Issues with Inka Outdoors

[ElvisJeep87]

Hi Everyone involved and those who are looking to to learn from this thread.

I have been following this thread for a while. I am sorry for all of those on the form the others not on this form who are in this situation.

This may be "A day late and many dollars short" for some people but maby others can learn from it.

Being a old retired businessman, a bit of advice. There is a problem on both ends of this situation (the buyers and builder).

The American market and culture we live in is, we want it now, I do not have time to investigate a company. Yes; I read and you that you knew it was going to take a long time to get it made. The consumer has all of the power, until you give up your money!

When you are required to give up a deposit over 10% of the cost of a item your left yourself open for this type of situation. All businesses should have proper working capital or a line of credit with the suppliers. Dealing with any person (company) where they need to get a large deposit then they do not have capital to weather any bump in the road. Your risk of a situation like what has happened here is very possible.

Dealing with a company that has the waiting list for their product, if they need working capital can get investors or banks to lend them the money to operate the business. If a bank or investor will not lend them the money, why would you risk your money? Granted I read that they said it would be a while before they were able to produce the product. If their demand for their product is as good as they say then if you do not buy it when it is finished they will not have any problem selling it to the next person in line.

I am in no way saying that the person or company was trying to take your money without providing your trailer.

There are some states where you have some laws that will protect you and others that do not. Being that this is a interstate transaction maybe you will have federal laws that can give you some protection?

There are some states where you can not collect more then 10% of the total price or $1,000.oo which ever is less for a contract. I am not in any way giving out legal advice as I am not a lawyer. I am a retired businessman is all.

You can also protect yourself by asking for a “Material and Labor Release”, before you give them the final balance. If you do not know what that is you can do a quick search and find out what the importance of that is.

I know that this makes it very hard for the small guy to get started in a business. If your having a person build a one off product from their garage then I would suggest that buy the materials they need when they need them. They will get their salary and profit when it is competed. Any extra money that you give them has the potential of not getting your finished product

Again I see this is whole situation as a problem on their end and yours.

I am sorry that this had to happen to everyone, but additional research will better prepare you for your next large transaction.

This has just some food for thought. You have gotten my $.02 for free.

Not all of us have a “I want it now” mentality. We wanted a solid product that we were willing to wait for, that product was sold to us by Jeff and Mike. Apparently, two very good salesmen....Also, at the time we researched the company, all the people who had received their product had nothing to say but good things! Yes we should have dug deeper, our bad for sure! With that said, we have filed with our states attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission.

 

[Guitarsail1]

Unbelievable. I really was eyeballing an Inka hard last year, but something about the lead times for these guys and Moby etc etc seemed way off to me. I get they take long lead times but the amount of money they wanted up front to then take over a year to make the trailer seemed totally weird. SO glad after seeing this I went with a manufacturer who has the trailers sitting at their shop ready to be picked up. Love my trailer. This is crazy seeing this and a few others go down..

 

[ElvisJeep87]

Unbelievable. I really was eyeballing an Inka hard last year, but something about the lead times for these guys and Moby etc etc seemed way off to me. I get they take long lead times but the amount of money they wanted up front to then take over a year to make the trailer seemed totally weird. SO glad after seeing this I went with a manufacturer who has the trailers sitting at their shop ready to be picked up. Love my trailer. This is crazy seeing this and a few others go down..

Thanks for rubbing it in ??

 

[Guitarsail1]

Thanks for rubbing it in ??

Haha sorry man. When they said not that they woulnd't but COULDN'T issue a refund thats number one they are going the Pelfreybuilt road. And number one reason to do any deposits with a CC. Issue a chargeback on that deposit and get your money back ASAP.

 

[zimm]

you all do realize this has nothing to do with "overlanding".

its just a business that violated any good business models and all ethics, and it was clear from the START OF THE THREAD. POST 1.

anyone that made excuses for it, aided and abetted the crime. when someone is running a ponzi scheme or a shill game or thier business devolves into one, they need stooges to keep the money flowing, and if you chime in with scenarios empowering plausible deniability, whether or not you know it, YOU ARE SHILL.

i'm mostly directing this at a rep for a company that DOES deliver goods and has a great rep. Martyn's. did he intend on being a shill? naw. its clear to me over time he's a good guy. but damn man, i winced when he posted (bad enough) and the opening line was "I have lots of empathy for both sides here". equivocating the perpetrator and victim in a situation that because hes been in the exact business for so many years, hes like a professional witness. his statements in this area would be good on the stand. what a bad move. at that point Martyn's hard earned rep was now granting credulity to Inka's issues. one can say he didn't know the extent of Inka's production problems, but thats not good enough, because if you dont know, then you shut the ******** up!

>advise to Martyn; resist the urge to chime in on money matters in your business. you get nothing out it in the best case, and in the worst case, youre on record feeling bad for someone in the process of stiffing someone.

>advise to buyers; treat the trailer construction like a house, and use an AIA (or similar) form for billing for time and materials. if they dont have the cash flow in place to wait 30 days on T&M invoicing, they are not on secure footing and either dont have a line of credit, or maxed it out. either way, dont get involved.

 

[teotwaki]

you all do realize this has nothing to do with "overlanding".

its just a business that violated any good business models and all ethics, and it was clear from the START OF THE THREAD. POST 1.
-----SNIPPED FOR BREVITY-----

Zimm, that's quite a good post.

I just read the whole thread and when the owner posted just once to draw a line in the sand I knew it was all over.

As mentioned before, Expo is full of warning threads of this type. Person with a dream starts a "overland" company but has no business knowledge and no idea of how to handle customers in an honest and forthright manner. Business has money/product/delivery/quality problems and owner covers them up. Unhappy customer posts about it on a public forum and the business owner attacks them in one form or another.

Been there and done that. Fortunately for smaller amounts than what the OP has at stake. I hope the story continues to be updated.

 

[Jeepskier]

I put in an order late 2016 after going down to Salt Lake City to get a hands on look at their Inka OHV trailer. Solid build and exactly what I wanted. Paid $9K plus for a deposit bc I was having the works done to this thing. Excuses after excuses for delays. I thought it was funny in his recent public emails that he only mentioned 2017 and 2018 orders while still having unfulfilled 2016 orders. Last I was told I was number 5 in line. So close! Mike's an ************** for screwing us out of our money and I'm an ************** for letting it happen.

 

[Guitarsail1]

Damn...just...damn. Its like watching pelfreybuilt all over.

 

[Jeepskier]

Damn...just...damn. Its like watching pelfreybuilt all over.

What trailer did you end up going with?

 

[Guitarsail1]

Got a VRV FLyer and LOVE it. We've spent about 5 weeks in it. 3 weeks of offroading across UTAH and we beat that thing with no issues. Such a solid trailer.

 

[Pathfinder7]

Open letter to Mike and Blair Stanford. I placed my order in Aug 2017. This was a time when you knew you were already struggling and unable to fulfill your orders. You had zero problem taking my money and promising a 9 month delivery while you still hadn’t delivered trailers from the year prior.

I am not a rich man, I was a soldier for most of my adult life and now fight fires for a living. I worked very hard for the money you took from me and my family. I saved up and did a lot of research and what I thought was due diligence (clearly not) and we took money from our savings for this. I have two young boys that were looking forward to our adventures in this trailer. Instead, Mike, you knowingly stole our money. I believe that you knew the scheme you were running at that point. Maybe you started off with good intentions, or maybe you planned this all along. Either way, by your own count, you took over $250,000 worth of deposits from customers and you have less than $90,000 in assets to show for this. What the hell happened to all the rest of the money? How could you not manage to delivery any campers over the last year? You expect us to believe you invested over a quarter million of your own money and nearly $400k from another investor and that has somehow all gone into thin air? Absolute ****************. We all know that you and your family have been living good off all the money you stole from those of us who trusted you.

If someone came to my house and took that amount in money that would be a felony. If you tried to take it from me on the street you would find yourself with acute lead poisoning. As it is, you used salesmen like Jeff and a flashy website to steal from a couple dozen people. You and all of those who enabled and supported your Ponzi scheme are thieves.

I have both state and federal claims pending against you and your LLC and I will fully support criminal charges as well. If there is a bankruptcy hearing, I will damned sure be there to testify that you continued this scheme while still conducting marketing and sales. The truth is, you will likely walk away from this with all your things and our damned money in your pocket. That’s how this country works these days, protect the criminal and punish anyone else involved. But know this, Mike, you are a thief, a liar, and a reprehensible human. I hope you and yours reap exactly what you have sown and you get what’s coming to you in this life, or the next one.

-Rob

 

[ElvisJeep87]

Open letter to Mike and Blair Stanford. I placed my order in Aug 2017. This was a time when you knew you were already struggling and unable to fulfill your orders. You had zero problem taking my money and promising a 9 month delivery while you still hadn’t delivered trailers from the year prior.

I am not a rich man, I was a soldier for most of my adult life and now fight fires for a living. I worked very hard for the money you took from me and my family. I saved up and did a lot of research and what I thought was due diligence (clearly not) and we took money from our savings for this. I have two young boys that were looking forward to our adventures in this trailer. Instead, Mike, you knowingly stole our money. I believe that you knew the scheme you were running at that point. Maybe you started off with good intentions, or maybe you planned this all along. Either way, by your own count, you took over $250,000 worth of deposits from customers and you have less than $90,000 in assets to show for this. What the hell happened to all the rest of the money? How could you not manage to delivery any campers over the last year? You expect us to believe you invested over a quarter million of your own money and nearly $400k from another investor and that has somehow all gone into thin air? Absolute ****************. We all know that you and your family have been living good off all the money you stole from those of us who trusted you.

If someone came to my house and took that amount in money that would be a felony. If you tried to take it from me on the street you would find yourself with acute lead poisoning. As it is, you used salesmen like Jeff and a flashy website to steal from a couple dozen people. You and all of those who enabled and supported your Ponzi scheme are thieves.

I have both state and federal claims pending against you and your LLC and I will fully support criminal charges as well. If there is a bankruptcy hearing, I will damned sure be there to testify that you continued this scheme while still conducting marketing and sales. The truth is, you will likely walk away from this with all your things and our damned money in your pocket. That’s how this country works these days, protect the criminal and punish anyone else involved. But know this, Mike, you are a thief, a liar, and a reprehensible human. I hope you and yours reap exactly what you have sown and you get what’s coming to you in this life, or the next one.

-Rob

I could not agree more with this. Thank you for posting it!

 

[ottsville]

Please tell me somebody made a deposit by check to Mike personally....

 

[Outside somewhere]

Open letter to Mike and Blair Stanford. I placed my order in Aug 2017. This was a time when you knew you were already struggling and unable to fulfill your orders. You had zero problem taking my money and promising a 9 month delivery while you still hadn’t delivered trailers from the year prior.

I am not a rich man, I was a soldier for most of my adult life and now fight fires for a living. I worked very hard for the money you took from me and my family. I saved up and did a lot of research and what I thought was due diligence (clearly not) and we took money from our savings for this. I have two young boys that were looking forward to our adventures in this trailer. Instead, Mike, you knowingly stole our money. I believe that you knew the scheme you were running at that point. Maybe you started off with good intentions, or maybe you planned this all along. Either way, by your own count, you took over $250,000 worth of deposits from customers and you have less than $90,000 in assets to show for this. What the hell happened to all the rest of the money? How could you not manage to delivery any campers over the last year? You expect us to believe you invested over a quarter million of your own money and nearly $400k from another investor and that has somehow all gone into thin air? Absolute ****************. We all know that you and your family have been living good off all the money you stole from those of us who trusted you.

If someone came to my house and took that amount in money that would be a felony. If you tried to take it from me on the street you would find yourself with acute lead poisoning. As it is, you used salesmen like Jeff and a flashy website to steal from a couple dozen people. You and all of those who enabled and supported your Ponzi scheme are thieves.

I have both state and federal claims pending against you and your LLC and I will fully support criminal charges as well. If there is a bankruptcy hearing, I will damned sure be there to testify that you continued this scheme while still conducting marketing and sales. The truth is, you will likely walk away from this with all your things and our damned money in your pocket. That’s how this country works these days, protect the criminal and punish anyone else involved. But know this, Mike, you are a thief, a liar, and a reprehensible human. I hope you and yours reap exactly what you have sown and you get what’s coming to you in this life, or the next one.

-Rob

They have a 700k home in an upscale area of Charlotte Nc so I'll go out on a limb here and say that money went to funding a very nice lifestyle while their soft ponzi scheme played out?

 

[Tex68w]

Damn...just...damn. Its like watching pelfreybuilt all over.

Yup and apparently Moby1 is right behind them.