UKC

Hey all.
I was just having a trawl around fleabay, and came about gear from these people:
http://www.caracolclimbs.com
Has anyone heard of them? They seem pretty new, and some of the English is pidgin at best. Prices for some of their products are pretty good,and they do claim CE certification, but i suspect they may be another gear4rocks type company.
Would you use their gear?

In reply to crustypunkuk:
Its a bit naughty that their cams are called 'friends' and their wires are called 'wallnuts'.

In reply to crustypunkuk:


They ARE based in Norfolk.......

In reply to crustypunkuk:

Worse, clicking on the site brings up spam type popup pages.

In reply to crustypunkuk:

The clue is in the name for their cams "Kouba".
Kouba was a cam manufacturer in Czechoslovakia which was bought out by a guy called Jindrich Hudecek (a handy World Cup climber in his day). His company, Hudy Sport is well known though you will be more familiar with Rock Empire (part of his company) and Trango who they make cams for. Adam Ondra is one of their sponsored climbers if that helps!

In reply to jimtitt:

The Mantas are identical to my older Rock empire cams. They are excellent value for their price, but can be bought much cheaper in Germany.

CB

In reply to cb294:
They certainly look like the old-model Robot (I haven´t any of them though). The new model has forged cam stops and an extending sling as well as being lighter.
Since you can buy them much cheaper (£21.98 against £27.99 for the No.3 for example)from http://www.everything-outdoors.co.uk/acatalog/Rock_Empire_Robot_Cams.html it doesn´t make a lot of sense buying the older model really!

In reply to Needle Sports:

I noticed this and that is very worrying. Wouldn't part with any cash or personal info on this website.

In reply to jimtitt: I just looked at the everything outdoors site and although it says you shop online there doesn't appear to be anything to click on to buy them. Is it just me and i'm missing something?

In reply to jimtitt: Don't think, that Kouba was manufacturing cams in Czechoslovakia - doesn't exist 20 years. Kouba is crafting cams also with the name of his brand, as he is making basicaly the same cams for Rock Empire - Jindrich Hudecek, which are just sold with different brand name. However, it's the best quality equipment.

In reply to Needle Sports: Sorry, never happend to me, when I was testing that web :/

In reply to crustypunkuk: Hi, my name is Milan. Me and Paula are climbers and nature enthusiasts. Probably, because she is Spanish and I'm Czech, we do many mistakes in our web page. Caracol Climbs is our small, family type company, which is offering mostly my handmade wooden hangboards and selection of our trad climbing gear from Czech manufacturer Kouba. I was and I still am using this gear on my trad climbing routes in Czech, where I saw and tried this equipement for firstime as good as I'm using this gear on trad routes here in UK. I pretty like that gear and after great offer from Mr. Kouba, we bought passive and active protection from him and would like to introduce it to climbers in UK, where are we living.
Hope I didn't bother you too much with this.

In reply to sianabanana: Sorry again for those pop up windows, but really, never happend to me, while I was testing that, nor to the others. But obviously, it's weird, no idea, where could be problem.

Don't think, that you should be affraid of putting your personal info to our website. We're NOT handling with personal data of our customers, because we use eWay as our secured payment gateway.

Hope that thing with cash doesn't mean, that we're robbing someone!! It's nonsense.

I expect, that your reaction is because you don't know anything about us or you have no friends, who tried our products and it's normal in these times, don't trust people too much ... unfortunately

In reply to crustypunkuk: Excuse my English please, but what is gear4rock type company?

In reply to Needle Sports: Isn't your comment just because we're sort of competition in selling trad climbing gear?

In reply to Boddy:

Boddy, gear4rocks is a company that sells Ukranian climbing gear (http://shop.gear4rocks.com/). They don't have a great reputation on UKC. So saying you're a gear4rocks type company, the OP is basically asking if you're selling Eastern European climbing gear.

As for the pop-ups, I can confirm that when you click on links in the site, you get pop-ups like this:

http://html.usagc.org/pages/greencard/landingpage_eng.html?afk=AdPUKgc

or

http://www.snapfish.co.uk/snapfishuk/storepage/storePageId=Special%20Offers...

I can't see anything in the HTML, so I'm guessing it's something to do with the javascript you've got on the page.

In reply to Boddy: Hi Boddy, I got the pop ups too. They are a bit off putting. I found the site a bit awkward to navigate aswell, it took me a long time to get to the product and price.

Good luck with your venture.

In reply to Boddy:

Hi Boddy.

Thanks for the response.

Its just that a website like that, where you get weird popups from advertisings makes you think this is a spam or fake website.

Doesnt inspire with confidence to part with cash.

Hope you can get it fixed as im sure that it would put others off in the same way.

Sian.

In reply to jimtitt:

Hi Jim, I only have a hazy memory of the details but I don't think Rock Empire have any connection with Hudy any more.

In reply to IainWhitehouse:
Your right, they seperated in 2007/2008.

In reply to IainWhitehouse: Jindrich Hudecek owns both companies, Rock Empire and Hudy sport as well, so it is connection

In reply to Papillon: Hi Papillon, I'll have a look at that problem with those irritating pop-ups soon. Thanks for your remarks about awkward navigation, I promise, that I'll improve it.

In reply to mattrm: Hi Matt, thanks for your responce. We are NOT selling Eastern European climbing gear, all our products are from Czech Republic, which is Central Europe if that change something I saw cams, which gear4rocks are selling, but can't say anything about it, because I don't have experience with it. But the thing I know is, that products from Kouba are known as good and reliable and that's why we decided to represent this brand in UK.

About those pop-ups ... as I wrote to the others, I'll do my best to solve this irritating pop-uping nonsense, hope soon.

Whole page is in HTML with CSS. The only javascript, which I use in our site are buttons for shopping cart, which provides ShopIntegrator - www.shopintegrator.com
and line with link to eWay - www.eway.co.uk, our credit card processing payment gateway ... so hard to say, what exactly can affect pop-ups

If you'll have any idea, I'll appreciate your help.
Cheers.

In reply to Boddy:
Thanks for replying to the thread. It's good that you are keen to offer decent products at decent prices, and i wish you good luck.
I might give the wallnuts a try!

In reply to crustypunkuk: No worries, I just didn't want, that Caracol Climbs looks like some fake web or that we are robbers. Thank you for your attention and yes, try our wallnuts and I'm sure, that you'll be happy with your choice.

In reply to Boddy:

I was intrigued so had a look at those popups. It seems that it stops giving them to you after a few times so I cleared my cache and they came back so must be using a cookie or something to track.

Anyway, I took a look a the html and just cannot seem to find the pesky code that is doing it.

I can see that it is being triggered on the loading of a new page rather than the on click of the link.

Saved the code of the website and just cannot see anything untoward. Also I do not get the same behaviour running the html here on my local machine even though it does it consistently on your site.

Very strange. I would check your code on your local machine, and if you get them there, then I would comment everything out from the page and comment bits back in until you find the thing that is causing the trouble.

If you cannot recreate it on your local machine, then the only thing I can think is the hosting is doing something dodgy.

It is really bugging me that I cant find what is causing it.

In reply to Boddy:

No, it's because your website causes strange popups ; (

SR on behalf of Needle Sports

In reply to sianabanana: I tried your method of comment things out and then comment bits back on my other computer and after putting one script for handling with pictures out, pop ups stopped to appear. Hope it was this thing. Anyway, I wrote to the customer service of names.co.uk which I use for hosting of our website and asked for help. They could see from backup, if there was something wrong. Or at least hope so.

Can you do me a favour please and have a look once again and check if those annoying pop ups are still appearing?
Thanks a lot.

It's really bugging me as well, that I can't find, where the problem is ...

In reply to Stephen Reid: I understand, it was just friendly teasing

Hope that I finally solve that problem...