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A lot has been said lately about
Collaboration "Group Hugs" and "Who to Support".
Editorial - We have a story to tell about our experince
in supporting our sport through donations and through paid advertising
and as it relates to the California 4 Wheel Drive Association.
I think its as important to know when we, as supporters, are
being mistreated.
Rocky Trail Outfitters and RubiconTrail.com no longer
support Cal 4Wheel.
There's a reason for this and we have decided to make
our side of that reason public.
We had been a supporter through both donations of
items and through regular advertising and we look forward to
supporting them again in the future. We want to donate more and
we want to pay to advertise.
Here's why we no longer do. It's a longer story than
this but here it is in a nutshell:
* We had happily arranged to
pay for monthly advertising in Cal 4Wheel's "In Gear"
magazine. Our written (email) arrangement was for In Gear to
bill us monthly to our company credit card. All cool, all agreed
and all working! Our AD for Rocky Trail was showing up monthly.
This advertising included mention of our support of FOTR as well.
* In the next year, we continued
our advertising with the same conditions where Cal 4Wheel would
debit our company credit card monthly for advertising in In Gear.
* Rocky Trail Outfitters donated
a complete Pett Toilet System to the Cal 4Wheel Raffle Vehicle.
* We placed Cal 4Wheel brochures
in with items we shipped to our customers. (no longer)
* Toward
Nov of that year we got a bill in the mail for ONE months billing
showing PAID.
* Soon thereafter we got another
bill in Dec.with a hand written acknowledgement that a debit
was made for $370 on our credit card.
* In another email from Suzy
Johnson of In Gear she suggested that our credit card was charged
$270 in June of that year.
* By late December we received
a bill for over $500.
* What the heck was going on
with In Gear accounting and why didn't they honor our emailed
agreement?
* We have all copies of these
correspondences both mailed and emailed.
* We were shocked at the mishandling
of the accounting by In Gear and to find that our clear arrangement
of monthly billing, which ran smootly the year before had not
been done for the recent year. AND WE WERE TO BLAME FOR THE ERRORS.
We even got bills hand-marked PAID in the mail.
* We asked in an email what had
happened to our arrangement and we asked whether cal 4Wheel felt
any responsibility in all the accounting errors.
* The only reply we got was to
be reported to a collection agency. THAT'S NOT RIGHT!
A COLLECTION AGENCY!
* We contacted Robert Reed, then
President of Cal 4Wheel, with no luck. He stood by his accounting
department with no attempt to apologize or look into why we were
being treated in this impersonal way. We had SUPPORTED Cal4Wheel
and wanted to pay per the terms we agreed upon and yet we were
squashed like bugs and sent to collectiion.
* Cal 4Wheel has lost ALL of
our business including: In Gear advertising, direct, un-reciprocated
links from every page on this website, inclusion of their informational
brochures in our retail packaging, donations to their raffles.
We advertise elsewhere now. We do this
happily and we get billed monthly for the advertising we do.
Our current advertisiers treat our suppport with the respect
it is due. They appreciate the dollars we spend with them and
they fulfill their end of our agreement for payment.
* We gave our payment info to
Cal 4Wheel and we authorized monthly billing via that method.
Because they could not handle that from their end (even after
having no problems handling it the prior year) we were punished
for our support! THAT'S NOT RIGHT.
* We would still like to reconcile with Cal 4Wheel and put
this behind us but we have not heard that they are interested.
Support Cal 4 Wheel? You decide. We would certainly
like to support any new management there once we have recieved
the appropriate apology for doing everything on our end we could
to support them.
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$ 19.95
$
24.95
$ 3.00
