I'll copy the first two paragraphs here:
Personal accountability is a concept my father drilled into my psyche starting when I was about nine. I didn’t feed the dogs one day before I went to school. That Saturday, he did not allow me to eat or drink anything from 6AM until 4PM that day. It taught me not only personal accountability, but also the concept that what YOU do affects OTHERS. It taught me that failure was unacceptable.
Fast forward 45 or so years, and I still believe in personal accountability - or, I guess, in the personal accountability of retailers. Because I am a retailer, and I don’t think it is anyone else’s job to provide for me. And I STILL find failure to be unacceptable.For the writer of this article to talk about "personal accountability" and still be Ken Whitman's biggest enabler, having customers pay for photos with "Whit" the actor, the con man, the flake, Mr Snake Oil Salesman himself - ironic seems to fall short of the gall embodied by this.
Yes, "gall" is a much more apt word/term to describe a Whitman enabler.
ReplyDeleteMarcus King is as much a slimeball as Ken Whitman is. Writing about personal responsibility while knowingly enabling a perpetual fraudster? Puh-lease. I'll also remind you that he was selling resin ship models at his store from the Traveller Kickstarter that were supposed to go to backers. Unlike Noble Knight who tried to make things right when they found out that Whitman had provided them with backer rewards from the Kickstarter, Marcus King and Titan Games just kept retailing said backer rewards like business as usual. Screw this guy.
ReplyDeleteI'll own up to my mistakes, unlike Ken. I stated above that Marcus ignored the origins of the resin models Ken provided him with and continued to retail them. Revisiting old threads on another site, I have to revise that statement.
DeleteMarcus claimed at the other site that he was working with Marc Miller to get the rewards to KS backers, so he at least admitted that the resin models were not his to do with as he pleased.
Now, that having been said, no further followup was provided by Marcus, Marc Miller, or KS backers that proves this claim had any validity (unlike Noble Knight's case, which was verified by multiple parties).
So, AFAIAC, Marcus did acknowledge that the models were not Ken's or his to sell, but there is absolutely no follow up to confirm his claim that he was working to get them to KS backers (who they DO belong to).
"Balls as big as watermelons."
ReplyDeleteI know little about Whitman, and nothing about King. But, I can glean something out of that blog post. He is the sort of person that feels that he needs to come out good on every deal, and if the person or company that he is dealing with does too, all the better. And, if they don't, not his problem. He does not operate in good faith, or bad.
ReplyDeleteThe way he describes Amazon and Ebay, as if their sales were stealing from him. And, how he "gets them back" by selling on them. Rather than saying that a modern retailer should use them as part of a modern sales strategy.
The subtext of other retailers complaining about the distributors, and how they treat them as customers. What is said to me was that he would pass the crap on to his customers. (And, I have seen the condition of the products my FLGS get at times from the distributors, and there is a LOT to complain about.) He sees them screwing him over as part of the game, not something that needs to be accounted for, just as his accountability for passing the buck on to the customer.
In the end, he plays by his own rules, and figures that every one else should play by them as well. The fact that they don't, probably doesn't register to him. He doesn't see him self as breaking any rules, because those rules aren't in his book, so they don't exist. So, he has no problems working with someone who has broken moral codes of the community, because they aren't the codes he goes by.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear he has a lot of stolen property go through his hands. He probably makes sure NOT to ask to many questions, and makes sure it gets sold out of state on Ebay. As long as they didn't rob him, it isn't his problem, right?
I've run into too many hobby (comic, gaming, and trading cards, plus combinations thereof) retailers with the *exact* ethos you describe.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if "geek stuff" naturally attracts the sleazoids, or the business creates them, or both. And the speculation aspect of most hobbies just amplifies awful impulses.