I want to start this post off by saying that I am wrong, the issue of not having myself protected is my fault.  What I do want to state though is that PayPal should make this issue that I had more apparent to its customers that receive payments for a product valued over $250.

On July 31st ActiveTuning received an order for an RGB2+ for $325 shipped.  This is not a product that we normally stock (we state this on the product page, and also state that it will take about a week before it’s shipped to the customer), so once an order arrives, we place an order with our supplier, who then ships it to us, and we ship it to the customer.  We shipped a few days later, within PayPal’s 7 day terms.

Almost 3 months later, on November 28th, I received a notice that the funds were on hold due to a chargeback.  PayPal asked for the tracking #, in which I gave to them right that day.  The tracking # confirmed delivery of the unit to the customer.  Two weeks later on December 12th, I receive an e-mail from PayPal stating that the funds cannot be returned, the customer won the chargeback settlement, sorry….and I’m responsible for the $10 chargeback fee.  From my perspective as the business I did everything correct.  I received an order and I shipped as soon as possible.  I used USPS Priority Mail, as PayPal heavily promotes and integrates into their service.  This was not fair to me.

I immediately called PayPal, and after looking into it, they directed me to the third bullet of section 11.7 of their twenty five page user agreement.  Under the definiteion of “proof of delivery” it states the following:

Signature Confirmation for transactions that total $ 250 USD or more (see Foreign Currency Equivalents below).

While I did get delivery confirmation on the package, I did not get signature confirmation.  Since I did not get this, I automatically lose the chargeback case.  Yes, this is in the 25 page user agreement, but sorry PayPal, I can’t memorize or read every single thing.  This is a pretty important aspect of seller protection in my opinion, especially on higher priced items (anything over $250).  Would it be that difficult to “promote” this term/clause a little better to protect their own customers (the sellers that generate a huge amount of sales in which they make money through transaction fees and monthly service agreements)?  A simple obvious note when receiving a payment over $250 for a good that says “hey, don’t forget to add signature confirmation so you don’t get fucked when your customer scams on you”.

That is all.

I had been following the development pictures of the next generation Nissan Z for years, and finally official information was released.  The car looked promising in pictures, but I wasn’t 100% sure…I had to see it in person.  Luckily, Nissan’s Follow The Z Tour came by my neck of the hoods and gave me the opportunity to see the car in person.  Like the new Maxima, when pictures were released I was somewhat weary about how it would look in person.  When I finally saw it, I thought it was drop dead gorgeous, 100 times better than the media circulating around.  I was hoping the new Z would be the same.

After seeing the new 370Z, I can honestly say that I’m not dissapointed.  I didn’t get the same “oh my god” reaction I got with the Maxima, but it does look much better in person than in pictures.  It gives off a much more aggressive look with it’s edgier lines than previous models, something I really love about it.  The new headlights are to die for, and the car just looks all around cleaner.  The interior has been hugely improved, and there is a lot more cargo space due to no more rear strut bar in the way.

There were two models at the event, a blue and yellow.  I obvioulsy was only able to look at the cars, but I’d be dying to drive one around for a bit and see how it has improved (hint hint Nissan )

Nissan did a really nice job with the car, it has already grown on me tenfold from first seeing it.  I look forward to getting behind the wheel of one in the near future and giving my opinion of that as well.  Here’s a little video I did from the event, also, to see all the pictures (including in high-res) see the flickr set here.

Once upon a time, two Vipers and Corvette ago, I had a 2004 Nissan 350Z which was my garage queen project car. This car was my pride and joy, I put a lot of time, effort, and money into that car to make it the way I wanted. I thought it’d be interesting to go back and see all of the things I had done to the car to turn it from this:

To this:

My initial idea was that I wanted to make the car nice overall from all aspects…from performance, to suspension, to audio. Looking back now, the one aspect I didn’t really do enough was suspension, but that would have required dumping in a lot more money. So let’s take a look at what was done:

To start off, I went with some little modifications like a smaller antenna, removing emblems, and intake, etc. The original plan was keep the car naturally aspirated (meaning all-motor with no sort of forced induction like a turbo or a supercharger), which is why I got the intake. That changed over time, but we’ll get to that later.

I also wanted to have a carbon fiber/orange theme, I always thought that the orange matched a gunmetal sort of color really well. To kick that theme off, I installed a JIC front strut tower brace for tighter handling and a nice look under the hood. I also installed 15% tint all-around to give it a more refined orange/black look.

Next, I installed RS*R springs. This lowered the car slightly to give it a more aggressive stance, and help improve handling slightly. You can see the height difference in the springs here:

In the meantime, I was prepping for a show quality audio system installation by starting to amass parts for that:

We can see here I went with Polk/Momo amplifiers, and Inifity Kappa Perfect speakers/subs, along with a Pioneer Elite headunit which isn’t shown.

Continue Reading »

Not too long ago Lamborghini updated their Gallardo model with the new LP560-4. Why the name? LP stands for “longitudinal poseriore” because of the rear longitudinal engine position. The 560 part of the name represents the amount of horsepower that the 5.2L V10 pumps out. -4 represents 4 wheel drive. Congratulations, consider yourself a Lamborghini Gallardo naming expert!

I ran over to Lamborghini Washington for a first hand look at the new supercar. They had two in the inventory, one in white, and the other in a semi-dark silver:

Thinking of picking one up?? The silver one will run you about $265,000:

Lamborghini has a habit of doing this. They design a car that I look at and fall in love with. I can’t even begin to fathom how the design can be improved, but then they redesign, and it looks even better. Most notably to me the major improvements are on the front and rear parts of the car. The frontend has a new, more aggressive looking bumper with larger openings. It looks more like their super duper car, the $1.6 million Reventon. Along with the redesigned headlights, it makes the new rendition much angrier looking.

More importantly the rear of the car has been completely redesigned. I would say that the rear of the first Gallardo was the one part of the car that a lot of people didn’t like so much. Obviously Lamborghini heard this too, and redesigned accordingly. The new rear is much cleaner:

The updated lower profile taillights and the quad exhaust tips really do the majority of the improvements for me.

Here’s some more pictures that I took for you to enjoy:

Here’s a couple that were hooked up that I saw at SEMA in Las Vegas:

So I login to my gmail account today and I see an e-mail from a girl I used to date:

Hey, just in case you weren’t aware, wanted to give you a heads up, especially if you tend to by gift cards for the holidays. The following are involved in, planning to file Bankruptcy, or closing a significant number of stores:

Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stores
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Dillard’s to close some stores

I knew about a lot of these stores, but there were many new ones. The economy is really going through some crazy times right now. There is a possibility of the domestic automotive manufacturers filing for bankruptcy. The world is folding as we know it right?? Wrong.

Right now is sort of a the strongest survive scenario. The fact is, we as consumers will still continue to purchase products, we will still wear clothes, we will still buy people presents, and we will still drive cars.

Think about GM as one example. GM owns a ton of auto brands; Chevy, GMC, Cadillac, Hummer, Pointac, Buick, Saturn, and Saab. Just imagine how many vehicles per year are manufactured sold from the conglomerate of all these brands?? I don’t have exact figures, but I’m sure it’s well into the millions. If GM went under, that’s a huge void of vehicles that were at least partially sold…that are now not. While becoming a new car manufacture may not be the easiest thing in the world, somebody is going to take a lot of that business…and that ain’t no chump change. The strong will survive.

Now take a look at any of the other stores above, and I can bet it’s the same scenario. Who knows why some of these stores are folding…some expanded too fast, some didn’t do enough marketing, some expanded in the wrong areas…you get my point. Just because they failed, doesn’t mean you will to. What this new economy teaches us to do is to not be extravagant on how we spend. Run a company lean, and learn from past mistakes.

Now is a great opportunity to get into business…if you can survive the time while things are bleak…for what goes down must come up.

Just my 2 cents.

I received an e-mail from Amazon today with a really cool promotion that they’re doing called Customers Vote. Basically it allows you to vote on a total of 6 different rounds deals on products at pretty ridiculous prices (ex: the first week has PS3 bundles starting at $199 instead of a list price of $574+). Each round has 3 different deals that you can choose from.

Each round of deals is tied to a specific day, so the PS3 stuff is for the first day which is November 27th (Thursday – Thanksgiving). If you get randomly selected, you’ll see an e-mail the day before letting you know. That means you should then login early on Thursday as you’ll have the opportunity to buy the product. Keep in mind that there are going to be a lot more participants selected than products available, to it is a race to try and buy first. There are a good number of products though, for example there are going to be 500 of the PS3′s.

This is somewhat familiar to Amex’s My Wishlist, but I actually like the way it works better. Generally for those doing Amex’s My Wishlist, the servers always get pounded, and a majority of the time the site goes down…pretty annoying. By Amazon pre-selecting the participants, I’m sure a big part of the reasoning behind that is to limit how many people are hitting the site. This way there should be no server issues, and you’ll know from the get go whether you’re too late or not.

This is a great promotion from Amazon for a few reasons:

• It’s a cool promotion, hey, it got me writing about it
• It will get people onto the site and looking at products. Amazon is known to have a very high conversion of visitors:buy ratio. Getting visitors to the site is the main step.
• The promotion page links to the products they are selling at a discount. This helps the conversion:buy process, and should help generate some sales simple for awareness factor.
• They are not giving the products away. A PS3 bundle which they normally sell for $574 is being sold for $199, which means they aren’t giving away their true cost. If they were to give these bundles away it would be $287,000 worth of product. Let’s say there is a 30% margin on them, they end up giving away $200,900. Instead,? they are charging $199 for 500 units, which is about $100,000. That means they are really only giving away about $100,000 of true dollars…a savings of $100,000.

If you haven’t already done so, get over to the Amazon Customers Vote page, and vote for each of the 6 days to try and get some deals of your own!? If you happen to win, make sure and post in our comments to let us know.

Thanks to Scott, he made me aware of an awesome little piece of software to help do some usability testing on your site. It’s called ClickTale, and it will literally show you a video of what a user is doing on your site, among many other features. I gave it a shot on Carbon Fiber Gear to see what some people were doing on the pages where I was selling products. Wow, I can see where people are moving their mouse, what they’re clicking on, how long they look at each section, etc. It really tells me a lot about how a person uses my site, and allows me to design accordingly. Check out this video that explains the whole thing:

ClickTale has a free package that offers 100 recordings every week (400/month). Simply sign up, place some code in your header and footer, and you’re good to go. Anything over that will cost you…but if your site isn’t very big, it’s more than enough.

Keep in mind there are some privacy concerns regarding this. According to ClickTale’s own terms of service, you’re required to disclose in your privacy agreement that you’re using it.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think. Did you find out anything new about your readers/customers?

I’ve made the official migration for this site from DavidPitlyuk.com to DavePit.com. You’ll see that all URL’s will redirect to the new URL. You’ll also notice that all URL’s are now shorter!? For example the post for the 2009 Nissan 370Z used to be:

http://www.davepit.com/2008/11/17/2009-nissan-370z-first-thoughts/

Now it is:

http://www.davepit.com/2009-nissan-370z-first-thoughts/

The new domain name is part of the migration that I had announced when I launched this new design. My next task will be to work on cleaning up all of the categories, and the posts within them.

For those interested in how I did the migration, in case you are interested in doing the same…I will provide the steps I took:

Backup Files

The easiest/fastest way for me to do this was to login via Telnet/SSH (I use Putty as the software to do this). Go to the directory you need to backup, and then type

tar cvf filename.tar .

This will back everything up in the directory to a .tar file. Simply download that tar file and reupload to your new server. On the new server, you’ll want to untar it by using this command in the same directory:

tar xvf filename.tar .

This will untar all of your files onto the new server. Trust me, doing this is MUCH faster then downloading all of your files via FTP.

WordPress Configuration

I was doing everything on the same server, so I didn’t have to do anythign with the database. If you are using a different server, you’ll have to backup your database, and then restore it on the new servers database.

Since I was doing everything on the same server, I simply logged into WordPress, went to settings, and changed the domain names to davepit.com. This changed the database config to the new domain, and automatically started calling the files on the davepit.com domain.

While in the WordPress admin, I also updated these:

• All In One SEO Tool plugin – Renamed everything as needed
• Sitemaps plugin – Rebuilt the sitemap for the site to map the correct domain

Update Template Files

Go into all of your template files, and make sure to change any references you have from the old domain to the new domain.

Update Old Domain References In Content

You could go through your SQL database files and replace any references of your old domain to your new domain…but an even easier way is to use the search-regex plug found here. The plugin once installed allows you to search for anything in your content and replace it with something else. I simply searched for all the references to images using the old domain, and replaced them with davepit.com. Same thing with links. Now all of your content is calling the right files.

.htaccess Configuration

You’ll want to update your .htacess configuration on both domains to make sure you’re URLs are doing what they are supposed to. To get all of the old url schemas shorter, I added this line (Thanks WPRecipes!):

RedirectMatch 301 /([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(.*)$ http://www.davepit.com/$4

This will ensure any links that are going to the old URL’s automatically redirect to the new ones. Plus, it will allow the search engines to know the pages have moved, and start indexing the correct new URL’s without punishing me (since there is no page not found errors). While I’m at it, I also set the domain up to always redirect to www.davepit.com, even if you go to just davepit.com. The code for that is below:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^davepit\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.davepit.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Now we’ve got DavePit.com all setup…but we want to make sure people that are still going to DavidPitlyuk.com get redirected. Simple!? I setup a .htaccess file on davidpitlyuk.com with the following code:

Redirect 301 / http://www.davepit.com/

Perfect!? Now our URL’s are going to the right places!

Google Webmaster Tools

You’ll want to setup the new domain on Google Webmaster Tools so Google can appropriately crawl and index your content.

Thanks to Mubs from Suffolk Software for some of the help in figuring out the above work.

I’m a big fan of the Nissan Z, it’s a great performing and looking car for a great price. In fact, I had a 2004 Nissan 350Z that I put a lot of work into before getting into the Viper (See progression of vehicles):

For 2009, Nissan is redesigning the Z, putting a 3.7 liter V6, hence the 370Z instead of the 350Z. Nissan fans have all been waiting to see what the new look be released as. Nissan has finally released official pictures of the car, and even shown it at a couple meets:

As you can see there are a lot of changes that were made to the car, although it is visibly still a 350Z. We can see some resemblance to other Nissan vehicles such as the new Maxima in the headlighs and taillights, as well as the new GT-R in the window/hatch shape. I love the large opening at the front of the car, it makes everything look so agressive. Even though I like it, I saw a lot of complaints about it looking like a fish, which I can see. What I don’t like are the wheels, but who doesn’t change those anyway

The integrated spoiler looks clean, it melds well with the wider fenders. Looks aren’t the only thing changed on the new Z. As mentioned earlier, the 370Z now features the VQ37, a 3.7 liter 332hp V6. On top of the improved power, the car also weighs less than its previous generation, which I would imagine will make quite the difference.

Don’t forget about the interior, which looks much improved. This is probably one of the most talked about improvements so far because it used to be one of the most complained about aspects. The Z is a budget sports car, but the new interior looks great in the pictures. I’m looking forward to see it in person, I’d like to see it in person

Take a look at the following pictures and video for a better idea of how the new Z looks. Jalopnik also did an excellent design dissection that you should gander.

(Pictures from Autoblog)

The SEMA show is not only about the cars, there are also tons of hot girls modeling at many of the companies booths. No need for much more explanation, thanks to Alex for taking a bunch of the pictures: