[RESOLVED] Adam B. Dada/7bucktees.com

[Chris Acheson]

EDIT: After I made this post, I did get a refund from Adam. See the other replies in the thread. I'm now marking this as resolved.

Adam B. Dada runs 7bucktees.com, and ran the now-defunct coinsmiths.com. On July 5th, 2014 I ordered a wooden "Bitcoin Accepted Here" sign from CoinSmiths. It was $10, plus $3.45 shipping, which I paid via Bitcoin. Not a huge amount of money, but I feel that this is still worth warning others about.

By July 29th (24 days later), my order hadn't even shipped. The "from" address on my email receipt was adam.dada@gmail.com, so I responded to it:

Hi-

I ordered this item over three weeks ago, and it's still listed as
"processing". Why is it taking so long?

-Chris

The response was surprisingly prompt:

Chris:

I shut down CoinSmiths this weekend due to another team dropping the ball
completely.  I will be posting about it tomorrow, and I will be moving all
orders over to my other print shop at 7bucktees.com.  In addition, I will
be giving a store credit in an amount equal or greater to the order total.

This is the third team of people I have hired and paid in Bitcoin that has
failed the site.  I've been involved in Bitcoin since the first year, and
while I love the currency and use it daily, it's become impossible to hire
and motivate people for some reason.  Very frustrating, and costing me
thousands of dollars a month in wasted effort, ugh.

I'll email you tomorrow and I  have my guys at 7bucktees.com processing all
the failed jobs as we speak.

Me:

Thank you for the prompt reply. I had ordered one of your wooden table
signs, not a shirt. Will 7bucktees be able to deliver that?

Adam:

Yep.  I shut down the CoinSmiths shop on Saturday from out of town, and had
my 7bucktees manager go over and take the laser engraver, the sticker
printer (which weighs like 1500 pounds) and some other hardware.  I know
they're setting everything up, getting drivers to work, and trying to
figure out what orders shipped and didn't.  I am hopeful orders will start
going out tomorrow -- as long as the wood isn't warped.  I ordered a fresh
batch of wood on Monday but I haven't heard if it's coming today or not!

Would you do me a small favor?  Please go over to www.7bucktees.com/help
and create a new help desk ticket with your CoinSmiths order number.  This
is only so that my customer service people have a better view of the
discussions.  I am on that help desk as well (you'll see my name and face
when I reply), but my customer service reps will do a better job of
updating you!

Me:

Will do. Thanks!

I don't see a way to create an account on 7bucktees without placing an
order, and I need to log in in order to create a helpdesk ticket.

Adam:

Oh crap.  Stupid me.  Sorry about that.  Give me an hour, I have my webdevs
on speakerphone right now!

Oh that was easy.  Please try one more time.  There should be a "register"
link now:

http://www.7bucktees.com/help/

My ticket on 7bucktees:

Haven’t received CoinSmiths order

I ordered the medium-size wooden “Bitcoin Accepted Here” table sign from CoinSmiths on July 5th, and have yet to receive it. I talked to Adam Dada via email, and he said I should open a helpdesk ticket on this site. My order number is 540.

The receipt from my order:
(snip)

Me to Adam via email:

All set now. Thanks again.

Adam posts a comment on the ticket:

Got it, thanks.  One of my customer service reps will bounce in here when they open for the day!

Adam via email again:

i responded to it just to get myself in the updates.  i believe we open the
shop at 11am today (an hour from now), so someone should bounce in after
that.

i just hired a stay-at-home mom yesterday who will monitor the help desks
outside of regular business hours, but we haven't trained her yet, so i
doubt she'll be saying anything yet.  her job is to make sure everyone else
does their job!

sorry again for the confusion.  bitcoin is awesome, i love it, but it's a
real headache when you let other people into wallet access, etc.  learning
lesson for me, big time.

Me:

No worries. I'm actually not in a huge rush to receive my order, I just
wanted to make sure it hadn't been forgotten about.

I don't know if he took that as a cue that I'm safe to ignore or what, but all of my communication attempts after this point have gone unanswered.

On September 17th (50 days after my conversation with Adam, 74 days since my original order), I posted a comment on the support ticket:

So it's been another month and a half or so. What's the hold up?

No response. On September 24th (7 days later, 81 days since the order), I try emailing Adam:

Hi Adam-

After you had me open up the support thread on 7bucktees, I never
actually received any further communication from your customer service
staff. Is this thing actually going to get made? If not, can I get a refund?

Here's the support thread link:
(snip)

-Chris

Still nothing. On September 30th (6 more days, total of 87 days), hoping to get the attention of the support staff, I open another ticket on 7bucktees:

Refund Request – it’s been THREE MONTHS

I placed an order for a “Bitcoin Accepted Here” sign on CoinSmiths on July 5th. My order number is 540. I’ve waited nearly three months to receive it. At this point I just want a refund. The total cost of the order, including shipping, was $13.45. I have a previous ticket here which has been ignored: (snip)

You can send the money to my Paypal account (snip), or I can give you a Bitcoin address to use if you’d prefer that.

I also sent an email to Adam directly:

No one has responded to my support ticket, so I've opened up a new one
requesting a refund (see below):
(snip)

I placed an order for a “Bitcoin Accepted Here” sign on CoinSmiths on
July 5th. My order number is 540. I’ve waited nearly three months to
receive it. At this point I just want a refund. The total cost of the
order, including shipping, was $13.45. I have a previous ticket here
which has been ignored:
(snip)

You can send the money to my Paypal account (snip), or
I can give you a Bitcoin address to use if you’d prefer that.

No response to those either. It's October 10th as I'm writing this up, 10 days since my last communication attempt, and a grand total of 97 days since I ordered the sign. I have not received the product that I ordered and I have not received a refund. I have not gotten any response from Adam Dada or from anyone working for him since July.

It looks like this isn't just an isolated incident either:

• bitcointalk.com: Accusation against A.B. Dada/CoinSmiths/7buckTees
• reddit.com/r/bitcoin: Do not use 7bucktees.com. They accept bitcoins but are known to take peoples money and run.
• ripoffreport.com: 7 Buck Tees 7bucktees 7buck tees.com 7 Buck Tees by A.B. Dada BooshWorks, Inc Got ripped off by this company. Go somewhere else!! Chicago Illinios
• ripoffreport.com: 7 Buck Tees - Adam Dada - Booshworks Did not send ordered items. Did not reply to e-mail. Chicago Internet
• ripoffreport.com: Adam Dada, A B Dada, 7bucktees Did not send item I paid for even after 6 months of continuous requests Internet

According to the Reddit thread, some people apparently do receive their orders. I'm not sure if this is an intentional selective scam on Adam's part, if he's just incompetent, or if he's simply too lazy and indifferent to make sure that his customers receive the products that they pay for. In any case, beware of any business that he's involved with.

[MultipliedCombo]

Whoah, they seemed kind of decent and sincere when they made those responses to you.

Unfortunate that they're going down this path.

[Chris Acheson]

Whoah, they seemed kind of decent and sincere when they made those responses to you.

Unfortunate that they're going down this path.

Yeah, I was hopeful that things were actually going to get taken care of at that point. In retrospect, there are a few red flags there; he was shifting blame onto others and seeking sympathy for his situation in order to placate me. Sometimes shit does happen, but if I'd looked into the other reports at the time I would've realized that he's either unable or unwilling to put in the work required to make his business run smoothly.

[abdada]

hey chris, i'm sorry for the lack of response.  no excuses.

7bucktees is just the tiniest sliver of what i do.  it isn't even a profitable venture for me, just something i've done to help friends get work, or to train out of work people in some new skills.

i'm nowhere close to the shop but i can be later today.  do you have my cell #?  i've been passing it on to customers lately when orders are made, just so they can ping me if someone at the other end screws up.  if not, PM me here and i can pass it on to you and make right on this order.

for a small shop, we do a LOT of orders.  what's worse is that i do a lot of firings also (2 people this week alone due to incompetence).  there's a reason i put my name on my businesses, though -- someone, in the end, has to be accountable.  that person is me.

[abdada]

chris, i logged into 7bucktees and i have no orders with your last name.  was it placed under a different last name?


nevermind, i re-read your post and see this is a coinsmiths order issue.  that's a totally separate business from 7bucktees.  i am invested in 5 print shops (and 2 more i'm investing in before 2015 in other states).  the equipment for coinsmiths was repossessed (by me, since I bought it) from the other "partners" recently and I moved it to 7bucktees to get them to either fulfill orders or to help with refunds.  i'm not sure why we dropped the ball here at all because i thought i set up a good help desk ticketing system.

unfortunately, while poking around the back end of my help desk plugin, i just noticed that the coinsmiths category on the site notifies...no one.   and there are 7 open tickets there, derp.

give me a few hours to see wtf i did wrong and i will come up with something positive as best as i can.  a refund, for sure (paypal is easier for me but if you want btc i can work to make it happen).  your order printed, for sure.  a store credit as well.

i really have faith in the process we have, i just have to learn from these mistakes so i can refine it better and better.  my teams this year have put 10,000 shirts on customers' bodies.  probably 5% of those are bitcoin purchases.  even so, when we have a 2% failure rate, that's 50-200 unhappy customers.  and that's where we fail, because i have no experience in customer relationships at this magnitude.

i am sorry, personally, and i want to fix this however i can.  not because you posted here, but because i'm serious about my drive to have a relationship with everyone i sell to, and not just be an anonymous internet vendor with a fancy domain name.

[abdada]

alright, here's the update.

1. i found two tickets from you on the 7bucktees site help desk under the coinsmiths category.  i swear that i did not get there.  this was 100% my fault, i had set up notifications incorrectly.  that has been corrected.  i was wrong, i can't seem to fix notifications for that category, so i am passing it off to my web developer.  but it will be corrected.

2. i made a paypal "friends and family" transfer of $14 to your paypal account, as mentioned in your help desk ticket.

3. i would offer to have your item produced, but i repossessed that laser machine from coinsmiths with one of the other partners, and then him and i split paths just this week, so i have no laser machine and doubt i will purchase one until spring.  i will inquire with others if i can have the item made elsewhere and shipped to you.

4. i'll issue i have issued you a $14 store credit to 7bucktees.  you are welcome to use it, dispose of it, give it away. 

sorry for the runaround.  it's not my way, and it won't become my way.  i just need something better for tracking problems, and the current methods aren't it.  that's why i am starting to at least give out my (google voice) phone number to new customers, and i am hopeful that i can at least be "in the know" when problems happen, which they will because the shop is 100% custom products.

[Chris Acheson]

Hi Adam-

Thank you for processing the refund. I consider this matter resolved, and will mark my original post as such. I'm not happy that it took this much time and effort to make it happen, but I at least no longer feel cheated.

[abdada]

appreciate that.  i'm not happy it took that long, either, but the longer i am in this particular industry, the more i see all of the places where things can and do go wrong.

again, the reason i stick my name on businesses i am a part of is specifically to put my reputation on the line.  i regret putting my name on all of the various bitcoin businesses i've been a part of (i'm an anarchist, but i've learned in the past 2 years that most of us are scammers), but i will continue to promote bitcoin and get beyond these messes, although i am now no longer a privacy advocate and don't work with anonymous vendors, lol.

i also will never, ever, ever invest in businesses where the other partners/owners do not put their names on the line as well.  lessons: learned.