i have been become extremely frustrated with a seller on Augiogon that goes by Robert from NY (with address of bobsprit(at)aol(dot)com and number of 7187577114) so i decided to post my experience here. he sold me a defective Rega DAC, which I paid $700. after i received it and discovered that it was defective (static popping sounds), he offered me a replacement as he claimed that it was still under warranty. he seemed like a reasonable guy over the phone so i trusted him and sent it back to him in September 2012. since then, he has been avoiding my phone calls and have not replied to my emails. the few times that he has answered my phone calls, he gives bogus excuses, such as that he forgot to send it, and claims he will send it in next few days. he even offers that if the DAC still has issues that he will refund me the money. i have yet to see an email from him that the DAC has been sent. it's obvious that he has no intention on sending a replacement.
i have sold and bought many items over the internet, mostly on ebay, and have had no issues such as this so far. i have always treated my buyers with respect and disclosed any defects in any of the items i sell and i expect the same from others. it's sellers like this that ruin the online community. Robert, you sold your integrity and honesty for $700. karma does exist..you'll see.
Truly a cautionary tale, that perhaps strengthens the case for doing e-bay transactions and using paypal payment system. Audiogon does not have the 'muscle' to back up buyers.
Woo999 - did you initiate a formal Dispute through Audiogon? If so, what happened ? Particularly - what did Audiogon advise you do if (I guess) the seller refused to submit to the Agon dispute process ? If you didn't launch a dispute - why not ?
Seems like the last feedback is three years old. May be he had an expensive divorce since then.
If the story is verifyably true (email track!), you should be able to escalate and get him banned from Audiogon. I had one incident over the last decade and my fraudulent trading partner was banned. Easy to come back with new email address, but at least it would wipe out the 100% rating record.
Robert has excellent feedback and you have none. Why should we believe you? I have been burned by ebay sellers too many times to mention. I had to stop buying there.
I have 125 deals (sales and purchases) on ebay. I got a really bad Linn LP Top Plate from a seller that really didn't know what he was doing (at least he made a bad crook by putting a photo of a nice one and selling me the other) and got a very quick refund. He sold another person an item then told them he was too broke to ship it. They got a refund and he was dropped by ebay. You have to use paypal and or a credit card when making purchases. Ebay (even though I hate some of their rules) is as safe as anywhere else. You just have to be careful, because unfortunately there are bad people everywhere. I hope Woo999 gets their money back and thanks for the heads up.
Audiogon never reply to my last request for assistant .... :-( Just need to be careful out there .... But how ? Craigslist use to be very good, now is just full of bad people looking for opportunity ....
Feedback sometimes means nothing... sellers can not leave feedback on Ebay if a Buyer stiffs them... only buyers can... rule I learned from a buddy who got burned... trust no-one, check everything right away, file a dispute with Paypal, EBay, Audiogon whoever, right away, and let your Credit Card company know.. Some people figure you are just number on the other side of the country... couldn't care less if you were screwed... they will block you, threaten you, anything to get you to stop... but like someone said... "karma is a b*tich..." sooner or later, they will get theirs.
A simple method to resolve this is to use your credit card when funding PayPal. I've had a dispute using PayPal and their process (several years ago) offered no refund if the seller was found guilty (this for an expensive new motorcycle exhaust system) which was never delivered (Canada seller on eBay). I had to specifically ask questions to the PayPal agent to confirm their policy. After learning no refund would be issued, I stopped wasting my time dealing with PayPal and contacted my credit card company. They have a buyer protection policy for none delivered items and immediately refunded my charge and I left PayPal to deal with it. One phone call and faxing several papers to my credit card company was all it took. Regarding PayPal, don't be fooled into thinking PayPal offers buyer protection. While they offer buyer support, they do not offer refunds for fraudulent transactions.
Altogether too often these days, small 'rings' of userIDs seem to pop up with a low number of positive feedbacks each. In the old system, you could see the userID in full. Looking carefully, the 3 or 4 userIDs seem to work together and buy-sell from each other some music, or components and bolster each others positive feedback. At times and in one specific case I have experienced, it is only 1 or 2 people, all working from the same IP address(es) to put the setup in place. Audiogon will not legaclly pursue a fraudulent seller in my experience, or lend a user help to do so either but they will ban a user or an ad in relatively short order. The problem is the users come back with different userIDs, some even tied to the same or similar information and location a short while or up to a year later and start the ring all over again, sometimes using the exact same pictures and items descriptions they stole from somewhere else a year before to defraud other users.....unfortunately this is altogether too real on this forum and people have gotten burned.
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