Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire BOOTLEG ebay WTF.

[VideoGameImports]

I don't think we ever sold anything through Arcade Otaku before so possibly Saur was trying to fix something on somebody else's behalf.

There was a lot more to the story with Minty's Duo than has been mentioned and you've definitely only heard one side to the story and only a small part of the story at that. I'll go into a bit of it here but if Minty wants to, he's welcome to forward all our email correspondence back onto me again (I don't have it with my computers here and my old ones are stored away), I'll take a fresh look at it. But I'd want all the emails, in their entirety along with all his nasty vicious words, where he mentioned that he broke it himself (not the original fault, a different one), rather than just some massively edited version.


Basically what happened is we sold Minty a Duo with an RGB SCART conversion (which I think may have been done by Saur, who was doing them for us at the time). It turned out to have the sound problem which became increasingly well-known of Duos. We didn't know this when we sent it, so it could have degraded in between us last testing it and him testing it. I honestly can't say for sure. The RGB wasn't working properly too. He opened it up and ended up damaging something. I can't remember what it was but it was he who told me about the damage. He sent it to Saur who said the drive was completely dead. It's a common trick for people to try swapping drives and as he said he already had plenty of CD games, it was plausible that he could have done this, even though I didn't actually accuse him of doing that. While it's tee that the console was under warranty, it's also true that the CD-ROM drive was working fine when he sent it to Saur. When it arrived broken, it was either because he swapped it or because it got damaged in transit. It's well-known that PC Engine CD-RIM drives are very delicate and before he bought the console we talked about this and packaging it well. It's not my faulty that he didn't pack it properly to send to Saur. Of course we would have repaired it but it's not fair that we have to pay for a repair for damage which must have been done in transit when he sent the console to Saur because he used shit packaging.

As I said above, if he wants to send all the email correspondence, I'll look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and reconsider it. To be honest, the guy was being an utter bastard about it, something which was never portrayed in his posts (obviously, as he's going to want to make it sound likes being 100% bad and him 100% good). But on the other hand, obviously he did receive a console which wasn't working properly and I can't blame him for that and I can of course understand somebody not being happy about that. But there was so much more to this. My eventual stance at the end wasn't just me being a bastard, it was how he acted towards me and I still believe that if the drive got damaged on the way to us, then we shouldn't have to fork out for it being repaired. It's pretty much the same thing as somebody returning say a package which is actually just an envelope with a CD-ROM game inside which arrived broken in two but then still wanting a refund. Of course, a Duo with a working drive which then gets damaged in transit on the way back to get something else fixed is slightly more of a grey area and more complicated but I still think in principle it's the same. I don't know or remember what happened to the Duo, whether we returned it to him partly unfixed or not.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

To be honest, the guy was being an utter bastard about it, something which was never portrayed in his posts

Actually it was. To play devil's advocate here, anyone who says they're going to bid on an auction and purposefully not pay for the items as justification for a business deal they felt slighted about (instead of trying to resolve them directly) clearly has issues. That's not a professional way to resolve a complaint about an order you made with a company. Even in the post where he complained about you it seemed like it was just bad luck that an item being shipped for a mod got damaged in transit (having worked at a shipping warehouse before, I know how rough irresponsible shipping guys can treat boxes) and somewhere along the line there was a miscommunication, mistakes might have been made, the package probably should have been insured against damages, I dunno, but at some point Minty lost his shit and decided to pin all the blame on you. It's clear that what he posted is probably only snippets of the actual emails back and forth.

[Skykid]

Guys.

Let's say Minty was a complete bastard about it and his communication was unsavoury. Let's say he did tinker with the PCE and break something. Let's say it was difficult to reason with him.

End of story: one guy has 200 pounds of his money and he has nothing. Not even a half working PCE console.

To me that doesn't sound like a reasonable way to end the deal, especially if the product was faulty when he received it.

[Bar81]

Guys.

Let's say Minty was a complete bastard about it and his communication was unsavoury. Let's say he did tinker with the PCE and break something. Let's say it was difficult to reason with him.

End of story: one guy has 200 pounds of his money and he has nothing. Not even a half working PCE console.

To me that doesn't sound like a reasonable way to end the deal, especially if the product was faulty when he received it.

What are you talking about? If the item got there and it was working and he broke it then that's his problem. Even if we were to assume it was broken when he got it, as soon as he broke parts of it that's on him as well. If it didn't work, he should have sent it back without anything else like a normal rational human being. His subsequent behavior just proves that there's something not all there with that guy.

[nosorrow]

Indeed, it sheds new light on that dispute. Why not return the item ASAP if it's broken? Why even start tinkering with it? I don't get it.

[Skykid]

Neither of you have read the grievance, obviously, so why question me?

Neither the sound or picture was working on arrival. VGI accused him of tinkering and further breaking the CD Drive. There's no evidence for this, no one knows.

So again, a console paid for, faulty on arrival. Deal ends with customer out £200 with not even a faulty console.

You guys must be barking mad to think that's an appropriate final settlement. Responsibility is with the business. Issuing no refund at all and keeping the returned console is theft, technically.

[Bar81]

Neither of you have read the grievance, obviously, so why question me?

Neither the sound or picture was working on arrival. VGI accused him of tinkering and further breaking the CD Drive. There's no evidence for this, no one knows.

So again, a console paid for, faulty on arrival. Deal ends with customer out £200 with not even a faulty console.

You guys must be barking mad to think that's an appropriate final settlement. Responsibility is with the business. Issuing no refund at all and keeping the returned console is theft, technically.

It's obvious that you are just trying to stir up shit now.

We have a guy, who obviously has questionable ethics given his admitted behavior above, claiming that a unit he received wasn't working (no one but him has any idea if this is true, but we will assume it is for the sake of discussion). Then, inexplicably, instead of just returning the unit for a refund like any normal person would, he, by his own admission, at the very least breaks some part of the unit after opening it up. Now, it's suddenly supposed to be on the seller to do what? To magically determine if the unit was broken before he broke it?

People like you and him are the reason manufacturer 's put tamper proof seals on electronic goods.

[Skykid]

You're an idiot.

I'd appreciate you not responding until you either get your brain out of freefall or actually read the history.

The issues with the console being faulty on arrival (no sound, image) were confirmed when the console was returned to the designated repair guy. So yes, the guy bought and received a faulty console and both parties agree on this point.

The CD drive not working - purportedly, remember the customer never had a chance to corroborate this information - was an additional issue on arrival with the repair guy blamed on transit handling and poor wrapping.

No one has taken responsibility for it and the whole tampering thing is uncorroborated.

So again, synopsis for the slow of thinking: man buys console, console arrives broken. Broken console returned for repair, claim of additional fault. Customer never receives console in any condition again, never receives a penny of his money back.

That's totally cool with you is it?

We should probably stick you in the trading station warning thread as a matter of course.

[VideoGameImports]

Told you it was a grey area!

Skykid, I think you're possibly missing the point a bit here. We reached a stalemate. It wasn't working when he got it so he returned it but on arrival at Saur's place, it was damaged further due to poor packaging on his behalf. The buyer wouldn't pay to get that part fixed, wouldn't accept that he could/should try to make some sort of claim with the courier (even though both Saur and I agreed that if it was damaged in transit, it was because of his poor packaging!) and wouldn't accept anything else so it was just left. We were left unable to act and he was pissed off at us and blamed us for everything.

If he agreed to pay for the repair of the fault which was done in transit on his side, we would have returned it. If he wanted it repairing other than the part which was damaged in transit, we would have returned it. If he accepted a refund minus the cost of repair to the CD drive, we would have given it to him. But he accepted nothing and just ranted at me so it just got left. As I said, I really don't remember if we ever returned it to him unprepared or not. He says he never got it back so I guess we not have done and it's so long ago and would take me ages to find out if we ever did. It was a very difficult situation to deal with to be honest. He never asked for a console to arrive not working but then other things happened which weren't our fault and his stance and attitude wasn't allowing progress to be made. I'm glad we don't get this sort of situation every day (or even every year!). If he hasn't got anything at all to show for his money, that's not right. And that's why I mentioned that he's welcome to send me all correspondence and I'll look over it again and consider if there's anything I think we should do about it. We never aimed to screw him in any way but he made it impossible for us to do what was right. he just had the opinion that we were completely at fault for everything, took no blame for using inadequate packaging and was horrible about it. I really hate this sort of thing. As I said earlier, this situation was so bad in every way that we actually almost completely stopped selling PC Engine hardware. I think we pretty much stopped buying Duos, Super CD-ROMs and white CD-ROMs for about half a year because I just couldn't face looking at them.

[Skykid]

I got it, I got it.

But Lee, you have to do something. You can't just keep the product and all the guy's cash. You want to refund him minus the cost of repairs? So do it. Ignore the angry emails, send the total to his PayPal acc and return the repaired machine.

There's one thing really worth noting in all this: you can blame his poor packaging (it must have been sheer latex to somehow manage to damage the CD drive internals) but if you had sent the working unit he paid for initially he would never have had to make that return in the first place.

I appreciate it's not perfect world. I've had to deal with plenty of tenuous situations and dodgy customers over the years, but in the end I always have to compromise, even if it costs me something, for the sake of reputation.

I can see this deal was problematic, but your resolution to date is non-existent. I just have no idea why you're still holding 100% of his initial payment.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, at the very least I'm surprised that there wasn't a "fine, here's a refund of the modification costs and we're shipping you back the broken machine you sent us" which would have been a resolution (albeit not an ideal one), but I was more saying that we shouldn't make any hard judgements one way or another without knowing the full extent of the story (it's entirely possible an offer along these lines was made and simply ignored because he was holding out for a full, free replacement of a working machine or something, who knows).

We were left unable to act and he was pissed off at us and blamed us for everything.

Based on this, I'd have probably just shipped the broken machine you'd received back to the address he'd sent it from, refunded him the mod costs he'd paid so far, and washed my hands of it. It sounds like you tried to get him to contact the shipper for a damage claim, and possibly he knew it wouldn't go through if it was his own fault so he might've been stalling to get a resolution that got him a working machine (it can also be very difficult to prove damage claims and get reimbursement from a shipping company unless the box itself is visibly damaged on the outside and you file the claim the moment you get the package).

If there was poor packaging when the machine was shipped that clearly could have resulted in damaged goods, did you make sure to get photographic evidence of this? This sort of thing is important for covering your butt, especially if you're trying to show the customer the product they sent you got damaged because of their own negligence. I remember I worked in a place where a customer once returned a large, expensive fabric cover worth $500 because he ordered the wrong one, and instead of taping up the package it had been shipped to him in, he simply rolled it up with a few strips of packing tape with a shipping tag underneath and returned it without any external packaging, meaning it was a miracle it didn't get too dirty in transit. Why he didn't use the original packaging I'll never know, but we went over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure it was in good enough condition enough to resell (he had no excuse as he called the day he got the order to schedule a return, did he destroy the external packaging? I have no clue).

[MintyTheCat]

Yeah, at the very least I'm surprised that there wasn't a "fine, here's a refund of the modification costs and we're shipping you back the broken machine you sent us" which would have been a resolution (albeit not an ideal one), but I was more saying that we shouldn't make any hard judgements one way or another without knowing the full extent of the story (it's entirely possible an offer along these lines was made and simply ignored because he was holding out for a full, free replacement of a working machine or something, who knows).

We were left unable to act and he was pissed off at us and blamed us for everything.

Based on this, I'd have probably just shipped the broken machine you'd received back to the address he'd sent it from, refunded him the mod costs he'd paid so far, and washed my hands of it. It sounds like you tried to get him to contact the shipper for a damage claim, and possibly he knew it wouldn't go through if it was his own fault so he might've been stalling to get a resolution that got him a working machine (it can also be very difficult to prove damage claims and get reimbursement from a shipping company unless the box itself is visibly damaged on the outside and you file the claim the moment you get the package).

If there was poor packaging when the machine was shipped that clearly could have resulted in damaged goods, did you make sure to get photographic evidence of this? This sort of thing is important for covering your butt, especially if you're trying to show the customer the product they sent you got damaged because of their own negligence. I remember I worked in a place where a customer once returned a large, expensive fabric cover worth $500 because he ordered the wrong one, and instead of taping up the package it had been shipped to him in, he simply rolled it up with a few strips of packing tape with a shipping tag underneath and returned it without any external packaging, meaning it was a miracle it didn't get too dirty in transit. Why he didn't use the original packaging I'll never know, but we went over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure it was in good enough condition enough to resell (he had no excuse as he called the day he got the order to schedule a return, did he destroy the external packaging? I have no clue).

BareKnuckleRoo:

No offers were made. I can print out every E-Mail if it is necessary to prove this.

I was asked by Lee to post to his repair guy and I acted on that.

I did not ask Lee to contact the postal service to claim anything; that was his call to make himself some money back - nothing to do with me and please pay attention to Lee's morals/ethics here.

Lee describes the situation as being 'grey' but I'd counter that and state that:

1. Item was faulty when I received it.
2. Item's cable was not wired correctly; I had to use my own video cables to get it to display anything.
3. Item posted and Lee claims that CD Drive was faulty and that I must have damaged it. I have never had anyone report me as being dodgy in any way and I have not the time to mess around 'swapping Duos' faulty for working - that's a pretty cheap move and laughable from where I am standing.
4. Lee messed about a lot and lied through his teeth: thought he checked the Duo then retracted then said he had, claimed extra damages along the way to cover his own operations, generally behaved like a dodgy seller.
5. Never reimbursed anything - nowt.

For all your claims that I am some kind of super villain keep in mind that I have nothing to gain here. I simply lost the best part of GBP 200 and got nothing but a load of hassle from Lee and VGI in the process.

The guy has felt the need to some how defend himself as the situation has become public and he is concerned about his proift margins here

I would suggest that you chaps who sit there judging me to read the entry in the trading post. I have no issues in printing the entire set of E-Mails publicly if it is necessary here but please read it BEFORE you say things such as "Minty opened up the Duo and probably damaged it himself".

[MintyTheCat]

AO is Arcade Otaku (forum). Said I remember Saur as the guy who I had to ship the faulty unit to twice, whether or not it was you being the seller Lee, I can't say for sure.

Either way it doesn't matter. Unit was faulty, issue was unresolved, and I was out of pocket on two special D shippings, but I came to a partial refund agreement that I was happy with at the time and I'm keeping the GT as parts for a rainy day.

But if you actually didn't refund or even return Minty's DUO unit that's real cold and as a business you should make good on it. The guy bought and paid for working system, that's what he should get no matter what happened in transit.

Exactly. Interesting that Lee completey ignores me and my statements eh. Saying that he nearly had to stop selling PCE Hardware due to my experience is a poor cop out and laughable.

[MintyTheCat]

I don't think we ever sold anything through Arcade Otaku before so possibly Saur was trying to fix something on somebody else's behalf.

There was a lot more to the story with Minty's Duo than has been mentioned and you've definitely only heard one side to the story and only a small part of the story at that. I'll go into a bit of it here but if Minty wants to, he's welcome to forward all our email correspondence back onto me again (I don't have it with my computers here and my old ones are stored away), I'll take a fresh look at it. But I'd want all the emails, in their entirety along with all his nasty vicious words, where he mentioned that he broke it himself (not the original fault, a different one), rather than just some massively edited version.


Basically what happened is we sold Minty a Duo with an RGB SCART conversion (which I think may have been done by Saur, who was doing them for us at the time). It turned out to have the sound problem which became increasingly well-known of Duos. We didn't know this when we sent it, so it could have degraded in between us last testing it and him testing it. I honestly can't say for sure. The RGB wasn't working properly too. He opened it up and ended up damaging something. I can't remember what it was but it was he who told me about the damage. He sent it to Saur who said the drive was completely dead. It's a common trick for people to try swapping drives and as he said he already had plenty of CD games, it was plausible that he could have done this, even though I didn't actually accuse him of doing that. While it's tee that the console was under warranty, it's also true that the CD-ROM drive was working fine when he sent it to Saur. When it arrived broken, it was either because he swapped it or because it got damaged in transit. It's well-known that PC Engine CD-RIM drives are very delicate and before he bought the console we talked about this and packaging it well. It's not my faulty that he didn't pack it properly to send to Saur. Of course we would have repaired it but it's not fair that we have to pay for a repair for damage which must have been done in transit when he sent the console to Saur because he used shit packaging.

As I said above, if he wants to send all the email correspondence, I'll look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and reconsider it. To be honest, the guy was being an utter bastard about it, something which was never portrayed in his posts (obviously, as he's going to want to make it sound likes being 100% bad and him 100% good). But on the other hand, obviously he did receive a console which wasn't working properly and I can't blame him for that and I can of course understand somebody not being happy about that. But there was so much more to this. My eventual stance at the end wasn't just me being a bastard, it was how he acted towards me and I still believe that if the drive got damaged on the way to us, then we shouldn't have to fork out for it being repaired. It's pretty much the same thing as somebody returning say a package which is actually just an envelope with a CD-ROM game inside which arrived broken in two but then still wanting a refund. Of course, a Duo with a working drive which then gets damaged in transit on the way back to get something else fixed is slightly more of a grey area and more complicated but I still think in principle it's the same. I don't know or remember what happened to the Duo, whether we returned it to him partly unfixed or not.

Vicious eh?

To start a message with the statement that I am highly likely to edit them, you make me laugh.
Your level and degree of argument is what I would expect from an adoloscent, Lee.

I did not open up the Duo, Lee. I did not even own the necessary tool to open the machine up as given in the E-Mails.
Now, you claim not to have any of the E-Mails - fair enough. I have them all here and I can quote directly from them whereas you are having to rely on memory. I'd invite you to tell me and the rest of us about my 'vicious words' if you can find any that is. For the record I recall calling you a piece of slime in an E-Mail and a scumbag on here. That's probably vicious in your book but from your actions and behaviour and from I have read of your treatment of some others I can say that the title is befitting.

Lee has managed to behave in a similar fashion going back to at least 2001:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/archive/i ... -2297.html

It was purely your statement that the Duo's CD-Drive was damaged when you received it. I cannot say that this was correct now as you never returned it to me to try but I can say that it was working when I sent it to Saur but either way given your questionable ethics and dodgy working practices of which can be corroborated by others I would say that my word is not under suspicion here but your is and what's more as a Seller and shop operator your word and reputation is something that has to be kept pristine otherwise buyers such as me and every body else will lose faith in your and then stop buying from you.

In fact here is what Lee wrote in the E-Mail:

"
from: Lee - VGI <lee@videogameimports.com>
to: Minty
date: 13 July 2007 16:24
subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

If you're trying to insinuate that I sent you a machine which was knowingly faulty,I COULD EASILY TURN IT AROUND ON YOU AND SAY YOU OPENED THE MACHINE UP AND SWAPPED THE DRIVE WITH A FAULTY MACHINE YOU ALREADY HAD. You already said you'd been building up a collection of games over the years, but without a machine to play it on? I'm sure a lot of people would find that suspicious, and from someone who works in electronics too. But I won't say that. The only proof I have is you saying the drive worked before you sent it back and it not working now, so I have to conclude it got damaged in transit, and there's no way I'm going to pay for something which has been damaged by someone else. Whatever we sent to you, if that didn't work when it arrived, then we'd sort it out for you, but you said the CD-ROM drive was working so case closed as far as I'm concerned. It's pretty straightforward: if it arrives faulty, it's with the sender/their shipper. We sent you a working machine which arrived with audio and video problems, we accept that. You sent us a machine which arrived with a CD-ROM drive problem, and you're going to have to accept that.
"

I have added the capitals for emphasis here. As you can see here Lee stated that his strategy if I ever went to a public forum would be to say that I had opened up the Duo. He has not stated that I did do that so you should (I hope) start to appreciate what type of person we are considering here and his methods - notice the word 'turn' here - an honest seller?

Let's face it, this is Lee's attempt to some how regain face and admonish the effects of his previous dodgy dealings. You were silme then and slime today, Lee.

[MintyTheCat]

Neither of you have read the grievance, obviously, so why question me?

Neither the sound or picture was working on arrival. VGI accused him of tinkering and further breaking the CD Drive. There's no evidence for this, no one knows.

So again, a console paid for, faulty on arrival. Deal ends with customer out £200 with not even a faulty console.

You guys must be barking mad to think that's an appropriate final settlement. Responsibility is with the business. Issuing no refund at all and keeping the returned console is theft, technically.

It's obvious that you are just trying to stir up shit now.

We have a guy, who obviously has questionable ethics given his admitted behavior above, claiming that a unit he received wasn't working (no one but him has any idea if this is true, but we will assume it is for the sake of discussion). Then, inexplicably, instead of just returning the unit for a refund like any normal person would, he, by his own admission, at the very least breaks some part of the unit after opening it up. Now, it's suddenly supposed to be on the seller to do what? To magically determine if the unit was broken before he broke it?

People like you and him are the reason manufacturer 's put tamper proof seals on electronic goods.

...Only the machine was NEVER opened by me - read the account or read further down this Thread - do you work for local government per chance?

[MintyTheCat]

Just a word on E-Mail signing, CRC generation all that jazz:

E-Mails and their content are signed. If you receive one the content is used to generate the correct signatures, CRC and everything else along with the time and date. If you 'add' or 'remove' anything to/from that E-Mail none of it will be valid against the Server that you used for your mail. As such, any doctoring, forgeries, etc can very easily be found - think of how fake E-Mail planting is used and how computer forensics are used legally.

I can supply the correctly signed E-Mails from the dates posted to vouch for all of the content just so you know, Lee. All will be added to this Thread or the Bad-Sellers Thread though as you are clearly untrustworthy

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Five posts in a row? You know there's an edit button, right? Ugh, this thread was sort of shmup related to begin with and now it's not whatsoever.

though as you are clearly untrustworthy

Uh, sure. If this thread is anything to judge by, you're not exactly a shining beacon of ethics either.

I won the Auction but I shall not be paying for it. He has it for GBP 59.99 on his site and it went for GBP 150 - people should check before they buy.

I see that as a public-service.

[MintyTheCat]

Five posts in a row? You know there's an edit button, right? Ugh, this thread was sort of shmup related to begin with and now it's not whatsoever.

though as you are clearly untrustworthy

Uh, sure. If this thread is anything to judge by, you're not exactly a shining beacon of ethics either.

I won the Auction but I shall not be paying for it. He has it for GBP 59.99 on his site and it went for GBP 150 - people should check before they buy.

I see that as a public-service.

This was related to the bootleg.
Ebay were notified and they did nothing. No Payment Claim raised and I appealed as the item was a bootleg and I get no poor report or anything.

When all is said and done this guy Lee is a Seller with a shop and I am merely a chap who was robbed GBP 200. You may need to straighten out on your ethics and understand a little more about morality and after all I dare say that most of us are buyers more often than opposed to sellers and as such this topic is fitting to most buyers. You may consider it to be community service/action plus you are not able to balance an argument and retorts will not get you very far here and that goes especially for Lee.

Is it true that Lee and VGI were banned from advertising in a handful of Magazines due to poor seller conduct - it is an aside but helps to understand the character and his 'moral dynamics' shall we say.

[VideoGameImports]

Urgh, Minty, email me if you want to. Everyone else, this IS a grey area. He returned the faulty Duo with no box or power supply. I couldn't refund anything because he wouldn't agree to anything other than it all being our fault, which it wasn't. Besides, we didn't even get all the stuff back from him. With regards to the claim, we would have made NOTHING from any claim Minty made, it would have been handled between him (the sender) and the courier. If he had the parcel insured, I would have helped him in any way I could to ensure he got as much back as possible and whatever that amount would be would have nothing to do with us. It's not my fault he sent it back without it's box in basically no packaging and it got damaged. Imagine if it had been delivered back to us after being run over by a forklift truck. Would we have been responsible for that too? It's the same principle. If Parcel Force or whoever it was ended up contacting us over the damage, if we showed them the packaging he used, they would have just thrown the claim out. That's why we shouldn't be held responsible for everything but he had no interest in trying to make a claim as he already had made his mind up that it was all my fault. If Saur remembers any of this, he would back me up on it and he was never employed by us so would have no interest in trying to make out something had got damaged in transit to shift the blame from us. Obviously I accept that when Minty originally got the package, something wasn't working, but the story isn't that simple and doesn't end there. I'm not going to bother getting caught up in this any further on a message board. If Minty wants to talk to me, he knows how to get in touch.

As I've said before, you're always going to find someone who isn't happy. We aren't 100% perfect. We have made a few mistakes but it's literally a handful in the last 14 years since we opened our website. I'm not really sure this is one of them though. Minty, you made it impossible for me to act. With regards to that other link you included there, this guy, if he is who I think he is, his issue goes back to 1994... 20 years ago! Congratulations, you've found somebody pissed off with us 20 years ago. His case was bizarre. And we haven't changed our name 7-8 times in the last 5 years. We started out in 1991 as Dream Machines. I was 15 and my partner was 17. We got into trouble due to being useless, having crap foreign suppliers and being too cheap and having more sales than we could handle. My partner got kicked out a few months later, I gained 3 new partners (2 were silent partners, only contributing financially), we sorted the outstanding orders and problems out and then became Dream Machines 2. In 1995, after losing money on the collapse of the 16-bit era (we were owed over £50k by dozens of game stores who went out of business) and betting on the Saturn which was losing massively against the PS1, my other partners decided to call it a day and declared it impossible to make any money in this industry. When Dream Machines 2 was wound up, I bought all remaining stock and opened up as Dreamware the next day. Dream Machines 2's losses were all absorbed by the partners. Since 1995, we have traded as Dreamware and our website opened up in 2000 as VideoGameImports.com. We are still Dreamware. That's it. We haven't changed our name for almost 20 years! If we were so shit, we wouldn't still exist. We spend nothing on advertising, we don't meddle with google to try to get our name at the top of any searches. Minty had a problem. He broke something. He returned the console without it's box and failed to protect it from damage... it became complicated. He had no interest in making a claim with the courier or accepting he'd done anything wrong. He didn't accept anything other than it being all our fault. We couldn't proceed. That's how it was left.

[VideoGameImports]

Is it true that Lee and VGI were banned from advertising in a handful of Magazines due to poor seller conduct - it is an aside but helps to understand the character and his 'moral dynamics' shall we say.

Oh, hang on a second. I refrained from commenting on several items of bollocks in your other topic about us but this.... what. The. Hell?

Where did you even get that from? Or was it just something else you completely made up. To confirm:

We were never banned from advertising from any magazine, either as Dream Machines (1991), Dream Machines 2 (1991-1995) or Dreamware (1995-present). Seriously, who the hell are you? If you want to talk bollocks like that why not really lay it on thick and then we can just build a case to take legal action against you. We've yet to do it, but I'd love you to be the first.

[VideoGameImports]

We haven't advertised since about 2000 (I think it was a few early adverts in RetroGamer) simply because we haven't had to. Funnily enough, word of mouth has been strong enough for us. How many businesses can you say that about?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

We were never banned from advertising from any magazine, either as Dream Machines (1991), Dream Machines 2 (1991-1995) or Dreamware (1995-present). Seriously, who the hell are you? If you want to talk bollocks like that why not really lay it on thick and then we can just build a case to take legal action against you. We've yet to do it, but I'd love you to be the first.

If he stiffs you financially on the auction (with all the evidence here) and then gives you a reasonable case against him for slander... geez. Worse comes to worse, offer him a refund of whatever mod costs and just send him back the console with a written statement saying the further damage it incurred in transit when sent back to fix the mod is his fault. The more proactive you are about trying to get a direct resolution, the more favourably a court would likely look on a case...

But then I'm no lawyer; I'd actually suggest giving yours a call to see what he suggests in case you're worried this might require 'legal escalation'.

I was curious if Minty had posted elsewhere about this. Didn't find anything, but it does seem like he has a habit of being none too savvy when it comes to his business dealings (working for an outsourcing agency, negotiating with a client behind their back to work directly for them instead of for agency, complaining when caught and disciplined for refusing to attend meeting), assuming of course it's the same guy.

[Xyga]

Hey THIS is the internet shitstorm of the week.

[CStarFlare]

For the love of God, don't bring legal action into this. It doesn't matter how bad he gets, there is no internet merchant in history who has benefited from suing a disgruntled customer.

[cave hermit]

Too tired to read this thread properly, but from what I'm seeing:

[Skykid]

Roo you're a regular a regular sleuth!

For the love of God, don't bring legal action into this. It doesn't matter how bad he gets, there is no internet merchant in history who has benefited from suing a disgruntled customer.

This indeed. Bit ridiculous, especially if the auction becomes part of the charge, since technically bootlegs are not allowed for sale on eBay, even if eBay are slack at policing their policies.

It's not my fault he sent it back without it's box in basically no packaging and it got damaged. Imagine if it had been delivered back to us after being run over by a forklift truck. Would we have been responsible for that too?

Yes, because as you admit, you sent him a faulty unit initially. I don't like all this passing the buck much, as a customer it's the sort of thing I dread: when a business starts telling me 'don't worry, just make a claim with the post office to get reimbursed' or 'sorry I can't help, you should have used insurance to return the faulty item I sold you.'

There's grey areas and then there's manufacturing grey areas. Has anyone ever tried making a claim with Royal Mail for damaged goods? It takes six months if you're lucky and by the end you end up with either a fraction of what you claimed, or more likely nothing at all because they forget you exist and you give up the fight.

When a seller pushes this on a customer it's just poor humour.

I'm not convinced that this issue couldn't have been better handled and rectified on the business side. Perhaps VGI do have a great record, I'm not disputing that, but these are the ones where complacency as a seller comes back to bite you in the ass. You could have insisted he returned insured and covered the shipping cost because the unit was faulty: this would have safeguarded against any problems on arrival - not offering to beat the box up a bit and take a photo for him.

Anyway, getting cyclical now. As has been expressed several times, at the very least the return of the faulty or repaired unit minus the cost of expenses is your best move. Not keeping the console and the money because you're getting frustrated at months of emails.

[MintyTheCat]

It is amusing as that was indeed a question raised following what was posted else where by other disgruntled buyers from VGI.

Legal action for what, Lee?

I am unlikely to take legal against you given that the amount owed is not enough for me to contact a lawyer let's say.

But what you may be finding here is that if you do rip people off and they do tell others about it you will suffer consequences.

To be honest I do not need to do anything other than post the chain of E-Mails to this Forum and that should convince most.

You have incriminated yourself and it is known now. You could get legal to try to shut me up and perhaps others but I highly doubt that your working practices will change and you will no doubt be faced with similar situations in the future.

One lesson to be learned from all of this is: act as a Seller with integrity and reputation is pretty much everything in this world.

I will not post E-Mails to Lee directly as I do not trust him. I will instead post them here to let the public and let posterity decide.

[VideoGameImports]

Minty, you muppet. This is what I said:

If you want to talk bollocks like that why not really lay it on thick and then we can just build a case to take legal action against you. We've yet to do it, but I'd love you to be the first.

And that was in response to your little gem:

Is it true that Lee and VGI were banned from advertising in a handful of Magazines due to poor seller conduct - it is an aside but helps to understand the character and his 'moral dynamics' shall we say.

Which is why I said why not lay it on thick. Putting it down as a question to try to get yourself out of it... you totally just made that up... unless you'd like to show where you heard about it prior to your post to prove that you haven't reduced yourself to being a total liar. Why not just ask if it's true that we go round in a white van at weekends asking little kids if they want to come with us to Disney? Or if it's true that before we ship PC Engine Duos out we open them up and coat the circuit boards in pigs blood and write satanic verses in the blood. You could say anything. If you want to talk about our conduct, here's a recent quote from Trading Standards which should help to sum us up as a business more than anything which anyone else can say about us, either in our favour or against us. We had an issue with a customer a couple of months ago. Long story short, he bought a handful of MD games for a total of around £50. He came back, thanked me for the free game and quality packaging but said one didn't work and 2 more were temperamental. My short response was "try cleaning your console. You shouldn’t have had 1 not working at all and a couple of others being temperamental." He seemed translate that as "Piss off, I've washed my hands of this" and he contacted Trading Standards about it. It turns out he was running a chip locked Japanese game on a Pal MegaDrive with a crappy converter. Anyway, Trading Standards called me and said (although I'm paraphrasing this) "we haven't even got a single complaint about you on our records". That's Trading Standards, not some internet troll trying to masquerade slander in the form of a question.

Since being in business I've sold close to a million games and around 50000 consoles. If, since the turn of the century, there's been a handful of disgruntled customers, while not ideal, that's not a bad record. I hope that gives some perspective in light of MintyTheCat aka Mr. Brown Paper.

Minty, if you want to resolve this Duo fiasco in any way, contact me directly. I don't care whether you trust me or not. It's up to you. This was 7 years ago but the fact that I'm willing to speak to you after everything you said should be enough for you to make contact if you even care about this. You said I've incriminated myself but one fact remains indisputable: we don't have to offer you a refund without receiving the goods back. Whether you have all the goods or only some of the goods isn't important. You can tell all your friends on here if there is any further outcome at some point in the future. Personally I think you'd rather just try to slag me off instead as seems to be your way but let's see. The ball is in your court. If you do contact me, try not to be quite as vile as last time, eh?

[MintyTheCat]

That's all very well and good, Lee.

I think that I actually uploaded my last E-Mails exchanged between myself and you and I doubt most would regard them as being nasty/vicious.

I have also contacted you several times and indeed the last time you simply ignored it and to this day I have not received any response.

All this could very well have been prevented and please do not try to wriggle out of this by saying that I have the Duo; we have E-Mails stating that it was received by your mod guy Saur and that it was not sent back to me.

My fear would be that if I were to contact you then I'd end up finding you inserting lots of nasty words shall we say and I am not willing to take that risk and hence the need to make things public.

I can understand that you are angry here but then you have been rather naughty and you have ripped me off so as they say "what goes around comes around".

I shall invite you to contact me through PM on this site, Lee, but I think that it's fairly clear what the crime is here and fairly clear what the expected outcome should be but just to make it clear:

1. Apologise to all you have ripped off.
2. Reimburse me.

I do not have the Duo's box any more as it was lost during a house move. I never received the Duo's Manual - you kept that. I did keep the step-down converter so I am not expecting you to reimburse me for the box or the converter.

Given how you have behaved and given that you deferred this for several years I think that some kind of fee is in order here as means of penalty. I shall give you the option to reimburse myself and to pay a penalty fee of which to be paid to me directly - taking into account inflation over the last 7 years. I shall then donate the amount you pay as a fee to the Shmups Forum given that this is the centre point for our Shmup Community.

You can opt for this or I simply publish every single E-Mail that we exchanged. I havce essentially written the debt off but if you wish to reimburse then all the better.

Your call, Lee.

[MintyTheCat]

Minty, you muppet. This is what I said:


Which is why I said why not lay it on thick. Putting it down as a question to try to get yourself out of it... you totally just made that up... unless you'd like to show where you heard about it prior to your post to prove that you haven't reduced yourself to being a total liar.

I think it was here:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/archive/i ... -2297.html