East Coast Angel (ECA) won't return my Angel A4 Fly

[fullofpaint]

Brad Potter (East Coast Angel, ECA) has had my Angel A4 Fly for over a year and won't return it. I shipped it to him in mid-January 2020 with some velocity issues. He told me several times over the course of the year he was getting to it and then never delivered. He also ignored my messages, even after viewing them.

I asked for the marker to be returned over a month ago regardless if it had been service or not, exactly a year to date he received it. He acknowledged my request the same day and he has ceased all communication with me since then.

I am not the only person in this situation, I’ve spoken with three other owners with a total of 6 markers who are similarly waiting on markers to be returned, some who’ve been waiting even longer than I have.

I highly recommend not doing business with him.


Link to all screenshots of conversation

Update: Brad is now refusing to return my marker until I take down these posts. Added new screenshots of this

Update to the update: Brad sent a shooting video and a valid tracking number today. Should arrive Thursday. Will update when it gets here.

[Meleager7]

why are these guys accepting a years worth of jobs, that they can’t ever hope to deliver in a timely manner!? Are they insane?

[fullofpaint]

Brad Potter (East Coast Angel, ECA) is now refusing to return my gun until I take down all these posts. New screenshots added to my post.

[NONOBLITUS]

Wow ! I sure hope you are truly contacting law enforcement for this.

[gabe]

Wow that's some real bull$ht from the biggest Angel tech in the industry. Seems like paintball airsmiths have a bad history of getting in too deep and then not being humble enough to return guns and refund money with grace. Doc being the notable exception.

[DocsMachine]

You don't stay in this biz for twenty-three years (come July 1st ) by being an asshole.

That guy's being an asshole. Punisher smoked his whole biz by being less of an asshole than that guy.

Doc.

[Falcon16]

I remember the fiasco around him.

[Pumpytrilly1]

Mind sharing what happened?

[Mr. Hick]

I'm not sure he understands how the internet works? Was he assuming that you wouldn't screenshot his conversation and post it? That's some BS.

[Toestr]

If I remember correctly, someone also called him out in a Facebook group a while ago for the same kinda stuff. I'm pretty sure the guy who called him out ended up getting flamed and kicked out of the group though. I'm not entirely sure.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[Relief]

Yea brad is the mod on a pretty popular FB angel group & he’s been able to just keep farming that for guns & business & people not knowing any better.

This has come up a few times over the years. He slandered me just for being friends with a guy he was trolling.

His morals & ethics are just trash.

[pghp8ntballer]

There are 2 Angel groups on bookface - The OG one which is the original Angel Owners forum group and the other group doesn’t have OG in the name. If I remember correctly Brad isn’t allowed in the OG group, but he is a mod for the “other” group. There is likely a good reason for this.

I’ve only dealt with Brad once or twice - simply purchasing used items. He’s been involved in a few “questionable” situations that leaned on both sides of good/bad but there was enough there to limit my interaction with him.

This has been my game plan with several paintball air smiths and/or machinists: Do the research, keep the ears open, and be willing to accept the risk.

Buying items outright is a fairly straightforward with limited risk with PayPal. Having work done, not so much. Stanchy, JCurt, Bazooka Boy (anodizing), plus a few others were the people I have dealt with. Everything I sent off was at a time they were not having issues with customers. Lucky me. What I sent though wasn’t super rare or valuable to me... if it was lost I would be irate, but oh well. A lesson learned. But eventually all had issues and left paintball or were outcast by many. Looking back, there were tell tale signs when issues rolled in. Once they start rolling, I know not to send them any work and purchase only... if I can’t get what I need elsewhere.

I hope any of you folks dealing with him get your things back safely and quickly.

[Relief]

This is all valid info but did you read Brads messages? He’s just sitting on the guys gun & adding weeks to return unless he takes his posts calling him out, down.

This isn’t over-worked or bad work.

This is just an asshole being an asshole.

[pghp8ntballer]

Yep, I read them and posted convos in previous bookface issues involving Brad. He is not always in the wrong, but not exactly taking the honorable position. I agree his tactics with FOP are extreme. If it were me in this situation, I would want to live close so it could be resolved peacefully in person. But at the same time, I would be on a hair trigger to get the police involved based on his actions.

I don’t disagree that he is being a royal d-bag.

[fullofpaint]

Current update: Brad Potter (East Coast Angel, ECA) has asked for my address and claims it's boxed up and ready to ship Monday. We'll see what happens.

[Toestr]

Man, why is this kind of stuff so prevalent in paintball? These people have otherwise overwhelmingly positive reputations, and are major members of the community then go and pull stunts like this. Even my local proshop that gets recommended by players out the wazzo has stories similar to this.

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[Sharkpocalypse]

I already sent OP this over DM's but figured I'd leave it here as well as a warning:

Sent my gun to ECA last summer for an o-ring refresh, tune-up and board swap. Whole process took about 6 weeks. When I got it back, it was jammed in a USPS box with some random pieces of styrofoam as padding. I later noticed some scratches on the body and volumizer that weren't there when I shipped it. Sending it out I had put it in a large ziplock bag and packed it tightly in a box full of foam peanuts with at least 2" of clearance on every side. Upon getting it back, I saw a big gouge out of the volumizer (which was installed on the battery side) that I can only imagine could have been caused by the gun falling several feet onto concrete, tip first. There was also a bit on one of the lower tubes where the anno looked like it had been partially rubbed away. This thing had been near mint when I sent it out. The ram was over tightened and wouldn't allow the breach to open and there was a leak coming out from around the flash tank which hadn't been there before. After lots of troubleshooting, I finally found that there were nicks in the gas diverter plate which was letting air seep through. Didn't really follow up with him since I doubted anything would have been done about it. In the end, I resolved to never let that thing out of my sight again. If anybody is going to destroy that marker, it's going to be me.

[fullofpaint]

Man, why is this kind of stuff so prevalent in paintball? These people have otherwise overwhelmingly positive reputations, and are major members of the community then go and pull stunts like this. Even my local proshop that gets recommended by players out the wazzo has stories similar to this.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

Brad Potter (East Coast Angel, ECA) is actively suppressing any issues people have. He's deleted comments and posts in the angel group he mods and last night he deleted many pre-existing comments on his own page asking about their markers or talking about their experience with him. I have actively spoken with 5 or 6 people in a similar boat to me, including some who have put down payment and are still waiting.

[eddie]

He's not the only one deleting comments. I think people would benefit from leaving that awful subreddit.

[fullofpaint]

I don't mind the mod that much. 90% of the time I think he does a fine job. It mostly frustrates me that he's so unwilling to let people contribute. Like I'd love to see an automod for some frequently asked questions, a wiki for basic paintball stuff, a functioning sidebar for the current version of Reddit. I wrote a huge wiki post for beginner players walking them through the current gear, explaining terms and all that. Asked for it to be stickied so the community could contribute and discuss things. Never heard back.

[eddie]

I'll admit I was a little annoyed when I said that. The subreddit is ok, but man its annoying to see a joke post get locked. It would be nice to get that wiki back.

[DocsMachine]

Current update: He's asked for my address and claims it's boxed up and ready to ship Monday. We'll see what happens.

-I suspect somebody has taken him aside and explained the concept of "The Streisand Effect" to him.

Man, why is this kind of stuff so prevalent in paintball?

-Two reasons: One, because it's easy to get into. The sport started as a sort of boutique, gagrage-shop industry, and a fair part of that remains even today.

And two, we have no "long established" professional industry. We have the big guns, like DYE, BLAST and PE, but nearly zero large aftermarket manufacturers. Think of it like Otterboxes for smartphones. That company isn't associated with any of the phone manufacturers, but is still a huge and widespread manufacturer itself.

We don't have anything like that. Our "big" equivalents are shops like Shocktech and Palmer's Pursuit- which in the grand scheme of things, are not much better than the strip-mall tchotchke shops.

As such, it's easy for a decently-talented one or two-man operation to launch a biz. Look at me. When I started, I had little more than a dimly lit shed off the side of a two-car garage, and a couple of worn-out machine tools. (And today, I have a well lit shed off the side of my garage. )

No one is- or probably ever will- put together a large and properly reputable repair shop for paintball guns. There's just no market for it. So you get little garage-shops like me, Superman, Ken and Bacchi, but unfortunately also occasionally run across a Punisher or this Brad guy.

It's also worth noting that this isn't limited to just paintball- I've run across similar types in virtually every motorsport I've been a part of, heard similar stories about a ton of real-steel gunsmiths, computer repair guys, you name it. We just pay closer attention to it here, as this is, after all, our passion.

Doc.

[Falcon16]

I wonder where Jcurt went. I had a pleasant experience with him bought a 90 frame for my phantom built and gifted a 90 through an SS a few years ago all went well. Then I heard things went really south.