Well that was an interesting tirade. I have no intention of going into a lengthy discussion of this in deference to those of you who have become as heartily sick of the whole thing now as I was in trying to deal with Peter in the first place. I do feel, and I apologise in advance here that there are a few inaccuracies that should be stated. I will keep this as brief and blame free as I can.
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Peter Graf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >I will not explain here all the lengthy details how much effort and >prefinancing it required until I could find any commitment from established >QL traders in the production. I found only vague forms of interest, nothing >I could count on, although I had written software to show that the hardware >works, and several operating systems were under construction. Suddenly after >Tony Tebby had already finished a running SMSQ/E, financed by me, >at my own risk, and Tony Tebby expressed his enthusiasm for my development, >I had the surprise to read in the public, that Qbranch and TF Services >had made a decision towards Q40 production. I expressed directly to Peter at an Eindhoven meeting, long before any mention of development of SMSQ/E for the Q40, my wish to sell the machine for him. My offer was, if I recall correctly (and it was a long time ago) to sell the finished working boards. I would never have offered to make them because I lack the knowledge and experience to do so. It was Stuart Honeyball, who had been looking at the boards for Peter, who suggested that I would build them and finance the whole deal. I was informed of this at an Indian restaurant prior to a QL show in Nottingham. Those present included Jochen, Tony Firshman, and D&D who were organising the show. It was Tony who came up to me and said 'Did you know that you were financing and building the Q40 - Stuart says it should only cost around 10 grand'. I remember this very clearly because it was a bit of a shock. I talked Tony into coming on board because I knew I could not build them. > >My objective was a coordinated effort to cut costs by finding cheap >sources. I estimated, that with quantity discounts for 50 boards, and >someone who has access to larger parts distributors, DM 350 costs could >be reached. I proposed 70% profit for the trader and DM 150 licensing fee >for me, which gives a retail price of DM 745. The license fee was originally >supposed to finance my development costs, but back then I already had >expenses that could not be covered by this licence fee from 50 boards. >I clearly stated that my fee would rise rapidly with higher retail prices >because that means less produced units. As a trader, Roy Wood should >know that my profit is not turnover (my fee), but turnover less expenses. I am not too sure what this sentence is saying but Tony and I would have been glad to see 70% profit. As it was we could not find parts at a price to match Peter's and we argued for a long time about the costs and end sale price. During the argument Tony said on more than one occasion that he would quit and I had to talk him into staying on board. Cheap sources = 'pulls' i.e. second hand parts. I was very unhappy about using second hand processors and even more unhappy about only getting 20 of them up front I was therefore willing to buy 50 new ones from one of my Super Gold Card sources. This would, at the very least, have guaranteed 50 identical units at the heart of the machine. > >My negotiating partners proposed a higher retail price of DM 1050 based on >their higher expenses. We clearly stated that we do not agree about the >retail price, but without my approval estimated price figures and >release dates were already published. Efforts to cut costs were started, >and I found cheaper CPU's I think Tony has probably something to say about this. In the end of the negotiation, if I recall, we agreed a price for the unit and I received an email from Peter saying he was 'very happy' we have agreed to take 30 pounds each per unit sold as our profit. Tony probably still has that email. (70% anyone?) >Suddenly, despite my cheaper figures, and without my prior knowledge, a >purchase of a large number of expensive CPUs was made, that would cause a >rise of the retails price beyond my worst apprehensions, without any >advantage for the users. I was irritated and I saw more and more lack of >coordination. Roy Wood complained, that my involvent in the production was >causing long delays and there would be no more cutomers to sell to. >Consequently, I let him do the production without my help. I complained that he was constantly arguing about how Tony and I were going to spend our money but we could not have sold the unit at the time because there was not a working operating system for it. Neither SMSQ/E nor QDOS classic were yet in a state to sell to the public. > >Under the contract with Roy Wood, my obligation was to supply assembly >plan, partslist and PCB data. Roy Wood obtained permission to produce >and sell the Q40, without a fixed retail price limit, and received protection >against third party competition for some time. My final fee would reduce to >DM 200, in case licensing payments were made in time for the first 25 >boards (which did not happen). I never was responsible for the Qbranch Q40 >production at all! True. > >Unfortunately, Roy Wood decided to sell the Q40 without paying my license >fee, in breach of the contract he signed. I tolerated this for a >long time with respect to his claimed personal problems. He also ordered >components from me, which he processed and sold without paying me. Not wholly true. As the boards began to sell I did pay Peter but there were other factors at the time which made payments difficult. I will tell of this later. > >Without any obligation, I supported Roy Wood much more than he deserved, >mainly by personal emails to his supplier Now this is odd. Who was my supplier that he emailed ? I actually did not buy any of the parts for the Q40 after my abortive attempt to buy processor. Tony bought all of the parts that did not come from Peter. >and his customers, with >informations, advice, but also practical help, e.g. a working reference >board. I think that a working reference board was fairly essential and we all supply help and support to customers. That is normal. We are too small a community to say I am exempt from this.. >In my opinion, Roy Wood should have taken more care of his >production, when his problems first occured and not many months later. I never produced a single board so it is for Tony to reply here. The first I knew of any problems was when Tony said that he had assembled all of the boards and there were no more working ones. I had at that time sold about 28 but only supplied 19. (Train runs into buffers. Some passengers get upset.) >In >fact I asked him to let me help, but offers from me were ignored or >required feedback was not given. My motivation for further help for Roy >Wood decreased, after I suffered cheque fraud from him, and he complained >about my attempts to search the faults on his boards, stating he had not >asked me to do any work for him. OK now here we stay in libel territory don't we ? He did have a few cheques bounce on him. Most were replaced and went through. This is more to do with the way that Eurocheques were processed. They could take up to three weeks to go through the account and the final amount taken would depend on the exchange rate at the moment the cheques were 'negotiated' by the exchanging banks. The banking problems were related to the statement at the end of this. > >Roy Wood was not just "a little late" in paying me. From 1999 to 2002, >until now, payments were constantly missing. Roy Wood has not properly >paid even one single invoice in all these years. Some were paid after >more than two years, others are not paid until now. Yes this is also true. Things started off badly with many delays and I then got angry, not something a do a lot, On the whole most of the bad blood at the time was between Tony and Peter and I was the oil on the troubled water. Tony was completely stumped as to why they did not work and I thought that Peter should care more about what was happening. I refused to pay him the money I owed him until he gave us a clue about what was going wrong. Tony assumed that, since he had designed the boards, he would have some tests that would pinpoint the source of the problems. The negotiation was between Tony and Peter. I stayed out of it except to try to use the money owing as a lever to get something moving so that the customers would finally get their boards. At this point I had stopped worrying about the 30 pounds profit I just wanted to fulfil the orders I had and gracefully exit. > >Also we are not talking about "small matters", but high levels of debts >troughout years, with a maximum of more than DM 9000 plus my interest >losses caused by his arrears. Because Roy Wood did not pay me, I had to >delay the already started Q60 development for several years, causing >further disadvantages for me and the QL world in general. > >Things got even worse. When I started to accept no further orders without >advance payment, Roy Wood explicitely agreed to this and I was >naive enough to trust him. I purchased components, paid my supplier and >delivered. Unfortunately the cheque he used to "pay" me was dishonoured. >I hoped this was only an accident as Roy Wood claimed. True. I did agree and true the cheque was dishonoured. See below. > >Three times Roy Wood paid me with dishonoured cheques, including at least >one clear case of cheque fraud in July 2000. Roy Wood promised to send an >exonerate document, which never arrived. Neither arrived replacement >payment, nor did he use the multiple other possiblities to give me the money, >so it was definitely not by accident. See below. > >I had my bank investigating the problem with Roy Wood's cheque, the result >was quite clear - the cheque was cancelled by his bank after consultation >with Roy Wood. You may remember an email exchange in this list regarding >this and compare with Roy Woods recent claims: OK The cheque was dishonoured and it had, this time, nothing to do with either a lack of funds or my stopping it. I actually emailed Peter a copy of my bank statement covering the period from the issuing to the returning of the cheque. He said he could not read it. I did send him a copy of the letter from my bank saying they had never been presented with the cheque in question. Peter faxed me a copy of the cheque. I do not think I still have that but I am sure I still have the letter from the bank and will gladly scan it in and send it to anyone who might be interested. I think, If you look at the bounced cheque you will see only German bank stamps on it. If it had been stopped or refused by my bank it would have a UK one. As I say I am not sure if I still have the fax in question but I may because he published these accusations on the user group before and I thought I might sue him. I was even offered a free German lawyer to do it but I decided not to. OK finances. Q Branch went through a very sticky time during 1998-2001. I opened a shop and hoped that I could make some money from that. I had expected that the shop would be financing some of the Q Branch activities but we never really managed to get it to work. One of the many things that I did at that time was to close down the Q Branch credit card service and merge Q Branch with Microfast 2000 which was the company we set up to run the shop. Why pay for two machine rentals ? I was transferring all of the Q Branch sales from the Microfast bank account to the Q Branch one. Several times during this period the shop takings were so low they were not covering costs and there was not enough money in the shop account to repay the Q Branch one. Matters really came to a head when the council business rates, insurance and several other bills were taken from the account just when Q Branch had made large sales. The shop owed Q Branch several thousand pounds and since both companies were, in effect, me I could do nothing about it When I cut my losses and closed the shop I was already several thousand pounds down. Amongst those debts were the major renewals of QL Today. I told Peter that I could do very little to repay him until I had made sure that everyone who had pad for a magazine got one. Acrimonious emails ensued between us and I paid the bulk of the money I owed when the final QL Todays had been shipped and I was once again able to release some money. That is about all I am going to say on the subject you will all be pleased to hear. I am sure Peter has a whole different view on the subject and, after all, this is all very subjective. My main concern was always for the end user. I may have acted rashly at times and I may have not treated Peter very fairly in some people's eyes but he was willing to wash his hands of the whole episode at a very early stage and I am sure that Tony Firshman has the email in which he said this. I deleted them all . I do not regret getting involved with the Q 40 because, if I had not done it none one else would. I do regret that it turned into such a mess and such a bad feeling between the parties involved but there were faults on all sides. I leave you to judge for yourselves. I will say no more on the subject. Cue applause. -- 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
