If you are a private seller, then why not give this a shot? It's free and might even have some of those zebra thingies! You can also post requests for exchanging or loaning fish. Please refrain from posting opinions or irrelevancies in this section.
Zebrapleco.com can not take ANY responsibility for items advertised or sold in this section as they are free classifieds. Members not following the Forum Rules however will have their Posts deleted.
lora wrote:Payal only covers losses if the seller has the money in their Paypal account, which is very unlikely. He's probably had enough time to clean out the account.
I agree that he might have enough time to clean out this paypal account. Just hoping that he is dumb enough to leave the money in there for two weeks or so. But I really think he cashed out all his money on Monday Oct 2. But it look like we got scammed by a pro.
Hey anyone that brought from this guy, pm me... because I was thinking putting a group together to go after this guy. So far Lift and Lrry are in.
I think if put a large group together and a large of sum of money lost to this guy we can file lawsuit against him or we could all contribute some money and use it to hire a PI in St. Augustine to track down this william armstrong or dave pugh. Then we could all just show up his front door one morning to introduce ourself to him.
What do you think and please let me know with a PM
This was a scam indeed by this jerk. I too went for the deal as he offered me a breeding group of 2.6 and 10 babies (F1). I sent him $1986 which was supposed to cover the 2.6 adults ($1100), the 10 F1 ($850) and shipping. The funny thing is that he gave me a wholesale deal and was very helpful during the sale. The only thing that sounded weird was that he wouldn't allow me to pick up the fishes even when I live about 3 hours from St. Augustine in FL.
Well, his address from Aquabid is nothing but a POBox and yes, the paypal address checks out to be from the deceased guy. None of us will get the plecos at all and he ceased communications with everyone after Oct 4 when the money cleared his acct and probably managed to take it out and close it.
Luckily for me, I paid with a Credit Card and I will be getting my money back, but I am not sure what paypal would do for those that didn't use CC to pay.
I contacted Aquabid through their complaints page and he appears to be suspended now. I recommend flooding the guy with negative feedback like I did and save copies of all the exchanges between you and that David Pugh guys that was selling the fishes to us. Police Dept is good to be contacted as well as internet fraud division, etc. Use every avenue possible to get your money back.
Ivan
We all follow paths that lead us to our goal, but it is how we behave while on that path that dictates what kind of a person you are.
I too was fortunate, that I used my credit card. My CC company will investigate the case.
I hope that Paypal and Aquabid will do something about this case, this is not good business for them. If nothing is done about this case or if they don’t make any improvement to protect the buy and seller, I will never use their companies again. I will pass along my negative experience to my family and friend’s about these companies.
As a consumer we should be protected from scenarios like these.
Yeah, I used paypal, but unfortunately I did not use a credit card. I hope paypal can get my funds back somehow, and if they don't then they are a scam too with all their claims of protection. I'm trying to figure out what else I can do right now but I've never experienced a scam of this magnitude before. This is just an all around bad deal.
I used a credit card, but they don't cover this. Paypal will only reimburse your money if the seller has the money in their Paypal account or provides "purchase protection". I won't be buying anything from Aqua Bid in the future, I'm just too scared of getting ripped off again.
You know what they say about "when a deal is too good to be true"..
$1100 for 8 breeding adults where 6 are supposedly to be female? Nope, ain't happening. That's $137.50 per allegedly sexed adult fish when 1" F1 babies are going for $150+ For a real 2.6 group I'd say you'd be looking closer to $5000, maybe more.
Pete, you are absolutely right but rubbing it in or stating what appears to be obvious now, doesn't really help anyone. I am not worried as my money is back where it belongs and this scumbag will be caught but I feel for the others if they can't get their money back.
Too good to be true is the right phrase to use but the scam was not ordinarily prepared. The fact of the matter is that people are willing to pay the high prices Zebras routinely go for because of the classic supply and demand rule but there are some of us that will not pay those prices because either we can't afford them or we simply don't want to overspend like that. A deal comes around like this and we feel happy because we get our chance. The delight blinds us into not seeing the subtle, yet quite apparent signs that this is a scam and thus we fall for it.
You should realize that if this was a poorly made scam, not this many members would have been taken. You just so happen to be the smartest of us all and were skeptical from the start. We all learned a tough lesson here and I, for once, have resigned myself to never own a Zebra Pleco again because the "normal" prices are simply too much to really start a colony.
Furthermore, I was not trying to buy them to make money but rather to breed them just to help in the preservation of the species in the hobby. To be honest with you, if I was successful with my group, the one that never arrived, I had planned to sell the babies for about $85 each just to help people like me be able to get a Zebra in their home.
Sorry for rambling on guys. It really upsets me that all of us got scammed and upsets me even more to think some of you might have to go through hell to get your money back.
If I can be of any help to some of you, please contact me and I will try the best I can to help you out.
Ivan
We all follow paths that lead us to our goal, but it is how we behave while on that path that dictates what kind of a person you are.
Hey everyone who got scammed by Dave Pugh/William Armstrong please go file internet fraud complaint against this guy here: http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/
This is a joint project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. The IFCC's key functions for federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies will be (1) receiving online complaints, (2) analyzing them to identify particular schemes and general crime trends in Internet fraud, and (3) compiling and referring potential Internet fraud schemes to law enforcement. In addition to FBI and NWCCC personnel, the IFCC will include agents and analysts detailed from the Internal Revenue Service and Postal Inspection Service.
At least this will get it rolling for all of us. The longer you wait, the harder it is for them to track him down.
Sorry to hear the losses and wish you the best in justice. I too am very anxious to get some zebs. I can see jumping at such a good deal because I too cannot afford the high price. My mind is made up that I either will never own a zebra pleco or someone close to me will have them for a face to face meeting. What worries me is this person obviously knew all about zebs and is most likely a member of this forum!
I can't believe this guy is still being allowed to sell on Aquabid. He has just listed another CD rom. Whether its an automatic listing or not, it just isn't right.
rhino wrote:What worries me is this person obviously knew all about zebs and is most likely a member of this forum!
Hold your horses. It's obuiously a seasoned conman we're talking about, but the story doesn't get any "better" by adding speculations. That's what you do when you want to create a mob - add a guess or two, a speculation or two. suddenly everybody believes it and accepts it as facts.
Keep to the facts you know and you won't end up in a blind alley, or we all start scowling at eachother.
