Official Elemental Designs Subwoofer Thread - Page 499

Very wise to use ANY other brand of amp rather than theirs. ATTENTION TO EVERYONE ON HERE!!!! Please see attached email address and do something about your problems with eD! steve.switzer@iowa.gov This is the IOWA ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE and if he gets enough of these complaints we will have more of a chance at getting some justice! Again please email steve.switzer@iowa.gov Make your email to the point but definitely tell him if you paid for something you never received, like myself, or if eD has items that belong to you that you have not got back! Check with Dave on here because he is actually on your side and is trying to help all of us who were ripped off. Thank You Dave! Include order details in your email to the Iowa Attorney General such as the proof of payment email. I have been fighting with eD for over 2 years now, Alex in particular, which treated me like crap and always blamed ME for the amp's problems. Unlike others, I went to the Forums to warn people about this company's amps and their customer service, ONLY to have ALEX get on the same forums with a much higher status and well lets just say that everyone took his side and then everyone got screwed and I was right in the end. People need to pay more attention to the little guy sometimes and don't take sides with a member just because they work there or are of a higher member status. That's what a Forum should be about. I went on for help and was mocked to the point I quit. Now with the truth revealed, I'm back and hope that everyone gets help for their units. For other users on here that need an amp, first work with Dave. The problem I've ran into is that a BASH 500 amp works great but it doesn't fit the nice hole left in the amp and will need an adapter plate made. Or you can completely seal your amp hole and use an external amp. You still will need a blank plate with a speaker terminal cup. Does anyone know anybody that can make plates to cover these holes? I did know someone, and I paid them for it, but it seems they stiffed with nothing after getting my money! Thanks eD! Hope Alex gets a job he can handle, like McDonalds maybe? EMAIL AWAY PEOPLE!! steve.switzer@iowa.gov

In case you guys are wondering what their factory looks like. These pics are from my cell phone:

Before anyone gets all conspiracy theory on the pallets in the back, that's 100% normal. Shipments come in on pallets and most items leave via UPS or FedEx so there end up being a lot of extra pallets. That's been the case since we(meaning eD when I was there) moved in to that building in 2006. Although the stacks used to be all up against the building and more uniform in height.

I was more amused/interested by the PBR in the dumpster.

Also, a Bud Light box it seems.

They must've been watching the movie, Blue Velvet.

Oh I'm not saying Alex is the only one involved! I'm just saying Alex pretended to be a saint, an angel to everyone on the forums while screwing people over at eD at the same time. He was the main man working in customer service and believe me I tried to deal with others by starting over and writing to Tech@eD & sales@eD and it was always Alex that contacted me back and its Alex that kept telling me that my subwoofer must be blown or that I didn't know how to use a plate amp. Well I'm no rookie to home audio and all my other subs work just fine. I also took the sub to Speaker Workshop and had it bench tested as perfect and yet he never helped. Then I decided I wanted nothing to do with an amp from eD and bought an external SpeakerCraft amp and asked for a plain plate with a speaker terminal cup. eD had a policy on it's site saying they didn't bill cards until the product shipped. Well my bank account shows a withdrawl from eD and I show an email with order invoice number and I have months of emails from Alex with excuses. I'm sure Alex was dealing with angry customers all day and it wasn't him that made the amps I get that, but he wasn't honest and he blamed the customer for eD's crappy amp LT550 which if you all read, you KNOW is a POS! The icing on the cake is that I went on AVSforum and other forums LONG ago and warned people of their shady customer service and the forum showed him with a high status and me as a "newbie" even though I am not, I just don't write about every little piece of audio I own. I simply warned the public and he called me out as a liar and an idiot and seemed that everyone took Alex's side. I could not win so I gave up and now everyone that laughed, and others that didn't, are paying the price. The are TONS of customers with fried amps and broken amps, some at their home and many others stuck at eD or who knows where else. Dave rescued some of you with a list of names of people's amps he had and Dave is a class act person for having the honesty to do this! If only eD was this honest with their customers they might still be in business! So no I don't put all the blame on Alex and I'm sure he was frustrated himself but he chose to keep it corrupt and then tore me up on the forums and well now people here is an example of David Vs Goliath. Just because a member is a person that doesn't post often and doesn't represent a company doesn't mean he is an idiot. Im quite sure I can't get my money back since I paid almost half a year ago now even though I can prove I didn't get the product, but I am out little compared to others. But in another way I am out more than just a plate, because I gave up on their junky LT550 amp and spent a TON to get a good external amp. Now I'm sitting with a box that has a hole in it and an expensive external amp that is collecting dust.

update on amplifiers...

i just watched a semi truck pull away with a couple of pallets going to another customer.

what that means, is i am free to fix the eD RMA's for people who have contacted me and i have their amp. going to have lunch, and then get busy for the rest of the afternoon and this evening.

i am not going to message anyone until i need to, and probably wont respond to any messages till late tonight... but, rest assured, im busy. this will continue the rest of the week, so dont be discouraged for a while just because i dont respond right away.

meanwhile, there are some amps that belong to people that have not been claimed yet. anyone want to spread the word to other forums about the list of names i posted ? my goal is to get all 28 amps back to their owners.

contrary to what some think, this is happening just because of Matt's efforts, and Matt alone. he did struggle to raise enough money to ship this out to me, and without him, we would be just sitting here with nothing as we all were before. so i for one, will tip my hat to Matt for caring enough to get as much done as he is able to.

So are the components that will go into fixing these amps be better than the ones eD used? With all the talk of the crappy parts eD used I would like to know that better parts are being used to repair them so it just doesn't happen again in the near future. I am speaking about the LT/550 amp specifically in my case.

needed to photoshop in mike wallace standing in front of doors....

Thanks Dave! PM Sent with RMA & my info as requested.

a few amps fixed and burning in... i have time for a break to answer messages and posts.


well put it this way... i can order crappy parts from China, pay the shipping and hassle for international shipping, and wait three weeks... however the parts are dirt cheap... darn near next to nothing.

or, i can order parts made in the USA, or Japan, or Germany, from a company right here in the USA, and have them in my hands in two days. yes, they cost more... however the quality and reliability of the parts can not be beat.

pretty much a no brainer there.

for what it's worth, the parts distributors i deal with, also sell the better quality of the China made parts, and they are also cheap... but why bother ?

you guys may not know it, but most of the popular amps are made in China or Korea, with the same crappy parts. i have a few clients, that have less reliable amps than eD did... and i have seen them recommended here. ( for contract reasons, i wont mention them though ) i think the LT550 amps i am working on now, are worse though... may give up on some of them and offer those people a LT500 replacement.

Matt built subs and speakers. He never touched a credit card processor, he never answered the phone, he never took anyone's payment for anything.

If the CEO of your company embezzles funds and you're unaware, do you expect to be prosecuted when people find out? My guess would be no.

While eD was certainly a small company, I can say for a fact that Matt likely had no clue any of this was going on. When I was there it was 3 people total, then down to 2 for a while and I wasn't running the company so I wasn't privy to everything being done with payments to vendors etc.

You really need to get off your crucify everyone crusade. Or are you also upset with the folks they paid to sand the boxes, the ones they paid to pack shipments, the ones they paid to assemble subwoofers? The only person you continually rail on now is Matt who is the only one that had the balls to stay back and try fixing a huge mess he inherited.

I get that you were hurt in this situation, but you need to understand that it had nothing to do with Matt other than the fact that he worked(works?) at eD.

Perhaps you should be listening to the one person still having dealings on a b2b level with the company. Dave says Matt is doing a great job and publicly posts that on the forum. Do you think he has some ulterior motive for saying Matt done good?

Why does any of that matter and how is it going to help anything in the future? Is knowing who owns the assets going to help you get your money back? It's probably the bank's at this point and the bank will come before anyone in trying to get back the funds.

eD didn't advertise on AVS, a customer asked the permission of the mods to create this thread years ago. They haven't even been very active on here since I left the company.

No one is thanking eD and I think that's where you're missing something. Matt, an individual, is doing everything he can to help fix a situation that happened at the company he worked for.

Again, if your CEO embezzles funds and leaves, are you going to stick around to try to find a way to pay back everyone at the company that's ever been wronged? With no way to process transactions or ship goods so any reimbursement you make likely will come from your personal funds? No, you wouldn't do that because it's insane and you can't expect someone to have that level of responsibility for someone else's actions just because they worked at the same company?

Guess what, that's exactly what Matt's been going through. No money, can't have a fire sale to reimburse prior customers, can't even ship products out or process transactions.

If you've got one guy talking to customers, talking to vendors, charging cards, making delivery promises, paying(or not paying) vendors, and then there are other people at the company just doing their job, who's fault is it when things go down hill? Hint, that one guy referenced in my last sentence was Alex.

Don't believe that letter that was posted all you want but I, having worked there and technically been Alex's boss for 2 years, can believe that he took on more than he could and was trying to make the best of the situation even while things were going down the crapper.

Your tinfoil hat conspiracies and hatred of Matt are just frustrating. I mean, you could start calling me out for leaving the company when things were going well. I obviously ditched out before things got bad and, through your apparent logic, probably caused all the issues in the last 3.75 years simply by not being present.

The questions that Marvin raises are likely to be answered by the legal system should it proceed that far.

How does knowing who owns the assests change anything? Plus what assests do you not already know about?

The blame goes to the owner, not workers. Alex was the owner, not Matt. Matt is doing things because he feels bad, he does not have any obligation to us in anyway. His job was to build subs and I must say the cabinets were the best part of their subs! You want to blame everyone at eD and what Chris is trying to tell you which you seem to ignore is that Alex was the owner, he knew what was going on. When the owner of a Mcdonalds starts ripping people off you should blame the burger flippers or the drive thru worker? I have a small company and my 2 employees have no idea about the monies involved, bills, overhead, etc... They just do their job and I have 3 people, including myself.

Why would you believe differently? Maybe this is what you need to discuss? I have lots of money spent on eD and have $3600 of subs now so I have an interest in this.

company is owned by an LLC. Alex is the CEO of the LLC. so yes. Ben changed it over to Alex. If Ben still was the CEO thats the reason it failed, because he left and started another company and doesn't run eD anymore. So a company without anyone in charge would ultimately fail. They would actually fail rather quickly, not a long drawl out 2 year spiral, where employees get paychecks.

This may well be, but the owner of record according to the Iowa Secretary of State lists Benjamin P. Milne as the owner. 'Course if the company was in fact sold, lock stock and barrel, the new owners may not have updated matters.

That business is inactive, and has been since before they closed their doors. That was brought up too. Where the current filing is, don't know. Maybe they never filed it.

That's why I referenced a tinfoil hat. Alex is the owner. Believe whatever you want.

Had I not left, I'd most likely be the owner, and would expect the blame for things that went wrong.

And eD wasn't always backed up like this. Was there a batch of bad amps when I was there? Yup. What did we do? Replaced every single one of them with new amps which had no issues I can remember.

Were there shipping delays? Sure, but it was never for lack of parts. It was more orders than could be physically painted.

Were there charging issues? Nope. Unless you used Paypal, that's your choice to send money instantly. Outside of that the day someone was charged was the day that there were parts for their cabinet cut and ready to go.

There were even more order statuses while I was there and generally multiple updates throughout the day outlining the exact location of your cabinet. Until it moved to being in production, I wasn't processing a credit card.

You think the company was around for 11 years taking money and not shipping products? Obviously some things changed, for the worse, in the last couple years. People being charged with no inventory and nothing that essentially has their name on it in the building is truly awful and not something I'd ever have imagined would be done.

And sorry, it is a bit personal when I spent 4 years helping to build that company up and becoming a pretty good player in ID subs and generally well liked here on AVS. When a guy on the internet who bought something at later time and had a really poor experience says the company has always been crap and been covering themselves forever with shady business practices it just screams lack of knowledge about the company and conspiracy theorist.

If you want to say eD went to crap under Alex's watch, go ahead. But please don't lump the entire existence of the company and how it acted in to what it was in the end because that's just not true.

https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=10&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=how+to+use+public+records+to+find+information

I attended the annual meets. Talked to Ben briefly, talked to Alex before I knew what was going to happen, and I've talked to Matt since it happened.

This is all also public knowledge and I live in South Carolina. Work for an unrelated company. Have never worked at eD.

I've never defended the company or Alex. You just don't get it. There wasn't a conspiracy. In the end it was a crap company that went t!ts up. I came here to try to provide what information I knew about. Take it as you want.
Edited by spl152db - 9/18/12 at 9:32am