters to be aired in
public but don't try to threaten me because it just won't work.
I stand by the statement I made before. The general run of traders do
not trust Peter because we have had a first hand experience of his
behaviour.
Even recently he has stated, when Tony Firshman offered to supply some
parts to D&D, that he did not want any of Roy's defective parts. Funny
that. Tony Bought all of the parts for the Q40 except those supplied by
Peter himself and some of the SIMMs which I bought. Peter parts were the
most defective including EPROMS that would not program, one defective
processor, two low speed processor (which we never asked for but were
charged for) and very shoddily recycled video ram which has caused many
of the problems we have had.
Next time you open your mouth try to find out a few facts. If you don't
want to believe me ask Jochen Merz, ask Tony Firshman.
>
>Certainly we should try at any cost to keep this matter out of *this*
>discussion.
No we should not.
--
Roy Wood
Q Branch, 20 Locks Hill Portslade. Sussex. BN41 2LB. UK
Tel : +44 (0)1273 386030 Fax : +44 (0)1273 430501 (New number!)
Mobile +44(0)7836 745501
Web : www.qbranch.demon.co.uk
