I am going to step in here and defend SM and the crew. You are expecting too much. They run a small crew of people. Keep in mind this is a start up. They don't have the $$$ to have a huge crew of employees. I can't imagine how they do as good of a job as they do with as little support/employees they have. I own my own buisness and am currently juggling 6+ projects of various forms. I can empathize with what the company is trying to accomplish. I imagine currently SM wishes there was about 72 hours in a day. I know I do.... I can't get everything done in a day I need to. I can't imagine what all he has on his plate.
As for being upset that he did not remember who you were or the details of your conversation. That is just standard operation procedure. Most of the time poeple who do "know what you are talking about" are either just saying that to get you to move along, or they are looking at a screen that has a details history of your issue. He clearly stated that they just implemented their new customer service system and you should enter your ticket there. I would never have expected him to remember my issue. You should not take that personally. I think it is great that he was honest in telling you he did not remember. At least he did not go "Oh yea I remember..." when he did not.
I think you should have told them you don't feel like the ELBs are an appropriate compensation or your shipping. I am sure something could have been worked out. From my general experience they want to please their customer base. Bringing it here though in the manner you did just does not seem overly helpful. Instead of coming in here all: about it. You should have been more: about the issue. I understand you have dealt with this several times. You need to keep in mind though, this is still a start up. They have it more together then %90 of the projects I backed on kickstarter.com. Many of the project I have paid in to have still not even delivered prototypes months past their projected windows.
Really appreciate the vote of confidence. We try our best to be accommodating and reasonable with all of our customers. Sometimes you have to agree to disagree and just move on.
... to get this thread back on track
I know that folks are getting 45 degree adapters to use with their stemless pieces. One of the issues that we saw was that it really throw the balance off of the bong. We went to the drawing board and designed the CloudBuddy. It is a modular piece that allows you to place your Cloud into one of two female joints. One gives you additional height, whereas the other one allows you to position the Cloud to the left of the piece. With this design, in most cases, you can have hands free use of your Cloud... here is a demo
This will be available at the end of the month