2010 Roundup of The Kamado Forum activity

[fishtail-99]

It's time for the year's roundup of activity on the Kamado forum! Lots and lots of interesting information here for any prospective Kamado customers to think about. First, let's go with the number that everyone wants to know: How many posts were made on the Kamado forum this year?

401 posts this year actually show up if you do a search. In 2008 when we did our summary, we could only speculate on how many posts had been deleted by the Johnsons, but this year we have a count. There were actually 453 posts this past year, so 52 posts out of 453 posts were deleted, leaving the 401 you can still see. So think about this folks. 1 in every 9 posts to the forum were deleted by the owners. Sign of trouble perhaps?

Well, here's probably a better sign of trouble at the mill. Here is a year-by-year count of posts to the forum (and of course we don't know how many were deleted in 2009 and earlier years):
2001 - 3,747
2002 - 5,771
2003 - 9,703
2004 - 11,055
2005 - 10,432
2006 - 7.169
2007 - 3,867
2008 - 1,148
2009 - 818
2010 - 401

That's pretty incredible, isn't it? 401 posts down from a peak of over 11,000 in 2004! Well, here are some more statistics for 2010:

There was only 1 post by a new member introducing themselves this year. There were 6 in 2008.
There were no "Hi, I'm a happy customer" threads this year. There were 3 in 2008.
Only 13% of the threads were about cooking, vs. 25% in 2008.
13% of the threads were about problems with cookers cracking, frozen tops, tiles shedding, etc. vs. only 7% in 2008.
17% of the threads were about customer complaints, poor service, where's my cooker, where's my money, etc. etc. etc. up from 11% in 2008.
Only 2% of the threads were about Kamado charcoal and none of them were about pooling orders, despite RJ's claims that this is the best charcoal in the world. (Better even than their Philipine charcoal!)
5% of the threads were folks trying to sell their Kamado cookers.
There were no posts that verified that anyone actually purchased a Kamado cooker during the year.

What about holiday posts? Well a family member posted happy holiday for Thanksgiving, but no one replied. The family ignored the 4th of July, Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. They also ignored Memorial Day.

So, all in all, it appears that both customers and the Kamado company have essentially abandoned the forum. Not a good sign if you are a customer or prospective customer, is it?

Happy New Year!

[Admin]

Now now... let's be fair. We did get a Happy New Year yesterday...

[fishtail-99]

The NY greetings were in 2011, so they will show up in next year's numbers, assuming that Kamado survives the year....

[Unbelievable]

Now, maybe more potential buyers will take notice.

[Gerard]

Your data is begging to be graphed. Surely one of you nerdy types can provide.

[Porkchop]

awesome stats fishtail! numbers don't lie. if you look at this timeline, percent reduction in posts year to year are as follows:

2005-2006 = -30%
2006-2007 = -46%
2007-2008 = -70%
2008-2009 = -29%
2009-2010 = -50%

didn't KFF start mid-year 2006? hmmmm... i guess fishtail is also giving us a performance eval oh, there was another website started in 2006 too, but it couldn't have been all THAT influential...
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[Admin]

[Gerard]

Oh yeah... much better.

[curly]

They're probably just going through the 'quiet period' before they go public or sell out to one of the big-box stores. RJ has big plans ya know!

[Gerard]

[curly]

[fraudkamado]

Based on my personal cache of messages, I show a total of 440 posts to the forum this year. Combined that with the 401 posts left on the forum, that gives a ~10% removal rate.

Sounded interesting, thought I'd share.

[fishtail-99]

I had 453 messages total, so the actual number deleted was 52 or about 11.5%.

[mercurian1]

Ooops I mean Richard!
Where's my refund?

[Unbelievable]