isispelican
Well-Known Member
Hope they manage to get out of this
RAN guitars offline. Did they close? Update: Trouble Relocating
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My RAN's are among the best instruments I've owned or played, and Dariusz has been nothing but a stand up guy in my experience. Really sad to hear how things are playing out for them at the moment. They do truly make world class instruments.
Flappydoodle
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Some of you guys are gullible AS FUCK
Why on earth are you holding out for guitars? Any of you in the EU need to be lawyering up and sending letters ASAP. If RAN are going to be selling assets, issuing refunds, or handing out partially completed guitars, you want to be in the priority. It's virtually guaranteed that there won't be enough cash in the business to pay back everybody.
Just from those two conversations - the shop is gone, their luthiers have gone, and the owner is apparently sick. That means RAN is gone.
If they don't have money to give back deposits, they quite likely don't have money to hire (and train) new people. This dangling of future hope is exactly how you will end up losing your money and never seeing a guitar.
My advice is, try to secure your money back now. If they do actually get up and running again, and you're really desperate for a RAN, you can put another deposit then.
Only a fool would leave money in a dysfunctional business with no premises, no employees and this shoddy communication with customers.
Why on earth are you holding out for guitars? Any of you in the EU need to be lawyering up and sending letters ASAP. If RAN are going to be selling assets, issuing refunds, or handing out partially completed guitars, you want to be in the priority. It's virtually guaranteed that there won't be enough cash in the business to pay back everybody.
Just from those two conversations - the shop is gone, their luthiers have gone, and the owner is apparently sick. That means RAN is gone.
If they don't have money to give back deposits, they quite likely don't have money to hire (and train) new people. This dangling of future hope is exactly how you will end up losing your money and never seeing a guitar.
My advice is, try to secure your money back now. If they do actually get up and running again, and you're really desperate for a RAN, you can put another deposit then.
Only a fool would leave money in a dysfunctional business with no premises, no employees and this shoddy communication with customers.
What would you suggest? going from your country "in Europe" to Poland and kick some ass?
diagrammatiks
Well-Known Member
Why does this keep happening. Says forum where this happens all the time.
GXPO
Well-Known Member
They have public healthcare in Poland, no excuses!
I hope they manage to turn this around, the guitars were never really my style but they were clearly well built and loved.
GXPO
Well-Known Member
Likelihood of taking internet dudes advice -95%
Psssht... I ain't buying no commie guitars then!
(j/k love my two Mayones... Mayonii? Whatever...)
Obviously RAN is the only builder in the world. It's not like there are literally hundreds of builders who make guitars with similar specs and pricing. We all know that absolutely no one is building pointy super-strats.
This is good-ish advice, but no one is really going to take it. We've seen this how many times?
That said (hence the "ish") unless you have thousands into a build, it might just be better to let it go. I'm not sure how this works in RAN's neck of the woods, or where everyone is from, but pursuing this legally is likely going to be more costly than a small deposit. Even if a judgement is given in the buyer's favor, how are they going to collect? So, after hundreds of dollars in legal fees you'll be left with a judgment not worth the paper it's written on. At least that's how it works over here. Does the EU have a body that handles this sort of thing?
This is why I'm a huge proponent of going to local luthiers, at least those in the same country/state/province.
ChugThisBoy
Well-Known Member
Psssht... I ain't buying no commie guitars then!
(j/k love my two Mayones... Mayonii? Whatever...)
I know it's a joke from your side but please, don't.. just don't do it again.
narad
Progressive metal and politics
Yea, let me notify my legal staff who I, of course, have on retainer, to get back my $600 deposit from luthier in an overseas country*. It's not about being gullible -- these are simply difficult situations. We all know there is some inherent risk in ordering from far away places, but usually the price is a bit better, or the wait times are shorter, but when something goes wrong there's really no good or responsible solution to these things.
It unfortunately winds up being one of these unfortunate in-between situations where it's not really enough money to warrant getting back through legal action, and more money than anyone really wants to chalk up as a loss. I mean, even when I had previous situations with much larger amounts ($2-3k) in with another shady ex-soviet circle luthier, and consulted lawyers about it, I really couldn't make any headway. It's probably only because he was seeking immigration into the US that I had any effective leverage.
*I don't actually have a RAN deposit.
777timesgod
Officially the unofficial Forum Censor
Health issues - check. Builders leaving - check. Location problems - check. Insufficient capital for refunds/operation - check. I think that the members of this forum in particular know the symptoms quite well.
I appreciate the loyalty of some for a company that improved a lot over the years, they used to be the go to guys for custom copies (of known brands/shapes) of lower quality, for European customers eager to avoid currency, customs and shipping fees or had designs that the foreign custom shops would not work on. While they still do those, they raised their game and I heard better things as the years went by.
Definetely, if they do not come back -which seems very likely at this predicament- large sums of money will be lost. Please, let us not see the same arguments between the camp of "sit on your ass and take the hit because I make 10k a month, own 100 customs/amps and do not consider it a big deal" and the camp "I barely could afford the deposit on that custom guitar, time to lock and load and book plane tickets". They always lead nowhere and are tedious, if you had a deposit and can get it back though your credit card/bank, make a decision if you want to try it or assist a company that may or may not go down. Just my 2 cents.
I appreciate the loyalty of some for a company that improved a lot over the years, they used to be the go to guys for custom copies (of known brands/shapes) of lower quality, for European customers eager to avoid currency, customs and shipping fees or had designs that the foreign custom shops would not work on. While they still do those, they raised their game and I heard better things as the years went by.
Definetely, if they do not come back -which seems very likely at this predicament- large sums of money will be lost. Please, let us not see the same arguments between the camp of "sit on your ass and take the hit because I make 10k a month, own 100 customs/amps and do not consider it a big deal" and the camp "I barely could afford the deposit on that custom guitar, time to lock and load and book plane tickets". They always lead nowhere and are tedious, if you had a deposit and can get it back though your credit card/bank, make a decision if you want to try it or assist a company that may or may not go down. Just my 2 cents.
jephjacques
BUTTS LOL
Aw man, I bought one of their in-stock guitars last year and it's among the best guitars I've ever owned. This is a real bummer.
They def took the money and RAN.
How long did it take for you to come up with that one?
Mere hours.
Flappydoodle
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If you are in Europe, then a simple letter from a lawyer is likely to make you a priority when it comes to getting anything back from the remnants of the company. I say "in Europe" because threats from overseas are too difficult to enforce. Within Europe, there are lots of customer protection laws for situations like this.
When it comes to dissolving a company (in the UK at least, I assume Poland is similar), there is some hierarchy about who gets what first. Bank loans will tend to get repaid because their contracts are so tight. But once everything is liquidised, there may be a pool of money left for customers and suppliers to whom the company owes money. My point is simply that you might want to try and get yourself to the top of that list, if you care about getting the money back.
That's fine.
The "gullibility" relates to optimistic comments about waiting for them to get back on their feet etc. Based on them having legal troubles, no premises, no workers, and the owner being sick - the chance of them getting back on their feet is slim.
I realise you're being facetious, but you don't need "legal staff" to send a simple letter. And I assume there are people who have sunk more than $600 deposits in.
I think I was clear in my original post - I don't think that anybody will be able to successfully take legal action, win, and get money back. But when RAN are "making a list" of customers and deciding who gets what, the noisy people will be served first and the optimistic people hanging on will get ignored.
I think it's gullible to think they're putting together some list of whose naughty and nice and will reward some and not others based on things like strongly worded letters from lawyers that mean absolutely nothing.
Shame to see a luthier that had credibility* established over a relatively long period of time (at least in the world of custom builders) go under, especially if they were indeed screwed over by a third party.
*Credibility for their customers. The blatant design infringement they used to pull is another matter entirely. Given that the company was pretty much built on a foundation of IP theft, there is a certain karmic justice to them being screwed out of said business by third party fuckery themselves.
Regardless of whether the business deserved its end, the builders clearly took pride in their craft as evidenced by generally widespread praise for the quality of the instruments they produced, and they deserve better. At least, those that weren't knowingly complicit in profiting off the designs of others do.
*Credibility for their customers. The blatant design infringement they used to pull is another matter entirely. Given that the company was pretty much built on a foundation of IP theft, there is a certain karmic justice to them being screwed out of said business by third party fuckery themselves.
Regardless of whether the business deserved its end, the builders clearly took pride in their craft as evidenced by generally widespread praise for the quality of the instruments they produced, and they deserve better. At least, those that weren't knowingly complicit in profiting off the designs of others do.
777timesgod
Officially the unofficial Forum Censor
I think it's gullible to think they're putting together some list of whose naughty and nice and will reward some and not others based on things like strongly worded letters from lawyers that mean absolutely nothing.
The mass e-mail send under the pretence that it was individually composed and addressed for each customer (from what I understand) is a red flag. Trying to please some customers with half-finished gear and return of deposit may sound logical but I also do not see it being plausible. If you have assets and money, you will use them to get back on your feet and will not be concerned with customer A and customer B.
After all, what is the difference to brand damage from pissing off 1000 people and having some assets to get by or pissing off 900 people and being dead broke.
I remember being attacked in the past (not in this forum of course) when I simply mentioned Ran guitars. I did not promote them or anything but fans of several brands were pissed off when they first appeared years ago.
My view was always this, if the big companies cared about their fans, they should have established European custom shop branches. It is not that hard to pull it off (for some time at least, the big companies would last longer), given the sheer number of garage luthiers selling axes for 3-5ks nowadays. I am not implying sending luthiers over but franchising and giving the right to established locals with guidance from the HQ.
As I said, the damage from shipping from the USA, plus the custom office fee, plus the currency change and bank fees are a deterring factor for many to order a custom guitar/bass.
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