(Topic ID: 229216)

A clarification

By pinsanity

5 years ago


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  • Latest reply 5 years ago by pinsanity
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    #1 5 years ago

    on what constitutes the "Australian pinball community".

    There has been a recent post made in the Homepin thread here which I believe needs correction as it does a disservice to the integrity of the broader Australian pinball scene.

    The post in question is this one below:

    https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/homepin-official-thread-pinball-parts-machine-progress/page/63#post-4682391

    and makes the generalisation that the Australian pinball community gave it's full (impliedly unquestioning) support to the new (at the time) pinball venture from Homepin.

    I have largely let the Homepin thread roll along to its inevitable drawn out climax because most pinsiders outside of Australia have been smart enough to have avoided being caught up in this financially but the above post demands an obvious correction inasmuch as it paints the entire Australian pinball community as a bunch of drones who lack the foresight to do their own due diligence on new pinball manufacturers.

    This is far from the case as most people within the Australian pinball community who have no local forum loyalty ties were highly skeptical and dubious about this new startup based behind the bamboo curtain and certainly had no inclination in putting money down with such even as far back as 2013 and less than a week after the project was first announced. In fact, some of those (including yours truly) after doing due diligence felt that these concerns should be voiced not only on a local level, but should the need arise on an international platform as well. Unfortunately in the case of the former that wasn't permissable at the time as explained further on.

    The reasons for this were numerous and without going into specifics there were instances of past behaviours when money for a new venture had been taken, and with less than 10% paid for product being delivered years later, the excuses as to why the remainder could not be delivered began surfacing. This scenario should sound very familiar to those who have been following this local Aussie saga for any length of time.

    The reality is that the only Australians down here who have cheerleadered this venture from the beginning without question have been those with direct ties to either of the two local forums namely AussieArcade.com and Aussiepinball.com. This is because the Admins of both forums have had up until recently prolonged commercial financial arrangements with Homepin stretching back years and which has allowed them to maintain the narrative that all was above board with Homepin Aus Pty Ltd or the Katana HK Trading Company or whatever business name Homepin was/is now trading under.

    In light of how the entire venture has inevitably gone pear shaped both forums have subsequently removed all references to Homepin and one has taken the added steps of refusing to allow the company to even be mentioned in any context - embarassed about their ineptitude, covering up their level of culpability? You decide but this is why there are a number of new Aussie prepayers now making their voice be known in the Homepin thread on pinside as the local avenues for redress have been severed.

    To put it into perspective these two forums combined constitute approximately 5% of the total Australian pinball community so to infer that "full support for this venture was right across the Australian pinball community" is not only disingenuous but insulting to the intelligence of the 95% who don't have local forum loyalties but do have the ability to use their own critical thinking and engage in due diligence.

    1 week later
    #9 5 years ago
    Quoted from Rdoyle1978:

    WTF is the point of this post?

    Proactive absolution in anticipation of a future event based on past empirical data.

    2 months later
    #11 5 years ago
    Quoted from Homepin:

    As far as the two Aussie forums go, AA simply got sick of people like you regurgitating crap - that's why you are banned (I guess you already know that) so they just stopped people from posting rubbish about Homepin and Thunderbirds - they created a private thread FOR PEOPLE WITH A FINANCIAL INTEREST IN THUNDERBIRDS, not stirrers and troublemakers with ZERO money in the game. AP, well, it has all of 20 members............

    https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/homepin-official-thread-pinball-parts-machine-progress/page/70#post-4829729

    You know the iceberg has been hit when the rats start jumping ship.

    It was always inevitable and just a matter of time.

    Bumper Action redux.

    #14 5 years ago
    Quoted from Rondogg:

    You think you're so important to the pinball world that you need absolution. Christ, every time I have hope for my Aussie friends, some a-hole has to screw it up...

    This venture was screwed long before I began voicing my concerns publicly.

    Anyone who has the intelligence to do due diligence on new startups and the final outcomes of their previous ventures under a different trading name would have known that long ago instead of mindlessly jumping in at this late stage with banal platitudes like "hope".

    1 month later
    #15 5 years ago
    Quoted from whthrs166:

    Hmmmm..... and what does this mean exactly.... The guy was pretty straight forward on what happened to him to cause the delays. Are you calling him a liar or what? Shit Happens Man! It sucks that things didn't go as planned, I get that. Some business start ups take years and no guarantees. When people invest in such business start ups it is a High Risk Venture to say the least. At this point it seems that the folks that invested and took those risks on this company start up should focus on the silver lining here in getting what they paid for. It could always be worse, look at the DP situation.

    It looks like you're in luck since they are currently looking for new "investors" to get the line operational in order to be able to finance the original "investor" units from five and a half years ago.

    All sounds pretty straight forward and above board right?

    #18 5 years ago
    Quoted from Isochronic_Frost:

    The guy has seen a lot of extraneous situations totally throw a hitch into his plans.
    As people constantly say, building a business and making pinball machines on a commercial scale is an absolutely colossal undertaking. Making pinball machines is not something to be taken lightly as we’ve seen by everyone else who has folded or basically crashed and burned.
    Hope things start working out for him. I can imagine it’s devastating to have your wife die and your programmer die and get your hands tied in such complicated overseas situations. I’d have looked into established ventures or at least other companies who seem to have a decent ability.
    I mean at least Spooky has made 3 machine so far, and JJP has been going strong. Everyone else hasn’t seemed to get past their initial run. Best of luck to Homepin. I really hope things work out and they can straighten this out and move onto game 2.

    Firstly let's establish a more accurate timeline for the subject matter at hand. June 28, 2013 - Homepin announces Thunderbirds pinball machine to be assembled in China and begins takes preorder money (ahem "testing the waters" as was explained at the time) drawn primarily from Australian forum members for the next six months.

    The original specified contracted completion date for all preorders for Thunderbirds was June 30 2015. This was a tripartite agreement between the license holders ITV, the proposed manufacturer and any preorders to date.

    In late April 2015 representations were made on local forums that the machines were weeks away from completion and shipping and despite some rather questionable business manufacturing decisions along the way everything PR wise emanating out of China to the unwary indicated that progress was on track to meet the original completion date.

    When machines failed to land in Australia by June 30, 2015 the contract was in breach and all preorders were entitled to a refund and to rescind the contract. Those who applied for such were denied through either obfuscation or blatant false statements as to actual progress and that has been the situation ever since.

    Fast forward to March 2019 and there have been just over two dozen machines produced globally (95% of which have been to new money purchasers to keep the doors open) from the original estimate of 2000 units with the added bonus of the original preorder holdouts from 2013 still not having a machine in their possession despite having paid for it years ago.

    It's time to put hope to one side and start facing reality.

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