It's difficult to tell if this is a case of out and out fraud or a lot of best intentions gone down the pan. Regardless.. if it were the latter and not the former, the least this chap could do would be to refund any monies taken in full with a note of regret/apology asking the buyer to try again at some point in the furture when the project is running again. You just don't sit on folks cash and expect them to be happy with nowt in return Plain bad service.
I ordered a book late last week which arrived on Sat morning. While glancing through it on Sat afternoon, I noticed a complete leaf was missing (4 sides) No way this was visible/obvious without page by paging the book so I emailed the seller explaining what I'd found. By return email (that quick) I got an extremely apologetic reply with instructions to either keep or bin the book and a full refund no questions asked. If you want folk to buy from you, you don't ignore them and keep their money.
An alternative to may's problem is to contact the card vendor and tell them what's happened. It's been some time I gather since the original order but they may be able to refund him his loss.
Thanks for all your responses. I did actually write to Fife Trading Standards some time ago; I received a reply saying that they had spoken to Matthew Murray and he had re-assured them that he was trying his best to sort out problems with his ISP.
I have got passed the stage of being pissed off; I now regard it as part of my daily routine to send Mr Murray a reminder that he owes me £12.
I will point the gentleman at Fife Trading Standards to this thread and the link on the Visual Flight site.
John
If anyone wishes to contact Fife Trading Standards, the person to write to is:
Ross Mitchell
Fair Trading Officer
Fife Council
Kingdom House
Kingdom Avenue
Glenrothes
Fife
KY7 5 LY
Email: ross.mitchellATfife.gov.uk
EDIT.. John/et-al.. I've removed the @ in Mr Mitchells email address just in case we get zapped by a spambot
Good to hear from you again. Mr Murray did eventually refund the money he owed me. I noticed last week that his website has re-appeared; I emailed him to ask if it was possible to order with any confidence and he told me that I am going to get the Dundee scenery for free once he has sorted out a couple of glitches(!). I'll believe that when it actually happens. If you go to his latest site and try to buy one of his sceneries, you cannot get past the order page; apparently, the whole site is not yet live which begs the question why has he opened it to the public. I just can't work the guy out; he seems determined not to actually sell anything while at the same time peeing a lot of people off.
I have a theory that he is actually a student who is writing a thesis on how to frustrate people and guaging just how long an individual can be strung along before he or she finally loses patience! But I may be wrong.
If I do ever get a copy of any of his sceneries, I'll let you know.
The "owner" seems to have issue's with communication, some what of a breakdown, I'd hear one email but never a response after that, however I believe he's infact genuine, I'm afrad to say. Thankfully I never purchased, as when i noticed there were no images I did a runner, however, I was sent a free 50% discount off Dundee with the coincidence being the site was offline for the duration of my discount being valid, then it was a free copy for my patience, were is it ? dunno probably not even made.
However, I remember when he first set up his site, from what I can re-call he did infact have a nice site, with, yes you can guess, product images, at the time I thought nothing of it and his site changing more frequently then I've had hot meals ! He now has another website, with a product page for Fife, and a screenshot section, which doesn't seem to load for me, the excuse I've always received is his hosting company is failing to provide him with the adequate functions needed for the site, so, begs the questions, why not seek a new one ?
I'll be monitoring his progress carefully, this morning he had a notice on the site stating, ALL functionality would be restored by 2230 and customers would be able to buy and download their products, we'll soon see.....
John - I'm pleased that you recieved your moey back, afterall the amount of caos you went through was simply ridiculous !
Kind regards,
Piran -
Last edited by Plymouthair on 03 Jan 2010, 17:33, edited 1 time in total.
We will be back online shortly as we correct a fault that has caused an issue with product images and the payment process
So no change for 2010 then. I imagine he'll want to change the design of the site will change another few times before he's ready. I know!!! Maybe a postage stamp satellite image of Dundee from google earth will get the buyers jumping to part with their hard earned?
I eventually got my money back. I notice that his site is back on line again with yet another design. It disappeared for a day (software problems and an inability to display screenshots) but is now back (black squares where screenshots should be) but the option to buy Glenrothes is live. I wonder if anyone is brave enought to try and buy it?