BeerBorg

I thought I should go ahead and tell everyone what I know about the MrBeerFans shutdown. And no, nothing world shaking here.

A number of months ago (maybe 9 or 10?--sometime after the latest software was going over at Mr. Beer forum) Josh contacted the MrBeerFans Forum VIA the Moderator's Forum. (This is a good time to mention that there are at least 2 Joshs at Mr. Beer, Josh B. and Josh R.) They were asking about "the path forward" (they like this). As I remember they mentioned three options on the table. Keep the same forum software but upgrade it to a current version. Migrate the forum to the same software the Mr. Beer Forum was using. Or Combine the two forums. Personally I pushed for the new software as it was what they were using and it seemed to be more smart phone friendly when I looked into it a bit. That is something a number of members had wished was better at the MrBeerFans forum. Josh was to get back to us when they were ready to "move forward".

To back track a bit. The MrBeerFans forum was actually started independently of Mr. Beer but with the company's approval of the usage of the trademarked name. It was started before Mr. Beer had a forum of their own. I believe I signed up just after the forum had made some sort of software change or something. Poodie probably knows more about early happenings than I do. "Chug" was the one that started the forum originally but there came a time that he moved on to other stuff. At some point Poodie made D_Rock an admin as well. D_Rock made some nice changes at the site, adding recipe forums and such. He also contacted and worked with Peter G. at Mr. Beer as D_Rock was concerned about the future of the MrBeerFans site. He worked out with Peter and Chug for the site to be hosted by Mr. Beer with minimal interference, which was the case for a few years.

And Cooper's bought Mr. Beer and Peter no longer works there. Most all the members here at BeerBorg know how, after the Coopers change, the old Mr. Beer forum was radically changed taking away a lot of the features (wasn't PM gone?). I don't know the whole story, but Leigh started/had this forum available and many of the Mr. Beer forum members moved over here. So, yeah, when they say they understand about moving to another forum, they're not kidding.

When we had not heard from Josh after his initial contact I sent him an email:
With this response: The next notice we got was what you all know about: That same day I sent a second email to Josh: With this reply: To me, it was disappointing that they were unable to actually follow up on their own stated intentions.

Two other people that I know of have also contacted them in regards to acquiring the database and etc and doing it with a domain name change. I am not holding my breath.

I don't really hold the decision to stop hosting the site against them. But the way they went about it pretty much tells the tale of their character.

Thanks to everyone at the old MrBeerFans site for making it so much fun.

And to everyone here at BeerBorg, I hope you don't mind the riff-raff. Thanks.

Thanks for all you Moderators did over there....def a shitty way for them to take it down

An interesting story. I don't think I ever visited Mr Beer Fans. I was active on the MrBeer Forum before major changes made it difficult to use. I found my way here with many other refugees. Then we faced apparent resentment from the admin at MrBeer. I had already stopped using HME, and had no reason to return there. I'm glad you all came over, more beer is always better.

Thanks for the update and backstory. I was going to contact Mr Beer today, but between homework and my son's first day of Kindergarten I did not get a chance.
I do not plan to nasty or rude, but simply state that the company has moved in some directions over the last few years that I do not support. I also want to encourage them given members a chance to access and back up areas like recipes that they spent years amassing. I don't have much hope, but at least I will have some closure.


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Pretty crappy way to run things. I'm not sure any business can quite knife you in the back like you guys were. It's obvious they were just stringing you along until the plug was pulled and their history has repeated itself.
I do brew Mr. Beer or Brew Demon but think there is a huge market for them both. But customer service, or lack of, goes both ways. Treat customers nice, they buy more. Treat them like crap, they'll throw the crap right back at you.
Hope you guys have good aim!

I completely understand their side of things and thier decision...but what happened to our "heads up"...thats all. I keep all my recipes handritten in notebooks for this very reason. Anything digital can be lost.

I actually don't understand their reasoning. Josh had told me in the shout box (and Prof's email confirms) that they just assumed we'd all happily/mindlessly accept them pulling the rug out from under MBF, and migrate over to the official forum, thus enhancing their forum with our "knowledge and humor", like a bunch of lemmings. Seriously, how clueless can they be? As if we'd be totally OK with losing all our content, contacts, and "our" forum that had been there for 7+ years... Why couldn't they have offered to sell us the forum back? Why such short notice? Why no extension on the shut down? (the domain doesn't expire for another 14 months!) Why the talk of an upgrade, only to kill it months later? I get the part about spending less resources (AKA, $$$), but the way they conducted themselves in this matter is just very bush league, arrogant and unprofessional to me.

Reading the exchange between The Professor and Josh was a bit angering and sad, but thanks for sharing, Prof.

I've been an employee at little corp owned by big corp, that was owned by even bigger corp, and I have experienced many a "this decision did not come lightly" moments. As the IT guy, I had to pull the plug on people may times with little notice due to decisions made by big corp - with a few people at little corp in the mix, but they didn't really have a lot of options but to go along or quit or get fired - and ultimately when they shut us down be the guy who shipped our "carcass" as such all around the country to other offices, and be there when the scrappers tore apart the rest of our remains, or else just walk away without any severance pay. Which I couldn't afford to do.

I'm just saying this because I think if folks want to properly focus annoyance, the blame quite likely goes well beyond the folks in Phoenix, and the true folks to blame live in a scary place that's mostly inhospitable, except for the places that are, except those places have ginormous spiders and other weird things that can kill you.

But who knows, maybe the folks in Phoenix did drink the coolaid. But it is also possible they were threatened with ginormous spiders. Or a mixture of both. That happens too.

@ Frosty...I'm just saying I understand their business aspect of it. We might not take much away from them as a seprerate forum but in the end maybe we (MBF) do/did. Obviously we are competition to an extent. A forum with MB in the title that has become not much at all about MB. How many guys there actually brewed MB, how many newbies were we getting over the last couple years? Anyone that did search MB and find a forum, it might have been MBF the same way we all found the place. Then, you add on flipping the bill for us. I'm sure MBF was kind of like the kid that is 18 now but doesn't have a job, isn't going to school...and is just sitting at home burning up Mom and Dads' money. So, their buisness side of things I understand.

That doesn't make what they did ok, nobody is ok with that or not bitter towards them for it. But maybe we should have expected that from the start. Why would JoshB or MB have our best intrests in mind? Whey should we have assumed Josh was one of us? I now think Josh put out that initial post to the moderators to kind of feel things out. Maybe the talk of options was just to sugar-coat things for us. These things happen every day in real life, we were just a number to all of them in their big picture. It's easy to make cuts and rash decisions sitting behind a desk in an office on the other side of the country. We should have realized once Chug dropped it into MB lap it was only a matter of time. McDonalds doesn't buy out a Burker King and keep it a Burger King. Josh even mentions in his email, they know a lot of MBF wouldn't migrate over to the forum. It wasn't about losing or keeping us, what are we for MB...it was about elimating us as the fork in the road so they can streamline their own "Community".

Again, not denying they were wrong and this all went down pretty shitty. All I would have asked was for them to follow up on their word of keeping us posted. A little more time to make a transition, pull some content off the forum...etc. I wish we could of gotten our hands on the place a while back, we could of dropped our ties with MB completely. The only relief I feel is having this place and seeing so many make their way over.

We put a lot of work into that place and it's the people that made it what it was just like here.
To all.

In my mind big corporations continue to prove over and over again how they're run by people with the heart a sociopath. I looked the word up again this morning to make sure of it's meaning "a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience."

Eventually brewers get bored with Mr. Beer kits as I did and thankfully Mr.BeerFans was there early on to help me learn about all grain brewing and other brewing topics. They really are only interested in selling their own products. I always questioned what value all grain brewing posts on their forum added to their bottom line since they only sold extracts.

The_Professor wrote: To back track a bit. The MrBeerFans forum was actually started independently of Mr. Beer but with the company's approval of the usage of the trademarked name. It was started before Mr. Beer had a forum of their own. I believe I signed up just after the forum had made some sort of software change or something. Poodie probably knows more about early happenings than I do. "Chug" was the one that started the forum originally but there came a time that he moved on to other stuff. At some point Poodie made D_Rock an admin as well. D_Rock made some nice changes at the site, adding recipe forums and such. He also contacted and worked with Peter G. at Mr. Beer as D_Rock was concerned about the future of the MrBeerFans site. He worked out with Peter and Chug for the site to be hosted by Mr. Beer with minimal interference, which was the case for a few years.
.

It all started from a Yahoo listserv. Chug and Beamdude came together and started the forum in early Dec 2007. Chug made me an admin in early 2008 the he began to fade away. I ran it by myself for a year to a year and a half. D Rock was added at some point late in that year and a half because it became too much to manage alone and I had already migrated to AG brewing. Chug surfaced and announced that he had sold it to MB. I was fairly tweaked that he did not offer it to me and Derrick because we had kept it going. We brought The Professor on as the forum grew. When the "Jocko Wars" broke out we brought on more Smurfs. I faded into the background shortly after. I do not remember when/who turned Jon Commie but I turned Wilson, Pudge, & Mr. Bill red.

That is what my fermented brain can remember.

Wow I just got back on the Borg from a trip.

All I can say is Deja Vu.

Hope this means we'll be seeing more of you Professor.

I'm in and out lately without house building stuff but look forward to meeting all the great brewers from MBF.

Did any MBF member actually move to the official forum?

I don't think so, but i haven't talked to everyone yet. If not, that has to say something about how that was handled by Coopers/Mr. Beer. When no-one from the shut down forum moved to the official forum, you did something very wrong.

Not that they care one little bit, just sayin.


Happy to be here now and enjoying getting to know you all.

TazBorg

@ MadBrewer: I know what you mean.

On a much smaller scale, I do get the financial aspects of their decision, as I have been CEO of a business before. I know how it is to have to cut costs on those entities that are the lowest profit centers. But, there's still a right, and wrong way to go about it.

What I don't get is their lack of professionalism and crappy way they treated us. Yeah, most of us weren't regular customers, but in a way, we were sort of ambassadors for their product. Any time a noob came in with a Mr. Beer-related question, we always had advice on getting a great beer and had very little negative to say about the product, as a whole-that all "SHOULD" have had some value to them. The vast majority of us used their products at some point and had a good experience with it. Now, we're all $hi++ing on the company (not necessarily the product, but that's splitting hairs really, because none of us will recommend them again, as a result).

I just think they didn't expect the backlash they recieved, and that to me, is arrogant, ignorant and lacks business-sense.

At any rate, it's over and done with. I'm grateful for the Borg and I'm glad so many of us made it here; thanks to Louie and The Prof.

Have been getting a lot more emails than ever before from Mr Beer Team lately, makes you wonder if they are trying to cushion the negative blow.