Buyer Beware!

Well, Monday has come and gone w/out a reply from the person I purchased the cables from. Of course, the cables have not arrived. I will therefore contact Audiogon staff tonight to ask them to follow up and eventually release the address and phone number of the seller for follow up. Though I really hate to do this, I have been very patient and circumspect thus far. The seller goes by the name of jwest on Audiogon, and his name is (?) Jason west. The transaction was for a 6 foot pair of Audioquest Dragon speaker cables, and he deleted the advert the day after I sent him payment via PayPal. This in and of itsef is of course not unusual, but failure to reply to e-mail right after confirming receipt of payment is. He did say there were other prospective buyers, so if by chance you were one of them, please get in touch with me. Mr. West, if you are listening, I truly hope this is a misunderatanding and will be more than happy to apologize on this forum.

To share my story and some lessons learned, a few months ago I purchased an ARC 100.2 from an individual at an excellent price ($1300). Normally I would opt for COD, but since it was such a good deal I talked to the guy on the phone and agreed to send money first. The seller confirmed the receipt of the cashier's check, but mentioned that he's going on vacation soon, and he might not send the amp until he comes back. Well, I thought it's a little fishy, but maybe just bad timing. I pushed for the seller to ship the amp before the vacation, and after a few emails it was finally shipped with tracking #. So now I'm happy that I didn't get screwed--or so I thought at the time. Many days later the package arrived, and when the delivery person came I knew something was wrong because the package was not big enough to contain the 100.2, and surely was too light. It turned out to be an old Sumo preamp from who knows when. To make a long story short, I tracked him down in his home city and filed with the local police station. It turned out that he's ripped off about 30 people using the same scheme, and the police is hot on his trail. Eventually he was caught and put behind bars, but I never did get my money back unless I can file a class action suit against him. Some tips from me: try to do COD if possible, but there will be seller who refuse to do COD because they've been burnt that way. If the deal is very good, try calling and ask about the unit. I did just that, but I didn't ask important questions. The questions to ask are--describe the unit and what is the serial number. If the seller is a fake he might not have the unit and cannot describe it. If he doesn't have a serial number then definitely don't go for it. Once you get the serial number, you can usually check it with the manufacturer to verify some information on the equipment. We all get lucky once in a while on a deal-of-the lifetime, but don't think you can get lucky all the time :). If it's a really good deal, act fast, but be careful.

Thanks, Madnut. I guess I will follow your advice next time. It's a shame. I wish Audiogon was a bit more "selective", though I must say they were VERY helpful the last time (first time also) I had an issue on a trnasaction. They released the members phone number right after I asked, and I was able to reach closure on a deal I'd been "chasing" for nearly a month via e-mail. I trust they will be as reponsive this time. I have sent tow e-mails to Audiogon Service regarding Mr. West. Will keep you all posted on how it goes.

Alexc: Was Jason from the San Francisco area? It is a large world, but I had a Jason from SF booted off of Ebay a while back for schilling his Hi-fi auctions. He admitted to doing so in an email to me and I forwarded it to Ebay. Not the brightest bulb, but dishonest. Just curious as this would not help your situation.

Call your sponser...or maybe a chat with Winoguy17.