Charlie Gyenes (W6HIQ) makes HF mobile antennas under the name Hi-Q-Antennas. In the past I’ve seen mixed reviews of his antennas although the negative comments had more to do with Charlie and his service than his antennas. He claims to supply antennas to the Military, Nasa and other government entities. The military will often purchase products from many different vendors so it could be thousands or it could be a few dozen for all we know. I personally would love to see the size of his government contracts but that’s a whole different topic. Anyways, I recently discovered a problem between Charlie and a few others in the ham community. I don’t know the details but apparently his antenna lost in a competition where they measure antenna efficiency and he began accuse them of “cooking the numbers”. Then it seems he began to make person attacks against K0BG. It’s impossible to completely prevent criticism, angry customers or even slander but it is possible to respond in a mature and professional manner ─ something in which Hi-Q-Antennas has failed miserably. The response from him is not only a failure from a PR and customer standpoint, it’s an embarrassment to the entire amateur radio community. I would never purchase one of his products after seeing his response to critics and I would encourage others to avoid him as well.
As I already stated, I am unaware of the details of what happened and what exactly was done by K0BG. I do know that K0BG praised the Hi-Q antennas in the past, he is well respected among many in the hobby regarding mobile installations and apparently said or did something in the recent past to criticize Hi-Q-Antennas. I also know that Charlie Gyenes (W6HIQ) participated in the 3905 Century Club’s annual Antenna Shootout competition; He lost to a far cheaper antenna. He also responded by having his lawyer send letters to I believe K0B6 and the 3905 Club despite having absolutely no proof that anything was amiss in the competition ─ at least he hasn’t proven anything publicly from what I have seen. From what I’ve read on his site and others I suspect the letters were threats of legal action for slander. The results of the 2009 Antenna Shootout stated that one of the competitors (Charlie Gyenes - his website confirmed it was him.) complained that the test equipment had to be faulty:
One of the major complainants… this year insisted that the test equipment could not have been working properly. I offered to let him pick up and try the gear for himself (and even Loren offered to deliver it), but he declined. After the gear was returned to me, I took it out in the field and tested it to insure it was working properly – it was. If anyone is interested, I have pix and results from testing three different brands of antennas from one vehicle and one mount location.
The Hi-Q-Antenna news page is filled with very poor grammar, style and personal attacks against KB06 and the 3905 Antenna Shootout. I mention this because it’s so poor I had to read it multiple times before I even had a clue as to what he was trying to say. Below are just a few small quotes taken from the page:
ENTER a “QUACK” * Mr. Know it All! K0bg.
He has gone on a rampage to bash the Hi-Q products (he had FOUR of them, written many articles praising them as being the very best for the past six years, now it is ALL BAD)!
In 2009 it was apparent the ALL of the Hi-Q HF Mobile antennas where the WORST including the NEW Hi-Q-6/80 that is used by our military and NASA!
All of the attendees with Hi-Q antennas at Vista has requested from tom bates, AA1NZ to DO NOT PUBLISH the results until he personally inspect, calibrate HIS ( $9.00 DVOM) with the loop antenna AND
DO A RE-TEST! (Oh yeah, he offered it to me to check it but I know nothing about his DVOM).
Then the KNOW IT All’s came: K0BG!
(Anybody that has OVER 60 subjects on his website, pretends to be an EXPERT on all, HE IS EXPERT ON NONE)!
Look up his biography: I have NOT seen any doctoral degrees in any field of electronics, no brand name test equipment and the KNOWHOW how to use it’
OH YES, he does have usable ideas (or complied them from other people, plagiarizing, like how to do a good grounding and where to place the ferrites or toroids!
K0BG has thrown his hat in the ring, (k0bg.com) allen has for the past six years has written numerous articles praising the four Hi-Q antennas he has (or had).
In October he choose to REMOVE all of his references, crying like a 15 year old school girl, that I had hurt his friends feeling (and his) by doing what needed to be done: STAND up for my good name and the reputation of all of the Hi-Q products by threatening to hire a lawyer to defend my rights!
(And YES, I did)!
The first and most obvious thing you will notice when visiting his site is it’s hideous and poorly designed website that looks like it’s taken right out of the 1990’s. Second, you notice the horrible grammar and the constant misspelling of simple words such as “were”. Third, the obvious tone of the entire message is exactly what he accuses KB06 of, “crying like a 15 year old school girl”. When one looks at all the past results, the reputation of those who run the competition, and the amateur community in general, there is absolutely no reason for this kind of attitude and response. (If he ever reads this, his time, energy and money would be much better spend on a new website and checking his many grammar and spelling mistakes.)
What’s surprising to me above anything else is how immature and unprofessional his response has been as a business owner. He has done everything wrong, broken every rule in the book and more. This easily could have been turned into one of the best opportunities to improve the publics perception of Hi-Q-Antennas. Instead of asking for help and trying to figure out what went wrong, he let his pride get in the way and began to slander and attack anyone and everyone who would dare to criticize him and his product. Apparently he has a problem knowing how to deal with customers according to one reviewer:
If you have a problem getting it to work correctly (or have any question in general like “I ordered this antenna 2 weeks ago and I was wondering when it would ship”) be prepared to get a grumpy Charlie. When I called and cracked open my wallet to order it he was happy to serve. When other calls were made that were not making him money he was less than obliging. And if you have any polite suggestions or feedback, Just keep that to yourself as they do not want to improve their product.
To his credit there are also plenty of positive reviews but it seems he doesn’t do well with criticism and complaints. This reminds me of the famous adage, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” His reputation wouldn’t have even been the slightest bit hurt by any of this had he simply and humbly accepted the results whether they were right or wrong. Over at ExpertLaw.com they have a great article about what constitutes slander and ends with some great reason why one should think very carefully about commencing a lawsuit of slander (the principal applies to any legal action including letters from lawyers) because the lawsuit could do more damage than the “slanderous accusations”. The fact is most amateurs would have chalked to low performance his antenna’s apparently got at the competition to something gone wrong like a bad cable or something and most certainly wouldn’t base their opinion of his antennas from a single competition. This is a case where he clearly overreacted and it will come back to bite him.
There is far more to operating a successful business than simply providing a great product. The most important factor is to provide excellent service and a professional response to every customer ─ especially the critics. I’ve learned that any publicity is good publicity if you know how to respond. When I managed The Great Escape it wasn’t uncommon to have customers complain but we were successful because we genuinely cared about our customers. We were so successful in this that even some of our most angry customers became repeat customers and they even unknowingly became some of the best advertisers. I remember one particularly busy day when I mistakenly double booked a birthday party for the same time slot. We had enough party rooms but not enough room in the laser tag arena for both groups. I immediately told both parties what had happened, explained it was my fault, and asked if one would be willing to wait 20 minutes to play. They were both extremely angry, both refused to compromise and let the other go first and one of the moms said, “This is the worst experience I have ever had. I will never come here again!”. To make a long story short, I apologized several more times, I let her kids play on our inflatables for free while they waited and provided extra pizza. Finally, I only charged her for 8 people even though she had 20 people. Her response as she handed me her credit card was, “I know I was angry and said I wouldn’t come back but…the kids did have a great time so I’m sure we’ll come again.” I later found out she told several parents everything that happened, which only served to increase their confidence in us, not because we were perfect but because they knew if something did go wrong we would make it right. This is the heart of customer service and it is the single deciding factor between satisfied customers and loyal customers.
The only thing Hi-Q-Antennas can do now is apologize to the 3905 club and K0BG for overreacting and making slanderous accusations against them and apologize to the amateur radio community for being an embarrassment. If he would actually humble himself and do these two things he could quite possibly turn things around.
