Taking Action Investigation: Home Brew Business Accused Of Not ...

Not that it should be a law this day in age, but how is it that this dude is even allowed to sell home brew supplies when it's currently illegal to brew your own beer anyway? I guess it's like those stores that sell "peace pipes"...

Those supplies "could" be used to make root beer. Plus the only time it is illegal is when you add yeast, then you are brewing beer. Sad, that in America people cannot brew their own beer, well only in this and 2 other states.

kegkits.com is an internet business. I buy things all the time on the internet that are not packed and shipped in Alabama. My guess is that the same is true of this business, and that the bulk of his customers are actually out of state.

A big lesson learned, i ordered over $500 worth of stuff from tom hargrave at kegkits.com in Aug 2009. he never delivered my stuff or responded to my many inquiries. my credit card company reversed the charges after i submitted 26 pages of emails and phone records where i worked to resolve the matter directly with Tom. the AL BBB was great to work with. i want all to know know the 2 hours it took me to pull it all the phone records and emails together paid off by getting my money back from my Credit Card. but, the real bummer in the end is that i wished i could have gotten the products i wanted from Tom. he just simply did not fulfill the order, nor followed through on his promise to do so after he TOOK my money and had it for months. i now use Northern Brewer in St. Paul, MN via internet orders and i spent over $900 with them and all items were delivered in 2 days! what a differnce! now that's better business, dont you think?

i'm thankful that this is happening-hopefully someone can shut down this business. i wish i could put a price on the time lost dealing with Tom Hargrave-he has no excuse for running a shoddy business, although he'll give you plenty and cause you grief all the same. looking forward to viewing the newscast.

Any local homebrewer who knows anything doesn't go to kegkits.com . I don't believe he's able to sell ingredients, just equipment such as CO2 regulators and tap kits, etc. Should Be Legal is right, it's not beer until you pitch yeast. This state needs to get with it- homebrewing is legal under federal law. LEGALIZE HOMEBREWING IN ALABAMA - call your representative and urge them to support SB153 to legalize homebrewing in this great state!

I waited six weeks for my order and after MANY emails and phone calls that were not returned I took further action. I contacted the BBB and told Kegkits I wanted a refund immediately. I got an email finally saying I was to recieve the package after 8 weeks only to never get it. I ended up going through my bank and luckily they refunded my money and did a 12 week investigation to only tell me they could not get ahold of anyone either. Do not do business with this company. He is not professional and will rip your money off. Needless to say I was very angry this person is getting away with all of this.

Homebrewing is illegal in Alabama but it is unenforced. If the batch size is small and you aren't selling it for a profit no one will bother you. You can buy anything and everything you need at Pearly Gates groceries except for kegging supplies.
I saw this guys web site and decided that I would rather go to his shop to see first hand what he had. He was closed but I could see in the glass front door that this was a fly by night operation. The place was a wreck and it looked like no one had been there for a long time. This was just before Christmas.

Here go check this on your Mr. Tom Hargrave...

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/do-not-order-...

Yet we spend time, money and energy arresting folks that give the finger to cops...OK to blatantly steal from people but PLEASE DO NOT express your Legal Rights!

I have done busines with Kegkits.com twice. The first time, I ordered a keg and CO2 canister with regulator. I recieved an e-mail confirming my order and that it was shipped. I did not recieve the items untill 6 weeks later. I was happy to finally get my order...better late than never, I guess. The next time I ordered from them, it was 2 kegs that were supposed to be the the nicest used kegs Tom had ever seen! They were infact the dirtiest I had ever seen and one of them was unusable due to a leaky lid. I requested a replacement lid or even the $10 valve that would fix it...no reply, no response from his refund department, no nothing. I tried a number of times to e-mail, call his business line and his personal line that he gives on his outgoing message...no answer and no call back. Yet I still recieve adds and newsletters and updates and all kinds of garbage he sends out. He is either a fraud, or he needs to stop selling to paying customers untill he gets cought up on past issues. I will never buy from him again, and I will not refer anyone I like to him.

This business has a terrible reputation online. He takes orders and never responds and may take months to ship the product, if at all. He has taken money from people all over the country. He should probably be in jail.

Yes I’m Tom and I own kegkits – it’s an on-line business that I started about 5 years ago.
And concerning the episode where Wendy Halloran chased me down in front of my house with lights and a camera at 7:30 PM Tuesday evening? I consider that episode assault and reporters who fall to that extreme should be prosecuted. As long as you resort to these tactics you can forget about any kind of interview with me.
Now regarding the business:
We got out of control earlier last year and as a result, I scaled back over 30%. We used to sell a full line of homebrew supplies including grain, hops, yeast and malts and we dropped all of these product lines. In addition we dropped quite a bit of hardware – just about everything that could be used for brewing. The drop in product lines should have pulled my sales down 30 – 40%. I even put a statement on the web site, in BOLD RED type that we are shipping late and the email for every order placed on the web site has this very same statement. But my issue now is that customers DON’T READ this stuff. But don’t believe me, place an order yourself and choose check payment so that you wan’t be charged & read the confirmation email yourself.
But it turns out that the internet is a very unfair market place and the net rewards businesses who are the most plugged in, not those who have the best business. And as a result of shipping late a lot of customers complained on a lot of web sites and most were to the tune of “Don’t shop at kegkits, they ship late and oh by the way their web site is …….” The end result was more quality inbound links, higher google ratings and even more sales!
Even you posted a link from this article to my web site which will only serve to further improve my Google rankings. So will the flurry of discussions on the net that this article will create. I guess I should thank you and I would if I were not trying to scale back to something more reasonable.
Then we got in trouble again in December, this time because the H1N1 flu wiped me out for two weeks and we were behind again in January. But we have caught up with January and will finally be current with orders in a week or two.
In all of this I’m sure that we owe a few customers orders but I’ve lost track of the customers we shipped late to, who filed chargebacks against us and then kept the products we shipped. The cost to us has been in the tens of thousands of dollars just this past year alone.
Oh, and we to have a F BBB rating. It’s not a rating I’m proud of but it is a rating I’m stuck with right now. The rating stems from me not taking the time to respond to the notifications sent out to my business. I am working 80+ hours / week and really don’t have time. And concerning the BBB & their rating system – do a net search on Wal-Mart and the BBB. You will find quite a few Wal-Mart’s with a F rating.

Hey Tom, we are not talking about Wal-Mart here. We are talking about you and your shady business tactics. If you are working 80+ hours a week, that is no fault of ours. Maybe you should do what any other successful growing business would do and hire some good help. Being busy is no excuse to treat your customers, the people who pay your bills, like trash. To not have an ounce of customer service is a complete joke, and to be as arrogant as you are with thanking us for complaining and helping you out with your google ratings just goes to show what type of person you are. I guess all I can do is stay clear of your site and make sure I spread the word around my homebrew community to not do business with you. You are a crook.

Mr. Hargrave,
I'm glad you had time to write that lengthy response. Why didn't you have time to respond to my numerous requests for information on my order. My credit card was charged 6 weeks ago. I even paid for quicker shipping, LOL.
I'm glad to see you are getting publicly embarrassed for terrible and borderline criminal business practices.

I watched this tonight on WHNT and its clear he's a crook the way he acted. Here is some advice if your working 80 hours a week and don't have time why in the heck don't you take the site down and close shop? It't clear you want because if you do then you can't keep peoples hard earned money. Also you act like its a crime for the news crew to track you down yet you want reply to peoples calls and emails and you you have the nerve to say that the reporters should be prosecuted your butt needs to be prosecuted! At least people know you and maybe your employer will hold your pay and dish it out to the people you riped off! Looser!!!

Tom, I mean "chili head" (your words) you are a coward. Why don't you take action and let that speak for you? You have time to sit and write about how unfair it is for news channel 19 to chase you down, well maybe you should be spending your energy fulfilling your customers orders!!!! Don't you think? Oh, wait, don't answer that, START PACKING!!! If you cannot fulfill orders due to your suppliers, then maybe you shouldn't be selling these items. How hard is it to put on your page that the item is no longer available? YOU- SIR ARE A CRIMINAL and a FRAUD! If you don't think so, then let's see you refund money or fulfill the orders within the next week- There is a holiday on Monday, so maybe you can work on getting this done! Also looks to me as though you aren't doing so bad for yourself noticing the vehicles you had parked in your drive.....maybe if you weren't stealing from people- who knows! It will be interesting to see if you are able to walk out of your house anymore without the THIEF label!! You are a poor excuse for a businessman -very SAD.

I was going to order about $60 worth of stuff from this guy.... Glad I got a little buzzed on suds that night and I put it off. The next day while surfing the net at lunch I found some warnings.... I found the Chi Company (http://www.chicompany.net ) had the same gear and I saved over $100....

Good luck Tom H....

First, no-where in my response did I say I was not at fault. I plainly stated what happened with this business and why. And why don't I hire more help? This is not a busines that you can just throw a $12.00 / hr person into. So instead I'm trying to shrink back down to something more manageable.

Second, The WHNT story won't help because they posted another inbound link to my web site. Plus the net chatter caused by this story will post even more quality inbound links. And these new links will just increase my Google ratings, traffic and business. If you don't understand this part of my response then have a web developer explain - I really don't have time - I have to go back to shipping stuff.

Third, I believe by comments about Wendy Halloran's interview tactics are valid. No-one deserves to be assulted or blind sided in his own front yard.

Fourth, With all of these complains I have a lot of regular customers who order from me several times every year. But no-one hears from them because they don't complain, do they?

And LOL LW, the Chi Company is a good business. I'm sure you will be happy with them.

Not cool quit messing around on the internet and fill your customers orders. How are you still able to accept Credit cards? I was under the impression that once you had so many charge back you would lose your merchant account.

A person that takes something that doesn't belong to them. Tom owes me a couple of kegs that I ordered and paid for back in March 2009. He still has my money, and the kegs.
If you can't keep up with the orders, why not turn off ordering until you catch up?...or sell the business to someone that can keep up, or quit your day job. If you bit the bullet and trained a decent employee so you could fulfill orders, you wouldn't get the chargebacks. Guess the lazy man's approach is easier, just continue stealing from the homebrewers. That's a community that deserves to be abused eh?