Like I said, IN THE POST THAT YOU'RE REPLYING TO, I messed up with that price range. I've apologized and updated my original post. Do you want me to concede the same point AGAIN? Because I have already conceded it multiple times. Do YOU know what you're trying to accomplish here with this rhetoric? Because I don't.
Isn't VERIFIED by me?
I think you've lost the plot. I'm not Consumer Reports. I didn't purchase every possible model of cue case from every vendor and subject them to every possible objective test before writing my review here. I'm not an expert on cue cases, nor have I claimed to be. I wouldn't even say that I'm a cue case enthusiast. I'm just some guy who bought a cue case and decided to write a review of it on this forum because I couldn't find any reviews of the case online before I purchased it and I thought my impressions would be helpful.
While I haven't "verified" anything (whatever that word means to you), I have been playing pool for 15 years and I know a bunch of people who have cue cases. Most people I know have cases that cost around $200 or less. I have seen, and handled, many of those cases, and I would say that the case I bought is comparable (or better). I know a number of people who have cue cases that cost $300 or more and their cases are obviously better. So I wrote the review according to my own personal experience, with no claims of having "verified" anything I wrote to your arbitrary standard for internet forum comment thread posts.
Correct, you're not consumer reports. So given that you aren't actually benchmarking this product category and given the fact that you are an engineer it seems to me that the proper way to review something is to speak about what's in your hands to the extent that you can describe it and not to make comparisons with other products that you don't have available to you.
Consumer reports purchases all the products they test. They establish performance benchmarks and test each product against those benchmarks.
Presumably their findings are able to be duplicated by others using the same testing methods.
I am the closest thing to consumer reports for cue cases that exists. And I freely state that I am biased given my position but that I invite anyone to come to the shop and inspect the reviewed cases themselves.
At shows I invite customers to try and break our cases. Even though my methods are obviously not rigorously scientific and certainly wouldn't be acceptable in an engineering lab they are still transparent. I have objective experience with dozens of case brands and models.
I don't want an apology. My goal is merely to inform when I see comments that are inaccurate. I appreciate it when I am corrected as it adds to my knowledge and prevents me from making a similar mistake in the future.
In my mind an engineer should strive for informed accuracy rather than subjective speculative opinion.
I am certain that you didn't want all this when you made your review. I am of course flattered when our customers accurately describe the attributes of our cases and are able to debunk inaccurate comparisons to other cases. I would never encourage them to name call though in defense of our quality.
It should be noted again though that whatever opinions or claims made in a public space are open to scrutiny and rebuttal.
In my mind you were defrauded. You received a case that was made to look like ours in both external appearance and internal protection. But you didn't actually receive the same quality level or protection. When informed of that you chose to be very defensive about it and even to speculate that the lack of protection was actually a smart choice by the manufacturer.
Then you went farther and said you would be surprised to find out that the knockoff and our cases were not made in the same factory. Think about how such a statement reads to me and others?
To me it reads like don't waste your money on a higher priced "version" with a name brand. In fact you added a completely arbitrary set of numbers with the 75% of the quality for 25% of the price comments. So if I were someone looking for a case and can't across your comments I would be inclined to believe it.
Such a review, well written and articulate yet containing inaccurate assertions, is compelling.
I have dealt with similar "reviews" for 30 years. They don't die and left unchallenged they gain legitimacy. People defend their reviews under the umbrella of personal opinion regardless of the harm to others that is inadvertently caused.
Again, I think you meant well and I get it that I am probably overbearing. But for me cases is our bread and butter business and at present we have 35 employees who depend on the income generated by our sales. For the factories making knockoffs and the vendors who sell those knockoffs the amount of cases we make is a small amount in comparison. But a 10% drop in sales for us based on a viral review that contains inaccurate comparisons is much more impactful to us.
I don't have their resources and they don't have the willingness to be truthful about their products. So when they receive "help" from enthusiastic consumers who are ignorantly making false comparisons they get better marketing than anything they can do themselves.
This same company was putting out claimed ABS dealer cases years ago which were not abs and instead were just normal weak plastic. The cases were designed to deliberately mimic tough ABS suitcases. When I inspected it and found that not only was the exterior shell weak but the interior was actually dangerous to cues, far more than in your case, due to bad design (exposed metal screws inside the case among other things), the maker literally threatened my family through a message to my wife.
To the point that my wife asked me to take the review down. That's what we are dealing with here and why it means so much to me to expose these frauds. Put simply they don't care about your pool cues at all. They are not pool players and have never experienced the pure joy of finding just the right cue and playing well with it. They aren't saving money to buy their dream cue. They aren't playing on a league team where their team depends on them playing well and will never understand how a defective cue messes up a player's confidence.
So if it's not already clear I am a big pool nerd, a passionate player, and a lifelong student of the game. I appreciate the art and engineering that goes into pool cues and the joy that comes with getting just the right one in my hands. I have been to dozens of cue maker's shops and multiple large factories.
This is way more than just a job for me. That's why I take it seriously and pay attention when I see discussions about cases.
I hope that you can see my perspective here and if not then I can be satisfied that I have presented it with as much clarity as I can.
A famous cuemaker had a slogan that sums it up for me, "passion is a hard thing to conceal". I got into this because I wanted to solve a problem for myself. Along the way I have spent a lot of time and effort doing much more than simply adding padding to the inside of cases. And I don't think that I have discovered the best way to do it, just the best way so far. I have dozens of prototypes and experiments that may someday make it to market.
And when they do there will always be an unscrupulous knockoff maker ready to build a fraudulent version to fool the public and fooled customers willing to promote them. I could tell you a bunch of stories that you might find interesting about all the ways that they cut corners to shave off costs and increase their profits. But at this point I think you get the idea.
