Beware of Great Lion Enterprises (wooden dummies)

[Goldtooth]

I ordered some stuff from Great Lion, and talked to Joe Thornton. Joe took my money, then vanished. I hate to say this, but Great Lion folded last year, according to the Georgia Secretary of State. Clark Thornton, Great Lion's principle, is nowhere to be found, either.

The reason i mention my sour experience is because Great Lion has the balls to maintain a website and take money from people still. Their phones 'dont take incoming calls' but you better bet you can send them an order, and give them your credit card. My next step is to contact the local police in GA, and whoever is responsible for wire fraud. Watch out for them.

I dont understand why a company with such a good looking product and reputation could flake out like this:(

Edited July 8, 2006 by Goldtooth

[ShotokanKid]

I hope you can get your money back. Good luck with that.

[Spirit At Choice]

It always pays to research a company you've never used before.

For what it's worth, I had a fairly good experience with Superior Martial Arts. Merchendise was well packed, of decent quality, and they did send email notifications in a timely way.

They were a little flakey in mailing out the orders: hand printed addresses that were slightly incorrect and took the post office extra time to deliver because of it-- they transposed two numbers of my house number on one box, then put a state code of VA instead of WA on another.

[Goldtooth]

UPDATE:

Great Lion told me my stuff was on the way. The ship date came...and went.

By the looks of things, they have taken a huge amount of money from people from January to date, and we are all in the same boat. Im embarassed to be associated with them or this fiasco, but i feel compelled to provide this forum with the warning.

GL has even updated their website and catalogue! They cant MAKE you anything, but they sure can TAKE MONEY from you. Current iteration of thier website now omits their 'home phone,' but handily forwards you to a machine that takes no message.

Im taking Monday of to liase with the Valdosta local police, and the Georgia Bureau of investigation, because i am convinced that GL has thousands of dollars (20+ full hardwood dummy orders+!) in their pockets with no capacity to produce.

The irony of this entire process is that i built my dummy already, except for the leg and arms. I have the entire aparatus mounted in my studio, and it is a real beauty, but i hang my gis on it because i cant use it. I even intend to do a writeup on how easy it is to make most of a mook jong, then sub the lathe work out to a company like this. My intention, aside from being a bit pedantic and helpful, was to actually generate more business for guys likes this so they could work with more do it yourselfers like me. Im afraid to infect my style's forum with the venom and vitriol that im currently eschewing, and i cant even finish my damned report because the jong's not done!

[aefibird]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience, I hope you get your money back.

[bushido_man96]

Hope the investigation goes well for you. Hope you get your money back, and then I hope they get taken care of, too.

[jaymac]

Thanks for the warning.

[White_Tiger]

Is this company located in Valdosta?

[Goldtooth]

I finally got my money back from GL. Mastercard actually credited my account...with 22 bucks interest. I made the rest of the dummy myself, and aside from getting a lathe, it was easy. Some companies on the web sorta exagerate the process, and make it sound like the guys who build jongs are master craftsmen. When properly tooled up, these operations could bang out a jong in under an hour.

Anyhow....i built the thing in my garage, and the only time i used numbers or any math was to read the tape measure to determine the length of the arms and torso, and pulling from one hole to the next. 5-600 bucks would be a fair price if you have no skill or tools..or friends with skill and tools;) You can build your own for under 300 bucks, or less, depending on what is lying around the house and what you can get for free. Dont get hung up on 'traditional' materials. Yip Man may have used steel, or pvc, or poured a jong out of a sono tube if what we have now was available back then. Improvise. Innovate!

Just wanted to touch bases with this group on Great Lyin, though. Dont give them your money! For sure dont buy any jong parts from anyone with a colored coating unless you want to pay a lot for low grade lumber.

[Eric789]

Hi guys,

I found this forum by Googleing Great Lion Dummy Frauds ! Haha. I have also been the victim of their criminal activity. I live in Scotland and ordered my dummy some ten months ago. At first I had no reason to doubt that the dummy would be built and shipped - in approx. 6 months. Fair enough for a thing of quality. No need to go into the gory detail, we've all been there.

I reported the alleged crime to the Police Department that deals with the area of the great lion factory and am now awaiting the Criminal Investigation Department to get back to me. I'm about to report the fraud to my bank who will refund the $1100.00 taken from my account. So, I won't be out of pocket but I still won't have my dummy!

It's a shame I live so far away. I would happily have visited the owners to crack their skulls and extract $1100.00 worth of painn from them. I guess I'll just have to let the law do its thing

Anyway, if any of you want to get in touch then ping me an email and I'll get back to you.

Eric