Statement about authenticity of our Microduino products

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Statement about authenticity of our Microduino products

Post by admin » Sun Sep 22, 2013 12:29 pm

Statement about authenticity of our Microduino range of products:

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16th September 2013: It has recently come to our attention that the manufacturer of Microduino (TM) released a statement about websites selling counterfeit Microduino products. For some reason that we do not understand, our website was named in this list, despite the fact that we are a known reseller and that Microduino have been supplying us with small batches of modules for quite some time. We are known to Microduino as a seller of their products and that Microduino have even used content created by Hobby Components to form part of the official Microduino wiki site. Microduino have removed our website from the statement that is currently posted at their wiki site; however, this statement still exists in its original form posted elsewhere.

The Microduino branded products sold by Hobby Components are manufactured by Microduino and are genuine Microduino products. Hobby Components would never knowingly sell products under a false pretence. We have now taken these products off sale whilst we attempt to resolve this issue with Microduino.



17th September 2013 - 11:09AM (GMT) We awoke this morning to a further message from Microduino.. We will now explain our current stance on the situation, and try to explain to our loyal customers and to those 500+ people currently backing the Microduino kickstarter project, why we feel the need to defend our company against the accusations made by Microduino Studios.

As previously stated, we have been in contact with Microduino Studios in an attempt to understand the reasons behind statements made against our company. Unfortunately, despite being in direct contact with them, we have received no reasonable explanation for their actions. We also requested that Microduino remove these statements made against us as we consider them to be unfounded and of a libellous nature. Microduino Studios stated to us that they had indeed complied with our request and had removed these statements from all places in which they had posted them. To date, they have only removed the allegation from one location.

The allegation made is as follows:
“CAUTION: We recently found FAKE Microduino websites microduino.org and http://hobbycomponents.com/index.php/dv ... duino.html. They are frauds and scams! Please be alerted and DON'T place any order with them. Microduino studio NEVER authorized any agent or distributor to sell Microduino products. Please help to spread this information to avoid any potential lost.”

We would like to reiterate the following:

Hobby Components has been selling Microduino products since the beginning of June this year and these products were manufactured and purchased from by Microduino Studios. That Microduino Studios were fully aware that these boards were purchased for the purpose of resale. At no point has Microduino ever conveyed that their products were not intended for resale.

Microduino Studios were fully aware that we were a customer of theirs, and of the source from which we purchased their products.

It is the belief of Hobby Components that Microduino Studios have been producing batches of module, have knowingly sold them for resale, and that they changed this policy as a result of the Kickstarter project. That Microduino knowing that existing availability of its products would have a significant effect on its ability to raise funding via its Kickstarter project, consciously decided to hide this fact by denouncing our website as “fakes”, “frauds” and “scams”.

Microduino Studios have also made contact with us several times in the past via our supply chain prior to the kickstarter project regarding placing of orders, availability of their products and feedback.

We are still in possession of a significant amount of Microduino stock, but unfortunately we will not be selling our current stocks in the near future and Microduino Studios is not a company we wish to conduct any further business with.

Hobby Components Ltd actively promoted Microduino products, and were more than happy to do so, as we believed in the product itself. Content was created and posted in our support forum (forum.hobbycomponents.com) for the use of customers purchasing the Microduino range of products.

10PM (GMT): We have now been in contact with Microduino and will be making a further update to our statement tomorrow.





UPDATE: 22nd September 2013 - 16:22PM (GMT)
Firstly, we would like to re-post the initial statement Microduino made against us, which placed us in the awkward position of responding:

“CAUTION: We recently found FAKE Microduino websites microduino.org and http://hobbycomponents.com/index.php/dv ... duino.html. They are frauds and scams! Please be alerted and DON'T place any order with them. Microduino studio NEVER authorized any agent or distributor to sell Microduino products. Please help to spread this information to avoid any potential lost.”

We just don’t want this original statement by Microduino to be lost in current discussions now that Microduino have been removing it from some of the places in which they posted it.

We are also happy to see that Microduino stopped pushing this statement and are now beginning to acknowledge that we are in possession of genuine Microduino products. We would also like to make it clear that we did not just purchase a few prototype samples and in actual fact purchased several batches of products, these include batches of the following boards:

Microduino Core
Core+
SD Card Module
BM Module
nRF24 Module
FT232RL Module
Enc28J60 Module with PoE
Enc28J60 Module without PoE
OLED Module

Batches of some of the above items were purchased on more than one occasion and as we are still in possession of a significant amount of this stock, it is easy for us to prove that this is the case should it be questioned and that Microduino’s statement about selling “20 Microduino sample sets in June 2013” is simply not true.

Although we know it is the case that Microduino have always known who we are, we believe that it is preposterous for Microduino to suggest that they have been selling batches of their boards and not keeping record of who they were selling them to. The boards we have are fully tested and working and appear to have been made on a production line. They also have a “QC Passed” sticker on them.

Microduino also religiously state that they never authorised us to sell their products. This could also imply that Microduino had conveyed this policy to us in the past. This is certainly not the case. Microduino at no point gave any indication that the items we purchased were not for resale.

These boards are currently off sale purely because we now see them as evidence in response to Microduino’s original statement and they were taken off sale before Microduino made any attempt to contact us. Microduino only made contact with us about taking these boards off sale after they became aware of our original statement. They did this by contacting us through our supplier (as they have done in the past). This is something that it should not have been possible for them to do if they were unaware of where we bought them from. Microduino were informed at this point that the items were already off sale.

We have no desire to see any damage caused to the actual product itself, but unfortunately by Microduino actively making these statements against us it placed us in a very awkward position where not responding to them could imply guilt. We hope that Microduino see that by continuously posting these statements, that they are also causing damage to their own reputation and that they should stop this campaign against us.

We are undecided on what we will eventually do with our current stocks of Microduino products, we are currently giving away two modules in a twitter/facebook sweepstake, but we will most certainly not be purchasing Microduino stocks in the future.

All statements made by Hobby Components have been in direct response to allegations made against us by Microduino.

We still do not know why Microduino took the line of discrediting our business and stating that they were not for resale rather than taking a more open line of just admitting that it was producing these modules in quantity and that the Kickstarter campaign was for the purpose of taking it to the next stage.

For any businesses looking to resell their products in the future, all we can say is, please read the original statement made against us - you have now been warned.

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