Some of you may already know that FlyingCirkus.com recently hosted a video contest. I entered the "foamy" category and managed to take 2nd place. I was pretty pleased with that. There was a prize associated with 2nd place which was a copy of Aerofly Professional by Ikarus. This was pledged as a prize by Ohio Model Planes. Max Duncan promptly sent emails to the vendors that donated prizes with the names and addresses of the winners and copied the winner. I got the email and waited. And waited and waited and waited.......for about three weeks and finally emailed Dion at OMP asking about it. He said nobody told him the contest was over and I was the winner of this prize. I took it pretty easy at first and just emailed Max at flyingcirkus about it. Max was really cool. He sent a reminder again to Dion and verified I was the winner. So I waited some more.....nothing. I wrote Dion once more, he says still nobody has talked to him. So I email Max.........this goes on and on for a couple of cycles and Dion will not return Max's calls or emails. Finally last week, I get disgusted enough to just tell Dion to keep the prize, I was tired of being frustrated about it. I copied Max on this email, well somehow......by Friday we all get together and Dion quits dodging us. He agrees to ship the prize and promises to do it the next day which was Saturday. I figure I would have it by Wednesday. Wednesday comes and I have nothing so I email Dion once again. He tells me he still hasn't shipped it but assures me he will the next day. I told him to keep the prize, I didn't need it. I believe he is skirting this in every way he knows how just because he does not want to donate the prize. He lied to me, he lied to Max, and he NEVER once took the initiative to find the answers for himself. He always insisted on Max contacting him THEN ignored Max's efforts. This guy does not deserve your business. Please keep this in mind before spending money at OMP.........if this is the way he treats GOOD people giving him GOOD advertising just think of what he might do to you. Since I made this complaint, others have come to me saying they have had similar problems with this guy. Don't buy from OMP and let's let this guy wither away. The RC hobby community is too small to leave any room for bozos like this.

thanks for reading

Brad Lorance

I try not to make assumption on someone else's motive until I talk w/ that person directly. Email is not a reliable mean of correspondence, especially for new, growing, and understaffed business. Even if there's truly one louzy person in the company, it's probably to your loss to do away with that company, because they truly produce good products. I've dealt with them, and they are pretty reasonable. As long as you catch them on the phone, they treat you with respect. I personally have dealt with much worse merchants.

Not to downplay your experience but OMP has worked very hard to earn a well deserved reputation. I have dealt with them MANY times with positive results.

Have you tried to call OMP directly?

Sorry but I have to butt in here as well. As we all know by now E-mail is definitely not the best way to do anything these days. Even I miss loads of emails coming in from consultants and engineers which contain drawings etc that I have to work with. Even normal text messages sometimes gets blocked. If you perhaps have a small virus creeping in there or well anything the other person's email doesn't like then it doesn't go through. Some of them simply just gets lost. I do not know if you made any other effort to get a hold of them. As you know the OMP forums are also here on RCU and this has been found to probably be the best way to get a hold of them. What if Max's emails simply did not reach Dion? How do we as the public reading all of this know that you even made an effort? Sorry I do not mean to question your credibility or person but it is sometimes rather hard to just leave complaints like this running. There is no proof that you even made the call to them? Sorry I had to just get in here quickly because I do find that threads like this really creep up my back sometimes. Some of them are simply going out to destroy other businesses. And well to tell you the truth us guys which rely on OMP to provide us with planes to fly have to make a stand and defend them as much as we could. Without them I would not be in the hobby as of late I only have an interest in flying profiles because of their functionality and well the costs involved. I can not afford to go buy a 1/3 scale gasser which will perform like one of these. And well as everyone knows there is only 3 or 4 companies which make high performance profiles in the world now. I can not import a ARF to South Africa? You know the costs involved in that? Morris Hobbies has awesome products and I have had one of their kits before but their prices are also fairly high for me to get in. So that leaves me with only OMP to deal with. Paul Swany only has PayPal and well we in SA can not get PayPal accounts. So what is my options? I have to defend OMP as much as I possibly could. We all know by now that OMP is a really small company handling alot of business. I am sure that Dion not intentionally make things difficult for you. As for him waiting for a response from the flying circus I can also understand. Anyone could mail him or just claim they have won the prize. I am sure Dion will sort you out asap. What if Dion had unforseen circumstances and couldn't or simply forgot between chaos to get the package out? You know there is only so much a single person can do? Sorry you had this experience but still I hope that you can sort it out with them. Rather than having this float around here. Please make an effort again to rather find a way to sort it out?

In case you have not found it already here is the support forum.


[link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/forumid_261/tt.htm]OMP[/link]

look guys. It wasn't just a couple of weeks. The contest has been over with for two months now. What am I supposed to think? I tried not to be constantly on them about it because I don't want to be pushy about a FREE prize. But after two months, come on! Something definitely fell apart and thats all there is to it.

Brad

Dion posted on the cirkus forums that he shipped it today. If it makes it here, I will post it to let you guys know. I just hate it that it had to come to this for me to finally get it.

Brad

I would have waited to post something like this over a free contest. well I probably wouldn't have posted this at all.. maybe next time you can call and talk to Mike or John which are the big investors of the company. A free contest and you start talking bad about the company, Not real cool ,in my opinion..

i got a nasty PM form him on the cirkus forums

the reason this took so long in the first place is Dion, for some reason, wants to triple check ID's with everyone he sends anything to. Max at the cirkus tried to call him but somehow called the wrong office where all the retards are employed. And I know they are retards because they don't know how to forward messages to the "other" office.......anyhoo, so Dion figures that since he never got a phone call he has no obligation even though he DID get email confirmation. So, every time I ask Dion.......and I do ask nicely..........he says he intends to ship it but is waiting on confirmation. He can't call Max? Nope, he wants to wait for Max to call, which Max is doing but to the head clown office. Finally, I simply tell Dion if he doesn't want to send it then don't. I want to make it clear that Dion knows from me that he can do whatever he wants to do. I have told him not to send it if he does not want to send it. Funny thing is, he has said now for the fourth time he is sending it......the last three times were failures I suppose, for whatever reason. If Dion does not want to support the contest, all I wanted to see was his banner removed from the Cirkus webpages. Let me make that clear, this is not a crusade to get a flight sim.....this is about respect. I don't much care for the I'm sending it, now I'm not, now I am, now I'm not game. Dion has been quite rude with me about this situation and I now have taken it a bit personal. So, it is like this........if he never makes good on his promise then I will be sure to tell people about it. If he does, then I'll shut up. I won't ever have a good memory about this whole ordeal, but I'll shut up. He said he sent it today and left a billing number of some sort on the post for UPS that pretty much means nothing. I asked him if he could verify he has shipped it and I have heard nothing.

If he does not want to ship it, then I don't care...........but don't lie to me and keep stringing me along about it.

Brad

hey Lorrance, where in PA are you from? im in boyertown, kinda near reading , closer to allentown. maybe we can meet up some day, fly somewhere

definitely! I am in the Harrisburg area so Allentown may be just a couple hours away from here. Do you know Rod and Chris Maier? We could all meet up and fly sometime up your way.

Brad

yea i know them

Do you have AIM or any kind of messenger? id really like to talk to you about meeting up


i was going to meet rod and chris up at their field to fly his extra, but we couldn't stay long enough to meet them.

so if you got a screenname or any kind of messenger, i wanna talk to you on it

Thanks,
Scott

o, speaking of harrisburg, you ever fly at TCWS? i am going to become a member there so i can fly my giant scales when they are finished. and if the yaks ever get here, lol.

Thanks again,
Scott

Anyone ever notice how it takes longer to get free stuff than stuff you pay for? Even mail in rebates take forever when all they do is have a computer cut a check.

Brad - Why are you dealing with OMP at all on this? Was it not a Flying Cirkus contest? By sending e-mails all over the place to everybody involved, you open it up to finger pointing (I left a message for so and so, they were supposed to call me back, I didn't get that e-mail from so and so). Why not just let Max handle it for you?

I know how it feels to have people on RCU tell you that your complaint isn't valid. I started one about Dave Patrick because the lady that worked there said at least 10 times that the plane would ship tomorrow and never did. Other folks had the same problems but still there were people who defended Patrick and attacked me.

So Brad, I'm not attacking you or saying you don't have a valid complaint. But I do want to make the point that it is not the norm for OMP to provide bad service. In fact, for a small company, they handle orders extremely fast. By the way, if you did want to post a complaint about OMP, I think the OMP forum would have been a better place to post your thread as Mike and Dion both monitor that thread rather closely.

OMG! I just found this thread, and I must say I am kinda floored.

For the sake of maintaining a positive vibe in the hobby (that's what The Cirkus is all about), my only comment is that OMP has made good on fulfilling their commitment to the contest we had a few months back. Brad, please accept our apologies for the miscommunication that took place, and for the delay in getting you your prize. To OMP - The Cirkus is deeply indebted for your generosity, and you deserve a big thanks from all of us. The contest was fun for all, and it would not have been possible if not for the generosity of our contest sponsors.

Regards,

Mad Max Duncan
flyingcirkus.com

Brad,

I see you are taking a bit of heat over you posting - that is why I have not posted my experience with them. I had one dealing with OMP - and it was my last. I don't want to go into details here, but yes, I would caution others to be wary of OMP - and this is only after I learned of their Support Forum here.

Dan

well, he hasn't made good on it as of yet. He emailed me and told me that it was pulled out of the shipping pile by his partner on Friday. He says that it will ship on Monday, but this hinges on being approved by his partner since I pissed him off by making these posts in the first place. If he partner does not agree, then no shippie. I personally don't care what his partner thinks. It is like this, you can make me happy or you can make me more angry........and seeing that this is now the fifth time it is going to be shipped it will not surprise me to see it removed from the shipping pile once again.........for any reason.

I will watch the tracking number he gave me. He is also supposed to email me when and if it ships. If it does finally ship, I can at least post that in his behalf although I will never look back on this as a joyous occasion.

Thanks Max for all you have done. I have said it many times and you know I am not upset at you or the Cirkus crew. I may have, and probably did overreact to this whole ordeal but all I can say is that is the way I am. Anyone that knows me will tell you I take no s***, so I usually handle the simplest of matters in the same way I handle the most serious matters. Just the wrong person for this to happen to I suppose........

okay guys........I'm out. I will be sure to give Dion some retribution after I know it has shipped. Stay tuned.

thanks

Brad

I'm locking this thread. The original poster got to tell his story and flyingcirkus was able to tell their story. From here things would only be speculative. I suggest to anyone that wants more info then the parties above have offered to simply contact them via PM or email.