Revelation Audio Lab (RAL) ... are they crooks?
Jul 5, 2008 at 7:36 PM Post #78 of 159
Quote:

Originally Posted by Zarathustra19 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I merely said it was suspicious to me, I made no direct attacks on any particular new member's intentions, but I stand by what I said, I found it strange that a person's first posts on these forums would come as a complaint about a particular manufacturer, especially when those posts contain very bold statements about the integrity of a person who seems to be setting things right with customers he did work for. Broad sweeping statements like calling a person a con man and the like do not strike me as cries for help or sympathy.
.


Nobody care what you think, you didn't get cheated and lost money to RAL. As one of many victims got coned by this CROOK Brad, I have all the rights to call him a con man or crook or things much worse.
 
Jul 8, 2008 at 10:24 PM Post #81 of 159
This thread deserves to be pinned and heavily linked! It's on the first page of Google results, thankfully, but hopefully we can push it to the top.

Brad Vojtech who operates Revelation Audio Labs is obsolutely a known con man and thief.
Check this thread, too:

Audio Asylum Thread Printer

He's been officially banned from Audiogon.
I have personally been swindled for over $3000 by this guy and can provide extensive email proof.
Please feel free to contact me for more info, and I can send you all the emails we exchanged, complete with his ever-more-fantastic excuses.
I actually got a biwire set of speaker cables in August 2007 (apparently I was lucky as many buyers were not getting anything at that time). However, I sent them back to him to have them reterminated (at a cost of $400) and he apparently sold them to someone else, then started with the lame excuses.
I have been following up with calls to various Florida agencies as noted in this thread and the one at HeadFi, and feel free to call the church where he works (!!) as well: call (386) 503-4472, and speak to Pastor David Jacobs.
We need to keep the pressure on. Will any of us get cables or our money back? Unlikely, but if we can stop him from continuing to defraud people, that's something, anyway. I've been contacting all the audio magazines in hopes they'll do a story, and I encourage anyone else who has been defrauded to contact them as well. If TAS and others get dozens of emails, they'll hopefully feel forced to investigate and publish something.
Here is the link to the Florida Consumer website, where you can leave a complaint:
http://tinyurl.com/6hmxq
--Toren Smith
I can be contacted via this temporary email address for 90 days:
tuny-1d0s@spamex.com
 
Jul 10, 2008 at 3:08 AM Post #83 of 159
It's even better. Here's what he wrote to me in one of his emails:
Quote:

I serve as the elected Treasurer of our church, have served previously for years as Trustee, and am an appointed Sunday School teacher.


Of course the guy is so full of crap, who knows if it's true? But it's grimly amusing.
I also contacted John Atkinson at Stereophile with my story and a link to this thread and got a personal response expressing interest, so, with luck we might get a blurb of some kind in an upcoming issue.

Actually, I can't resist posting one of his emails to me after I said might have to sue him. It's long, but hilarious when you know it's all just made up.

Quote:

For me to keep your cables and money and not return them with the work you requested would be beyond insanity - it would be suicidal. Please give me credit that never was there ever any intent to do that. Yes, I have not delivered them to you yet, but because you have not received them yet does not mean that I deliberately lied, nor does it indicate that I schemed to take what is yours. I have no "need" here for your cables - and the amount I charged to complete the project was only quoted to pay my costs alone - there was no profit included in that pricing. Reading your last e-mail completely devastated me - reading those words was utterly overwhelming beyond words. It is time to be totally transparent with you. Revelation Audio Labs, Inc.'s sole employee is myself - RAL is not a multi-employee company, or mass-production manufacturer, by any stretch of the imagination. It is basically one guy with some successful designs, hand crafting his own ideas, just trying to make a living to support a handicapped wife and three teenaged children. With RAL you get a product rare and unique in this world - a cable that is actually made by its designer. With the economic downturn beginning in October for us, orders have been a mere fraction of what they had been for the same period of the previous couple of years. To say I have been struggling to make ends meet is an understatement. I will be candid with you - the utility company cut off our water, and we were without running water in our home for 4 of the past 8 weeks. I don't know how we would have made it if we could not bring containers of potable water here from my married son's house, and take showers there, and if we didn't have a shallow well on our property which allowed us to bring in buckets of water to flush the toilet. It almost became a routine, but it was unpleasant at best to say the least. Toren, if I had the money to send you, even part of it, just so you would not carry through with all you and your attorneys intend to do against me, I absolutely would have sent the money to you today. If you do now proceed with these things, yes, I am certainly ruined, completely, and my family is destined to be homeless. It is a matter of fact that we still owe almost half our March rent, and all of April. Why we have not been evicted before now is an act of God, and we know that to be so. I say all of this so you will know, in addition to the delay due to the significant retermination redesign, there is a very good, earnest, innocent and honest reason why I have not been able to finish your project - an economic reason - I have not had the money to purchase the spade terminals for your cables. With the full comprehension that you meant what you said in your e-mail prior to your last one, I had every intention to finish your cables and have them waiting on you as you expected. Bearing these things in mind, I plead with you to give me one more chance to finish your cables. Your cables are in the mid-phase of the project - they are in the state disassembly with the amp end connectors off of them. I am basically and literally a starving artist. I beg you to consider setting a final date when I can have your cables back to you. I am not a dishonest person, I believe I am a person caught in horrible circumstances. I am not a thief, I am not a liar. I serve as the elected Treasurer of our church, have served previously for years as Trustee, and am an appointed Sunday School teacher. Of course these things do not profess any merit in themselves, I only share this in the hope they will at least lend at least some as to my unfeigned reputation and character. Really I am pouring out my heart to you. I beg your mercy. All I need is a little more time. Can you please find it in your heart to grant me that? I solely want to do what is good and what is right and give you what is yours - it is yours - and to go on at our best.

Most sincerely,

Brad Vojtech
Chief Designer / Founder
Revelation Audio Labs, Inc.
www.revelationaudiolabs.com


 
Jul 10, 2008 at 11:42 AM Post #84 of 159
I received my powercord today . Maybe there is really some misunderstanding ??? The powercord really do something great to my system . Very musical and do not have silver characteristic problem . The only problem I notice is the powercord is much shorter than 2m ........
 
Jul 13, 2008 at 3:40 AM Post #85 of 159
Quote:

Originally Posted by TorenSmith /img/forum/go_quote.gif
It's even better. Here's what he wrote to me in one of his emails:

Of course the guy is so full of crap, who knows if it's true? But it's grimly amusing.
I also contacted John Atkinson at Stereophile with my story and a link to this thread and got a personal response expressing interest, so, with luck we might get a blurb of some kind in an upcoming issue.

Actually, I can't resist posting one of his emails to me after I said might have to sue him. It's long, but hilarious when you know it's all just made up.


How did you know the things are made up?
 
Jul 13, 2008 at 3:47 AM Post #86 of 159
The guy should be prosecuted, get fined and perform 100 hours of community service - after he makes good on all his mis-dealings!

I think Audiogon is quite on the up and up...but cheats exist everywhere. He may have been reputable at one time and then money problems turned him into the bad guy.
 
Jul 13, 2008 at 4:03 AM Post #87 of 159
To be fair, I received my Precept power cable about 2 weeks ago. However it was after a long wait (way past promised date), after countless emails, effort and frustration. I sold the Precept on Audiogon immediately. I simply cannot anymore associate with it any positive feelings after what I had to go through to get it. Simply looking at it reminds me of the hassle. Yes, I too threatened to sue him (would be a slam dunk) before I finally get the cable. It was not until a lawsuit became a real possibility (went through FL's consumer department first), did I get a response from RAL/BV.

After reading the email above, I feel bad for Brad, but still I am not ok with his business practice and will never buy from him again. That said, I hope he will get his act together and do well.

Here's a thought for the defense of whatever is left of Brad Vojtech's perceived integrity (I said I feel bad for him) - the name of the company and its sole proprietor has remained the same, it's never been changed, which may indicate that he is indeed trying to make good/do good. But on the other hand it could also be said to be the deliberate choice of opportunism hoping to still be able to use whatever good reviews/feedback to seduce whoever hasn't been made aware of the current status on product delivery of the company. Who knows. I don't care anymore.
I hope it works out for those to whom BD still owes.
 
Jul 13, 2008 at 6:20 AM Post #88 of 159
No running water in his house, yet his website is still up and running!
cool.gif
 
Jul 14, 2008 at 3:05 AM Post #89 of 159
Why do I suspect most of not all of his sob-story emails are made up? Because there is little or no consistency, and some of the claims violate common sense (example: he claimed he didn't have enough money to buy the silver spades to terminate my cables. When I pointed out that he was combining two sets into one and would therefore end up with a spare set he quickly changed the subject).
I can be contacted via this temporary email address for 90 days:
tuny-1d0s@spamex.com
And I will gladly send anyone who asks a complete text file containing all our email to date. You'll see what I mean about much of his constantly varying claims not making sense, and how he tries to crawfish out of things when I call him out on his multiple contradictions.
Finally, my most recent offer was for him to just ship my damn cables back to me and keep the freakin' $300 I sent for the biwiring he never did.
But he never sent them (he has never explained why he can't send them). My suspicion: he sent them to someone else to get them off his back and so can't send them back to me. This is, by any definition, theft.
Do I feel sorry for him? Not really. If he'd gotten into a bad situation and closed down as a Chapter 7, well, that's business, and I'd at least sympathize. It's the fact that he keeps taking people's money when in most cases the poor buyer will never get anything that chaps my ass.
Those of you who by some miracle have gotten your cables recently, congratulations, and it sure is a mystery why he fills some orders and not others (perhaps he has the materials to make some cables but not others). But you might save a little sympathy for all of us who have not gotten a damn thing and probably never will, instead of feeling sorry for Brad.
 
Jul 16, 2008 at 2:40 AM Post #90 of 159
Update: I already got my response mail from the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, which I consider amazing response time for a government agency!
It includes all instructions for filing the paperwork for the case (which will be easy for me as I already put it together) as well as contact info for the agent in charge of my case.

I've also just today filed with the Attorney General of Florida, who also provides a very convenient online procedure, and requires pretty much the same documents as the FDACS, which makes it a snap.

Florida Attorney General - How to Check on a Business

Anyway, I recommend that anyone who is owed products or refunds from RAL take this course and keep the pressure on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top