@ Ted: I sincerely hope you are not inferring that it was YOU who refunded my money to all of these people. Had I not initiated a dispute, I would not have my money back. You did not issue the refund. If I need to cut and paste the emails in here, I will.

Once you said when I dropped the dispute you would refund my money.
Second time was after I said once you process the refund I would end my dispute and/or the credit card would drop it as a result of the refund being processed. You responded that would be find and you'd process the refund on Friday (the email was Dec 11, so that would have made it Dec 14). That never happened. The only credit appearing on my statement was initiated because of the dispute, not a refund from you. Last I checked (Dec 20) my bank (CC) was still waiting for the vendor (Ciamillo) to respond to the dispute. Not exactly what we'd call ISSUING A REFUND.

Do not play games with the truth and my reputation on this site (or anywhere else).

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Speedplay is the devil.

Yes, Kristi did refund your money. The process actually takes a lot longer if the merchant disputes the chargeback. But we didn't wait for the chargeback notification. Kristi took care of it right away when you refused to accept a phone call. We simply wanted to understand the nature of why you wanted your deposit back and we wanted the opportunity to give you a refund without you filing a dispute. I don't understand why the credit took so long because Kristi issued the refund on Paypal proactively and we never got a notification of chargeback. I'm not saying you are wrong regarding when you received the credit but we did proactively process it.

I sent a PM to Ted about this, as I'd like to avoid a pissing contest here. Sadly that's where it's going. The only credit I received was from my bank after filing the dispute, NO REFUND FROM CIAMILLO and I have a feeling I'll be posting copies of the emails showing otherwise.

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Speedplay is the devil.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I have had refunds take more than a couple of days to show up, at times. Then again, I had a partial refund (from a price match at Backcountry) take about 30 seconds to show up.

@Ted: You guys should have unified email addresses, especially your MBA. That way all things relating to the bike projects go to "ted@ciamillo.com", etc. Might help to sort things logistically for you guys and certainly looks more professional.

Best of luck to everyone, and all sides, in this thread. I missed the initial crank/brake offer or I would likely have dropped a deposit as well. I've been looking for an excuse to get a set of Gravitas.

Think this is getting way to personal. Please continue this over pm.

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Storck Fenomalist 6.3kg.
BMC Teammachine SLR01

I would happily order a set here and now if there´s no more total redesigns going here and a firm delivery date.

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Experimental Prototype

Good deal Mattias.. I would be happy to have a fellow machinist evaluate it. PM me.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

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- Zipp rims will break if you look at them too hard
- R-Sys wheels will spontaneously explode
- The ZG crankset will never, ever exist
- Everyone needs Lightweights, even if they're fat and old
- Parts actually made of metal are SO 10 years ago

I don't understand why Ciamillo can't just test the product, pay for advertising like any other company and sell a finished product when there is a finished product to sell.

It would save everyone a lot of time, energy and typing.

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Check out the latest controversies in sport-

http://berzin.blogspot.com/

Well, the reply is easy, it has not the critical size to afford it !
When you have the critical size, you can make your staff working on your everyday tasks and focus on R&D.
When you only have workers and no permanent sales manager, it's just very complicated !

So, there is another solution: fire your team during the R&D process and borrow money to the banks.

As of today and after the crisis I no longer want to borrow money to the banks and Ted probably does not want too... or maybe cannot because it's hard to see a bank that would be expert in crank design to evaluate the chances of success.
But what is more clever, is to make your address book a kind of shareholder sit a reward that is to save a few hundreds of dollars and getting sure to receive the first cranks.
The last solution is simply no crank, no more new products, and so a business that is dying slowly.

I would personally hate having only Sram, Campy, Shimano on the groupset market because they would manage their own prices and not invest in new products. Small business are showing that it's possible to make something different and they are making products with better ratios (quality/weight).

But, yes, you're true, the real line to follow for a such project is testing/advertising/selling, and Ted agreed that he did not invest his money for the right projects at the good time. But Ted is first of all a machinist.

You ain't never told a lie!

Online buying is a huge part of todays cycling. Where else to share experience, good or bad, but a forum?
You can only get so much mileage out of the latest aero frame, $3K+ carbon spoked wheels or $160 cable sets. For example, I probably would have bought Had it not been for all the negative things I read about C4 hubs here.

Don't advertise, dont make any special offers for ww, don't give any timelines , dont release any photos of a design that is not the finished product . If capital is being raised do it privately. I am in the market for a new crank for my Guru so I was interested in this crank but "I don't think so"
I think also that Ted saying he did not post a thread on ww is a bit lame . The offer on this sight was clearly aimed at ww and Im sure he accepted there money. I don't understand why you would show a photo of what looked like a really cool crank and ask for deposits then completely redesign the crank

Artray.. I did not start the threads here. I never posted the pics of the old design here. I used my email list of existing customers. Less than 20 percent of the pre-order participants are WW members. How is that "targeting" WW members? It is the members themselves who, in my opinion, did the other members a service by sharing what was going on here at Ciamillo about the development of the Gravitas crank. I think if you had received the first design and I produced the current design later it would be a greater disservice than giving you my best at the beginning regardless of the circumstances.

Yes, the timing was unfortunate especially since I was so invested in the other design but I am so happy with the current design.

Ted shared with me some info regarding my transaction with him. It appears Ciamillo did not contest my dispute, which means everything should go through. The only reason I say appears (and from the documentation I have NO reason to believe it's otherwise) is paypal has not (as of 5 minutes ago, 4:24 PM, December 26, 2012) shared ANY of Ciamillo's actions related to the claim with me (which is one of the reasons Consumer Reports suggests paying for items thru Paypal ONLY with a credit card).
I now need to contact my credit card, but I'm sure they are still waiting to see if paypal responds to them, since paypal has the dispute listed (on their site) as "Under Review".

I wish paypal was a little more forthcoming in sharing this info. At the same time if Ted let me know this was how they had proceeded a couple of weeks ago, I would not have posted what I did, but I believe someone else posted a suggestion that the sales mgr, office person and Ted all have these communications linked, again, live and learn.

At this point I believe Ted has acted in good faith towards me and my previous posts were a misunderstanding based on the info and communication I had at the time. Unless something else changes, I'd consider what happened with me taken care of (pending the final outcome of the dispute, which is apparently being dragged on much longer than it needed to be by paypal).

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Speedplay is the devil.