Xitone Build Time

2204JCM said:
Yeah it will be 2 years for me very soon.
My patience is starting to go.
I'm going to have a nice little talk with him in a few weeks....
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I paid on 6/4/21, and got the laser excuses and a bunch of "It'll ship in two weeks!", but never received anything from Xitone and has not responded to my e-mails since April of 2022. My last two E-mails I tried to politely imply that if he was unable to deliver that I'd appreciate a refund and that's when he stopped responding.

Glad I found this thread.
 
I paid at the end of January 2022. I inquired about a wait time and was told it would be several weeks. I thought to myself okay what’s a month or two gonna hurt… I see if you paid the beginning of June I could have been told it was going to be atleast 8 months right off the bat 🤦‍♂️
 
Idk about new customers, but back on 6/4/21 he told me 4-8 weeks, but when he wrote me an invoice he wrote 3-4 weeks in the invoice notes.

I didn't start contacting him until a couple months went by, this was kind of when everyone was having a hard time with shipping and stocking a lot of parts, so I understood and took his word. Then he said he had to move his shop, and then his laser broke down... I should have filed a dispute with PayPal before my time was up, but everyone had such high praise for him back then, and there wasn't anyone at that time that had a bad experience except for waiting longer than estimated... I'm bummed about it, I feel stupid now, but he genuinely seemed like a nice guy that was down on his luck and fell behind on orders.

I really hope he's not taking money from new customers at this point.
 
LSD_Doom said:
Idk about new customers, but back on 6/4/21 he told me 4-8 weeks, but when he wrote me an invoice he wrote 3-4 weeks in the invoice notes.

I didn't start contacting him until a couple months went by, this was kind of when everyone was having a hard time with shipping and stocking a lot of parts, so I understood and took his word. Then he said he had to move his shop, and then his laser broke down... I should have filed a dispute with PayPal before my time was up, but everyone had such high praise for him back then, and there wasn't anyone at that time that had a bad experience except for waiting longer than estimated... I'm bummed about it, I feel stupid now, but he genuinely seemed like a nice guy that was down on his luck and fell behind on orders.

I really hope he's not taking money from new customers at this point.
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Many months ago he told me it was ready and just needed to get shipped when he had time....
 
@LSD_Doom Ive read this kind of story countless times over the years (there was a huge thread about Echo Park guitars over on TGP and I’m pretty sure there was a similar problem with a guy that made Dumble clones). Small builders who require money up front should be approached with caution. I think many times these individuals are not trying to scam people intentionally but they fall on hard times or make a few irresponsible choices and then end up swamped in a backlog of orders that will take years to fulfill. They start making excuses and it snowballs because they need the money from new orders to fund the current builds.

I’m not saying it isn’t the builder’s fault. They have a responsibility to deliver for their customers regardless of the circumstances that life throws at them. I’m just saying this is reasonably common unfortunately.

I wish you luck in getting your situation resolved.
 
I'll echo Zed here. My wife is an avid knitter and also follows that community. There's a cottage industry of tiny businesses that buy yarn from the mills, dye it in interesting ways, then sell it. They run on a shoestring and It happens all the time that these little bitty businesses get upside down financially or are destroyed by success when they can't scale up to meet demand for their products. They struggle mightily, make promises in good faith they ultimately can't keep, and go down in flames and sometimes big legal troubles. It sounds like that's what's happening here.
 
HerrSquid said:
I'll echo Zed here. My wife is an avid knitter and also follows that community. There's a cottage industry of tiny businesses that buy yarn from the mills, dye it in interesting ways, then sell it. They run on a shoestring and It happens all the time that these little bitty businesses get upside down financially or are destroyed by success when they can't scale up to meet demand for their products. They struggle mightily, make promises in good faith they ultimately can't keep, and go down in flames and sometimes big legal troubles. It sounds like that's what's happening here.
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This and divorce, drugs and alcohol. I won't do business with "owners" or single proprietors anymore, which says a lot since I ran my own business for 12 years. I've been burnt a few times now because of the big 3. I'm done with the solo great guy who will take care of you thing,
 
OrganicZed said:
@LSD_Doom Ive read this kind of story countless times over the years (there was a huge thread about Echo Park guitars over on TGP and I’m pretty sure there was a similar problem with a guy that made Dumble clones). Small builders who require money up front should be approached with caution. I think many times these individuals are not trying to scam people intentionally but they fall on hard times or make a few irresponsible choices and then end up swamped in a backlog of orders that will take years to fulfill. They start making excuses and it snowballs because they need the money from new orders to fund the current builds.

I’m not saying it isn’t the builder’s fault. They have a responsibility to deliver for their customers regardless of the circumstances that life throws at them. I’m just saying this is reasonably common unfortunately.

I wish you luck in getting your situation resolved.
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Yeah, I read as many threads about Xitone as I could find. Didn't once come across a post that even hinted on not getting what you paid for.
 
2204JCM said:
Yeah, I read as many threads about Xitone as I could find. Didn't once come across a post that even hinted on not getting what you paid for.
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He used to be pretty frequent on this forum and did right by a lot of folks. He has sent me multiple new speaker designs to 'try', just to get some feedback. I did buy a passive wedge and got it quickly (which was a few years back).
Seems like he hit some type of life changing event and has walked away from this business (or something like that).
What a bummer.

I made the mistake of paying someone ahead of time to build me a guitar once. Took WAY longer than expected, and did not come out the way we agreed. Because of that, it sits in a case unplayed. I had zero ways to make him fix it. He moved and changed his phone number.
Never again will I take that path. Sucks to see XiTone is doing this to people.
 
FYI I emailed Mick this weekend asking if he had any 12" active wedges in stock, and if not, how long would it take to ship. He replied almost immediately that he doesn't have any, but that I'd be looking at "6-8 weeks or so". He then emailed me back and asked, "Do you have a need for it sooner? If so let me know a date certain and I can see if there is something I can do."
 
ESW said:
FYI I emailed Mick this weekend asking if he had any 12" active wedges in stock, and if not, how long would it take to ship. He replied almost immediately that he doesn't have any, but that I'd be looking at "6-8 weeks or so". He then emailed me back and asked, "Do you have a need for it sooner? If so let me know a date certain and I can see if there is something I can do."
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That's nice, but it's words.
 
ESW said:
It's not nice at all. He's still telling new customers that it's a 6-8 week wait, and what's worse, he emailed back to say he could ship one out faster - all while there are guys here who've been waiting for more than a year (or more than 2 in some cases).
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Understood, poor choice of words on my part.

I was commenting on how he's said a lot of different things to different people, but done pretty much nothing for most of them.

Messed up situation for sure.
 
ESW said:
FYI I emailed Mick this weekend asking if he had any 12" active wedges in stock, and if not, how long would it take to ship. He replied almost immediately that he doesn't have any, but that I'd be looking at "6-8 weeks or so". He then emailed me back and asked, "Do you have a need for it sooner? If so let me know a date certain and I can see if there is something I can do."
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The something he can do is REFUND THE WAITLIST. Nobody should deal with him ever again. I understand that people can have issues but they can handle it better than this. Honesty and communication costs nothing .
 
You can dispute this charge on your credit card. It should get refunded since you never received the product. What a message to send if multiple people do this.
 
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