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Has anyone orderd from a site called Internet Hobbies?


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There are people that didn't have $200+ orders filled, and they ordered again??? Or waited 6 months? Or sent a $400 cashiers check??

Ummm, why? 

Sounds like mail fraud, Postal inspector time. Local cops too. 

Edited by keyser
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6 hours ago, keyser said:

There are people that didn't have $200+ orders filled, and they ordered again??? Or waited 6 months? Or sent a $400 cashiers check??

Ummm, why? 

Sounds like mail fraud, Postal inspector time. Local cops too. 

Best to use a credit card with a company you do not know so you can dispute the charge.  Even Paypal will help you resolve disputes with a vendor but a cashiers check or money order is taking a risk.

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Stumbled across an Internet ad from them some time ago, and almost ordered something.  Then I saw some of the complaints.  IIRC, they were also using slightly different names on several different websites.  But the Contact Info on all of them was the same address in Mayfield, PA, and they all had that pitch about "founded by modelers in 1995."  I got suspicious and dropped the idea of ordering from them.

Here's a thread about them at Fine Scale Modeler, from last year:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/general_discussion/f/50/t/182060.aspx

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On 4/9/2020 at 3:18 PM, vamach1 said:

Best to use a credit card with a company you do not know so you can dispute the charge.  Even Paypal will help you resolve disputes with a vendor but a cashiers check or money order is taking a risk.

Agree. I was wondering why people on the BBB site ordered after non-fulfillment, sent cashiers check. Just giving money away no recourse. Glad they can burn it like that. 

Paypal only covers 45 days IIRC, so that's barely enough to cover slow international shipping. Credit card gets charged before shipping or availability, I call. Immediately. 

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I once ordered a Fujimi Trans Am kit from them, a very limited re-release that could be found nowhere else in the rest of the world, not even in Japan, but they listed it in stock.  I e-mail them about the availability, and they promptly replied that yes, they indeed had it in stock.

After placing the order, they stopped answering my e-mail.  That went on for a month, until I threatened to report them to PayPal, and they promptly refunded my money.

Their list prices are already bad, but they do list many items that could be found nowhere else.  Not that they have those items to start with.

Edited by fumi
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17 hours ago, fumi said:

...Not that they have those items to start with.

That reminds me of a clown who was operating back in the 1990s.  He might still be ripping people off, so this is a warning.

Not using his name in case he's one of those lawsuit-happy types. Let's say he had the same last name as a famous singer/actor. That should be enough to ID him, for anybody else who was unlucky enough to deal with him.

I listed some old kits for sale in The Other Magazine. He called to say he wanted to buy a bunch of them, several hundred $$$ worth.  I was delighted...until his check came and bounced. That happened 3 times.  I finally called the Fraud Division of his local cop shop. That got his attention and he paid up.

This guy was running a sort of model car kit Ponzi Scheme.  He told buyers he had every old, rare kit ever made and took their money.  Then he looked for sellers with those kits and "bought" them with his bad checks. 

I know that because on the Usenet group rec.models.scale, I asked about him.  The thread lit up like a neon sign. LOTS of people had stories about him, none of them good.

One poster lived in his area.  He said the guy also claimed to have a hobby shop, and bought case lot kits from distributors at the wholesale price.  Then he marked up the kits a few bucks and sold them out of the trunk of his car.  The distributors shut that down when they got complaints from real hobby shop owners.

 

 

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