WeaponCrates is officially gone

Samurai · April 26, 2018

We should really spread the word that weaponcrates 2.0 is not to be trusted. It will end up in a thread like this. This guy is not good for the airsoft community.

proffrink · April 26, 2018

Link this thread in some FB groups I suppose? He's an admin of a couple of the big ones allegedly.

L3wisD · April 26, 2018

I did talk to Robert Tingle who is admin of Airsoft Comrades UK on facebook, where Zac is also an admin.

He seemed unaware that Zac was getting this negative press from WC.

He did say he'd look into it as he doesn't want Comrades to have that sort of reputation as well, but I've not heard any updates since.

Alpha.s1 · April 26, 2018

https://www.netim.com/domain-name/whois-search.html

put darkrhino.com in this, and it will show you he owns everything to do with the company that ‘bought’

weaponcrates, then voila you have some hard proof he is a bullshitting scammer scum

(not that the guys on this thread need to know that/ already did this)

image linked for the laxy buggers.

p.s. I know this surprises like no one, or is even news to anyone, just havent seen anyone show this yet

proffrink · April 26, 2018

That's already public information via Companies House. I did a WhoIs too but couldn't find much new other than maybe the phone number.

Doesn't show he's a scammer either I'm afraid: Dark Rhino has been in the footer of Weaponcrates for a long time. I believe the new aquisition was a different company but it fell through (see page 3? of this thread). They might have just left it there as Weaponcrates itself isn't a formed company - Dark Rhino is. Weaponcreates being one of their 'brands' all along.

You're not required to form a company with the same name of the product/website you have.

Alpha.s1 · April 26, 2018

I just assumed that while public, it doesnt seem to be very well known at all,

I suppose its not really worth anything unless anyone has any written proof that WC was owned by zac, who then bought himself out, as he was advertising that wc was purchased by a new company, which shows is actually himself, i dunno, might be enough for someone to convince the community groups that still let him peddle his shit.

i havent really been effected by this, just rubs me up the wrong way that these types of people seem to run rampant in airsoft.

proffrink · April 26, 2018

Check the other pages regarding the collapsed sale. He has not gone and bought himself. That Dark Rhino thing has been in the footer for years.

springs · April 26, 2018

my understanding is that it was sold and since fallen through, they are now rebuilding their site and it's currently in a closed beta state by the looks of it as you can only get access via an invite.

They've also said on their FB page that there won't be any paid listings and it will be free as by the looks of it they seem to have some form of 3rd party backing

L3wisD · April 27, 2018

This happened on the Comrades group yesterday:

You'll notice all the admins come running to defend Grierson's actions regarding this

But the best bit?

So, anyone questioning WC, or talking about WC/Zac with less than glowing praise will just have their threads shut down.

I've left the group now.

It's a shame, as it was supposed to be the group that promised to avoid the snidey, bitchy and dishonest side of airsoft Facebook pages.

Best thing we can do is try to get this thread to make it the top result for Weapons Crates and/or Zac Grierson.

proffrink · April 27, 2018

So then what does this mean? :S

On 18/04/2018 at 22:03, Gtech said:

Hey Guys,

I run Airsoft Nation, which in essence was a competitor against WC. Zach recently (unexpectedly) joined into my Live Stream while I was discussing the situation and confirmed everyone should have their money sorted - drop the WC Page a PM to follow up.

As Jez said, there are 2 'customer support' guys who should also be monitoring the page. They're also the admins of Comrades/AirsoftUK.

WC was sold to an Alibaba Tactical sales company, and remember they bought the name 'weaponcrates.com', they didn't acquire the company. So Zach is the person you'd still be aiming any contact to.

However, on Saturday, as someone rightly noticed - the WhoIs (owner of the Domain) has changed back, to Zach. So this means the sale didn't succeed, however he did let me know the personal data had been deleted (if you take his word on it, on the 10th).

Zach and I have come to heads many times over the years, so I won't go into a slinging match about what is right and wrong. What I can say is that I have 2 incidents where someone has sent him a SCC process and after 1 day of 'seeking legal advice', they received a payout. I believe one of the chaps are in this post.

Hope that helps, good luck. If you're looking for something different for sales you can always come along and try AN. Although I don't want to be seen as promoting heavily on here as I know you've got your own classifieds section.

Expand

I still reasonably strongly believe that whatever sale was going to be conducted did fall through. 'Dark Rhino' still owns the domain, and it's quite hard to see where their partners are listed on the site. Perhaps they don't want to be affiliated until this new 'alpha' is complete? Surely any sponsoring/partnered company would - at the very least - want a place on their Facebook page and/or in the footer?

Jakkarro · April 27, 2018

I think the most effective way would to be expressing you experience on their Google business page as this comes up on top of everything.

Although I'm sure there will suddenly be a flurry of positive ones the moment there is anything negative on it.

Here's the link to those of you interested in this approach.

Https://g.co/kgs/FT7frk

proffrink · April 27, 2018

We shouldn't forget that this is a Facebook page that has gained a suspiciously high number of followers in what I'd call a very short time - especially for an airsoft-related Facebook page.

In fact - and though this is by no means conclusive - using the Facebook Open Graph search (basically just the search, but using the correct search query to filter users), we can see that the top 'likers' of Weaponcrates Facebook page are accounts registered in Hong Kong and Mexico. If you want to try this yourself, just put in 'Countries of people who like Weaponcrates' into the search. For some reason it also bugs out when I press 'show all' for results and just shows a blank page. Perhaps it's my browser though.

Considering that some airsoft retailers (such as Evike) have half a million likes though, it's not out of the question that a lot of Mexican and Hong Kongese just really like mediocre quality Reddit-procured gun and airsoft memes. I might be stirring the shit pot for no reason with this one, but below is something slightly more concrete that perhaps confirms what @Gtech alleges about a deal gone sour earlier this month.

Bonus

For your viewing pleasure, here's a full WhoIs history of Weaponcrates.com.

The important bit is here, where the domain temporarily transferred hands to a company registered called 'Shantou Chenghai Wisha' on 10/04/18. Another WhoIs entry changed the details on 14/04/18, and remain present today. This would fit the timeline for Weaponcrates being 'aquired' and then having that acquisition deal fall through, right @Gtech?

Reveal hidden contents

Here's the rest too if you want to have a dig:

Reveal hidden contents

Archer · April 28, 2018

https://wishasports.en.alibaba.com/

This is the company that "bought Weaponcrates"

Can't see what they were hoping to achieve

newsh · April 28, 2018

So they are a wholesale company for chinese airsoft kit?

Some of the minimum order quantities on those items are pretty high

proffrink · April 28, 2018

Alibaba is a website that only really does B2B sales. If they have a store on AliExpress you might well find they sell direct to consumer as well.

scenezx · April 28, 2018

Just thought I'd give you guys an update, I've had my refund and the money was finally paid back into my account at the beginning of the week. Been a little bit busy so haven't had time to update.

Definately agree though that word needs to be spread to avoid weaponcrates. I'm sure there's more people that have been messed around by Zac than we know of, can only hope that everyone has been paid out and nobody else is owed money.

Jez_Armstrong · April 30, 2018

Sorry but i have to express i never had a single problem using WC but that is because i never used the escrow service, and i probably sold more on there than most people (I think my seller score was something like 13300)

i am in no way taking sides but i believe that Zac is not a scammer, he tried to create a new way of selling and protecting and that went tits up, if there was no escrow service i recon the site would still be running today, however when i spoke to him he did tell me that it was costing him about £300 a month out of his own pocket to run the site which for anyone is alot so i can see why he wanted to try and make the site pay for itself somehow

i used that site as i would do this site or any other site, if weaponcrates 2.0 comes back and gets as popular as it was before i will be using it again but ill i will be using it as i have been using the forums for the last ten years

you message the seller, you tell them you want an item ,you exchange details and sort out payment (Which has always been with fee's and never gifted) adding a middle man who gets a percentage of your sale for doing...........well........who knows what the objective was with him holding your money, Zero one offer an escrow service where you send your guns to them, that's an escrow service

Rogerborg · April 30, 2018

On 30/04/2018 at 07:39, Jez_Armstrong said:

it was costing him about £300 a month out of his own pocket to run the site

Expand

I saw that claim too, and struggled to imagine how on earth he could be spending so much.

Most failed businesses don't set out to scam people. But if you don't plan for what happens when things go wrong, inevitably you're going to bilk your creditors.

proffrink · April 30, 2018

On 30/04/2018 at 07:39, Jez_Armstrong said:

Sorry but i have to express i never had a single problem using WC but that is because i never used the escrow service, and i probably sold more on there than most people (I think my seller score was something like 13300)

i am in no way taking sides but i believe that Zac is not a scammer, he tried to create a new way of selling and protecting and that went tits up, if there was no escrow service i recon the site would still be running today, however when i spoke to him he did tell me that it was costing him about £300 a month out of his own pocket to run the site which for anyone is alot so i can see why he wanted to try and make the site pay for itself somehow

i used that site as i would do this site or any other site, if weaponcrates 2.0 comes back and gets as popular as it was before i will be using it again but ill i will be using it as i have been using the forums for the last ten years

you message the seller, you tell them you want an item ,you exchange details and sort out payment (Which has always been with fee's and never gifted) adding a middle man who gets a percentage of your sale for doing...........well........who knows what the objective was with him holding your money, Zero one offer an escrow service where you send your guns to them, that's an escrow service

Expand

I would believe this too if it weren't for the fact that he's done this before. I don't think he sets out to scam, but rather is apathetic or defensive towards people who do encounter issues with a service he runs.

Like most companies (or even people): Don't judge them by what they do when all goes well, but rather by how they treat you when it goes wrong. This is someone with a long list of people who've felt they've been wronged that trails back 5-6 years and across industries other than airsoft unfortunately. We've seen that in this thread, but for many who've got hundreds tied up they've finally drawn the line and got the law involved.

There is no way that site is costing £300 a month to run unless he's severely overpaying for hardware he doesn't need or has hideously inefficient code (even then I struggle to envision it costing that much in this day and age). Actually hosting a site like this is really cheap these days as there's plenty of competition. I would be surprised if he was actually paying over £70 a month. If the site was running efficiently with the amount of traffic it gets then frankly I'd put that at closer to £40 or £50 at the absolute most. I really wouldn't buy this line at all.

Tackle · April 30, 2018

So just out of interest I type in to google "Zachary grierson scammer", very first result is FB from 2013:

https://m.facebook.com/AnonymousOsna/posts/514862781935351

interesting

ak2m4 · May 1, 2018

£300 for hosting is pretty high, think he used AWS, which can be expensive. I think there's an early post of his on this forum where he asks for feedback and a few users commented would be difficult to make it financially viable.

proffrink · May 1, 2018

Eh? AWS isn't that much more than competitors. Perhaps 15-20% if you're not doing anything highly specialised with it.

And yep, these sites are never financially viable unfortunately. Ads just don't bring in the money to justify app that labour. Especially not anymore when 1/5 of people use blockers too.

Rogerborg · May 2, 2018

On 01/05/2018 at 21:30, proffrink said:

Ads just don't bring in the money to justify app that labour. Especially not anymore when 1/5 of people use blockers too.

Expand

On that, I whitelist sites that I want to support (including this one), but it might be worth putting a very gentle nag somewhere just to remind people that it's an option.

proffrink · May 2, 2018

Perhaps a bit off-topic but:

Ads have only just returned as the AdSense account was transferred and took ages to approve. Maybe I'll put a notice somewhere or - better still - allow people to turn them on manually (off by default perhaps). Still working on making this a bit better.

Thanks for doing that though. It does help.

PrinskipperSkipple · May 3, 2018

I detailed my intentions of filing small claims and I got my money the day after. Glad to be done with it.

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WeaponCrates is officially gone

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