- Messages
- 13,334
- Reaction score
- 13,431
- Points
- 857
- Location
- Royal, AR
- Boat Make
- Yamaha
- Year
- 2007
- Boat Model
- SX
- Boat Length
- 23
We own a 2007 SX230. My family loves to use the boat. My wife is a teacher and my schedule is flexible so we get out on the water three days a week or more during the summer. We live on Lake Hamilton in Royal, Arkansas. We frequently boat on Lake Ouachita and enjoy traveling to meet other Jetboaters. For the last two years we have ventured out to Ship Island in the Gulf over the summer. This year we will be making the Bimini trip.
Before our SX230 we owned and enjoyed a 2005 LX210. We had a lot of fun with her in 2012 and the beginning of 2013. We also made a lot of upgrades to her that will be documented here.
Our home is on a large shallow bay of Lake Hamilton. I initially sought out a jet boat for the shallow draft. I discovered YJB after experiencing a plug blowout while the seller was demonstrating a LS2000. I have found the advice and friendship from the YJB community to be invaluable! I believe that we will be lifetime Jetboaters.
I own and operate a number of servers for my business. When I saw requests for donations on YJB I wanted to give back and offered to host the forum at my cost initially in June of 2012 and have repeated the offer to Brian since them. I did make small monetary contributions to Brian for the operation of the forum and was a member of the 2012 and 2013 Contributor groups.
I first became aware of the tension in the YJB community and the extreme control exercised by Brian when I bought one of Mel's anchors. After receiving the anchor I posted a thank you to Mel. I appreciated what he had done for me and thought that it was right to thank him. The responses to my Thank You post shocked me. Brian was very negative about Mel's anchor sales. I soon realized that Brian wanted to tax all product sales through the forum. This was my awakening to the fact that YJB was not a donation supported forum but a commercial forum operated for Brian's profit and that all of us were contributing to it not only through monetary donations but also through the many hours of time we spent improving his forum.
After that experience I found myself including the following in an email in Sept of 2013,
"One story that motivates me is xxx xxxxxxx. He is local to me. He signed up and posted pictures of his AR210 with graphics earlier this year. He taught us to wake surf a few weeks back. He has done a lot of work on his boat and he and his wife are going rope less with two 350 pound bags. They are great examples of what can be achieved with our boats. He mentioned the forum when we were surfing. He was very negative about his experience on the forum. It looks like he deleted all of his posts and his account. He is very active on facebook and could have been a great contributor.
I would see a new forum as a place for members to share experiences and learn from each other. Howto type documentation would be strongly encouraged. There would be no need or request for donations. There would be no advertising. I think we should have a vendors area of the forum where vendors could post about their products. Vendors commercial posts should be limited to that vendor area. I think we should have links to Brians store along with other vendors. This is not an anti Brian forum. The forum would not be my forum, it would be all the members forum and I would hope it would continue on if I lose interest in the future.
Uploading pictures would be easier. Apps would be available for Android and iOS. All the new forum features would be available and the forum would stay up to date with current technology.".
Later in October of 2013 when YJB had a several day outage I emailed Brian and offered to help get the forum back online. He replied that the site was down because he was upgrading the store and that he would like to talk to me when he got caught up.
In February 2014, when a PerfectPass Group Buy was suggested I contacted other members who were interested via PM and started a group email to discuss the possibility offline. I knew that PerfectPass does not want to see discounted prices documented online in the rare instance of their product being discounted. I contacted PerfectPass and over about a week was able to convince them to offer a small discount through Brian's store. While I was in discussions with PerfectPass I was also having what I felt were reasonable PM discussions with Brian. Then one morning my account on YJB stopped working. When I looked at my account details I saw that I was now a member of the 2012 Contributor, 2013 Contributor and Restricted Access groups.
Brian's last communication with me before turning off my account included
"I'm not going to contact PerfectPass to ask about any discounts or anything. I've badgered them for years (even as recently as a month ago) and I know exactly what they would say to me. I don't know of any distributors that will offer $100 and if anyone could show me of one that would but I would love to see it just out of curiosity. Do you know of a specific one? If there is one, I might be able to organize a group buy thru them instead of thru PerfectPass. I have had several say that they found many dealers that advertise it for less but every single one was referring to the single engine version and the dealers were clueless that Yamahas even had twin engines. The single engine version is $1195.00 (which I still haven't got around to listing).
I wouldn't be surprised is PerfectPass were to offer you a discount if you were able to organize a group buy because I have seen it with SeaDek and several other manufacturers. (it's just less likely with PP)........."
That was in response to my earlier message of
"Brian, would you mind giving me a week to figure out what is possible and then I will get back to you with the details?
I may hear from PP that they will not offer anything. But I think they are more likely to offer a discount to a non dealer than to a current dealer. Or my pushing may cause them to contact you with an offer.
I think that the more people that contact PP the less likely that they will do something."
After I called Brian to tell him PerfectPass agreed to the group buy Brian reactivated my account. We had a long discussion about the commercial nature of YJB. Although I was disheartened I planned to continue participating in YJB.
Then I received emails from several YJB members saying that Brian had treated many members the same way and was continuing to do so.
I want to enjoy our community, so I have decided to invest what I would have in YJB into a new home for our community and I hope you will join us.
Before our SX230 we owned and enjoyed a 2005 LX210. We had a lot of fun with her in 2012 and the beginning of 2013. We also made a lot of upgrades to her that will be documented here.
Our home is on a large shallow bay of Lake Hamilton. I initially sought out a jet boat for the shallow draft. I discovered YJB after experiencing a plug blowout while the seller was demonstrating a LS2000. I have found the advice and friendship from the YJB community to be invaluable! I believe that we will be lifetime Jetboaters.
I own and operate a number of servers for my business. When I saw requests for donations on YJB I wanted to give back and offered to host the forum at my cost initially in June of 2012 and have repeated the offer to Brian since them. I did make small monetary contributions to Brian for the operation of the forum and was a member of the 2012 and 2013 Contributor groups.
I first became aware of the tension in the YJB community and the extreme control exercised by Brian when I bought one of Mel's anchors. After receiving the anchor I posted a thank you to Mel. I appreciated what he had done for me and thought that it was right to thank him. The responses to my Thank You post shocked me. Brian was very negative about Mel's anchor sales. I soon realized that Brian wanted to tax all product sales through the forum. This was my awakening to the fact that YJB was not a donation supported forum but a commercial forum operated for Brian's profit and that all of us were contributing to it not only through monetary donations but also through the many hours of time we spent improving his forum.
After that experience I found myself including the following in an email in Sept of 2013,
"One story that motivates me is xxx xxxxxxx. He is local to me. He signed up and posted pictures of his AR210 with graphics earlier this year. He taught us to wake surf a few weeks back. He has done a lot of work on his boat and he and his wife are going rope less with two 350 pound bags. They are great examples of what can be achieved with our boats. He mentioned the forum when we were surfing. He was very negative about his experience on the forum. It looks like he deleted all of his posts and his account. He is very active on facebook and could have been a great contributor.
I would see a new forum as a place for members to share experiences and learn from each other. Howto type documentation would be strongly encouraged. There would be no need or request for donations. There would be no advertising. I think we should have a vendors area of the forum where vendors could post about their products. Vendors commercial posts should be limited to that vendor area. I think we should have links to Brians store along with other vendors. This is not an anti Brian forum. The forum would not be my forum, it would be all the members forum and I would hope it would continue on if I lose interest in the future.
Uploading pictures would be easier. Apps would be available for Android and iOS. All the new forum features would be available and the forum would stay up to date with current technology.".
Later in October of 2013 when YJB had a several day outage I emailed Brian and offered to help get the forum back online. He replied that the site was down because he was upgrading the store and that he would like to talk to me when he got caught up.
In February 2014, when a PerfectPass Group Buy was suggested I contacted other members who were interested via PM and started a group email to discuss the possibility offline. I knew that PerfectPass does not want to see discounted prices documented online in the rare instance of their product being discounted. I contacted PerfectPass and over about a week was able to convince them to offer a small discount through Brian's store. While I was in discussions with PerfectPass I was also having what I felt were reasonable PM discussions with Brian. Then one morning my account on YJB stopped working. When I looked at my account details I saw that I was now a member of the 2012 Contributor, 2013 Contributor and Restricted Access groups.
Brian's last communication with me before turning off my account included
"I'm not going to contact PerfectPass to ask about any discounts or anything. I've badgered them for years (even as recently as a month ago) and I know exactly what they would say to me. I don't know of any distributors that will offer $100 and if anyone could show me of one that would but I would love to see it just out of curiosity. Do you know of a specific one? If there is one, I might be able to organize a group buy thru them instead of thru PerfectPass. I have had several say that they found many dealers that advertise it for less but every single one was referring to the single engine version and the dealers were clueless that Yamahas even had twin engines. The single engine version is $1195.00 (which I still haven't got around to listing).
I wouldn't be surprised is PerfectPass were to offer you a discount if you were able to organize a group buy because I have seen it with SeaDek and several other manufacturers. (it's just less likely with PP)........."
That was in response to my earlier message of
"Brian, would you mind giving me a week to figure out what is possible and then I will get back to you with the details?
I may hear from PP that they will not offer anything. But I think they are more likely to offer a discount to a non dealer than to a current dealer. Or my pushing may cause them to contact you with an offer.
I think that the more people that contact PP the less likely that they will do something."
After I called Brian to tell him PerfectPass agreed to the group buy Brian reactivated my account. We had a long discussion about the commercial nature of YJB. Although I was disheartened I planned to continue participating in YJB.
Then I received emails from several YJB members saying that Brian had treated many members the same way and was continuing to do so.
I want to enjoy our community, so I have decided to invest what I would have in YJB into a new home for our community and I hope you will join us.
