Has anyone had contact with Burke whistles in past week?

[Whistling Pops]

I am having difficulty contacting Mr. Burke. I am hoping that nothing is wrong. On March 30 I received an email saying the whistle I wanted was in stock. I ordered it the same day. Since it hasn't arrived I emailed, both from my own email link and the one on website. A few days have passed and no answer. Does anyone know if there is a problem. I hope everything is OK.

[Feadoggie]

Ummmm....It's Easter time and there are other seasonal religious celebrations now too. People sometimes observe these things, take time off, visit friends and family, holy days in church, holidays in the spa, spring break at the beach, first day of trout season, opening day of baseball, Spring tionols, etc., etc., etc..

Have patience.

But I also hope you get your order soon and that everything is fine at chez Burke.

Feadoggie

[srleslie]

I went through much the same angst last December, as in this thread. Turns out I was using the automated order email address ("orders@burkewhistles.com"), which he doesn't monitor for private emails; should have used "mdburke@burkewhistles.com" instead. He also checks in here every week or two.

Last I heard he was over his health problems of last year, retired, and looking forward to running his whistle business.

[Whistling Pops]

I received an email today promising it will be mailed soon.. FINALLY!!!!

[maki]

What is your Burke whistle count up to now and what did you order?

[srleslie]

I received an email today promising it will be mailed soon.. FINALLY!!!!

I got an email "from" Mr. Burke today, too--at least it purported to be from him, but was really a spam message for a web hosting service he was supposedly "recommending." Assuming it to be a case of someone getting hold of email addresses I had sent to recently (how that could be done, I'm not competent to say) I forwarded it to Michael for his amusement; he answered immediately that his web site had been hacked. Says the problem has been fixed. May explain his delay in responding to you.

[ytliek]

I got an email "from" Mr. Burke today, too--at least it purported to be from him, but was really a spam message for a web hosting service he was supposedly "recommending." Assuming it to be a case of someone getting hold of email addresses I had sent to recently (how that could be done, I'm not competent to say) I forwarded it to Michael for his amusement; he answered immediately that his web site had been hacked. Says the problem has been fixed. May explain his delay in responding to you.

I got that same spam too

[Whistling Pops]

I got an email "from" Mr. Burke today, too--at least it purported to be from him, but was really a spam message for a web hosting service he was supposedly "recommending." Assuming it to be a case of someone getting hold of email addresses I had sent to recently (how that could be done, I'm not competent to say) I forwarded it to Michael for his amusement; he answered immediately that his web site had been hacked. Says the problem has been fixed. May explain his delay in responding to you.

I got that same spam too

I also got that spam today!

[Whistling Pops]

What is your Burke whistle count up to now and what did you order?

This makes 6. It is an E. I must say though that the stress of this experience may keep me from getting number 7.

[srleslie]

I must say though that the stress of this experience may keep me from getting number 7.

Ach, Laddie, beware the strrress (imagine R's rolled to a fare-thee-well). It can mak yer fingers stiff and unrrresponsive. Be thankful ye didna orrderr a Laffin' whistle: I orrderred me own months hence, dinna ken if I'll everr see it.

[Whistling Pops]

I received an email today promising it will be mailed soon.. FINALLY!!!!

I guess I don't know the definition of soon.
It takes 5 minutes or less to put the whistle in a box and attach shipping label. Three weeks seems to be plenty of time to box and send a whistle.

[mdburke]

I received an email today promising it will be mailed soon.. FINALLY!!!!

I guess I don't know the definition of soon.
It takes 5 minutes or less to put the whistle in a box and attach shipping label. Three weeks seems to be plenty of time to box and send a whistle.

Hello everyone.
I think I will need to make this a multipart answer and I need to ask a question so that I can resolve some issues.

I am very sorry that anyone ever emails me and does not get an answer. I try my best to always answer every email that I receive. One of the difficulties with message boards is that Avatars are not very helpful in assisting me to find who the person is that is having a problem so that I can resolve it. I just spent about 15 minutes trying to search to find a clue, but have been unsuccessful so far.
I wonder if Whistling Pops would email me today at mdburke@burkewhistles.com and let me know who they are and I will make sure that this gets resolved. I just looked through orders going back to mid March on my orders confirmation emails and did not find an order for an E whistle. Perhaps I missed it, or it was made through an email to begin with, I cannot say.

I do apologize for not getting instruments out quickly. I endeavor to ship them as fast as possible. Perhaps I should clarify what it means for a whistle to be "in stock" so that it is clearer to my customers. I make whistles in batches and there are many steps in the process of making a batch of them. I complete instruments right up the the final checkout and the necessary tweaking that goes with that right before they are shipped and also the final polishing and final examination that I do on every instrument. Some whistles will need only a quick check and a small tweak and out they go and others may need more attention. I hand craft every instrument and if a whistle does not ship immediately, I will recycle it through after it sets in shipping for more than a week or so to make sure that nothing has occurred in appearance or the way the instrument plays before it goes out to the customer. The result is that I finish whistles, usually the same day or the day before they are shipped. If I have them in stock, the process is very quick and efficient and that means that normally they can be shipped within one or two days from receipt of the order.

There are circumstances, however, that may delay shipping. A circumstance occurred recently. My daughter, who is a lieutenant in the US Army shipped out for Afghanistan on April 10 and will be gone a year. For the previous 3 weeks, she has been home and my wife and I have tried to spend as much time with her as possible. It is a very busy time and orders pile in very fast right now, and I have struggled to try to keep up with the demand and also give time to family. The results are that shipping times have stretched out, and we have not been able to ship as fast, falling behind a couple of weeks lately.
On April 12, I believe it was, my mdburke@burkewhistles webmail account was hacked and the hacker started sending out emails to the people that were in that account.

I immediately started getting emails from customers informing me of this and I instantly acted to contact my webmaster and we changed the passwords and I deleted all information on that web account to prevent anything else from going out from it. I have from this time kept the emails stored on the webmail page small, and the password has been changed to something very difficult to hack.

I will say that we never ever kept anything secure on that web server that provided email, so no secure information was ever compromised.

I spent a whole day answering emails from customers assuring them that all was well and apologizing. This cost me a whole work day and two hours the next day. I had not ever had this happen before, but others that wrote me said that it had happened to them before. I hope that the steps that I have taken will prevent it from occurring again, but the web is a wonderful and also an ugly place at times with people who have no moral scruples doing whatever they can with no remorse.

This mess also, no doubt made me miss some messages in the maelstrom, though I tried to answer every email and continue to do so.

Please accept my apology if you have personally been inconvenienced by any of this and also I am trying my best to improve the quality of my instruments every day and that means that I obsess over every instrument more and more to push it to be better than the ones I made in the past. That is no problem for me, because I love what I do.
Please contact me Whistling Pops so we can make this right for you. I deeply appreciate your business and the business of all my customers.
All the best
Michael Burke

[Whistling Pops]

Mr. Burke, thank you for responding. I will email you with the needed information. Anyone who reads the forum knows that I have been one of the biggest fans of Burke whistles and I trust this will all be worked out in the end.
Thanks

[srleslie]

Once again, a prompt, thorough, and thoughtful response to a problem. If everyone doing business on the Internet (or anywhere, for that matter) were as conscientious as Michael Burke this would be a wonderful world indeed.

I plan to be ordering a low E soon.

[Cris Gale]

Reading the response made me feel a lot better. I really appreciate the update