Dishonest Forum Members :(

It's a shame I'm having to write this and it's not really my style as I prefer to deal with things 'in house' rather than the name and shame approach, but I know I'm not the only forum member who's been affected and if nothing else hopefully it'll serve as a cautionary tale for others.

At the beginning of September forum member Greg Whitnall known as @Cosmic2011 advertised a selection of 916/996/748 etc bike parts in the for sale section. I bought some side fairings from him for £250 and in the usual forum etiquette I paid by bank transfer to save any fees. He promised to post them straight away. A week went by and he emailed me to say he was having a few personal problems but he would sort them the following week. I offered my understanding of the situation and told him not to worry. A month went by and nothing. Again I emailed him and he emailed back apologising saying he would get them to me asap. Over six weeks later and nothing. I've checked his profile page and he hasn't logged in for six weeks. He seems to have vanished with mine and others money. Ive tried to track him down and with the help of others on here have found where he works and a phone number where I've attempted to contact him but to no avail. I'm not going to let this go and I'm taking steps to recover my money. If anyone else reading this has been caught up in this PM me and I'll give you the details of the action you need to take to try and get your money back. It's a case of the more people come forward the more chance we all have of recovering our money.

Maybe we all need to be a bit more cautious when buying and selling on here. Just because we share a love of the same brand of motorcycle doesn't mean we should automatically believe and trust each other. Ive met and become friends with many people on here and have dealt with others when buying and selling parts who I would trust implicitly, but they're are others who are simply just a name and could be anyone honest or dishonest and I think we all need to bear that in mind.

 

Police not interested as its a civil matter. To be honest they probably wouldn't be interested even if he'd nicked it out of my back pocket. However if I can round a few people up who've lost money also they may take notice but I'm not hopeful. I feel the route I'm taking may be more effective - fingers crossed.

 

I'm not going to say where he works as that's not fair, its a fairly small family owned business and it's not their fault or problem. This is the act of an individual. It's about a four hour drive for me, so not really practical, plus a favourable outcome by turning up at random is slim.