An examination by a certified metallurgical lab on the device in question is necessary in order to prove or disprove the claims made regarding alleged failure of the brazed connection. Without an actual report by a lab we will assume this is a staged hoax.

The Silver brazed connections on Aliens are made by experienced ,skilled people who take great care in the quality of the braze. The accusations being made on this site are quite serious .
An examination by a certified metallurgical lab on the device in question is necessary in order to prove or disprove the claims made regarding alleged failure of the brazed connection. Without an actual report by a lab we will assume this is a staged hoax.
The cable on a 1.5 orange alien will hold over 3500 pounds, far more force than a falling climber could ever generate. When tested on a machine the cable will break ,not pull out of the cable eye.
David Waggoner at CCH

You appear to be implying that you are going to ignore your customer complaint unless the customer coughs up the dough to analyze your product for you. If you do indeed mean it that way, you deserve the massive loss of customers that will naturally result. Companies that pick fights with their customers, even with just a small fraction of those customers, inevitably fail.

As an alternative, if you were to request the Alien in question, get it analyzed in a lab on your nickel, and communicate to the climbing community what happened, regardless of whether it was a hoax or a product defect, you might actually earn some new customers out of respect for your demonstrated desire to learn more about your product from real-world incidents.

And should your product turn out to be defective, (never rule out the unlikely,) you might be able to recall its batch-mates in time to prevent being sued for criminal negligence by the bereaved family of some other climber who was not lucky enough to fall cleanly after the next failure. From what I have heard about the size of your business, a suit like that would probably kill CCH outright.

I'd suggest thinking about all these things before adopting a 'not my problem' stance, and if you're not, you might want to re-word your statement.

-aB

I think I'ts been shown in the discussion on this site that the person making these accusations had an alterier(sp?) motive.

This forum is ridiculous sometimes.

Did the people who experienced this malfunction go direclty to CCH with the issue, or just post about it here? If it's only the latter, I'd call their motives and intellgence into question.

And what's up with the troll by crimpstrength? Doesn't that kind of crap get tossed out by the mods?

Josh where - exactly - in this thread has it been shown that the original poster had any ulterior motives whatsoever? So far they have been completely forthright in attempting to present this problem and get it resolved. There is no basis whatsoever for your statement above...

This forum is ridiculous sometimes.

Did the people who experienced this malfunction go direclty to CCH with the issue, or just post about it here? If it's only the latter, I'd call their motives and intellgence into question.

And what's up with the troll by crimpstrength? Doesn't that kind of crap get tossed out by the mods?

The Silver brazed connections on Aliens are made by experienced ,skilled people who take great care in the quality of the braze. The accusations being made on this site are quite serious .
An examination by a certified metallurgical lab on the device in question is necessary in order to prove or disprove the claims made regarding alleged failure of the brazed connection. Without an actual report by a lab we will assume this is a staged hoax.
The cable on a 1.5 orange alien will hold over 3500 pounds, far more force than a falling climber could ever generate. When tested on a machine the cable will break ,not pull out of the cable eye.
David Waggoner at CCH

Josh where - exactly - in this thread has it been shown that the original poster had any ulterior motives whatsoever? So far they have been completely forthright in attempting to present this problem and get it resolved. There is no basis whatsoever for your statement above...

How many of them are out there is shops right now ready for sale?

I think I'ts been shown in the discussion on this site that the person making these accusations had an alterier(sp?) motive.

What makes you think that someone would stage this sort of thing? Risk their life in a fall and ruin their precious Alien to play a game with someone? To pick a fight with a tiny company? PLEASE!

You should talk to Black Diamond....their attitude is much worse, on very similiar subjects.

When I seel guys like Malcom engage, share info, and by gawd stick up for CCH too while he's at it, and used to see Chris Harmston do the same for BD, I realize how much opportunity other manufacturers are missing out on; community service, customer support, fostering good will.

What's chris doing these days? I miss him. When chris was around, if you had questions, chris answered them. And if it was novel, he ran tests, and then answered them. BD these days seems a lot more handsoff.

( had an ulterior(sp?) motive.

In my personal dealings with CCH they have been extremely easy to deal with and respectful/appreciative of their customer base.
I, for one ,will continue to use the quality product that CCH provides. )

I gotta say, you folks are a bunch of whining sniveling gerbals. CCH does have the utmost intention to manufacture very safe gear. It is not that Dave does not care, he is just not big city/corporately polished. His head is in making you your beloved aliens, not fighting hypotheticals on the internet.

My how things would be different if he said,

'never happened before. Please send us the cam ASAP, we'll investigate and report our findings.'

If it was a hoax, cam never shows up.

If its for real, CCH gets a chance to deal with it.

When I seel guys like Malcom engage, share info, and by gawd stick up for CCH too while he's at it, and used to see Chris Harmston do the same for BD, I realize how much opportunity other manufacturers are missing out on; community service, customer support, fostering good will.

I don't think it is wise at all for a vendor to be taking the 'dismissive' approach.

DMT

It doesn't seem to me that CCH has an "RC.com representative who is monitoring this and the other thread and reporting back to HQ..... Whether any of us think they should, whether "we would if it were our business," is not relative.

It doesn't seem to me that CCH has an "RC.com representative who is monitoring this and the other thread and reporting back to HQ..... Whether any of us think they should, whether "we would if it were our business," is not relative.

Also, since we're on the topic of hoaxes, can we validate that cchaliens actually represents CCH?

....
If CCH doesn't follow up with this issue (and past issues) off and online they will loose a LOT more than just the business of the 3+ posters on this board who have already said they are looking at different small cams.
....

A~

As far as this situation goes, hoax or not I won't be buying any aliens anytime soon.

And fourtunately you'll soon be able to purchase the much more expensive yet less than revolutionary C3's soon. Coincidence? You decide.

^^He did contact CCH.

maybe: nvrsmr14, insainio & chhaliens ( david W.) are all in on the hoax to dis chh! well, i will say that if that be the case ( and i don't believe it to be ) i would never again buy anything from BD. the hoax angle is :lol:

[
I understand that people might think I am off the mark here. I don't really care. Let's go with the "McDonald's coffee scenario"(loosely). Had the person who got burnt with the coffe posted the incident on a "We Love Fast Food Website".....in what manner would McDonald's reply? Even if someone called the CEO of McDonalds and said "Hey! there's a post over on....." (Yes - I KNOW this is *not the same thing.*"

Whenever I have course to contact a company I always call first, I mean damn, I want to talk to a person! things get handled better (& quicker) that way, than with communicating via email (too much is lost this way, especially on something of great importance).

cchaliens has two posts, total.

the first being almost a year ago, when there was another thread about crappy aliens. if it's a bd hoax, it's almost a year in the making.

If it's not the same thing, then why use it in your argument? ...cl

Speaking of reading comprehension, as I pointed out, he did contact CCH.
What part are you not comprehending?

Consensus is that CCH is a terrible company and their cams are not to be trusted.

to protect CCH and allow for further investigation.

At issue is the difference between calling and emailing CCH. Happiegrrrl seems to think that calling is more direct and immediate than email; her query was specifically whether insaine _called_ CCH, and specifically not whether he contacted them by other means.

Adopting a snarky 'tude about it contributes nothing to this exchange.

Actually, I did e-mail CCH before posting this. I e-mailed instead of called because 1. they were closed and 2. I had pictures which could better explain what happened than I could over the phone. I then wanted to post this to warn other climbers.

And as of yet, they have not responded to my e-mail.

Kevin

I felt it was close enough to allow those with an intermediate level of reading comprehension skills to make a connection. That was why I wrote it. I realize not everyone has that competent abiltity, and apologize to anyone who "didn't get it."

Shaky, I think that what we have hear is a miscommunication.....

YES, I am aware he emailed, and though I didn't cut and paste the quote, and yes, I am aware he emailed "because of...."

I am not on a high horse. More like trotting the lead pony up alongside the jockey on the racer, with a riding crop in hand and a suggestion of "Here, sir. You might want this."

My use of the phrase "virtual tap on the shoulder" was not meant to be condescending. Though I can see it has succeeded rather well in annoying you! Ahhh, the Laws of Unintentional Consequences....

Signed,

Miss Snarky



(and I promise I will stop now, as I understand I am not positively contributing to the thread by going in this direction. So, in hopes that I may at least walk away with the Miss Congeniality title - Shakey, you may have the last word, if you care to.)

I've followed this thread for a day and believe that as both a user of Aliens and as a reseller, Mountain Gear should weigh in.

Climbing Gear is "mission critical” and as such any concern about its safety should be taken seriously and resolved quickly. Take the past examples of BD, Metolius and other vendors putting out recalls for products where just a very small number of units were found to have flaws.

We believe a manufacturer should act proactively to ensure the quality of their product. It's certainly better to be safe now, than sorry later.
Though we do not believe the retailer should be responsible for a manufacturer’s quality control, there are instances where we believe it is in the best interest of climbing and our customers to be proactive.

To this end Mountain Gear has sent an orange alien from each batch that we have in stock (1105 and 1205), as well as another alien of each size from any batches we have, for testing. We should have pull test results back early the week of Jan 9th and I commit that we will post our findings here.

We do not have any cams stamped 805 but if you purchased an orange 805 stamped cam from Mountain Gear and would like us to exchange it we would be happy to do so.

Let's try to get this resolved so we can all go back to trusting and using some of our favorite gear.

Paul Fish
President
Mountain Gear, Inc
paulf@mgear.com

Not that it matters or counts, but my vote is for Insainio to *call* CCH on the phone. A cursory look at their basic website and the fact that CCH's rc.com account only has 2 posts should make it entirely clear to everyone here that they couldn't give two sh!ts about the 1nterweb and would prefer to deal with this issue the traditional way.

We believe a manufacturer should act proactively to ensure the quality of their product. It's certainly better to be safe now, than sorry later.
Though we do not believe the retailer should be responsible for a manufacturer’s quality control, there are instances where we believe it is in the best interest of climbing and our customers to be proactive.

To this end Mountain Gear has sent an orange alien from each batch that we have in stock (1105 and 1205), as well as another alien of each size from any batches we have, for testing. We should have pull test results back early the week of Jan 9th and I commit that we will post our findings here.

(and I promise I will stop now, as I understand I am not positively contributing to the thread by going in this direction. So, in hopes that I may at least walk away with the Miss Congeniality title - Shakey, you may have the last word, if you care to.)

he mentioned no such investigating, which i think is what the uproar is about mostly.

Climbing Gear is "mission critical” and as such any concern about its safety should be taken seriously and resolved quickly.

Take the past examples of BD, Metolius and other vendors putting out recalls for products where just a very small number of units were found to have flaws.

I'm not a quality assurance engineer, but it seems to me that if the results come back negative (ie, the pieces tested ok), that no conclusion about the batches can be made, because a sample size of 1 per batch would be insufficient to catch a manufacturing defect that affected only part of the batch.

Clearly, it isn't Mountain Gear's responsibility to canabalize its stock of Aliens for purposes of destructive desting; nevertheless, it seems to me that we have to be aware of the limitations of testing such a small sample size.

Jay

MGEAR--Very well said!!! Thank you for being proactive in testing these cams. It's too bad you don't have any from the poorly drilled axle batch or the possible "exploding cam" batch which is currently in question.

We believe a manufacturer should act proactively to ensure the quality of their product. It's certainly better to be safe now, than sorry later. Though we do not believe the retailer should be responsible for a manufacturer’s quality control, there are instances where we believe it is in the best interest of climbing and our customers to be proactive.

Let's try to get this resolved so we can all go back to trusting and using some of our favorite gear.

Paul Fish
President
Mountain Gear, Inc
paulf@mgear.com

The squeaky wheel gets the oil. And, the telephone is a hell of a lot squeakier than email. Insainio, if you could be more proactive by calling CCH, that would help out a lot! Thanks.

Analogies seem to be wasted on this topic for whatever reason.

Disappointing response from CCH, though I would guess it was fueled by not only Dave, but his attorney as well. I am sure he had to maintain some type of professionalism and obscurity in his response to protect CCH and allow for further investigation.

Josh where - exactly - in this thread has it been shown that the original poster had any ulterior motives whatsoever? So far they have been completely forthright in attempting to present this problem and get it resolved. There is no basis whatsoever for your statement above...

I've followed this thread for a day and believe that as both a user of Aliens and as a reseller, Mountain Gear should weigh in.

Climbing Gear is "mission critical” and as such any concern about its safety should be taken seriously and resolved quickly. Take the past examples of BD, Metolius and other vendors putting out recalls for products where just a very small number of units were found to have flaws.

We believe a manufacturer should act proactively to ensure the quality of their product. It's certainly better to be safe now, than sorry later.
Though we do not believe the retailer should be responsible for a manufacturer’s quality control, there are instances where we believe it is in the best interest of climbing and our customers to be proactive.

To this end Mountain Gear has sent an orange alien from each batch that we have in stock (1105 and 1205), as well as another alien of each size from any batches we have, for testing. We should have pull test results back early the week of Jan 9th and I commit that we will post our findings here.

We do not have any cams stamped 805 but if you purchased an orange 805 stamped cam from Mountain Gear and would like us to exchange it we would be happy to do so.

Let's try to get this resolved so we can all go back to trusting and using some of our favorite gear.

Paul Fish
President
Mountain Gear, Inc
paulf@mgear.com

[When I made it I had not seen the current thread about the current failure....i was refering to the previous thread from awhile back where the poster was a former(and short time) employee who did have ulterior motives....My mistake for not looking through every thread on the site.

Pity that the American Alpine Club does *nothing* to help ensure safe gear. It's shameful that there is no organization in the US that works to protect cliimbers.

Pull testing one cam per batch is nice, but probably won't tell us much. I think visual inspection of all aliens is more important. I'd expect most--but not all--of us could spot an improperly brazed device.

The Silver brazed connections on Aliens are made by experienced ,skilled people who take great care in the quality of the braze. The accusations being made on this site are quite serious .
An examination by a certified metallurgical lab on the device in question is necessary in order to prove or disprove the claims made regarding alleged failure of the brazed connection. Without an actual report by a lab we will assume this is a staged hoax.
The cable on a 1.5 orange alien will hold over 3500 pounds, far more force than a falling climber could ever generate. When tested on a machine the cable will break ,not pull out of the cable eye.
David Waggoner at CCH