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New Heighway Owner

windoesnot said:
I feel incredibly dirty for having shook Mr Heighway-mans hand once before, jesus christ what sub human scum that man is!

Good salesman
Poor businessman
Even worse person
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Long before he decided to launch Heighway I knew Andy from shows and meets ....since the mid/late 2000s. Had beers with him, talked pinball, considered him a pinball buddy. So it still smarts to think of him lying to my face at the EAG and at Play Expo when I showed interest in Alien , guaranteeing a machine within weeks if I coughed up some money. He knew there were no machines ready. Thinking back the desperation was probably there to see. Thank god I didn't hand over money.
 
Nice to see the fund growing. Dave, please do not meet Heighway again, ever.

Am I alone in worrying Heighway might feel some of the raised money is rightfully his?
 
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JWG9999 said:
Nice to see the fund growing. Dave, please do not meet Heighway again, ever.

Am I alone in worrying Heighway might feel some of the raised money is rightfully his?
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He can wish for the moon on a stick for all he deserves. It's not his. Period.
 
WELL DONE everyone who has contributed to Dave Saunders fund. I have tried to talk to the poor guy now for 3 days.... still can not get him.

https://www.gofundme.com/dave-sanders-fund

@Arv you are a saint mate - wish I had thought of that.

Sadly over the past few days I have heard from other 'ex employees/contractors' and have heard even more stories.

I really believe that the new guys tried to save the company - but it was just too hard to rectify.

The system was crap - I hope that the software guys do a visual pinball version of it! That will be the closest you will get to buying a reliable Alien.

Anyway - glad I left and said to remove my name from anything on the game.

I would probably buy a full throttle for £1000 tops at the moment, as I do like the game. The best thing to do is turn the cabs into visual pinballs when all those horrid crappy node boards fail.
 
@Arv A great thing to do - and nice to see the fantastic Pinball community rallying round again.

I'll be sure to stick something in the pot tomorrow.
 
There is a good point there. AH might get wind of the funds page for Dave and might try to acquire some of it using his usual tactics. How do we make sure that it doesn't happen?
 
Christ, I hope he's not the type to do something absolutely stupid if he feels his back is up against the wall... he's always bragged that he's prepared to do anything in order to succeed.
 
Eala Dubh Sidhe said:
Christ, I hope he's not the type to do something absolutely stupid if he feels his back is up against the wall... he's always bragged that he's prepared to do anything in order to succeed.
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We have your back in that unlikely case - I say unlikely because creatures of comfort like that only do things out of spite if it doesn't put them out too much. I know abusers like him.

I will certainly offer whatever I can to help.
 
I think most people know how he ran the Daventry pinball event. Don’t want to post publicly but if you’re unaware and really want to know, you know what to do.
 
Just did my donation. It's great the community coming together for a fellow pinhead in need. Our best wishes Dave and things will only get better from now on.
 
Big Phil said:
I think most people know how he ran the Daventry pinball event. Don’t want to post publicly but if you’re unaware and really want to know, you know what to do.
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Please do post it.

In the past, plenty of people on this thread and elsewhere lauded him for the events he put on.

Like so much of the other stuff he did, if people knew about what he was up to and what he did in the past, then why were they defending and cheering him on?

People who definitely knew otherwise were going to bat for him, saying how selfless he was in running those events, and that he had never been in it for the money - trying to get others to order machines from him (presumably in the hope they'd get one if others paid first and took the risk).

If what the Irish guy posted is true, then it would appear they were a smokescreen for theft.
 
Big Phil said:
I think most people know how he ran the Daventry pinball event. Don’t want to post publicly but if you’re unaware and really want to know, you know what to do.
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I can post publicly about my experience with the Barceló group.

After it became clear that the UK Pinball show was not going to be ran again by Andrew, I looked in to running it myself.

I visited their hotel at Hinckley Island and spoke with their events manager. I explained everything that I wanted to do, we discussed rooms for the pinballs, meals, discounts for hotel rooms, etc. etc. and was offered the function rooms at zero cost, as well as a discount for customer bookings. Everything was going great - UNTIL I mentioned a couple of days later that it was similar to the event ran at their Daventry hotel, by Andrew.

It was then that everything changed. I was told that the event room was now £3,000 per day (Friday-Monday) - payable in advance, there would be no discounts offered on room bookings or anything else favourable we had discussed. EVERYTHING had to be paid for in advance.

Read in to that what you will.

I took it that Andrew's reputation was that bad that the whole of the pinball community was now tainted because of him.
 
This fundraiser just shows that most people are actually generally pretty nice....this can get forgotten when we read the scumbag stories.

All the best moving forward Dave! :)
 
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Wayne J said:
I can post publicly about my experience with the Barceló group.

After it became clear that the UK Pinball show was not going to be ran again by Andrew, I looked in to running it myself.

I visited their hotel at Hinckley Island and spoke with their events manager. I explained everything that I wanted to do, we discussed rooms for the pinballs, meals, discounts for hotel rooms, etc. etc. and was offered the function rooms at zero cost, as well as a discount for customer bookings. Everything was going great - UNTIL I mentioned a couple of days later that it was similar to the event ran at their Daventry hotel, by Andrew.

It was then that everything changed. I was told that the event room was now £3,000 per day (Friday-Monday) - payable in advance, there would be no discounts offered on room bookings or anything else favourable we had discussed. EVERYTHING had to be paid for in advance.

Read in to that what you will.

I took it that Andrew's reputation was that bad that the whole of the pinball community was now tainted because of him.
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You mean to say absconded with out paying, what a loveable bounder and rogue. ;)

But it was about the same sort of response I got from the hotel when I enquired about putting on a similar show a few years ago.
 
I agree everything should come out, I never went to Daventry but I assumed from what I read at the time that he was the hero for holding these events, one of the reasons I was comfortable paying a deposit on Alien.
 
OK.....

At Daventry, all the hotel rooms had to be booked through Andy. Basically, he put the prices up so he could make money on every booking. I don’t know how much though. When I arranged UKPinfest, the hotel asked if I wanted to operate the same way! No....

He still owes the hotel money. Because of this, I have to pay for everything upfront.

It’s common knowledge that all pin donators still had to buy tickets for the event. Which I think is bonkers. Basically supporting the event and then having to pay to play your own machines.

The event wasn’t for the love of pinball, it was for greed and your money.
 
Yea they let this lot of "Pinheads" down into the Daventry Holiday Inn safe room...

oceans-eleven-movie-f4005da8-4e4b-4291-bcef-ff27294b2030.jpg
 
:mad: Isn’t Andrew in the UK hall of fame

And a judge with Gary and Andy on new inductees
 
Oh maybe I got that wrong maybe they voted him into the hall of shame, I have a bad memory
 
You really think that meal was £40? How much per head and how much did the organiser trouser? I remember the year where it was very late being served and seeing someone else paying the front desk for the whole shebang with Andy stood by his side...
 
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