FABO Administrator

[Valleyant]

What's the best course of action for dealing with a forum member that has not sent parts which were promised and paid for? I've sent PM's recently with no return response. The main objective is to prevent this from happening to other forum members. Thanks, for your help!

 

[chryslerfat]

Depends on how you sent the money. USPS money order has more legal response than Paypal or others. The forum is not responsible for anything.

 

[diymirage]

we do have a feedback system on the site that will allow you to leave positive or negative feedback aswell as a detailed comment on why you felt like leaving the feedback you did

off course, this isn't always foolproof either, just yesterday a fellow member started a thread with the same complaint you have and the person he was dealing with had 4 different feedbacks, all positive

one thing that spoke highly against the seller was that he never replied to the PMs the buyer had send him even though we could tell by looking at his public page that he had been online several times since he had send them

Chryslerfat is right that the board is not a middle man and has no dog in this fight and no power to enforce deal but I have had good luck with paypal to get money returned on deals where no parts were ever send to me (not on this board)

 

[Valleyant]

Yes it was through USPS Money Order.
I don't expect the forum to be a middle man. I also am not naïve enough to think I will shame someone into following through with an agreement/deal by starting a thread since actions speak louder than words. That is the reason I approached it this way, to get advice/ideas.
I will send another PM, to see if I get a response, then will use the feedback system to alert others.
Thankyou!

 

[RustyRatRod]

If a Postal money order was sent and no parts were sent, that's called mail fraud and is a federal crime. The law is on your side. Much better than shaming someone on a forum.

 

[Purple Haze]

X2 above just send him an email again and tell him you are filing federal fraud charges on him with the post office.

 

[My 72 340]

Agreed on all points mentioned previously.

The only thing I would add is if you do the Postal Money Order, DO NOT send it via regular mail, send it either Priority Mail, Express Mail, or at the very least Registered Letter with a signature required on delivery, if undeliverable then the person has to go to their local post office to pick it up, show ID and also will get their pic taken by all the cameras there.

All this can be tracked online at the USPS website, that way you can print the tracking/delivery information as proof if something does go wrong.

I personally would not send anything worth monetary value to a PO Box address, if that is all that is provided from the seller to send the payment, I would back out of the deal no matter how much I needed the item.

 

[ducter]

I do understand these posts, and it's getting more common. Maybe, and I don't even think this work properly but in lieu of the feedback system perhaps another forum setup for do buy from and don't buy from. It would take some extra work from the moderation team here though. The buyer and seller would need to pm each other the details so the mods would have a paper trail so to speak of. They would only need to approve the listing of do not buy from based off the pm's, if you don't get the details in a pm prior to buying your on your own. Or maybe they will just pull the classified section all together.