"Have you ever been ripped off?" Topic

On another thread on payment types one of our members said he would not accept PayPal since they alway side with the buyer.

With that in mind, have you ever had someone fail to pay and keep the goods?

Nothing like that has happened to me, however, I did have one eBay buyer who won, never paid, and ignored all attempts to contact. With no payment no shipment was made.

Sort of. Years ago I won an eBay auction with a lowball bid on a 40K vehicle.
I paid promptly; no response from the seller for three days. He finally claimed he never had such an item for sale; eBay did nothing. At least the dude didn't accept my payment.

Well I would not classify those examples as being ripped off since any loss was negligible. I did recently pay for some ww1 tanks from a frequent seller in the marketplace. The items pictured were painted resin and metal. What I got was 3d printed tanks. I kept them without a fuss, but felt I was overcharged for what I received. No worries though. I just wrote that seller off for future purchases. He has improved on the descriptions of items since.

Yes I have. A few years back I had an eBay auction for painted to order 40k vehicles. As I needed a bunch for my IG I bit. Well the guy had to buy the Models and started to paint them. Then all communication ceased. But since it was pas the 60 day for eBay neither them or Paypal would help. Then last year I won an auction for 28mm 1st and 2nd Nappy Carbanier, again a "will paint to order". Well after a bit no emails were ever returned. eBay and PayPal would not help as it was beyond 60 days and they urged me to contact the seller…..

So that was $800 USD of lessons.

Chris

Yes, many years ago. It was a minor amount compared to some gamer's stories though.

Yes – sent order to Dom Decals 11-19=2017 sent some emails and never returned, the next thing I know its past the 60 days. So if you want to be ripped off send Dom Decals a order. I was lucky it was only for $20 USD and not more.

Yes, for about $180 USD on a kickstarter that took the money and ran.

I had a e-bay item sell for well above what I thought it was worth. I ship it to Philadelphia and as a after thought I add insurance. 3 months later he said he never got the item and want his money back. Well I call the Post office in Phil. and they had it signed for by his mother.

So I present my resolute to E-bay and they take my money anyway, I need it to be sign for by the customer and not his mother. I got my Money back from the Post office.

It lit a fire under the postal inspector and they finally caught him red handed signing his mother signature on all packages he received. Apparently she had passed away years ago. He gets some happy time in Jail for his troubles.

I also got burned for $150 USD on the evil dead Kickstarter.

I got burned by a decal company for $40 USD, they accepted payment and never shipped.

And then there's the long story about New Wave, it took a year and the threat of legal action to get something approaching satisfaction from them.

Once before ebay from another miniatures gamer across the country – paid for a painted army that turned out to be badly painted and packed several layers on top of each other – when I complained about both – his response was take it up with the Postal Service – because they must have caused the problem.

Later it was with ebay not holding a seller accountable along with paypal

The Last Valley, put a big order for bocage in in 2003 before deploying to Iraq, still no sign of it!

Tally Ho!

1984. I gave a "friend" $150 USD to piggyback on an order he was sending to the UK. Essex? Hinchliffe? I forget.
Back then you had to purchase a bank draft in pounds sterling for such an order.
Gave him the money, haven't heard from him since.
I'm still hopeful, but I haven't had any Ancients for years.

Yes, several Kickstarters, an LGS (I won't say FLGS) that flogged me an army of GHQ moderns, lovely photos of the collection but then they arrived the vast majority were H@R (still nicely painted but way overpriced), they'd just photographed the GHQ ones, left the others in the background and passed them all off as GHQ. But no recourse as "they were all in the photos" (yes, small, at the back, out of focus). Oh, and the bring and buy stand at a local show where all my stuff sold at the reserve price – as it turned out to the guy running the b&b who never even put it out for the public to see; he was a trader and some of my stuff ended up on his trade stand at the same show for twice the price I'd asked for it.

A long time ago I purchased about $700 USD of old school Citadel fantasy figs from a guy in Nevada. He shipped a few figs then ignored me. After my attorney reached him I got all the money and more back.

The only other incident that comes to mind is from a buyer on eBay. He purchased one of the limited edition D&D Orcus plastic figures which was mint in the original box and the box it was shipped in – both still sealed from the factory.

A week later he claimed he got it and the box was smashed and punctured. After requesting photos of the damage he went silent for almost two weeks before I got some suspicious looking photos back.

He shipped the figure back to me and the damage on the boxed figure inside didn't match up with the holes and crushed corner of the box it was shipped in.

What he did was ship me back an Orcus figure he had previously purchased somewhere with damaged boxes – not the ones I sent him – and tried to claim that this is what he got from me. The original shipping label also didn't match up.

Unfortunately for him, when I ship expensive items like this I put unique markings on the box so I can tell if someone is trying to scam me on a return. I also photograph it in the shipping box along with the shipping label.

I went to my local post office and they started an investigation. I also notified eBay and to my surprise, I got a full refund of the purchase price back – from eBay – not the buyer. Ebay claimed it was too hard to tell what happened and that they wanted to take care of me because I was such a good customer.

I didn't buy that for a second so I investigated the buyer further. It turns out he spends about $10 USDk a month buying movie props through eBay. That is a lot of fee money for eBay so it was the buyer they were really worried about alienating.

Many years ago (pre Ebay) I sold some miniatures to a guy, shipped them to him & never received payment. After several letters where he alternatively said he sent payment or he was getting set to send payment I just wrote it off & told him it was on his conscience, not mine. Learned after this to wait for the check before ever sending items.

Not me but some guy from Brazil.Way back I bought a blister of GW LOTR Elves with spears in metal.One of the metal shields was missing so I called mail order to complain. The Troll told me they couldn't bitz that range,so they would send me a whole blister. A week or so later,TWO boxes show up on my doorstep,both addressed to me.One had the Elves,the other had an invoice for some guy in Brazil,and was full of 40k figs.I called GW again about these figures and asked what they wanted me to do and told me to keep them. I'm sure that guy eventually got his stuff.

Kick-Starter for $550. USD 4 years out and still nothing. Dom's Decal, waited 6 months with no replies to emails, posts, VM. Did finally get him to return the $200. USD Several times on Barter-Town for miniatures but that was like 18 years ago.

No, not in the wargaming hobby, so far I've been lucky but then I don't buy much. I had to send one lot of figures back as they didn't match the misleading description. The vendor was fine with me about doing so though.

I've had a few miscasts and a few breakages over the years but all three companies sorted out the issues very quickly.

I've had a few problems on eBay buying fishing gear. I had to threaten legal action to get a refund on an item that wasn't at all as described – they then refunded me in minutes.

In '83 one of my bi-weekly Ancients gaming "friends" asked to borrow some of my Romans for the weekend because he had relatives visiting and he wanted to use them in a game against his Gauls.

Monday I called to no answer and Tuesday I went to his apartment to retrieve my "boys" and…. the place was empty! Landlord said "they just up and left" over the weekend! Crazy! Never heard from my little guys again.

I've been lucky and have only had a few minor issues over the years; at the time they always seemed 'larger' than they actually were.

Not a rip off – but – a colossal pain in the…

Years ago I placed a large order (over 2000 pounds) to a UK manufacturer. Because of the size of the order Fed Ex was used to ship same.

Three weeks later my Fed Ex guy rings the bell with this extremely long obviously custom made wooden box and asks me to help him get it inside. I ask to see the paperwork and I am now the proud owner of a custom made muffler for a Mazda. Additionally, I had to pay (later reimbursed) a hefty customs fee on this.

So, my order from the UK company went to a custom car company in Tokyo Japan and I received the muffler which now involved the actual customer for the muffler who received nothing.

It took six months of numerous phone calls / paperwork to straighten out.

Yup, Palladium Books Robotech kickstarter, promised over and over again for 5 years that the project would be completed, also promised refunds if they didn't deliver. But they knew all along they had misused the funds and were outright lying to the backers and when the project was finally cancelled they claimed they couldn't issue refunds, but they published several new books not long after that. Maybe someday the Michigan AG will finally look into it.

When Architects of War was going through their Kickstarter shenanigans, I placed an order for the Woodbine WW1 figures. At a convention, I paid them cash for the order that they had on their table, but forgot to bring to the convention. I was told that they would have it the next day, then that it would be mailed, because it was in the house. Later found out that they never placed the order, just took my money.

I have been lucky and count my blessings.

Long before the internet and the ubiquity of inexpensive private mail boxes, I mail-ordered a game. I never got it, but the company said that its records showed that it had been sent. I believe that the post office brought it to my apartment building when I happened not to be home to answer the buzzer, and they just left it on the little shelf in front of all of the mailboxes, and some other tenant just stole it.

And no, I have not, in the ensuing 30+ years, been hunting down each of the 100-odd other tenants, strangling them in their sleep, and searching their homes for my missing game. Definitely not. That's not my style. Besides, it could have been someone from an adjacent building, or a guest of one of the tenants, and it's really almost impossible to get people to remember who visited them during a particular week in May of 1985 when they were busy studying for finals … anyway, it's not me.

I bought what was supposed to have been some 28mm John Jenkins Japanese buildings. I forget what happened next, but I ended-up with a half-broken resin building with pasta-textured thatch. I do not recall whether it was the seller who had baited-and-switched or a local club member who claimed that the same seller had shipped the wrong model to him.

On the other side of the spectrum, I've done a few sculpting jobs for companies and never got paid for them, which is why I ask for non-refundable deposits now.

They were all approved and AFAIK they liked the sculpts, but when it came to ship them and get paid, I never heard back from them. One sculpt was $900. USD the other $1,500. USD Each was for two different companies.

Normally I would have pursued it, but since both companies were in other countries it wasn't worth the hassle.

It's not just customers that buy product that can get screwed.

I lost about $80 USD when Wayland Games went under.

MechanicalHorizon, 100% agree with you. I'm often asked to produce custom designs and or sizes. Up to this point have not required a deposit. 85% of the time the person / company fulfills their commitment to pay and all is good. Then there are those that when notified that the design work & printing are complete, go completely radio silent… I also had an experience where I was asked to donate design time and production costs to support a youth naval reserve group fund raiser. 100% of all sales were to go to the JNROTC group. I did this to the tune of $600. USD Found out after the fact that the company was selling the items on the web and 10% was SUPPOSEDLY going to the group…It situations like these that remind me why I love my dog so much;-)

Only in a minor way, I bought some dark age archers off ebay thinking they were 28mm ut they turned out to be 20mm, partly my fault for being dozy really.

Bought a few things on Ebay that were never delivered.

Did you mean spartan games instead of Wayland?

Never been ripped off for cash but time, I've had a customers who place orders and when I send the Paypal invoice they never paid and never replied to emails. While I didn't lose any money I could have used the time to fill a paying customers order.

I sold a very large sculpt for a few hundred in cash and a set number of resin casts – I was really impressed with how the creature had turned out and wanted a couple of casts.

The buyer (a TMPer) said he needed a few extra weeks to come up with the second half. I agreed to the extension. Well, it took more than a year and a half, and about a dozen emails to see that second half. Plus I never got the casts.

Dan

Yes, I believe the company was Rand Games and it was a very long, long time ago.

I was ripped off by:

Black Tree Design: paid and never received delivery

Baker company: winter war kickstarter – paid and never received. The bastard is selling the minis on the website but never supplied those who financed them. What an ***ho**

Not in gaming but I once bought some stuff off of ebay, it didn't arrive I emailed, no response. The guy was so upset when I left him bad feedback. My main hobby is photography, I see some "stores" selling cameras on Ebay that have wonderful feedback, like 98.5 with thousands of positive reviews. Yet their reputations are that they bait and switch and ship broken products and rip people off. I have often suspected that there is a way to hack into ebay's feedback and give yourself a false rating. I had a similar thing happen with Ebay over some fake baseball tickets. Paypal and my credit card company took care of that. My experience with ebay is that they look after their sellers, after all those are actually their customers. The sellers pay the fee (directly), the buyers don't. And this is why I don't do Kickstarters either, I've been ripped off a couple of times. And if it's a year or so out not even my bank will help me. You give them money now, they promise to deliver sometime in the future and you don't even have something in writing. Sure you can enforce a verbal contract in court but odds are you will never collect a judgment.

Apparently I have. Ordered decals from Dom's decals back in Aug '17 and still haven't seen 'em. I guess it's POSSIBLE they could still show up though, right?

But that's really the only time I can recall in 3 decades worth of gaming, so I guess I've been pretty lucky.