Autogeek online

01GreyStangGT

01GreyStangGT

Member
Autogeek online seems to be offiline. Anybody else notice?
Is that’s the end, it was nice while it lasted.
I miss the days when this one was very active.
 
First there was a message to the effect "the board is down for backup and updates". That message included the normal header, etc. Then later it changed to the "database error" message.

So I guess you can look at that two ways--that they are simply still working on the updates and the forum is unavailable, or they had a problem with the updates and it`s FUBAR. I`d say it`s probably the former and the forum will be back in a day or two. Who knows if they are really updating/changing something or if they are doing some cleanup to try and fix the intermittent slowness that`s been plaguing AGO and Autopia.
 
Just to add to this--I`m a bit more puzzled/concerned about the disappearance of the Autopia Car Care store. When you click on the "store" link you now get this message:

[h=1]Down for Maintenance[/h]We’re thrilled to announce that Autopia Car Care has merged with Autogeek! This merger brings together two leading names in car care, combining our expertise and extensive range of products to better serve you. You can now shop all your favorite Autopia products on the Autogeek website, where you`ll find the same great selection, fantastic deals, and exceptional service you’ve come to expect. Head over to Autogeek today to explore the expanded range of car care products and accessories!

I guess in that way this forum still has a use to PBMG, of directing forum traffic to one of their stores, which is better than if ACC was simply gone with no redirect. Of course, there is no link to the Autogeek store from the ACC page. That should be easily corrected, however.

Anyway, to get back to the OP`s point, I would be more concerned about this forum disappearing than AGO. However, it now seems that Vision has completed their transition to in-house warehousing for Autogeek in Indiana, which presumably signals the end of the fulfillment center in Texas, and the chronic stock shortages. It seems to me that however lacking the communication was, perhaps there was just a big hiccup in their business plans between losing the lease on the original Autogeek facility, the Florida move, the pandemic, and that the fulfillment center was just a temporary step while they prepared a new warehouse in the Indy area for Autogeek and Sonax. The video below was only posted a month ago, and Google street view shows a different use for that building 5 years ago, so Vision wasn`t in there at the time they purchased PBMG.

Tour Autogeek

EDIT: Holy cow, I didn`t watch that video all the way through until after I posted, but towards the end they show "dedicated wet and detail bays" and a "training and testing area" with boats and cars; it seems clear they intend to replicate the "show car garage" doing classes and videos. Pretty clear Vision/Sonax isn`t going anywhere, they seem recommitted to Autogeek, I guess we`ll see about here and AGO.
 
images
 
Anyway, to get back to the OP`s point, I would be more concerned about this forum disappearing than AGO. However, it now seems that Vision has completed their transition to in-house warehousing for Autogeek in Indiana, which presumably signals the end of the fulfillment center in Texas, and the chronic stock shortages. It seems to me that however lacking the communication was, perhaps there was just a big hiccup in their business plans between losing the lease on the original Autogeek facility, the Florida move, the pandemic, and that the fulfillment center was just a temporary step while they prepared a new warehouse in the Indy area for Autogeek and Sonax. The video below was only posted a month ago, and Google street view shows a different use for that building 5 years ago, so Vision wasn`t in there at the time they purchased PBMG.

Tour Autogeek

EDIT: Holy cow, I didn`t watch that video all the way through until after I posted, but towards the end they show "dedicated wet and detail bays" and a "training and testing area" with boats and cars; it seems clear they intend to replicate the "show car garage" doing classes and videos. Pretty clear Vision/Sonax isn`t going anywhere, they seem recommitted to Autogeek, I guess we`ll see about here and AGO.
Click to expand...

I`ll have to give the video a watch.

It`s interesting they may be ending the Texas part of the business and consolidating everything in Indy. The Texas portion of the business didn`t start up all that long ago, and couldn`t have been cheap to do. Looking at it in a positive light it would show a willingness to invest heavily in the business to keep it going during a transition from Florida to Indiana.

As for a merger of the online stores, I think it is long overdue. Even during the glory days of PBMG after they bought Autopia, I could never understand why the two stores existed. You had duplicative administrative workload and at times they had competing sales...often with Auptopia with the better deals. Their house brands websites look like they are going through an overhaul as well. The Wolfgang and Pinnacle sites looks pretty good. Blackfire looks like someone hit the "publish" button accidentally. It`s half-baked and only a handful of the products are shown. I question those being separate as well from a cost and complexity standpoint, even if they are all based on the same platform, but can understand wanting to have a dedicated presence for each one from a branding perspective. I just hope the credits I had on Autopia survive the merger with AGO.

I`m hopeful for the forum. I saw the same thing you did with the maintenance message followed by the database errors. I can fully appreciate a minor action cascading into a major disaster. I`ve seen it happen. They could be trying to do something ranging from minor patching to cut down on the spamming I`ve been seeing hit multiple vBulitin forums, to major version update, or a migration to a totally different forum platform. Hard to tell really and we`re all just guessing and the chain of events seem to point to actions by Vision/Sonax in the background and not simply a site that encountered and error and has been left for dead.
 
BudgetPlan had posted a story about how the Texas warehouse was a contract fulfillment center, so there wasn`t really much investment in that.

So just to continue my speculation from above...maybe Vision got surprised with the loss of their lease, I think it was at the 5-year point so that seemed like a normal business transition period that they should have been prepared for, but I believe Bob McKee states in his book that he was giving them a year-to-year lease, so they may have been caught off guard when he didn`t renew it. They then had to hurriedly move to another location in Florida...but in the time period surrounding that lost key personnel in Florida, which left them with a decision whether to hire new people in FL or consolidate their operations in Indiana (Vision home base). It seems they decided to consolidate, but didn`t have enough room in their existing facility, so while they were working on that, they closed the FL operation and contracted with a fulfillment house in the meantime.

Unfortunately their communication about all this stuff was non-existent. They must have a PR person who could have painted all this stuff in a positive light.

This is the link about the fulfillment house: Why AutoGeek Moved to ShipBob’s Outsourced Fulfillment Solution

Reading that over again...I remembered being exasperated that they got Jason Sierra`s name wrong, calling him Juan. This morning Mike Phillips said on his forum he recommended to Juan, the AG forum administrator the software he uses...and now I found that apparently Jason is going by Juan now (probably he was always Juan but went by Jason which is pretty horrible but he`s not the first guy to feel he had to do something like that). Anyway, Jason/Juan always seemed to be pretty on the ball with the forum software issues so I`m kind of surprised we`ve been having all these issues and the lack of communication.

EDIT: Well, something is happening, now instead of "database error", the forum link takes you to the Blackfire Pro Concentrate website.
 
autogeekonline dot net now brings up content for Blackfire Pro, but only if you accept connecting to a site with an invalid/expired certificate. There also doesn`t appear to be any forum sub-heading option so, to paraphrase the Munchkins of Oz . . .
And it`s not only merely dead
It`s really most sincerely dead
 
Well, you`re the computer guy, but it seems to me they are shuffling some things around, changing servers, changing software, etc. It hardly seems to me they would bother changing DNS info for AGO if they were leaving it for dead.

EDIT: Besides, it`s not going to that Blackfire page anymore, seems to be back to the database error message, which I think just points to that they are working on it and shuffling some things around.
 
I`m getting a "500 internal server error" when I just tried it. Doesn`t even try to re-direct to any other site. I agree it appears to be some sort of movement afoot.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Well, you`re the computer guy, but it seems to me they are shuffling some things around, changing servers, changing software, etc. It hardly seems to me they would bother changing DNS info for AGO if they were leaving it for dead.

EDIT: Besides, it`s not going to that Blackfire page anymore, seems to be back to the database error message, which I think just points to that they are working on it and shuffling some things around.
Click to expand...
Oh, we were getting different results then. I wasn`t aware of any DNS changes nor did I experience that. As you say, it is definitely in a state of flux. Typically one sees the admin hang the internet equivalent of an "out to lunch, be back soon" sign on a site that`s down for planned maintenance. I do hope they bring it back and that whatever they`re doing also addresses the performance issues that had made it borderline unusable in the last week or two . . . maybe even do a better job of combatting the spammers while they`re at it. (hey, one can hope!)
 
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