A forum allows people to impart information, express opinions and sometimes add a little humour.
As Lotus are known to monitor this forum, it's a good place to express discontent with their communications, and, is a second string to those people who are contacting Lotus direct.
I sense that you don't appreciate our UK attempt at humour, often thinly disguised sarcasm. Perhaps it's too subtle for you. We are, after all, two countries separated by a common language.
I greatly appreciated your renderings and said so when I joined the forum. I thought they were excellent. I've also agreed with much of what you've contributed since 7th July of last year when I placed my deposit. Like you, I'm really looking forward to the test drive and taking ownership.
Let's not fall out over a disagreement of approach, but don't ever attempt to censor or bully me either.
The first post of yours I recall was this one in this thread, where I noticed you'd just joined the forum about 60 days ago:
I actually do like British humor, which is usually subtle, dry and understated, but referring to Matt Windle as arrogant and incompetent didn't come across as humorous to me, which is partly what prompted my comments.
Thank you for the compliments with regards to my renderings, and other posts of mine. I read a lot and didn't recall your first posts.
As for approach, I'm not opposed to criticism, but I much prefer constructive criticism. With regards to what's going on at Lotus, we really don't know a whole lot because they aren't saying a whole lot, and all indications are they're not going to say a whole lot. It's their choice and right to be this way if that's what they choose. It's not what I would choose, and I'd hazard most in this forum wouldn't choose this approach either, but that's where we're at. It's been mentioned ad infinitum ad nauseam in here, so I'm quite sure they know how we feel. Continuing to go on about it, and insulting the people at Lotus I feel is counter-productive.
None of us know what it's like to be in Matt's shoes right now, or any of the other people in charge of things, or what they might be having to deal with from execs at Geely. I want Lotus to succeed, so my desire is to try and improve morale there instead of beating it down.
There's another issue at play here, and that's the forum itself. Whenever I log on, I've noticed there's usually a handful of members signed in, and at least 3 times as many 'guests', and sometimes there's even more than that. There are thousands of deposits in, and since this forum is the most active and best for activity about the Emira, it looks like a lot of people who are not forum members access and read the forum. What kind of an impact does some of the nastiness have, on whether or not people might like to join? How many people might be thinking of joining, but hesitate because of some of the aggression on display in here? For example, I make a post calling for civility and being classy, and E33MIRA pretends he's unblocked me long enough so he can volunteer to be the poster child for classless incivility. It doesn't bother me, but I wonder how it might affect potential new members. There may be people who would like to join and ask questions, but are afraid to because they think they might be attacked. Being civil and classy, even if we're criticizing, has absolutely no down-side.
Just as an example, you placed a deposit last year in July, but it took you until May 31 of this year to join the forum, and you stated that you had been viewing and reading it for some time. There has to be a lot of people like you who're doing the same thing, but haven't joined yet. It would be nice if they'd join and participate. We have some very talented people in here; there's no telling who might join if things were friendly. We've had a few Lotus employees join, identify themselves as employees, make a few posts then go silent. Why did they stop posting? Were they asked to stop by Lotus management, or did they see some of the hostility and decide maybe it was better if they didn't participate.
My request is that we who are the frequent commenters, do our best to keep things civil and classy. so we can encourage some of those many guests who are just watching to join the forum. By and large we've been doing pretty good until the last few months of frustrations caused by the delays.
Agreed on not having a fall out, and I assure you, if I were intending to censor or bully someone, they'd know it lol.
Maybe we can start a thread about what we're looking forward to the most in getting our cars (besides just getting them in the first place lol). Let's try and talk about something positive instead of dwelling on the frustrations of the delays and lack of definitive information about that. Vehicle manufacturers everywhere are having these same problems, so if we can just be patient, that will be less stressful I think. When Matt said in his video that Lotus would hold to the original pricing our deposits and orders were based on, that's a pretty good statement that Lotus does care about us, because I can imagine there was quite a conversation between Matt and Geely about the cost of doing that. Considering how bad inflation is right now, that's a pretty good commitment.
I won't be getting a test drive (my dealer is 500 miles away). I'm just looking forward to my car being delivered (I'm having it delivered by covered carrier). That will be the first time I see an actual Emira, and the first time I get to sit in and drive one; and it will be mine. I'm greatly looking forward to the first few owners getting their cars, and reading about their impressions and experience.