Is there a reason people partner with Paradise? I've had nothing but bad experiences ordering with them over the years, but I keep seeing them become the official distributor for stuff like this.
Yes we help people produce their stuff and support the manufacturers. We have worked with over a half dozen different people like undamned to help reduce costs and make their products more available to the market. We do this many times at no income to us, but allow the developers to make more profits.
We are fine if people want to distribute in Europe etc. I mean for heavens sake, right now Arcadeshop and Highscoresaves sell products we manufactured for someone else and we make no money and ironically get no credit for doing this.
In regards to the AS boards. Please if you are going to resurrect 5 year old arguments then know the facts. Simple, arcade shop stopped selling the boards. After they did, we were approached by someone with the boards, we started selling them (it was right when we started) people cried foul, we pulled them. So then I reached out to Steve Gregory and Clay about them, I didn't hear back from either. We didn't relist them, then we started getting people calling us, "Steve Gregory told me to come to you for these". After over a dozen people in a week, and several emails to Steve that were unanswered, we put them back up. Later on we became aware that Clay was upset for us selling the IP, and found out there was some goofy conflict between him and Steve and part of the reason that Phoenix ended up with the next board. Am I saying we didn't botch any part of this, no, but after having the person who we thought was the owner of the board sending multiple people to us to buy them, and offering to pay royalties with no response, we put them back up.
In regards to shipping, we have struggled with International shipping. In the last year we have lost over 10k to people at international addresses claimed the package never arrived, etc. There is a HUGE risk to us and we tend to be more expensive for this reason, we want tracking, we want billing to match shipping. In regards to addresses, we don't edit them, so whatever a person puts into our system that is where it goes. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we do not control customs, the competency of the delivery agents etc. If there is an issue with the shipping rates, contact us, we watch pretty diligently and try to refund excess charges.
In regards to packaging, yes we had some issues at different points and took the feedback as valuable. There were many issues in how products were delivered to us, and there were some problems with how they went out (some of which were from people who were not following protocol etc.) We have worked to address this and so has Darksoft. The last set of cps2 systems came with boxes etc which made a huge difference, we usually have 20-30% rework before we ship and had almost none now. (mind you we have very little profit on these boards so 20-30% rework is not great)
At the end of the day we do this because we are trying to help build and create better products and opportunities, if you hate what we do there are other places to buy. But unlike many places we are designing and reinvest or profits. Neither Susan or I take any profit from the business. 100% of what we do goes back to employees, R&D, rent, helping new designers get projects done etc. No one else can say that. I apologize for any issues people have had, we value the feedback and will continue to try and improve.
" With the sad smiley face on it and all, I mean wtf is that?? 
Mind you no refund for the difference in price which was like an extra $15-20 to get the better switches. So I had to bitch them out to get my a refund of the difference as they didnt want to do it.
