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I purchased a used Spoon valve cover from dude01 (Huy) on October 2nd for $200. He sold the cover as being in perfect condition, except that the signature was fading. When I got the valve cover, it looked like this:
Granted it needed to be cleaned up, but there are serious nicks and scratches all over the valve cover, as well as a 1" dent on the front of the cover that I'm pretty sure will prevent it from being installed correctly on the car. Keep in mind that the only time I took it out of the box was to look at it and take pictures -- I NEVER tried to install the cover, or even had a tool within 40 yards of it.
dude01 did not personally mail the valve cover out; as some of you may recall, his car was featured in Modified Mag (I think in Sept. or Oct.), and has an Inline Pro turbo kit installed. His car was at Inline Pro getting some upgrades, so Inline Pro mailed the valve cover out, and told him that it was in perfect condition when they mailed it out. Therefore, he was reluctant to give me my money back for the damaged valve cover. In in the high-res pics that HE posted of the cover when it was sitting at Inline Pro (posted after the transaction, not on his original for sale thread), you can see some of the scratches and nicks:
At this point I had the banged-up valve cover, and dude01 refused to refund my money, stating that the damage was done either by shipping or by me trying to install it myself (which I did not do) -- so I filed a dispute with UPS. After waiting around for over a month, I called UPS in November to see what was going on with the dispute -- they said that, per their policy, they only deal with the shipper, so I should talk to dude01. He said that UPS had dropped the valve cover off at his house, and it was just sitting there, but that they had not returned any money to him. He also said that, because he felt so bad about how our transaction had gone, he would ship out a Spoon spark plug cover with the valve cover.
Nov. 14th - dude01 says he will mail the parts out on Monday
Nov. 30th - I PM him asking for a tracking #, since I still don't have the parts and I'm going out of the country for a while. dude01's reply: "Hey Zach,
Still haven't had a chance to send it out yet. Work has me all tied up. I haven't be @ inline for months now =/ I will try to get it out soon. Prob in the next two weeks.
Huy"
I wait, and wait, and no parts show up. So I PM him on Jan. 4th saying: "Huy,
What is going on with these parts? I haven't heard from you in over a month, and haven't received the parts.
Zach"
He replies on the 5th, saying: "Been busy I haven't had time to go to Inline. I'm going to be backed up for months working on a special project. So its not going to be anytime soon.
Huy"
I PM him back saying "I'm sorry, but that is not acceptable. You still have my money, and I have nothing. I gave you two months to ship the parts, which is more than enough time. Please either return my money or ask Inline to ship the parts to me themselves.
Zach"
He (dude01) replied today saying: "You know what ... I was trying to be a nice guy cause I felt bad that the transaction went bad. I don't owe you anything!! I shipped out a perfect valve cover. I had a few parts left over ... that I was willing to ship to you... I just don't have time at the moment. If you want to act like that then ... really I don't wanna ship anything.
Huy"
I wrote back today saying: "Then please give me my money back. I understand that you are busy, and it is a huge hassle for you to ship out the part, so that is why I gave you the option of returning my money (which you could easily do from your computer). You did not ship out a perfect valve cover, and every member of this board who has seen the pictures agrees that it is not perfect. I understand that you did not personally mail out the valve cover, so I understand why you would not believe that it was mailed out looking the way it did, but let's get past that and focus on completing this transaction or cancelling it.
You do owe me something. You have my money, and I don't have the part that I purchased. You refusing to mail the part or return my money constitutes petty larceny. I don't know if you're forgetting that YOU still have the valve cover or what, but it is illegal. I want to be a nice guy as well, so I will give you a week to either return my money or ship out the valve cover before I press charges.
Zach"
If somebody knows him personally or lives in his area, maybe you can help me out with this. I don't really want him to get arrested over a $200 online transaction, and I don't want to wait months for a court date to try to recover $200. My Paypal address is zjbrewer@fcsl.edu, if he sends me the money (since he has stated that he can't mail the part out right now - too busy) within a week we will be fine.
This is getting more common now in this forum. Second thread where someone has had a problem with a seller. Seemed like you gave him ample time and everything is well documented. Hope you recoup your money.
Why do people list items they can't ship within a reasonable time because they are too busy our out of the country? Seriously, if your schedule is that bad wait till a better time to sell. OP you are more patient than I am. Waiting months?!
Only problem with that is, there are so many pages to look through to actually find a person to see previous transaction response. Easiest fix is a rating system per user.
01-06-2009, 01:26 PM
dude01 = horrible transaction
