And Gene responds...

Wow this is certainly turning out to NOT be a “Good Friday”. It’s unfortunate that Axiom posted this without consulting with me first to examine the facts but I can understand their frustration. The reality of this situation is I hired a close friend of the family about 4 years ago who is now a struggling freshman college student in need of cash. I needed assistance at our corporate office to publish editorial content (none of which was written by him as he is NOT a writer) and also help me move heavy audio gear given the recent back issues I’ve been having. Over the years I’ve been mentoring him on the A/V business and having private conversations about the industry in general. What I didn’t realize was the extent in which he was posting on the forums and under the name “JBALL’ without revealing he unofficially does work for Audioholics. I guess I should have suspected why he was billing me 3+ hours to post a 4-5 page editorial that I could do in ½ the time.

I do however take issue with the following statement made by Ian:

“This resulted in Gene threatening me by saying that he had built the Axiom brand and he could destroy it”.

I can only suspect Ian wrote this out of anger when he discovered JBALL was doing work for our organization. I have always wished Axiom well in their business and I simply don’t use that kind of language nor do I recall ever saying such a thing. We have always given Axiom a fair shake in our reviews and editorials including allowing them the opportunity to peer review all content we publish on their products.

Although we have had disagreements on some aspects of loudspeaker design and theory, we’ve always managed to find common ground with each other. I have always considered Ian/Amie as friends, not just business partners.

In any event, I apologize for this incident and deserve the public flaming in the forums as a result. I take full responsibility for JBALL’s actions and feel quite embarrassed and regretful about these chain of events. Certainly mistakes were made on both sides but our goal is to move forward and rebuild the strong relationship we once forged.

I had a great conversation with Ian/Amie about this and assured them he would NEVER be posting on a public A/V forum again. I asked Axiom to suspend JBALL account and remove all negative posts towards Axiom. Thank you for listening.

__________________
Gene DellaSala
President, Audioholics
Pursuing the truth in audio & video...

M80's, QS8's, M22's, CHT SHO-10, Dual CHT SS-18.1's, Onkyo NR3008, Mitsubishi WD-73740