This feels different to the Hex-Nail saga to me.
I never invested money into the Hex-Nail so I can understand why anyone who did is pissed off with the Hex girls but I'm more inclined to cut them some slack. We're not all cut out to be entrepreneurs with that Steve Jobs level ambition and execution.
I think Ava and Liz were a couple of cool, down to Earth chicks with a killer idea for a product and the imagination and desire to turn that dream into something big. I think they also lacked the technical and business know-how to convert that dream into the stable environment required for a tech startup, but then in my experience the type of people that don't have a mind for the business world are some of the most likeable people around. Maybe that's just my bias against this neo-liberal capitalist dystopia that we seem to be creating for ourselves but I digress.
It breaks my heart that they let so many people down by lacking the business savvy to see Hex-Nail through, and I've hated to see some of the vitriol that's been thrown their way since. I know some people got burned but it would be a stretch to suggest that they set out to do that or that they haven't been burned themselves. I have no doubt that their having since separated has a lot to do with the stresses that they faced in trying and failing in their enterprise.
Like I said, this MaxVapor thing seems fishier to me. Hex-Nail made promises and failed those commitments and while it sometimes took them a while to respond to that, up until the end they would usually chime back in with some kind of excuse and as slow as it was, progress seemed to be made in their own way. I mean they weren't exactly running a tight manufacturing process, you dig?
*cough*hot glue
*cough*
The MaxVapor enail, on the other hand, seems to be putting out direct and conflicting misinformation. Like I shared in my previous post, there's different sites, different price points, different names, different claims for different dates, and zero information about this thing out in the wild except for one post where someone had to cancel their order due to it not being shipped. I'll say it again, this was May of last year when that person was told two weeks for an aluminum chassis and here we are a year and three months later and they're still claiming to be machining the chassis? It ain't exactly CSI to spot there's something undeniably shady going on.
I also get a bad vibe from the sites I've seen. The older ones have that late 90's Geocities amateur jank to them and the new ones have that modern day Squarespace template with stock photography feel. Still, not a single image of the unit that isn't a 3D render shopped into the pic (not to mention the amateur hour photoshop job I posted earlier).
If it weren't for the pics that
@maxvapor710 has posted of the internals and the 3D printed prototype I wouldn't hesitate to straight up call this a scam. At this point I think it's either that or they're intentionally being misleading about dates and where they're at in the manufacturing process to drive up pre-sales. The longer it goes, the more I stray from thinking it's the latter. Either way, in the words of the late Desi Arnaz, "Lucy, chu got some esplaining to do."
On a side note, every time this bullshit goes down in this industry I think about the fact that it's an attractive angle for a scammer to play because at the end of the day no matter if you get called out for it, there's going to be a percentage of the people you've scammed who aren't willing to go through official channels to be reimbursed for drug paraphernalia. It always reminds me of
this scene from Lock Stock.
EDIT: I can't edit my previous post so I'll drop an update here.
@maxvapor710 has updated us with more information and it's looking like we're good. I apologise for any jimmies that were rustled in the course of my rampant skepticism. As far as conspiracy theories go, this one appears to be debunked. Lizard people on the other hand, ooh boy lemme tell you 'bout the lizard people and the illuminati...
