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Bad Survive! Deserves A Permanent Post In The Hall Of Shame
- Thread starter ncrockclimb
- Start date
Wild Willie
Gold Member
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- Mar 19, 2018
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- 4,378
Awwww shucks... Glad I could help there, but it wouldn't have been possible without taking the time to learn from the fellas that came before me, and them taking the time to teach me.
Maybe I should start a YouTube channel, and talk mad crap about all the heavy hitters in the tree care industry...
Too bad I'm aware of my place in the grand scheme of things. I do want to make clear, that I do think that there are plenty of great content creators on the tube, that teach HOW to do things, not just sell you something. It's a great resource for repair work especially. My main issue is with the ones who pretend to have a profound knowledge of something and then take advantage of folks who might not know better by selling them something they don't need.
ncrockclimb
Gold Member
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- Nov 20, 2014
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- 2,378
This ^^^
YT is literally my first stop when I want to learn how to operate something, fix something or preform a task. There is a lot of good info there.
And Jon 100% does not fit into the "good" or value added part of YT.
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- Jul 3, 2019
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Honestly, ^^^ this ^^^ is the story that I believe. A combination of confirmation bias and being a huge, gullible idiot put him in bed with the wrong people.
I certainly find it hard to believe that a person with brains and a full knowledge of S!K's precarious situation would ever invest any time and effort into it, much less get their name involved in it.
From my perspective, Heavy Set Tactical came out of obscurity to play a small part in the finale of a dark comedy, then the theater burned down and he apologized for taking part in it.
He's on the record for apologizing, and I hope he apologizes to all those comments he dealt with so poorly, but then after that?
As far as I'm concerned, he can go back into obscurity.
If there's one thing I've learned from the S!K saga, a steady stream of propaganda, misinformation and fluff pieces pulls the idiots out of the woodwork.
r8shell
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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- Jan 16, 2010
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- 25,419
That's the thing. I'm sure there are some people making useful content on youtube and not every post on BF is perfectly accurate. But the arrogance to decide that any negative comments you read are just "drama" from "haters" without investigating further is so very dumb. Why not talk to the banks, suppliers, ex-landlords, ect. before jumping into a partnership?
"Hey, guys. It looks like Guy may have been lying, guys. No way a guy like me would know Guy wasn't a good guy, guys."
Elgatodeacero
Gold Member
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- Jan 5, 2014
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This is a wise and insightful post. I would have “liked” it if I could have.
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- Jan 29, 2010
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- 9,830
This seemed appropriate here…
gscreely
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2008
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- 174
I can only speak to what I have observed. I think he truly believed (at the time) what Guy had told him about how this big, bad world had conspired to make survive fail. I am giving him grace because there have been times in my life when I realized I have been on the wrong side of an issue, believe the wrong persons account, and not all of us are willing to confess that fact. There is no question that hitching your wagon to Survive was a profoundly bad idea, and John has paid for it in a number of ways. It was a genuine attempt to clear the air. Guy is a very convincing salesmen, but, as many other experienced makers did, I could see he was full of you know what.
If I didn't know the ins and out of making blades it would have sounded very reasonable and easy to believe. When I did my video about the Magnacut issue, Guy was emailing me and talking to me as if I would be convinced (I was sorta offended he thought I knew that little since I am actually a maker).
I just watched a video today from a well-known US company, trash-talking Magnacut. From what I can tell, they were using information they got from Guys videos. As someone in the room, John can speak to the fact that much of that was just a smoke screen to divert attention away from 1 million+ dollars of undelivered product. I find this story so intriguing, and at 349 pages of posts over a decade, I am not the only one. I don't think there has ever been a bigger scandal in the knife community. Maybe after some time, I will produce a short documentary on the company and its story; I know a good bit more about it than I say here. I will say this: it is not just people who ordered knives that got stiffed, but a deep and wide list of vendors, OEMs, Land Lords, and even family members. This thing is epic.
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- 14,763
I’d like this if that feature was available.
I hope you make that video. The notion that a criminal only hurts their direct victims is nonsensical. There is always collateral damage done. People really need to understand that this whole debacle was a criminal enterprise from the jump. It wasn’t a knife maker who got overwhelmed, he’s a criminal who chose the knife business to ply his trade in.
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Exactly.
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Let me get this straight, Jon from heavy set tactical ignores all advice that he admitted he received which warned him of survive and buys in anyway.
He helps survive sell more knives and in turn scam more people, but that's OK because he allegedly helped 1000 knives be made? How many knives were purchased from him pushing the sales? More than 1000? Did a single person buy a knife because of his peddling the knives who didn't get their knife? If he helped get 1000 knives out the door but helped them sell 7000 more knives how is that helping people?
Now he's throwing survive under the bus after getting his feelings hurt by guy, and trying to start his own knife company?
Na, not buying it.
He knew the ship was toasted and pushed sales and misled people. Fact. Salvaging his image to make his own company is in his best interest so of course that's what he's doing.
People are so naive (not talking about jon), it's why survive was able to get as far as they did. Jon isn't naive, he's a scavenger who will push lies for money if he thinks he'll benefit. The people buying into another clown who starts off as a liar are naive. Holy hell has anyone learned anything from this debacle with Guy?
I digress. Jon ain't fooling me.
gscreely
help him at your own peril, but I won't commend you for it.
He helps survive sell more knives and in turn scam more people, but that's OK because he allegedly helped 1000 knives be made? How many knives were purchased from him pushing the sales? More than 1000? Did a single person buy a knife because of his peddling the knives who didn't get their knife? If he helped get 1000 knives out the door but helped them sell 7000 more knives how is that helping people?
Now he's throwing survive under the bus after getting his feelings hurt by guy, and trying to start his own knife company?
Na, not buying it.
He knew the ship was toasted and pushed sales and misled people. Fact. Salvaging his image to make his own company is in his best interest so of course that's what he's doing.
People are so naive (not talking about jon), it's why survive was able to get as far as they did. Jon isn't naive, he's a scavenger who will push lies for money if he thinks he'll benefit. The people buying into another clown who starts off as a liar are naive. Holy hell has anyone learned anything from this debacle with Guy?
I digress. Jon ain't fooling me.
gscreely
help him at your own peril, but I won't commend you for it.
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- Jul 3, 2019
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I'm not clear on what his motivation was- open questions which haven't really been answered yet...
Was he actually on S!K's pay roll? The language I've heard was that he was "helping out".
Did he buy in to S!K as a part owner? or did he merely buy a machine from Guy? Based on what I've seen, the evidence seems to indicate he's a proud owner of a new knife machine.
Until someone can explain to me definitively that Jon benefited personally from perpetuating the S!K scam, I can't believe he was in on the scam.
I don't look at Jon's situation and think, "here's a guy who stood to profit from the scam".
I'm by no means a HST apologist, but if anyone needs evidence that Guy is a convincing conman, look how long his sham of a business ran, and how many people he's hung out to dry.
I mean... the guy convinced people to wait 9 years for knives that never came.
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If memory serves me correctly he was to get a percentage of the business, and the machine was used as collateral for the investment. He didn't just buy a machine from him.
Just weeks before the whole thing imploded Jon was still pushing people to buy knives from survive, knowing full well they weren't fulfilling orders, I'm not sure what is unclear about that?
Wouldn't it stand to reason, if you cared about actually stopping people from losing their money, that you would not encourage them to place orders?
The jig was up long before, he knew it and he said that in the video. Yet he still pushed the scam. Jon ignored everyone's warnings and did what he did because he thought he could make money. Period.
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So I went and watched the video myself - I should have probably done this sooner, as it seems to have clarified a bunch of stuff.
TL;DR: from my perspective, and if I believe what HST says, it reads like a fanboy with a savior complex and a desire to be in the industry made a bad investment, rather than a guy who was knowingly trying to perpetuate a scam.
Also, as a side note, I'm fairly convinced at this point that Guy wasn't running an actual scam. If Guy had made money instead of losing everything, I would have said this was definitely a scam. There's a lot of things Guy is probably guilty of- misleading consumers, misappropriation of money, not paying debts, lying, defaming good businesses... but if the point of a scam is to end up with money, he was sure shit at it.
Looks like HST was invested in the success of the company:
HST is a self-admitted S!K fanboy. (This probably explains his inability to assess the situation for what it was.)
He was talking about investing $75k into Survive, and was told by Guy that it would be more than enough to turn things around. (
)As part of that, he was told he'd be a part owner of survive, to the tune of something like 20-30%, which was never decided on. (
)He wrote an initial check for $30k, and got a piece of equipment put up for collateral. (Which he's now the proud owner of
)Looks like he knew pretty early on that S!K was deep in the rears, but supposedly didn't know what the real numbers were until later:
When he got there, Guy and Ellie had nothing left in their bank accounts. ( Worst scam ever
)"I wasn't given accurate numbers the whole way through, there were several times where it's like, look, this is how bad it is, now here's the real numbers." ( Guy the shyster
)Ellie saved him from putting in the rest of his 75k investment by showing him the numbers. (Ellie has a conscience, I guess?)
by the end, they had $48k of bills a month and maybe $4k of income per week. ($75k wouldn't even take care of 2 months of bills.
)There were 3 or 4 times (historically) when they got themselves out of the hole using preorders or some other undisclosed windfall. (BF called it here, first)
He probably bought 10-15 knives from guy when he went out there, and he (supposedly) sent some of those out for free to people he felt bad for. (wildly unethical, followed by generous)
3500 people aren't getting their orders.
Looks like selling new knives was an effort to keep the business going.
They had 4000 knife back log but a bunch of GSO 4's they could sell, so they'd send out a few preorders and 5 new knives to be sold.
Looks like the only way to keep the company going was to sell new knives to generate income. (no one here is surprised by that- that's what you'd have to do to stay afloat.)
His whole 40 minute video is best summarized with:
"I asked for this [siege of negative feedback] by joining this thing that, I didn't know at the time, had this much crazed and this much craziness and this much drama surrounding it in the knife community, but I knew what I was getting into... but I thought if we could come back hard and get all the preorders done by the end of the summer and hit blade show next year and have some new designs and... ya know... it would be really great."
UncleBoots
Gold Member
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- May 27, 2020
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- 575
That makes no sense to me. Bernie Madoff wound up broke, but was able to pull money from his scam for years. So did Guy. He was pulling in money for years selling preorders that he must have known he would not fulfill, and lying about it. That's exactly how he got his spending money for ages. How can that not be a scam?