Hi, I'm B-Ron

[B-Ron]

Just wanted to introduce myself and give a little info as to who I am. My name is Ronnie, and those of you that have been to Wired For Sound this year might have met me or seen me there before (I'm the black guy with glasses). I've been working for Adam since January of this year. Prior to that I worked for Zarb Electronics :hammer2: for a year. I've been installing for about 14 years and my specialties are sound quality, enclosures, security, and the electronics technical side of the 12 volt industry.
I'm working on Wired For Sound's website (http://www.wired4sounds.com) and printed media during this buy-back process. I'll be posted in front of this computer for another week or so, so you might see a lot of me until then. :jawdrop: I'll try to keep my posts to a minimum.
Ronnie

[Jordy]

Cool. Welcome to the boards.

[ROZ]

right on... How was it working with Terry and where did you work previous to Zarb?

[B-Ron]

Terry was one of the few straight-forward guys there, so working with him was a pleasure. Before Zarb I worked for Stereo 1, Best Buy, Hofco Alarms, Electronic Security Products, Airtouch, La Cellular, and then I also had a few of my own smaller private ventures going on, Mutiny Racewerx in Azusa and San Diego, Engineuity and Keep Performance Labs in Vancouver Canada. I've done a lot of high performance engine building, mainly on the machining side... throttle bodies, heads, valve trains, intakes, cams... also a lot of engine management systems like Haltech, SDS, AEM. Most of which was based around Mitsubishi, Toyota and Honda. I'm pretty much like everyone else in the industry... really smart, but really dumb for focusing on something that makes little money. I guess that's why it's called a passion.

[PHX ATC]

Website looks good, can't wait for it to be complete.
Sounds like you've got good ideas and the "passion" is what fuels prosperity.

[B-Ron]

Website looks good, can't wait for it to be complete
Thank you :mix: No one from Wired has seen the site yet, we've all got a full plate trying to pick up the pieces from the Zarb catastrophy. So I wasn't too sure how they'd like it. Thanks for your opinion, at least I'm headed in the right direction.

[ROZ]

Your display of affection for the partners is overwhelming :hammer2:

[Lightning]

Thank you :mix: No one from Wired has seen the site yet, we've all got a full plate trying to pick up the pieces from the Zarb catastrophy. So I wasn't too sure how they'd like it. Thanks for your opinion, at least I'm headed in the right direction.
For those of us not "in the know" - what happened?

[Evo22]

wlcome to the boards :boxed:

[B-Ron]

For those of us not "in the know" - what happened?
OK... I'll give you the Zarb Lite version.
Certain vendors stopped doing business with us because of Zarb's incompetent accounts payable. For example, we have a detailer that comes to the shop on a daily basis to detail every completed auto/boat. That company hasn't been paid in months and will no longer service us until Adam has regained ownership. Luckily he's a friend. Same scenario with DEI, but it's going to take a lot of convencing to pick them up again. There are a few other vendors as well.
Zarb supplied us with inferior materials, RCAs, connectors, cable ties, RF Modulators, relays, fuse holders, etc. They took all of our materials and locked them in a stock room which no one had a key to except a Zarb employee that was sent down to control inventory. Which is ok, for amps, radios... actual products. But materials? Come on! So when we needed materials to complete a job, we'd have to wait until this Zarb inventory control "manager" got us all of the materials we requested. So when I was knee deep in a boat, I'd run out of cable ties and have to wait an hour at times just to get cable ties, job sitting at a stand still.
Product not ordered before the 20th of each month had to wait until the 1st. So let's say you brought your boat in on the 21st and we didn't have all of the needed product, your boat would sit untouched until we could order the needed product. Customers' autos/boats would sit around for up to 3 weeks because we had to wait until the 1st just to order the product, let alone processing and shipping time. Another brilliant Zarb idea.
Zarb sent down their "top salesman" for us to utilize. Good idea again, if the salesman knew what he was talking about. He'd sell product against installers' advice which increased our come-back rate. Lied to our customers, sold them used product as new, installed different product than what was sold, etc.
Zarb would handle all of the hiring of new installers, which was a catastrophe at the very least. We went through 4 installers before we decided to just deal with being short staffed. Everything they touched they either broke, damaged or installed incorrectly. A few examples: one guy wired the speaker outputs from the radio to all speakers as well as an amplifier powering the same speakers! Another guy scratched an AC control unit so bad it looked like he was playing soccer with it. Wired dual voice coil subs incorrectly, not fusing power wire at the battery, the list goes on and on.
Zarb promised several techs a pay raise but never honored it. They fired several employees and replaced them with less qualified techs. And this really is only part of it.
Oh, I forgot about the fraudulent activities. The employees that got laid off tried to collect unemployment but couldn't. They were told by unemployment that there was no account for them, no monies. Zarb was deducting money from their paycheck though. So where did the money go? The IRS ordered my own paychecks to be garnished for a tax debt, so Zarb was garnishing $300 per month and supposedly forwarding that money to the IRS. I contacted the IRS recently and found out that an average of only HALF of the money garnished was actually being sent to the IRS.
I'll leave it at that for now. If I were to list everything Zarb did, this post would be so long Hot Boat would get kicked off their server for soaking up all the bandwidth. Now that I'm thoroughly vexed, I'm going to work on the website some more. :220v: