By Brandon
November 18th, 2010
The order process at Evike for pre-order items is somewhat akin to being locked in a dark room, for months on end, with someone occasionally slipping a piece of paper under the door to let you know they’ll let you out in a month, only to receive the same piece of paper under the door a month later. That’s actually a bit kinder than I should be, as Evike doesn’t actively contact you to keep you apprised of your order status.
I really never wanted to write a legitimately angry article when we started Chairsoft Press. I just wanted to write reviews of replicas I came across so everyone could share some of my happily maniacal collecting. But in order to do this, this means buying guns, and its awfully hard to keep going when you tie up significant amounts of free cash in something that I’m convinced is vaporware. Here is the story, presented factually, of the Evike.com BAR Preorder Debacle.
This all started in January 2010. Rumors had been circling around the bigger communities like ArniesAirsoft and others that an ACM Manufactured BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle, for those lacking context here) was under development and would be seen soon. Eventually, these rumors were gratified when Evike.com triumphantly announced that the pre-order for the BAR would open shortly, and Evike was to be the exclusive US Distributor.
Taking a step back to add a bit more context, the BAR has always been a bit of an albatross for serious collectors. When I started in 2004, the only “available” BAR on the market was the JAC Bullet Valve BAR, a classic gun from the early 90’s. In 2007, VFC made a surprising announcement when they showed pictures of a gorgeous BAR replica under development at their factory. The excellence of this announcement was only overshadowed by the final price tag of the gun- a walloping $1200. I love collecting, but within reason. Like all things that are good and expensive in airsoft, rumors of a clone soon emerged at all of the community websites, and circulated occasionally throughout 2008 and 2009. They really picked up in the beginning of 2010 however, and as mentioned above, Evike made their announcement in January.
I was traveling for work at the time, but received a frantic email from our esteemed co-author Guinness telling me to have a look. Guinness is a big WWII collector, so naturally the concept of Evike’s recently announced $280 BAR replica piqued his interests. I’ve always been a fan of the BAR as well. I went to the hotel and immediately pre-ordered 2 examples of the gun. The original pre-order Delivery date was set for the End of February. This was going to be great, Guinness would get a new toy, and I’d have a new review candidate for Chairsoft Press.
This was not meant to be. I continued to stay busy at work throughout January and into February… and then into March without hearing a single word about my pre-order. I went back to Evike’s website and checked the pre-order page, noting the ETA date had been pushed to March. To me, one delay seemed reasonable. Airsoft retailers have to navigate a language barrier with factories, overseas shipping, and then further inconveniences getting inventory through customs. Also, the release date fell around Chinese New Year’s, so one missed target seemed reasonable.
The end of March began to approach and I had still seen no update, and no communication from Evike. I was beginning to get a bit antsy and decided to confirm with Evike that the replica was still on Evike’s ETA timetable. My actual e-mail string is below;
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 12:01 PM From: Email Address DeletedTo: sales@evike.com
Subject: Order Number 362— Hello, I’m writing in regards to order 362—. I ordered a few BARs on a group order, and I was wondering if your ETA of 3/10 is still Accurate for the items I pre-ordered. Could you please confirm, or let me know if the ETA date has changed? Thanks!
I received this reply (Note that this is 4 days prior to their ETA date. I would assume if they had a pallet of these sitting in their store ready to ship to customers on their release date, they would have known, and known similarly if they didn’t). The Evike rep below quickly got back to me letting me know the ETA date was accurate.
—- Original message —- Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 13:18:52 -0800From: sales@evike.com To: Brandon’s Personal Email Account Subject: Re: Order Number 362— Dear Customer,
Yes, March 10 is currently still the ETA date. Please feel free to email us if you have any questions. Thank you! Caesar | Sales Rep. | Evike.com Inc. | 626.286.0360
www.evike.com
Your Ultimate Shop!
Our business hours are Monday through Friday 11am – 6pm PST.
I waited out the two days with baited breath, excited that the BARs would finally be coming. Again, my own exuberance would be used to slap me in the face. Obviously, being excited for the replica’s arrival, I checked the product page daily. Two days later however, the product’s ETA changed to 4/15. Note that I received no communication from the retailer. At this point, I began to feel like I was lied to about the actual status of the replica, and sent the followup email below;
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 8:54 PM From: Brandon’s Personal Email AddressTo: sales@evike.com
Subject: Re: Order Number 362— Hello, I’m following up on an email that I recieved on 3/6 last week, which is in the string below. I wrote to find out when some BARs I had ordered were going to come in and the sales rep confirmed 3/10 was still the eta date. Then, two days later, the ETA date per your website has changed to 4/15. I was wondering why I wasn’t told of this delay in my original email. If the items got pushed out by more than a month, I feel like someone must have known about it at the time I wrote my email. Please just let me know whats going on and when I can expect what I ordered (realistically). Sincerely, Me (Name Deleted)
To assuage my disappointment at them, Evike’s rep was kind enough to send me a form letter.
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:07:07 -0600From: <sales@evike.com>
To: Email Address Deleted Subject: Re: Order Number 362— Dear Customer, I am sorry to inform you that your item [AEG_MTX_M1918A2_BAR] is currently
on back order. The new ETA for the item is going to be 04/15/10. Please feel free to email us if you have any questions. Thank you! Caesar | Sales Rep. | Evike.com Inc. | 626.286.0360
www.evike.com
Your Ultimate Shop! Our business hours are Monday through Friday 11am – 6pm PST.
Needless to say, I was quite unhappy with this, but discontinued the emails at this point since trying to communicate with Evike felt quite pointless.
April 15th came and went, and the ETA was pushed to June. This was the story all the way through my summer, and I saw the following string of ETA pushbacks;
- February 28th Original ETA
- Pushed to March 10
- Pushed to 4/15
- Pushed to “June”
- Pushed to “August”
- Pushed to “October”
- Pushed to “N/A”
I attempted to call Evike a few times during this period of 10 months (during the summer, following the emails) however the on-hold times were so long that I never made it through.
Finally, this November, I decided to cancel my order and demand a refund. I had waited, buoyed on by the continually rolling release dates at the notion of at least some day getting my BAR. When the pre-order status went to N/A, that was the final straw. The best part was the email I received when I attempted to cancel;
Date: Wednesday, 3 Nov 2010, 01:18From: <sales@evike.com>
To: Email Address Deleted Subject: Re: Order Number 362—
Airsoftpost.com
——————————————————
Order Number: 362—.
Detailed Invoice: https://www.airsoftpost.com/account_history_info.php?order_id=362—.
Date Ordered: Monday 01 February, 2010
The comments for your order are
ORDER UPDATE:
Dear Customer,
We are unable to process a refund at this time.
Your credit card info has expired in our system. Please contact us at 626-286-0360 M-F 11am to 6pm PST to provide your new credit card info for refund.
Thank you,
Accounting Department
Evike.com, Inc.
www.evike.com
Your ultimate shop!
I provided my debit card information to Evike last week, and finally have seen a pending refund on my account.
I have now gotten my money back, but this does not make me a satisfied customer. Essentially I paid just short of $500 out to Evike with the only outcome of them giving it back to me several months later, with nothing gained except an extremely frustrating order experience. I feel like Evike has been quite manipulative with their rolling release dates, and shouldn’t have offered the BAR for sale until they knew a firm date for when it would be available.
It should be mentioned that Evike has made this ‘all better’ to their customers by promising three additional free magazines when the gun ships. This is great and all, but really for a gun that hasn’t yet shipped, and its questionable as to whether it eventually will, Evike really hasn’t done anything here. The value of nonexistent magazines is zero.
Another negative sign in all of this is that Evike has not displayed production pictures, design pictures, or really any detail surrounding this gun, just a picture of VFC’s gorgeous BAR, and a long product description. I feel like if they had any pictures, these would’ve hit the website almost immediately to drum up more interest in the pre-order.
Finally, Its principally wrong for Evike to violate the pre-order date repeatedly without actively notifying their customers. Unless the customer actively goes to Evike and tracks down the product page, and views it there, the customer has nothing to go on. Even if they do, however, its still very little to go on, blaming the delay on the Chinese World Expo. While it is true that the Expo (held in Shanghai China this year) went from May to October, this has not halted airsoft activity elsewhere, as A&K has retooled to deliver their products to the US again, Dboys has made a resurgence, and other Chinese manufacturers’ guns have shown up on our shores during the time mentioned.
Based on Evike’s handling of the pre-order, the fact that no pictures are available of the gun (in production, design or otherwise), and the fact that the pre-order status now reads N/A, it seems reasonable to assume this product is vaporware. There is no evidence to support the existence of this replica beyond Evike’s own pre-order page, and a brief mention of the gun on ACMGear’s blog. Given the length of the wait, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that this replica will materialize.
I wrote this article to caution people from Evike’s pre-order process, and to advise them to only purchase products that are in stock from Evike, if at all. Other players I’ve spoken with at our local field have expressed similar issues with Evike’s pre-order process.
If Evike has anything to add that they feel would shed light on the situation (Either about this specific pre-order, or their pre-order process in general), I will happily update the article. Until I hear anything however, I feel like my point is valid.
Carry on readers, and think twice about pre-ordering from Evike.
The info is good to hear, I figured there was a group of followers out there given the popularity of the order.
My problem isn’t so much that the guns never came, as importing guns through US customs is frought with risk (see the people whose store shipment of 30 WE GBBRs got seized for no apparent reason).
The sentiments that pushed me to write the article were more focused around the ‘black box’ that was kept around the situation. Information embargoes are very very annoying, especially when the product release is pushed more than a year past the original release date. I’d probably still have my preorder money in for one if Evike had been more proactive in telling us whats going on with the preorder. Instead, the route of obfuscation was taken. This is not a move that struck me as honest, or fair to the preorder customers.
Thats where I’m coming from on the subject.
Not that it will change anything, just thought I’d provide some background info.
The ACM BAR was being produced by a company calling themselves “Black Bear Airsoft”. Stuff was in the works for quite a while and the first shipments were suppose to go out in accordance with Evike’s preorder date and 1 HK dealer. Shipments went out, and got seized. As the business goes in illegal airsoft manufacturing in China.
So preorders pushed back. Second shipment to go out and seized. Into production of the 3rd shipment and the factory was raided and models destroyed and all items seized.
The Black Bear website(http://www.bbairsoft.net/) used to be an opening page of a very poorly written “We are the producer of the ACM BAR airsoft replica”, to which you continued to scroll down and see a long list of email responses and apologizes about why the products weren’t shipping. They’ve since updated their site
From what I’ve found they are now the producer all the wire mesh products coming out of China now (face masks, goggles, etc.) According to their Facebook page they are still thinking about trying again at the BAR. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Bear-Airsoft/107373966001579
So did you get screwed by Evike? Ya. Was it their fault? Kind of.