[xj-s] AJ6 severs links with Radford

Kirbert wrote:

Since Roger Bywater of AJ6 Engineering is not a s*bscriber to these
lists, he has asked me to post this message on his behalf. I urge
all to read it carefully.

Very interesting. I sent AJ6 an email, and when they didnt get to me
right away, I decided to call Radford because I saw on the list that
Radford was the USA distributor. I called them a couple weeks ago. I
recieved a recorded message (three times) saying that someone would call
me back or mail me info. Since I didnt recieve a phone call and found a
recorded message a turn off, I went ahead an just called AJ6 in UK to
ask my questions. After all, the kits really come from them, and
Bywater has answered my questions and list questions before… I would
try to do the international trade thing.

After talking, not to Bywater, but someone else who seemed nice and
knowledgeable-- well he had an English accent anyway-- and emailing AJ6,
I have most of my questions answered. Here I am almost ready to do the
deal, and I belatedly get a package of docs from Radford (they should
have called, it would have been cheaper). I received two nice spriral
binders (performance mods version 5.0 & installation guide version 2.0)
and two multi page stapled flyers. Makes no mention of AJ6 anywhere.
Perhaps I should send copies of these docs on to AJ6 with my HE pieces
(as soon as I nail down what exactly they need)? What versions did you
send, Kirby?

BTW The prices are way out of step with AJ6 too. I wouldn’t do it at
Radford’s prices.

Robert
73XJ12 (to be HE someday)

As there have been a several negative emails on the list above AJ6
Engineeing, I believe it is my (partial) duty to add to record. I am one
of the “sales” that Roger Bywater is referring to as being stolen from
Radford Engineering.

First let me state the Paul Wickre was never abusive - pushy definitely -
and his egregious remarks noted below are a sad testament to someone who
believes he can push the small manufacturer around and pass the expenses on
to the consumer… (I wonder what the Department of Commerce has to say
about his comments!!) I had several phone discussion with him and he never
was overt about the sourcing of his product - only after I mentioned AJ6
Engineering did he own up (look at his ad in Hemmings - no mention of AJ6).
He then implied that AJ6 could not provide the level of service that he
did and I would be sorry if I ever a problem with my order. He then used
old sales tactic of " I only have two kits left and you better move on it
before they go - after those the price going up". Regardless AJ6 still
is more competitive even with shipping so why even consider him… The last
element that made my decision NOT to go with him was when I asked him if I
should modify the ECU for a manual transmission conversion. He said no -
which is erroneous (as Kirby can attest). this show his lack of knowledge
about the product - even if he did write a “white paper” about the
modification (didn’t use the spell checker though!)

AJ6 and Roger B. have been extremely responsive, the turn around time for
the order was 10 working days and they worked with me on the ECU tranny mod
(at no additional expense) and my modified air boxes. They have helped me
with the troubleshooting of my car faxing info from the UK.

What can I add - I wish all the manufacturer of Jag parts were more like them.
Franck
85XJS (AJ6 not Radford modified ;-)>From: “Kirbert” palmk@nettally.com

To: xj-s@jag-lovers.org, pub@jag-lovers.org
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 17:49:43 -0400
Subject: [xj-s] AJ6 severs links with Radford
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Since Roger Bywater of AJ6 Engineering is not a s*bscriber to these
lists, he has asked me to post this message on his behalf. I urge
all to read it carefully.


Some people may have heard that we no longer supply Radford
Engineering. To counter certain stories that may have been
circulated we would like to give our account of the events leading up
to this situation.

Radford Engineering were never our ‘authorized US distributor’. Paul
Wickre appointed that title to Radford without any consultation or
approval from us and without our knowledge. As far as we are
concerned Radford’s status was just that of someone who bought kits
from us in small batches according to our standard trade price list.
From the day that Wickre approached us, about a year or so back, we
made clear to him that an exclusive arrangement was out of the
question. We had a very bad experience when we tried that with
someone else a few years back and swore we would never do it again.

As we were interested to know what Wickre was doing and how he was
presenting our products we asked for a copy of his sales literature
and price structure. He was continually evasive on the matter so
eventually we asked Kirby Palm to get a copy for us, which he duly
did.

It was then that Kirby first alerted us that Radford’s literature did
not mention our name anywhere but copied our text shamelessly. Surely
an ‘authorized distributor’ would be obligated by contract to use the
product name? We like to think that our products have a good
reputation so why would anyone selling our product not want to
capitalise on that? Whilst we were uneasy about this we realised
that most people knew that Wickre was buying our products so it
didn’t concern us too much at that time.

Wickre claims that we stole customers from him but these were just
ordinary people (probably 3 or 4 in total) who saw our website and
placed an order. As there was no exclusive deal or indeed any
contract at all with Radford what can be wrong with that? In fact
when we had enquiries from the USA asking if we had an agent over
there we provided Radford’s details and gave them the choice ‘buy
from Radford if you want to deal with someone in the USA or from us
if you want to deal direct with the manufacturer’.

We are far from blind to the market potential of the USA so perhaps
one should wonder why we would want to back away from Wickre’s great
plans for a volume operation. It was becoming obvious that the
disadvantages of dealing with Wickre far outweighed any advantages
and being unconvinced that his way of doing things was likely to be
successful and finding him unwilling to listen to any point of view
but his own we sensed that the end was near. We know enough about the
business to have survived a lot longer than most and we have seen
quite a few others with big-sell ideas like Wickre’s come and go. We
know from his own admission in an unguarded moment during one of his
phone calls that he has not made any profit on his dealings so far,
his solution being to demand that we raise our prices.

Finally we found ourselves in the situation where Wickre ordered that
we should do everything his way or he would intercept our phone calls
and emails, put us out of business and copy our products, which by
this time, we realised he intended to do anyway. Sadly, Wickre does
not just intend to copy our products, he is also duplicating the
suspension kits of the respected Harvey Bailey Engineering who, like
us, will no longer supply him.

We did not start in business to be pushed around by someone like
Wickre so in the circumstances the only decision we could make was to
tell him we would no longer deal with him. His response was to
insult us and threaten us further, by email, fax, phone and telegram,
unless we relented. We therefore informed him that we would ignore
all direct correspondence from him and that he should write to our
solicitor (attorney) if he had anything of importance to discuss.

I have tacked on a couple of Wickre’s abusive emails and a telegram
to illustrate my point. These are exact verbatim copies.

Wickre has threatened to sue us ‘for breach’ but in the absence of any
sort of contract we don’t see what he can possibly think we are in
breach of. All we have done is refuse to take any further orders
from him as a consequence of his behaviour.

I invite those who read this document to form their own conclusions
about the truth of this unpleasant matter. It might also be worth
considering who has the depth of knowledge to provide proper support
of the product - the originator or the plagiarist?

Roger Bywater / AJ6 Engineering.


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Send your e-mail

Bear in mind what I have said,

and take into consideration, the far reaching ability I have to reach
your
phone line through BT, AND stop every IP transmission into the states.
You
stop the practices I find offensive, or I will take every measure to
halt
your
commerce, as I find your trade offensive.

Buddy, you do not want to go up against me. I am sitting in Washington
DC
and
have been for quite some time. Trade, Telecomunicaions, the State Dept,
Department of Commerce, NTIA, things that you have never heard about, US
Customs, Port of Baltimore, Dulles Airport etc, etc, etc.Your comfy
family
business will go.

You fix it, deal with me, or I will turn on every spigot I know.
And if you think I m kidding, let’s play

Personal contacts…,…

Don’t be a fool, you will be shut off on Intl trade, If you think I am
kidding, I will show you a small display soon. We have and old saying
here,
“get along and go along.” Turn your adversary into your best friend, or
risk
your worst nightmare.

The offer is for mutual trade and profit, failing that, I will build
everything here, or we form a mutual accomodation to both our
prosperity.
You
English are like mules.

I have sent over trade proposals, now is the time that you send me one.
I
will
give you 72 hours or put out intercepts. Respond now. The Americans
learned
scorched earth from the Russians.

I am now waiting for your reply, and I want you to personally know, I
have
spent one year planning for contingincies. I am 4 miles from the British
Embassy, and have your trade records. I will not hesitate to do what I
have
to
do.

72 hours.

Do not mistake my resolve, or my efforts

Fix the problems or suffer in commerce

Resolved, this day, by our Seal, of the Hand of Two United States
Corporations, and a Limited Partnership under the Great Seal of the
First
State, Delaware.

By my hand and Seal,

Paul K. Wickre

Sent electronically to Moira Shea: US CONGRESS

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Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 23:06:07 EDT
Subject: what’s up
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So what do you want to do??

My Mom says Blow you off, you don’t understand business and volume

My girlfriend says Blow you off, you are tossers

My Mistress says you are wankers

Well that’s three agianst AJ-6

I’m turning over the Enterprise to my councelor tomorrow, suggest you
enter

into
a dialog with him… You are becoming fools in the first rising market
since
1988 in the US for V-12 cars.

Ta-Taa

Fill my orders or I will sue you for breach, here and in the UK. And IF
YOU

THINK I AM KIDDING, JUST MISS ONE ORDER.

Best Wishes-- Keep your Enterprise, you are local boys… Harry Suissa will
call you

You should not have pushed me–

Bye-

Paul

INTERNATIONAL TELEGRAM.

From Paul Wickre.
To Roger Bywater / AJ6 Engineering.

UNTIL YOU RELENT WE WILL CONTINUE THIS COMPETITION FULL STOP
STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU RELENT FULL STOP TRANSATLANTIC CABLE TELEPHONE AND
INTERNET POSED FOR FULL INTERVENTION ON YOUR PARTS FULL STOP
STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU GET IN TOUCH WITH COUNSELORS FROM U.S. CALL HARRY
SUISSA AT U.S. 301 - 589 - 1600 FULL STOP UNTIL YOU RELENT WE WILL
CONTINUE BOMBING FULL STOP OUT


– Kirbert | Palm’s Postulate:
| If anything is to be accomplished,
| some rules must be broken.
| – Kirby Palm, 1979

Franck Guilloteau wrote:
…I asked him if I

should modify the ECU for a manual transmission conversion. He said no -
which is erroneous (as Kirby can attest). this show his lack of knowledge
about the product -

Not to change the topic here, but I have a question on this…

A list member sent me a 6cu to repair, and remove the fuel cutoff on decel
since it was going in a manual xj-s. The ecu didn’t seem to have the fuel
cutoff. I had several 6cu, DAC 3586 and 2597 and tested them all. None
had this. It seems like only the 16cu (~87 on) have it.

This is a bit odd, since I also remember Kirby’s post from a while back.

Now, there is a leaning of the mixture on decel (6cu and 16cu), but no
cutoff on the 6cu. The tests were with throttle closed and 2500rpm input.

Walter

At 08:26 pm 19/04/99 -0500, Walter Petermann wrote:

A list member sent me a 6cu to repair, and remove the fuel cutoff on decel
since it was going in a manual xj-s. The ecu didn’t seem to have the fuel
cutoff. I had several 6cu, DAC 3586 and 2597 and tested them all. None
had this. It seems like only the 16cu (~87 on) have it.

Remember I found the same thing with my 3CU (which at the time you said was
not normal).

I can say that if the car has overrun valves and no fuel cutoff, it does
not slow down much when you takd your foot of the accelerator. I find it
much more pleasant to drive with a cork fitted in each of the overrun valve
feed pipes.

regards,
Mike

Hi,

I'm a very satisfied customer of Roger

Bywater and AJ6 Engineering. They’ve always been
exceedingly accessible and helpful.

By happenstance, I may also have served

as a “happy customer” U.S. reference for AJ6 when
the Radford folks were checking… if memory serves
me correctly, I may have spoken to the Radford folks
and given an AJ6 testimonial about a year ago. I
remember speaking to an East Coast outfit like that
and answering questions about my experiences with
the mods.

	Inder

PS
I owe replies to a couple of emails from friends
on the xj-s list. Haven’t forgotten, just been
buried in (interesting) course work. Will surface
soon to respond with my thanks.

In private or corporate dealings, I am always wary about anyone who take
credit for someone else’s work. Give credit where credit is due, otherwise
you appear to misrepresent your expertise. I have never trusted nor done
business with such people. I will add Radford to this dubious list.

Regards

Bernie

Since Roger Bywater of AJ6 Engineering is not a s*bscriber to these
lists, he has asked me to post this message on his behalf. I urge
all to read it carefully.


Some people may have heard that we no longer supply Radford
Engineering. To counter certain stories that may have been
circulated we would like to give our account of the events leading up
to this situation.

Radford Engineering were never our ‘authorized US distributor’. Paul
Wickre appointed that title to Radford without any consultation or
approval from us and without our knowledge. As far as we are
concerned Radford’s status was just that of someone who bought kits
from us in small batches according to our standard trade price list.
From the day that Wickre approached us, about a year or so back, we
made clear to him that an exclusive arrangement was out of the
question. We had a very bad experience when we tried that with
someone else a few years back and swore we would never do it again.

As we were interested to know what Wickre was doing and how he was
presenting our products we asked for a copy of his sales literature
and price structure. He was continually evasive on the matter so
eventually we asked Kirby Palm to get a copy for us, which he duly
did.

It was then that Kirby first alerted us that Radford’s literature did
not mention our name anywhere but copied our text shamelessly. Surely
an ‘authorized distributor’ would be obligated by contract to use the
product name? We like to think that our products have a good
reputation so why would anyone selling our product not want to
capitalise on that? Whilst we were uneasy about this we realised
that most people knew that Wickre was buying our products so it
didn’t concern us too much at that time.

Wickre claims that we stole customers from him but these were just
ordinary people (probably 3 or 4 in total) who saw our website and
placed an order. As there was no exclusive deal or indeed any
contract at all with Radford what can be wrong with that? In fact
when we had enquiries from the USA asking if we had an agent over
there we provided Radford’s details and gave them the choice ‘buy
from Radford if you want to deal with someone in the USA or from us
if you want to deal direct with the manufacturer’.

We are far from blind to the market potential of the USA so perhaps
one should wonder why we would want to back away from Wickre’s great
plans for a volume operation. It was becoming obvious that the
disadvantages of dealing with Wickre far outweighed any advantages
and being unconvinced that his way of doing things was likely to be
successful and finding him unwilling to listen to any point of view
but his own we sensed that the end was near. We know enough about the
business to have survived a lot longer than most and we have seen
quite a few others with big-sell ideas like Wickre’s come and go. We
know from his own admission in an unguarded moment during one of his
phone calls that he has not made any profit on his dealings so far,
his solution being to demand that we raise our prices.

Finally we found ourselves in the situation where Wickre ordered that
we should do everything his way or he would intercept our phone calls
and emails, put us out of business and copy our products, which by
this time, we realised he intended to do anyway. Sadly, Wickre does
not just intend to copy our products, he is also duplicating the
suspension kits of the respected Harvey Bailey Engineering who, like
us, will no longer supply him.

We did not start in business to be pushed around by someone like
Wickre so in the circumstances the only decision we could make was to
tell him we would no longer deal with him. His response was to
insult us and threaten us further, by email, fax, phone and telegram,
unless we relented. We therefore informed him that we would ignore
all direct correspondence from him and that he should write to our
solicitor (attorney) if he had anything of importance to discuss.

I have tacked on a couple of Wickre’s abusive emails and a telegram
to illustrate my point. These are exact verbatim copies.

Wickre has threatened to sue us ‘for breach’ but in the absence of any
sort of contract we don’t see what he can possibly think we are in
breach of. All we have done is refuse to take any further orders
from him as a consequence of his behaviour.

I invite those who read this document to form their own conclusions
about the truth of this unpleasant matter. It might also be worth
considering who has the depth of knowledge to provide proper support
of the product - the originator or the plagiarist?

Roger Bywater / AJ6 Engineering.


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Send your e-mail

Bear in mind what I have said,

and take into consideration, the far reaching ability I have to reach
your
phone line through BT, AND stop every IP transmission into the states.
You
stop the practices I find offensive, or I will take every measure to
halt
your
commerce, as I find your trade offensive.

Buddy, you do not want to go up against me. I am sitting in Washington
DC
and
have been for quite some time. Trade, Telecomunicaions, the State Dept,
Department of Commerce, NTIA, things that you have never heard about, US
Customs, Port of Baltimore, Dulles Airport etc, etc, etc.Your comfy
family
business will go.

You fix it, deal with me, or I will turn on every spigot I know.
And if you think I m kidding, let’s play

Personal contacts…,…

Don’t be a fool, you will be shut off on Intl trade, If you think I am
kidding, I will show you a small display soon. We have and old saying
here,
“get along and go along.” Turn your adversary into your best friend, or
risk
your worst nightmare.

The offer is for mutual trade and profit, failing that, I will build
everything here, or we form a mutual accomodation to both our
prosperity.
You
English are like mules.

I have sent over trade proposals, now is the time that you send me one.
I
will
give you 72 hours or put out intercepts. Respond now. The Americans
learned
scorched earth from the Russians.

I am now waiting for your reply, and I want you to personally know, I
have
spent one year planning for contingincies. I am 4 miles from the British
Embassy, and have your trade records. I will not hesitate to do what I
have
to
do.

72 hours.

Do not mistake my resolve, or my efforts

Fix the problems or suffer in commerce

Resolved, this day, by our Seal, of the Hand of Two United States
Corporations, and a Limited Partnership under the Great Seal of the
First
State, Delaware.

By my hand and Seal,

Paul K. Wickre

Sent electronically to Moira Shea: US CONGRESS

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Subject: what’s up
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Reply-To: RadfordEng@aol.com

So what do you want to do??

My Mom says Blow you off, you don’t understand business and volume

My girlfriend says Blow you off, you are tossers

My Mistress says you are wankers

Well that’s three agianst AJ-6

I’m turning over the Enterprise to my councelor tomorrow, suggest you
enter

into
a dialog with him… You are becoming fools in the first rising market
since
1988 in the US for V-12 cars.

Ta-Taa

Fill my orders or I will sue you for breach, here and in the UK. And IF
YOU

THINK I AM KIDDING, JUST MISS ONE ORDER.

Best Wishes-- Keep your Enterprise, you are local boys… Harry Suissa will
call you

You should not have pushed me–

Bye-

Paul

INTERNATIONAL TELEGRAM.

From Paul Wickre.
To Roger Bywater / AJ6 Engineering.

UNTIL YOU RELENT WE WILL CONTINUE THIS COMPETITION FULL STOP
STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU RELENT FULL STOP TRANSATLANTIC CABLE TELEPHONE AND
INTERNET POSED FOR FULL INTERVENTION ON YOUR PARTS FULL STOP
STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU GET IN TOUCH WITH COUNSELORS FROM U.S. CALL HARRY
SUISSA AT U.S. 301 - 589 - 1600 FULL STOP UNTIL YOU RELENT WE WILL
CONTINUE BOMBING FULL STOP OUT


– Kirbert | Palm’s Postulate:
| If anything is to be accomplished,
| some rules must be broken.
| – Kirby Palm, 1979

Bernard Embden==========================================================
The box said ‘Requires Windows 98, or better.’ So I bought a Macintosh