As once the proud owner of some Roland sabers, and selling a couple recently, I ran into a problem. After barely any use, it stopped charging. No big deal, small part, easy to change out, maybe resolver wires, replace the part. When I took the saber apart, it floored me. The board and the battery were wrapped in electrical tape, the wires, too, not to mention a rats nest, and two LEDs stuck in the mix of a chamber barely capable of holding both battery and board. So much in fact, it would have been impossible for the battery to not stretch the board.
I managed to get the saber charged through a complex jimmy rigging system. The board had stopped responding to swings and hits 95% of the time. You'd have to swing the saber like a baseball bat into a pillow to get a hit. The mess I discovered inside was as shocking as the Ethan Zimmer debacle I discovered. Hoping to sell this saber for at least $2500, I pulled it off the market. It turns out I am far from the only one to experience severe electronic issues with Rolands sabers. I wondered why he got 15 LEDs on a Prism 4.0 board, it's because each accent pad runs three of them. They are build and designed to fail at a $7000 price tag.
I confronted Roland and when I said that I can tell my story or have him help me fix the problem with the saber, which was an unpleasant conversation, he related not with customer service, but with blackmail. After smoothing the service, he asked me to try again and explain the problem, and I agreed to his solutions and to pay him for the work. 3 messages and a month later, he sends me this message:
To the attention of Mr J. Hawken!
As we have written before, we totally deny the voice you use in your messages.
Your activity is a simple blackmail, well documented here in your written messages. What you are doing is crime, legally.
We wont do any free work for you, that has been stated, also dont try giving us any deadline or so, totally priceless.
You are free to do what you like, but be aware of faceing the consequencies!
For further communication, in this attitude - please do not send any message as wont be replied!
Best regards
Rolightsaber
His explanation of blackmail is that I told him this line specifically:
if you choose to do nothing, echoes of this will go thourgh Echoes through the community??? Your activity will do so, you can be sure. Anyway, we have heard about it...
How do you come doing all this???
It sounds blackmail clearly, all documented here. Yes, you are completely right this case should be escalated!
Do not come with this tale buying saber from us, totally clear what you are doing.
If you can change the tone you are writing to us, immediately, then you can tell us what you would like to have serviced and how then we can discuss and tell you a price for it.
If you are continue this kind of communication, then yes we "escalate" this blackmail case, for sure!
My réponse to him was this:
At this point it’s up to you if I matter as a customer and how much you value your reputation with me, if you’re the kind of company that will go the extra mile that buys them goodwill and a great customer service story that echoes through the saber community, or one that charges a lot of money for sabers and doesn’t stand by them or help their customers by offering any solutions. Whatever choice you make is yours to decide, but I think you know exactly what you should do to rectify this situation as you have all the power here. The fact is that you still have a customer who would like to buy sabers from you, but now isn’t sure about the wiring done on your current work or that you’ll stand by your sabers if something goes wrong, regardless if it’s the result of a design flaw or a component failure that happened over time. I really hope that you make a choice that is mutually beneficial for both of us.
His réponse to my message was this:
Echoes through the community??? Your activity will do so, you can be sure. Anyway, we have heard about it...
How do you come doing all this???
It sounds blackmail clearly, all documented here. Yes, you are completely right this case should be escalated!
Do not come with this tale buying saber from us, totally clear what you are doing.
If you can change the tone you are writing to us, immediately, then you can tell us what you would like to have serviced and how then we can discuss and tell you a price for it.
If you are continue this kind of communication, then yes we "escalate" this blackmail case, for sure!
My reply to him:
Roland,
I must have not worded my message properly at all, I am in no way threatening you, blackmailing you, or making any demands of you nor would I ever want to do such a thing or make you think that I am thinking of such a thing. I know what I was trying to say but I said it in such a strange way, so if you could do me the favor of please forgetting everything I said and allow me to start over, let me start here for apologizing in accidentally conveying a threatening response in what appeared to be an attempt to manipulate you into doing things for me at your expense. I’m having someone do that to me after they repaired my lightsabers and broken them even more than they were before, and he’s a criminal defense lawyer, I would never want to do that to anyone. So I’m very terribly sorry and want to start over here…
I’m feeling very heartbroken over the current circumstances with my Starkiller and Mara Jade sabers, and since I’m the second owner and three sabers are over a year old, I would love to know if and what you might be able to do for me with these sabers that need to be rewired and have some electronics replaced/repaired, and if possible, have a couple things upgraded at the same time. I can go into more detail later on, if you’ll allow me. I would also like to know if it’s possible to see the wiring on the Rey saber for reassurance, provided you are even willing to sell it to me or let me preorder a saber like the qui-gon or the Yoda (which I presume already sold, and that one is the coolest Yoda saber I’ve ever seen). Please forgive me even if you choose to deny me service.
-Jonathan
Roland then Kindly replied to me:
We can do the service but need to know exactly what you would like to have, then we can calculate the price. Tell us as detailed as you can, to make sure you will get what you would like to have!
Payment only direct bank transfer, no paypal at all.
Thanks
I assumed we had worked something out, but I sent four messages to him over a month that got no reply:
MESSAGE 1
I’d like to just start with the MJV2RO as there are many people that want to buy the starkiller and it presently works perfectly.
The recharge port doesn’t work, so it’s impossible to charge the battery. I’ve tried 5 different chargers. After about an hour I was able to find a position where it would charge, but even just breathing in that direction would make it unplug and stop charging. The reason I was trying to charge the saber is because low batteries can make the saber perform oddly, and the problem was that it takes a lot of force to swing the saber for a sound to register, and you have to hit the saber very hard for a clash to happen. I pulled out the SD card and discovered the wiring, electrical tape, and the two accent LEDs that were kind of stuffed together at the bottom. The wiring to me is very much a mess, and I would ideally like it cleaned up. Anyway, the settings on the board in the override file are as follows:
## Override File
vol=4
beep=40
valsnd=1
switch=2
offp=0
offd=200
lc=400
hs=200
ls=70
i=53
swing=200
clash=150
lockup=200
As you can see, the values are set very much on the low side, leading be to believe that there may be a problem with the board. This will need to be troubleshot to determine if the SD card needs to be reformatted and reprogrammed or if the board itself needs to be replaced. I was hoping to change the board to a Prize 5.1 anyway and use a more powerful battery than a 3.7v 750mah battery. I would also like to add bluetooth R.I.C.E. or an easily accessible R.I.C.E. port to avoid needing to access the board in the future and easily change settings, and add there magic activation where you use that magnetic ring to power the saber on/off. Bluetooth for speakers would be nice, but if that can’t work, maybe we could add the d.a.c. amplifier. I would also like to have those accent LEDs stuffed in the pommel moved elsewhere where they can be seen, heck, I’d love to have as many accent LEDs tastefully added to this saber if possible. The single blue LED in the bubble card is cool, but maybe a few SMD LEDs in there would be more dramatic. I would also like to upgrade the saber so it has a TRICree RGB and matches the crystal with a 5mm RGB LED (red blade, red crystal, yellow flash FoC, yellow crystal FoC), or get a neopixel blade setup done depending how much that costs and if there’s room for the battery. If it’s really expensive, maybe you could just set it with a neopixel connector in the emitter and I can construct my own blade with the help of a friend (who builds a lot of them).
I’m open to suggestions though. At bare minimum, I need the recharge port replaced, the board/board settings fixed with a RICE port that’s easy to access, and to have the wiring cleaned up, possibly redone from scratch. What would be the shipping costs roughly, do you know?
Would it be possible to see a video of the REY saber showing off bluetooth RICE for audio and android, and see if maybe your’e willing to negotiate on the price? If not, maybe I can preorder a saber? I definitely want something like the qui-got or the Yoda, with a chassis going all the way through, lots of accent LEDs and beautiful crystal chambers, bluetooth rice and bluetooth for speakers, magic activation, and at the very least a Prizm 5.1 board or a Crystal Shard v4. A CFv9 would be fine too.
Thanks so much.
-Jonathan
MESSAGE 2
Hi Roland,
I haven’t heard back from you regarding the possibility of repairing this saber. I would be fine to just replace the board and recharge port. I even have the parts, but I cannot navigate the wiring without taking the saber completely apart. I’d love to make the saber RGB, but at this point, my biggest priority is repair.
Thanks!
-Jonathan
MESSAGE 3
Hi Roland,
I haven’t heard back from you regarding the possibility of repairing this saber. I would be fine to just replace the board and recharge port. I even have the parts, but I cannot navigate the wiring without taking the saber completely apart. I’d love to make the saber RGB, but at this point, my biggest priority is repair.
Thanks!
-Jonathan
MESSAGE 4
Hi Roland,
I would greatly appreciate a response from you. I haven’t heard from you in two weeks, and this was the sort of thing I was talking about before, where it seems like all communication just gets dropped before we can reach any kind of transaction for payment of goods/services. I hope to hear from you within the next few days at the latest.
-Jonathan
Then comes time for Roland:
To the attention of Mr J. Hawken!
As we have written before, we totally deny the voice you use in your messages.
Your activity is a simple blackmail, well documented here in your written messages. What you are doing is crime, legally.
We wont do any free work for you, that has been stated, also dont try giving us any deadline or so, totally priceless.
You are free to do what you like, but be aware of faceing the consequencies!
For further communication, in this attitude - please do not send any message as wont be replied!
Best regards
Rolightsaber
So, at this point I'm tired of this run around. In truth, I've been trying to buy a saber from him for over a year, but like the correspondence you've seen, which I can back up by hard copy should anyone wish to revivew it, this is the way they treat their customers who they sell mediocre products to. I have clearly rattled something, and I know from talking that I'm far from the only one.
Now, it's time to see what saber he's talking about. First picture is of the saber in question. The six after are what I discovered attempting to determine the damage and repairability:
These are the six photos of the impeccable, if I do say so myself, of the wiring job:
As you can see, these are not just amateurish jobs, these are substandard for $200 sabers. $5000-$8000 is what they charge. While I love their overall design concepts, these are, well, I'll let the pictures do the talking. I did not tamper with these in any way. SoCalSabers after reading my story has agreed not only to fix this saber, but to make it into what it should have been and more, so I am TREMENDOUSLY grateful to them for reaching out and helping me with this.
Thank you all for reading. Please share your legitimate stories if you've experienced anything similar, because I know I am not the only one! Thank you for giving me a voice.
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