The BRJ Black Friday Thread (Only for updates for/by customers.)[Ad Free]

[Hollowway]

Yeah, the guitars that are available, based on the 3 separate people I've talked to selling them, and based on what others have said (including Bernie's wife), say in a warehouse with no temperature control for months. I would be seriously worried about getting a guitar with a warped neck or worse. And there is no one to take responsibility if anything happened to be wrong. It's just not worth the risk, even if you could stomach potentially buying a stolen instrument that might belong to a completely innocent guy out $1600-$10,000.

 

[SpaceDock]

Bernie Rico Jr Guitar not Finish Project | eBay
Here's another one.

So, this is *my* guitar. I can even see my name written in the control cavity. I have been quite for the last few days and I tried to recover the guitar with the help of the police. Sadly, Bernie stole my money and not "my guitar" so I cannot lay claim to the guitar.

 

[Hollowway]

So, this is *my* guitar. I can even see my name written in the control cavity. I have been quite for the last few days and I tried to recover the guitar with the help of the police. Sadly, Bernie stole my money and not "my guitar" so I cannot lay claim to the guitar.

Holy crap. Did you try to contact he seller? See if you can trace it back. And how is it not stolen? If you have him money, he gave you a guitar. He just hasn't shipped it yet. What does the law say about that? Is there really no way to get the police involved?

 

[SpaceDock]

I have contacted seller, bought it without paying. Since it was never in my possession bernie still owes me money and the guitar was never mine, kinda sucks. Still working on any way forward I can.

 

[Tesla]

That truly sucks man.

 

[Nightside]

So glad I got rid of my BRJ. I got mine two years before the black friday run and still had headaches with it. It was shipped with the wrong color trem bar, broken switch which was probably due to the case being completely empty inside with a few loose random shaped pieces of case interior tossed in to try and keep the guitar from sliding around. It's not like it was any crazy shape either it was a Jekyll and fit my Ibanez prestige hard case just fine. Bernie wanted me to buy another case off of him. Instead I just left it in his excuse for a case and sold it off later at a huge loss.

I can't believe this douche has the nerve to try and start a business again.

Edit: He didn't see any reason to send me a new switch since it was broken in shipping so not his problem or the correct color trem bar since the one he sent was functional.

Double edit: After my initial BRJ experience I wanted nothing to do with his crap but I was almost convinced that my ....ty experience was just a freak accident and that Bernie was the best guy to deal with and his guitars pure gold. Quite a few forum members were singing his praises and a few well known (only around here at the time) artists were going on about it. I'm pretty sure Bernie's black friday run would never have amounted to much if it wasn't for the djent guys spamming pics of all their awesome guitars and their friendship with old uncle Bernie. I'm happy to see they didn't lose anything in dealing with him though and were able to move on to Jackson, PRS, Ibanez, Schecter...

 

[Womb raider]

It just boggles my mind how a business can collect a bunch of money, not deliver the product and get away with it with not even a slap on the wrist. The only option people are left with is small claims court which is more time and money than its worth.
I guess he could still get caught up with the IRS for tax fraud, since I'm sure he wasn't doing proper bookkeeping the way he ran his business. I'm sure Uncle Sam would love to know about the hundreds of thousands of dollars he made during that span of time. Not much consolation for those that lost money though.

 

[SDMFVan]

It just boggles my mind how a business can collect a bunch of money, not deliver the product and get away with it with not even a slap on the wrist.

Ever heard of Kickstarter? You just described the business model of about 75% of the businesses on there. I read a story today about a guy that made $600k for some new type of 3D printer; he used the money to build a house and told all the people he'd robbed "sorry".

 

[BlackMastodon]

Doesn't Kickstarter have some sort of clause where the owner of the campaign has to deliver some kind of product? I could've swore there was some liability, however small it may be.

 

[mperrotti34]

It just boggles my mind how a business can collect a bunch of money, not deliver the product and get away with it with not even a slap on the wrist. The only option people are left with is small claims court which is more time and money than its worth.
I guess he could still get caught up with the IRS for tax fraud, since I'm sure he wasn't doing proper bookkeeping the way he ran his business. I'm sure Uncle Sam would love to know about the hundreds of thousands of dollars he made during that span of time. Not much consolation for those that lost money though.

Im surprised the IRS hasnt gone after him already. If what everyone has said on here is true (which I dont doubt at all at this point) the amount of money he would have had would be way over the reasonable amount of capital that a business should keep. The law requires that a company only keep excess capital that is necessary for progressing in business. Thats the core of the Supreme Court case filed by the Dodge brothers against Ford in the early 1900's (only their case was for dividends and not products that had been paid for). Not only did they get what they were owed but they got more on top of it because of the excess capital that Ford had at the time. The IRS should have already audited him. If they havent yet he is going to be in for a rude awakening when they finally catch on to what has happened. He will get charged with at least tax fraud and criminal tax evasion. For those that dont know what those are......He will be going away for a long time.

 

[BlackMastodon]

We can only hope. But if he filed for bankruptcy, would that protect him at all? BRJ seems to be the kind of guy that would go to any and all lengths to hide behind anything that would save him.

 

[SDMFVan]

Doesn't Kickstarter have some sort of clause where the owner of the campaign has to deliver some kind of product? I could've swore there was some liability, however small it may be.

Not really: https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarter

They basically say that if someone doesn't deliver than you can try and go after that person, but it's not KS's problem. It's really not in their best interests to go after the projects anyway since KS's user agreement absolves them of any liability and they get a cut of the proceeds whether the project is real or fake.

People should keep this in mind when giving money to ANY luthier before a product has actually been made, especially when you're buying your way into a "run" of multiple guitars. You're basically investing in that company, and any legal ramifications are going to have to be initiated and most importantly followed through by you. The government generally won't be proactive in these kind of cases.

 

[Nightside]

You guys should buy the domain name for Bernie Rico Jr guitars and make it into a website dedicated to publicising his shenanigans with pics of jacked up orders, stolen guitars for sale and list of people he ripped off for how much and testimonials. It would be a good way to warn new people about him when he inevitably starts trying to sell guitars again.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Please someone do this.

 

[Electric Wizard]

The domain isn't for sale and registration won't expire until Christmas day. You can buy .net or .org though.

 

[Nightside]

As long as it pops up when someone googles BRJ

 

[clubshred]

The domain isn't for sale and registration won't expire until Christmas day. You can buy .net or .org though.

I actually owned the .org name for a couple of years because I was building his website at the time - of course, he didn't pay me. Shocker.

I let it expire I think last year because I wanted nothing to do with that crooked bastard.

 

[Speculum Speculorum]

So glad I got rid of my BRJ. I got mine two years before the black friday run and still had headaches with it. It was shipped with the wrong color trem bar, broken switch which was probably due to the case being completely empty inside with a few loose random shaped pieces of case interior tossed in to try and keep the guitar from sliding around. It's not like it was any crazy shape either it was a Jekyll and fit my Ibanez prestige hard case just fine. Bernie wanted me to buy another case off of him. Instead I just left it in his excuse for a case and sold it off later at a huge loss.

I can't believe this douche has the nerve to try and start a business again.

Edit: He didn't see any reason to send me a new switch since it was broken in shipping so not his problem or the correct color trem bar since the one he sent was functional.

Double edit: After my initial BRJ experience I wanted nothing to do with his crap but I was almost convinced that my ....ty experience was just a freak accident and that Bernie was the best guy to deal with and his guitars pure gold. Quite a few forum members were singing his praises and a few well known (only around here at the time) artists were going on about it. I'm pretty sure Bernie's black friday run would never have amounted to much if it wasn't for the djent guys spamming pics of all their awesome guitars and their friendship with old uncle Bernie. I'm happy to see they didn't lose anything in dealing with him though and were able to move on to Jackson, PRS, Ibanez, Schecter...

Those guys definitely lost a lot of my respect after all that bull..... But I will say this - for no reason I can think of, my BRJ Jekyll 727 is a damn phenomenal guitar. For some reason he pulled out the stops on the construction and quality of my guitar. It sounds and plays amazing, is incredibly resilient and stable - I'm FINALLY setting it up again after 2 years of not being set up and I'm just being picky, really. It did come to me very wonky though, and had to have quite the series of adjustments and nut-work done on it to make it play better than a 2-year-old built it.

When he did good work, he really did GREAT work. He just didn't seem to give one damn about consistency at all, and he also had a chronic issue with taking responsibility for his own problems. As I've stated before, even weeks before going completely bonkers and running off with a bunch of people's money he was talking about how nobody asks him "how Bernie is doing".

I explained to him it might be because they gave him sometimes thousands of dollars and expect a guitar or several guitars, but he just couldn't wrap his head around it.

 

[Randy]

It seemed to be pretty well documented some or maybe all the raw bodies and necks were being 'ghost built' (speculation was in Mexico) and there's a good chance the people running that factory knew how to build an alright guitar.

Dunno *exactly* how the finishing (final sanding, prep, paint, QC and setup) was handled but it appeared to be done in Bernie's shop. Considering how scatterbrained the guy is/was with an operation to match, it wouldnt surprise me at all if the "factory setup" and stuff done in Bernie's shop were all poorly done appointments on an otherwise decently built guitar.

For the record, I played a Hesperian 7 before and thought it was one of the best guitars I've ever picked up. The guy did some less than stellar .... prior and we've been over the song and dance over how unwise it is to underpay for a guitar and not think there's good reason, but being the guys namesake, all the forum celebrities, they looked cool and at least some of the ones in the wild played great... I can definitely see how a lot of people were blindsided.

 

[JPMike]

I haven't been on here for so long!

What's the situation?