Calamity James

…back again!

I finally got round to moving this site onto its brand new server (with an updated version of WordPress) so I can finally resume my ramblings!

Congratulations are due methinks to Barack Obama for becoming the next US President. I will be in Washington, DC for the inauguration in January, very much looking forward to that! 76 days and counting!

I promise I’ll keep my blog up to date this time, but then how many times have you heard that eh?

James

Not very often you are greeted with a message like this on PayPal’s website:

(Click to make bigger)

If you’re reading this message then we’re on our new server. Hooray!

I finally bit the bullet and gave in to temptation. I bought a couple more T shirts, this time from a reputable seller.

Nothing but praise for BustedTees, they replied to my enquiries very quickly and were very polite (even said to have a good weekend!)

I went and bought “SHIFT Happens!!!1” and “Blow me“.

Very impressed with the T-shirts, and ’shift happens’ particulary caused a stir at work with clients saying it was very apt.

I’d recommend them to a friend, so go forth and purchase! I think there’s some kind of sale on too!

James.

It seems someone with a slightly closer involvement with the company has finally stepped into the limelight. Here’s a copy of what “Manny” had to say on HideYourArms:

“Although I was never officially affiliated with or worked at Dirty Microbe, I’m a personal friend of the founders.

After receiving a MySpace message from someone trying to track down Christian about an order, I did a Google search and found lists of complaints on blogs and forums, including this one.

Dirty Microbe has been going though severe financial trouble for a few months and has recently gone out of business and filed for bankruptcy. The founders are scrambling to liquidate the company’s assets to repay creditors, including outstanding orders. I’d advise anyone who is missing an order to do a chargeback as soon as possible.

Dirty Microbe was a very small company and unique in that they printed all shirts in house, by hand. I mean, so small that it was rare that more than two people were working at any given time in there. You can imagine the workload. Lack of manpower was one major reason they went under and I suspect the main reason for the silence now. It’s hard to imagine how much time it takes to go through the legalese for bankruptcy plus all the other stuff that has arisen from the situation. The owners have pretty much been slammed doing that, and they were already way backed up on orders and support requests.

Tens of thousands of dollars were invested in printing equipment, web store design, signing artists, affiliates, advertising, etc… and subsequently lost. There was no scam — believe it or not, order volume was relatively low and the value of all unshipped orders tiny compared to the investment. Many recall that Dirty Microbe shipped a lot of shirts before they went down.

I feel for anyone been burned by this, I’ve been shafted by buying stuff online before and I know it sucks. I’ve tried to advise the owners to make some sort of announcement so those looking for answers have some idea what happened, but they’ve been tough to get a hold of. I’m sure they’re just trying to get past what has been the most difficult time of their lives.

I’m going to cross-post this on a few of the other blogs in hopes of getting some word out to do a chargeback ASAP, as there is a time limit on those.”

So there you have it, probably the closest we’re going to get to an official repsonse to this.

There are now posts on tcritic, HideYourArms and T-Shirts Around the Internet.

Spread the word to the blogs people! And digg the article!

This is a brief one from me, and for once isn’t a rant (although I’m still awaiting anything from Dirty Microbe!)

Over the weekend, my friends’ band, The Mondays, did their first “gig” at a street party on the Isle of Sheppey. To say they were nervous and their drummer was on holiday they sounded AWESOME.

Definitely a band  to keep an eye on in the future.

I have assumed the role of techie dude for them, so it’s down to me to make the website and deal with all the videos and styling side!

I’ve already started so check out….

• www.themondays.co.uk (Just a MySpace link at the moment)
• www.youtube.com/TheMondays07

Enjoy!
James.