I’m here in Atlanta…I’ll make sure to get the word out. I’m hoping he isn’t moving here for college (specifically GT). He won’t last very long with his excuses.
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You should introduce me to your friends in Atlanta, always great to have more people to ride with.
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blasted on reddit, in case:
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The logo on his site still sais AA torque syTems. lol.
I don’t get it, he never scammed me?
just bc it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Ha! Photos or it never happened. Really full board, innards and everything.
He sold me 2x vesc and 2x modified? Jacob hub motors, not a complete
It was pretty shady business and I received my stuff 4 months late but he did send it to me
Ahhh so he resold others goods. Retail is easy and he probably didn’t change/touch much. Consider yourself lucky.
No that was back in November 2016 I believe
I had no clue this was going on so close to me until I read that reddit post/press demo article. I live miles away from this tool bag…
I need to get them on this forum!
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Yeah unfortunately everyone but myself, my brother, and a guy with an outlandishly modified Moto-Tec ride pre-builts. It’s really saf because most of the guys are up to building a board. I guess 3 miles on a boosted > 20 on a garage build
All of the guys I know there ride mountainboards (downhill no moto) and snowboard. Eventually they’ll see the light.
Oooh, website Is down. Maybe he finally stopped with his bullshit.
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Hi All,
It’s time to put a period at the end of this crappy chapter of diyesk8 history.
You can read above to learn all about how a person ripped off a bunch of forum members by promising to sell them parts or a complete board, taking their money, but then never sending product or issuing a refund.
I tried help those impacted (i.e. those that ordered parts or a complete that they never received) organize and plan to take action. The goal was to get everyone refunded in the most “painless” way possible. We stopped posting publicly about our actions because there was a risk of diminishing the effectiveness of our plan if shared publicly.
Important detail: the “seller” was a legal minor. This limits what is legally possible in follow-up. The seller also received many payments via Paypal “friends and family” which we no longer allow in group buys on the forum because there is little recourse available to the buyer if things don’t work out.
Here are the steps we took and how they failed:
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I contacted the seller and had a handful of discussions with him on the phone about how to proceed. I believe he wanted to rectify all the outstanding debt, but he was in more debt than he could pay for. There was no way he could do this on his own, so we tried to involve a business mentor he met through his school.
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the business mentor responded twice but then disappeared, likely to avoid getting involved in the mess
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with the business mentor out of the picture, we appealed to the seller to get his parents\guardians involved… noting that they will eventually be notified and it will be worse for them to deal with this through the police or a lawyer. Seller refused
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@longhairedboy did an excellent teardown of a battery from the seller and explained all of laughably terrible quality issues it had. This was used throughout our communications to demonstrate the seriousness of the problem.
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I contacted the high school where the seller attended and spoke with a guidance counselor, noting that the student started the esk8 “business” through a sharktank-esque competition at the school. I sent them all of the documentation we had. This seemed very promising at first, the GC seemed to want to help the student out of this difficult position without legal trouble. However, a week later the school and the GC notified me that it wasn’t a “school-related issue” and they refused to discuss it further. They met with the seller but could not catalyze action. This was a major disappointment.
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I wrote and sent a letter to people I believed to be the seller’s guardians, but it is unclear whether it reached them or whether they were the correct party/correct address.
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With all of those options exhausted, it seemed appropriate to take legal steps. The first step is\was to file a police report in the county where the seller resides. This is where the story ends. Unfortunately, none of the folks in the impacted group were willing to file the police report needed to make progress. Some have legit reasons why they can’t (live in another country) and others are taking the loss and moving on.
The total “damage” to the community was around $4,000 in unfulfilled sales.
As a result, we implemented some new forum policies:
- group buys must be executed by legal adults (18+)
- group buys are not allowed to use PayPal Friends and Family payments
- group buys must be completed by a Level 3 member
- mods and forum members are now more mindful and watching out for potentially risky sellers
I think everyone here is now on the “lookout” for sellers that won’t be able to fulfill their promises, and we’re all a bit more skeptical of those boasting about products and services without tangible evidence of being able to follow through.
The bright side is that the seller is no longer taking part in esk8, their reputation being diminished beyond repair.
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Ditto. Thanks so much for your efforts and time in this matter @treenutter.
To ere on the optimistic side, even though the actions taken here didn’t go as we all hoped, it doesn’t mean someone else who is not a part of this forum didn’t pursue legal action against him.
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