Fraud /frôd/: noun : wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. Over the past decade, I’ve seen a disturbing trend as more and more companies seem to be blatantly trying to rip off consumers, investors, and crowdfunders with their electric vehicle products. Whether it is electric cars, ebikes, electric scooters or electric skateboards…
Before the Bluto Fat Bike suspension fork there was nothing. The only way to get a suspension on that fat tire bike was to get a fatter tire. The Bluto has been plagued by cold weather issues so I generally leave my expensive $500 Bluto Fork in the shed all winter long and only break it…
If I had a cool given name like Ivars I’d probably make sure everyone called me by it, while they followed me into battle to do my bidding. Maybe I’d use ‘Storm’ as my super-hero alias on the weekends while fighting crime, but Ivars is such an awesome name I’d want all my mortal enemies to…
The Sondors Ebike. Here we go. I rode the Sondors Ebike with the throttle pegged down and my first reaction was “Wow! This bike doesn’t totally suck”. The logos and the styling make it look like the latest incarnation of the Batmobile, and it rides like a tank over most everything in its path. Tooling around everyone…
After countless insults, hate-mail, getting run off the Storm Usergroup Facebook page and working really hard at NOT getting post-banned I’ve finally decided to stop writing about the Sondors Ebike controversy. Congratulations, you win! I got a refund, I no longer care what happens from this point forward. Unless I get legal notification in the…
I published an article several days ago about whether there should be more federal regulation or private insurance in the crowd-funding world found here. That same day the Sondors Ebike campaign announced that they would be offering perk insurance for people’s ebike perks. This is quite possibly the most questionable services I have ever seen offered…
Ever since the beginning of the Storm\Ivars Sondors Electric Bike Campaign there has been a not-so-subtle change on my favorite forum endless-sphere.com, and the change has not been for the better. What used to be a civil discussion platform for people wanting support or to connect with other ebike builders has degenerated into what appears…
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There were three very interesting things that came out of the interviews with Storm/Ivars at the Demo Days Event last Sunday 1) He has said that he might have one container of 300 bikes shipped to Southern California for people to pick up their ebikes. This video at 22:57. 2) He said the Sondors electric bike would…
Federal regulations are put in place to protect the consumer from advertisers who falsely advertise their products and make misleading claims. They can also protect consumers from flat-out fraud where they purchase something, but never receive the product they ordered or receive something very different from they thought they were going to get. Before you…
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