Warning!!! Shawn1978

[Cow086]

I sold him some corals to him about 3 to 4 weeks ago. And here is my story.

So i know him as Shawn as we all do he shows up to my house and is very interested in a colony of xenia (the whole rock) with about 6-8 stalks on it and a fair sized piece of LR. we agreed on $40 he did not take the speciman at that time cuase he was on his lunch break. so he was going to come by later that night with the money and pick up the corals. Which he did (sort of) he said that he dose not have the cash now but he gets paid on friday. and he will write me a check for the frorty dollars. Now me being confident that all MARS members are decent people and wanting to work with him on the deal i execpt the check. Dated two days later.

Later that night i felt funny about the transaction so i looked at the check more carefully. The name on the check was not Shawn. This freaked me out. Thinking i just got taken i shot an email to Bob and call this Shawn person to confront him about the check. He said that the name on the check is his real name and that shawn was a nick name. I excepted that as an explaination.

So i waited the two days to cash the check i go to his bank to see if the cash is in the account they said no problem the cash is there.

so i go to my bank and cash it.

5 days later i get a letter in the mail for my bank saying that the check had bounced.

I drive over to his place of employment and confront him about it. He laughs and says that he tried to put a stop on the check but it must not have worked becasue he knew that his mortgae was going to consume all of his check. So i stayed at his work for 2 hours untill he was off and he said he was going to get me the money in cash that night. well after waiting for 2 hours for him to get off he couldnt think of any way to get the money to me. So we agreed to pay me in two weeks when he gets paid again.

Two weeks go by and i call him 15 times with his cell phone off each time. finally i get ahold of him and he said he will drop off the money at 6 will i be home. I said sure. So about 10 min to 6 he calls me and says he cant pay me till 8. i said i got some plans but i can postpone them till he shows up.

i wait till 8:15 till i call him about 5 times in the next hour with his phone off. He never calls me or shows up. so i go on with my night very late.

I call him another 10 times on saturday to no with no responce.

Finally on Suday afternoon he calls me back and says that he lost his job and has no car if i can drive the 45 min to his house i can pick up the money. The agreement was that he would drop the money off at my house so he said he will borrow his brothers car and drive over he will be at my house in an hour. 3 hours pass and no call nor is he at my house. so i call him 3 times and finally get a respose that he cant get a car. So i say fine ill drive to your house well he said he did not want to give me directions to his house cause he was at his brothers. So i said that i was going to got to a park to play disc golf i will swing by some where close to pick up the money he says that he will get a ride to the park cause its close to where he is.

I show up at the park and call him he says that he will be there in 2 min.

I wait over 45 min for him to do some shopping at copps before he finally shows up at the park IN A CAR the same car that he couldnt get to drive over to my house with. and finally gives me the money that is owed me.


please be cousious when deal with this man and in the future i will not be execpting anything but cash on delivery i would suggest you all do the same.

I would post his real name but bob does not want personal infor on this forum

Paul

[Slrademacher]

A hard lesson learned but maybe we should take this a standard - cash on delivery. If everyone just paid cash at the time of pick up as the only way do these then there's no problem. It also means that it isn't a trust issue , it's an agreed to way to handle transactions for everyone regardless of familiarity or past experience.

[BraenDead]

For legal issues I want to avoid disclosing others personal information. In this case I will post the users signature line which contains the name, which is "Cornelius Pitts or shawn".

Bob

[Cow086]

thanks bob

[OceanNwisconsin]

bummer!

i know he told me he was going to buy a bunch of my stuff when i switched from saltwater to freshwater and he never came through.. which i found out later he is known for doing....

[spbreeder]

I think he was booted off this forum awhile ago under the name Cornelius Pitts. I know I got several PMs from him bordering on harrassment.

[BraenDead]

He has been booted again, I didn't realize (or remember, possibly) that he was banned previously.

Bob

[Lake75]

Wow, I never thought this kind of person would even exist in our community... Lucky that you eventually got your money back.

[MM]

This was the person that inspired my warning about security earlier. I got a couple of PMs to purchase corals. My instincts, simply from the content of the PMs, raised a red flag. I decided to not reply. I considered dealing with him with the thought that if my instincts proved correct that I would be entering the situation aware and that I could post any negative experince. I decided to avoid the situatiion and to initiate some discusion on the subject of security.

This was also shortly after a news story came out of Florida where a couple of thugs responded to an add for puppies ($2500) with an armed home invasion where they took all of the puppies - all on home security video. Which is what made it news story of course.

I do still think that members who attend meetings, and have a good faith interaction or two could be noted in sum way next to the member screen names. If this is not too much work for those who manage the site anyway. Nothing is perfect of course but it is always prudent to do what you can.

- Mark

[spbreeder]

Bob, I think Eric was the one who had the problem with him, he may have done the booting.

[Darb]

Wow, "Shawn" really gets around. Must have quite a tank. He wrote me a check at about 10:00 at night, left a voice mail at 7:00 the next morning telling me it was no good.

It took a week or two, but I did get my money.

-Brad

[Cow086]

i beleive this will be at least his 3rd alias on this forum cause i know he also has the name "shawn" on this site too

To find out that hes been booted before.........

well i know bob can only do so much he really cant stop any one for signing up a new name but man if youve been boot twice now you would think you would get a hint that no one wants you here.

[BraenDead]

Looking at the history I beleive he has only had the names 'shawn' and 'shawn1978'. Unfortunately I dont think there is anything I can do to completely prevent this stuff. He can sign up with different names, different email addresses, from different IP addresses.

Doing something like MM said might help but there are still a lot of people who sign up simply to buy something or sell something in the buy/sell forum and never go to a meeting. Most of these people are good people (from what I've heard, at least) and I fear a system as described would harm their ability to use this site.

It's a tough situation to prevent on my end. Any ideas are appreciated.

Bob

[Cow086]

is there anyway to have a rating system like ebay has that people can give good or bad ratings to based on either good comments in the forum or by selling or buying something.... My brother posts on a hockey website and they have a rateing system and it seems to help peoples cridibleity cause when i look at some of the peoples number of post that is an indication of how active some one is in the forum but i have no idea if there activity is just makeing dumb comments on everything or if they are giving real good advice. Well being actively reading this site for over a year now i can pick out a handfull of people i would say earn very high ratings and there are quite a few people that just post. Which is fine but alot times some of those "just posters" have hundreds of more posts than the good ones. Not to name names but there is a poster that has been on the site for less than 3 months and has more posts then most of the people i consider good posters. Which is fine if your making sound advice or asking good questions but simply posting everywhere jsut to get your post count up seems silly and quite frankly kinda annoying


i dont know just my 2 cents but i like MMs idea of some sort of rating syetem i however agree that there are a lot of posters that are good that dont got to the meatings that deserve a good rateing. So there needs to be something that promotes "good quality activity"

I think that this thread "feedback" is a step in the right direction but i think that there has to be somethng better out there

I have been selling stuff fairly frequently for the last 3 months and none of the people that have bought from me has posted about me now does that mean im a bad seller or just not a memerable enough one to get some good comments. Cause im curtanily not a bad seller cause otherwise people would deffinately post bad comnents about me like i did about shawn.

sorry i needed to vent a little but i think there is a suggestion somewhere in that rant

Paul

ps i dont want people to take this the wrong way that i want some people to post less cause i dont i just think that some comments warnet good rateing and others warent bad ones.

[Slrademacher]

Well, there are ways to subvert the rating system too such as having your friends/accomplices post positive feedback on fictious transactions. It's seems like we're dealing with one bad egg though. The only issue I've had with selling stuff is people not showing up when they said they will so nothing has changed hands. I've only been paid cash and I'd keep operating that way.