Very sorry to hear this. Chuck's life changed drastically in the middle of a big job for me. He lost his daytime job and made the decision to go Chasidor full time.

My job took much much longer than anticipated and I even drove to him to pick it up. Some parts were not quite right and a few weeks later I went back up to get the correct shelves and drawers.

All that driving for me wasn't a huge deal, me and my son were remodeling a room while my wife was out of the country and to ensure that I got this piece in time, I went to get it. We were going back to Chucks area a few weeks later to drop my kid off at hockey camp, so it was actually convenient to drop by then as well.

Chuck looked extremely overwhelmed when I was up there, his entire house was being taken over by the business, and shortly after that, late July I think, he cut his hand.

I won't make excuses for him, but I hope in the end there is some rational explanation. If he hasn't been active here since June, that would be right in line with things getting crazy for him at his shop. I haven't had any contact with him since picking up my replacement drawers in July.

I do hope things work out for you. It's such a shame.

Ditto this. I had shelves custom made by Chas last year and everything went great. Really surprised about the lack of communication.

That being said I think that you (the OP) are justified in being upset about this. If he is making updates to the website he can return an email.

I know you said you are done but I would find a phone number and call him, then you can really say you have done your due diligence plus.

It doesn't take very much time in the evening to pick up a phone and call a customer. Just my 2 pennies worth.

Wow - I am surprised to read this post. I purchased Drawers from Chuck last year and had no problems at all. There was a wait but I knew that when I ordered. I don't know him personally only communicated with him regarding my order but he has a long standing reputation on this and other sites as an outstanding person. Hopefully there is some explanation for your issue.

There are many perils in taking a part time hobby to a full time profession. Many budding entrepreneurs have a problem when scaling an operation.

I hope everything works out for all who have ordered.

Well...I took your adivise and looked him up through Google. Frankly I didn't even know what state he was in let alone the City From a post in this thread I determined what state he was in. I found his number and called it.....
It rang and rang and rang and rang. No answering machine or service.

I tried.

Well shoot. Next step would be a certified letter with return receipt.

I posted here a little over a month ago regarding trying to get a hold of him. My situation is a lot different than yours (yours is much worse), but there are many similarities.

I placed an order in August '09 (I believe). It was my third order from him, and was for a single stained drawer. The drawer had a quality control issue when it arrived, and despite my offer keep it, or if he waned to replace it to send it back, Chuck offered to let me keep the incorrect one and said he wold make me a new one free of charge. That's the way he used to run his shop, before it got out of hand. This was October '09.

I told him how thankful I was, and to please take his time on my replacement, since the drawer I got would still work to hold cigars.

He said towards the end of November '09 that it would be a couple weeks. He said everything was put together and it just needed another coat of lacquer.

He said at the end of December '09 that it would be finished and shipped within a week.

He said in very early March '10 that he had a couple things to finish on that weekend and it would ship on Monday or Tuesday.

In early July '10, I contacted him and told him that I had moved. He responded and thanked me for contacting him, saying he wish he could say he hadn't forgotten me, but he had. He said that it just needed glued together but that the front was done.

Since July, starting in September, I've emailed him at two different addresses that I know he uses/has used, and emailed him through his site probably at least 10-15 times. All have gone without responses.

Like I said, at least I got something for my money and I would hate to be in your position. Chuck was such a stand up guy in the past that this is extremely surprising. If this is how he is going to run his business now that he's full time, I have a feeling he won't have the "problem" of being so busy after a while.

I feal your pain.... I am order 420, right after you.....

I've been waiting long too...

Wow...your story pretty much sticks a fork in him from my standpoint. Talk about not following through. I was going to hold off on posting my experience on a couple other forums. I think I need to do it to stop the damage he might do to others sending him money. What's really weird is he has this web cam where I was able to watch him work today. He goes through that effort and then just blows off all his email.

You know...the thing is if you pay him through POpa you only have 45 days to complain...he easily takes that long so folk who pay that way are s*** out of luck.

I emailed him today and told him this thread was up....and I wasn't finished.

I lost on this deal...hopefully I can help others from experiencing my fate.

Thanks for your post.

Tom

The business smart thing for him to do would be to stop accepting orders until he's caught up with all orders he currently has, answer all email he currently has, and then figure out how to run his business a little differently.

It's really frustrating to see this however, because he does beautiful work, many many people on this board say he's a good person, and I believe he's filling a need for the community.

I emailed him about 3-5 months ago to see if he could make some for my wine cooler and I also got no response...

You are more intelligent than me. I should have emailed him first...without a response I would have emailed him again. With no response I would have moved on. Unfortuantely I just placed the order. As an FYI I just phoned him again..still no answer and still no answering device. His phone # is from Google so I don't really know if it is his any longer.

I am sorry to read this. I met Chas and his wife a coupla times to herf, and I am surprised to say the least. Certainly there are reasons for many things, but lack of communication is not acceptable. I do hope that everything works out in the end, even tho that end is taking way too long. I only hope that there is not a serious physical problem with him or his wife that is disrupting his life!

Thanks for the heads up! :-)

This sucks, but is such a common story on the net. I belonged to a popular knife collectors website. There I purchased a few things from a popular knifemaker. One order he sent me the wrong things, I contacted him, he told me to keep them and that he would send the correct thing to me. Now this sucked because, I got something that someone else had purchased, I expected that he made replacements for them, but I have no idea if he did. I never got the thing I originally paid for, and after trying to contact him several times, I gave up. Ruined that site for me. I haven't been back since.

I'm sure he's a good person, as I've heard from many BOTL's on this site, but there is something obviously wrong with his business running skills.

And that's the problem though, as smll2 said, you can see Chuck working virtually every day in his workshop so we know he's working. He posts almost weekly updates in the blog part of his site. He's obviously getting the cedar orders out because you can watch the order numbers change. I don't know if he spends any time reading email or reads them and doesn't respond, but I think he might think his time is better spent working than responding to email. I realize that responding to every email might be close to a full time job, but he either needs to find some help with that or spend the time responding himself. Even a little communication would assuage our frustrations, but the only updates we hear are the overall updates, nothing specific about our order so we have no idea what kind of ETA to expect since the estimated "two months" has long been past.

The problem is it is very easy for some people to ignore emails. I am very sorry this happened to you. I was going to go with Chas but no longer.

I was not going to post anything about this issue, but I am in the same boat. I placed an order in June of this year. Chuck and I wrote back and forth for measurements and details. I sent him an email in July and he replied that he was almost done, just needed to apply the last spray of clear coat. I have not heard from him since. I have sent numerous emails through his site and the email address I had from the start. I just wish he would contact his customers and either finish the jobs or refund the money. I will be sending him a certified letter in the mail. I hope it doesnt have to go any farther then this.

Well, as strange as it sounds, it's comforting to hear that everybody is having the same issue. If it was only one or two of us who placed orders in the last 6 months that didn't get them I'd be worried that my order got lost in the shuffle. If we've all not received anything, then it's just a crazy long delay. I'll still hold out hope that these will be shipped eventually since he's discontinued the stained units and is trying to catch up.

I won't be ordering anything else from him, but I'm guessing I'll at least get what I paid for.