Chad Williams aka Ranger288 is NO GOOD!

. . . for the record, the Ang Khola was fabulous, Ranger. I'd do business with you again.
 
Well, I had no intention of posting here again, but in light of Rangers post I feel that something need to be addressed. Chad, your statement that I contacted you asking to cancel the deal is an OUTRIGHT LIE. You and I both know it and I have every email that I have ever sent you, and I have posted most of them here. As far as your offer to pay me $275 back on the knife, what is the reason that you want to wait and get the knife first and then send the money? I sent it to you via paypal before I recieved anything from you. In light of the continued lies on your part both in emails to me and here on the forum, I am going to have to demand a full refund. Paypal was the ONLY method of payment you said you would take so I guess you will have to eat the fees. When can I expect my money back, and where do you want the knife mailed to?
 
Here is the mail I recieved from Chad. Notice any differences in what he told me he posted and what was actually posted? Also, where did something about a gift come from? Never in anything from me. I really didn't know if there was anything shadey going on here or not, but now I am pretty sure that their was. Also I noticed that Ranger288 has picked up on some excuses made for him by others and claimed them as his own.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chongnoi@aol.com [mailto:Chongnoi@aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 3:54 PM
To: JAmes Mason
Subject: Re: High res pic


Here is copy of the post I just posted on Forums. I have been out for several days with the Army and this is the first chance I have had to rspond to your email or defend myself in the forums.

Here are three possible sollution to remedy the problem where we can both reconcile and both of us take a hit. 1. Send the knife to BUsse for fixing and I wil pay for your shipping and fixing fees. 2. I wil buy the knife back from you for $275. You send it to me first or if not trust can send it COD. This is your refund minus my paypal fees, shipping fees, handleing fees, and resell fees. 3. You can resell yourself for the amount you paid or hold on to it for awhile and try and make a profit. Again, Alphaman there was no foul play on my part when I sent you the knife as I did not see any mark. Again for the last time, the knife was in unused conditon with no minor mark on it when sent to you. I am also not accusing you of any wrong doing or foul play, just that there is a dilemna and we see things from a different view-and lets be honest I do not really know you and of course you do not really know me so hard to judge what eithers intentions truly are. Hope one of the above solutions will work and we can out this behind us. Chad


Post:
Have been gone for several days, so this is the first chance I have had at responding to the emails. I do not have any bad intentions towards Alphaman and do not accuse him of anything shady. In all honesty the knife was sent in unused condition and there was no mark on the blade as Alphaman states or the photos are slightly showing. SO I am quite suprised. As for offering a refund, the question, I wrestle with, is if there is a defect and I did not casue it or see it, was it caused after the knife was recieved by Alphaman? I am again not saying there is no wrong doing by Alphaman. It is just a dilemna in that I say there was no mark on the knife when sent and now also Alphaman says there was a mark on the knife when recieved. I do not know if Alphaman is suffering from "buyers remorse" and trying to get a refund or if there was sincerely some mark on the knife that somehow I had a severe brain defect and did not see or happenend in shipping or unsheathing the blade. Right after I sold it to Alphaman I recieved email from him asking if I had mailed it out as he wanted to cancel the order as he had also recieved two additional ARK from Busse (One bought and the other a gift that he has sold). I explained that I had already sent the knife out and spent the funds. THen as soon as he recieves it he claims a problem. I have emailed Alphaman and offered a remedy of possible suggestion for reconcilliation. He can send the knife to Busse for repair and I will pay the charges or he can resell the knife to myself minus the paypal, shipping, handeleing, resell fees. Or he can resell it himself and probably get all his money back or try make a profit as in the future this knife will become more rare if he holds on to it. I can probabably arrange to have one of my relatives handle the situation in my abscence. As soon as I received the funds from Alphaman for the knife, I transfered them to pay off some bills so the funds were not available for a refund-and again why should I refund when the knife as I sold it did not have that mark. I could never have forseen any problems, except buyers remorse, as the knife was in unused perfect condition when sent. And I have sold serveral other Busse/knives to other forum member and have received nothing but positive results and comments from the buyers. I do greatly thank Jerry BUsse for intervening and offering to recoat the knife where Alphaman had the krinkle coat chip off. AS for being sold with a 3 day waiting period-that was never mentioned. Hope this will all work out.
 
Just curious, but if you now have a Busse knife that you always wanted, and Jerry Busse has offered to refinish it back to new condition for free, why is this still going on? And, if you are going to get the knife refinished for free, and are planning on keeping the knife or selling it for a profit, why would you need to try to have your credit card charges questioned? It seems to me that Ranger is now out of the picture. If you feel mistreated, simply do not deal with him again. Just a thought.
 
Yeah Danbo, that was what I was thinking too,and I posted as much, but now that Ranger288 has seen fit to come on the board and make up communications that never happened and offer me LESS than a full refund only AFTER I send him the knife back, I feel more like this was an intentional attempt to do wrong on his part. There is no reason why I should lose $75 bucks to him for the pleasure of seeing his used knife sold as new, and I sure as hell am not going to send the knife without money first, then he will have the knife and my money. I do believe that I would have to pay a fee to do COD as well.
I wonder why I am still the one answering questions when I have been completly open from the start, with both Ranger288 via email and here on the forums. And why I should be happy with a "MINT" knife that is far from it.
 
I think it is pretty clear that alphmaniv got screwed on this deal. Ranger is accusing him of chipping off the coating and letting it rust to get his money back? Come on. That chip and rust were clearly there when the knife was sent. I can see the damage plain as day, especially in the last scanned photo. Ranger needs to fess up and give him his money back. That's the bottom line.
 
I think Ranger either did know or should have known the chip was there, so, either he knowingly "fudged" his description hoping the buyer wouldnt be anal about it, or he didnt inspect it closely enough, either way, buyer is in the right and deserves a refund. I can tell you there is NO way i would not have seen that defect on any knife i own, i saw it in the first picture, and definitely saw it in the second, as im sure we all did. I too think its ludicrous to think or suggest that Alpha carefully chipped the blade finish and oh so carefully exposed that small area to a salt water solution to create rust just to be able to send the knife back, sounds to me like Alpha, like me, is a collector at heart, thus is fairly anal, and as such, would never intentionally ruin a brand new, mint knife, to suggest so is crazy. And, think about this for a moment. Why would Alpha intentionally chip and/or rust the blade just so he could return the knife when it would be logical for him to have assumed Ranger would take the knife back anyway? Think about it, would Alpha ruin a mint, unused knife JUST IN CASE Ranger was one of those rare sellers here on BF who wont take a knife back? Doesnt make sense, does it. No, clearly, the knife arrived with that damage, Alpha saw it, and didnt want the knife.

Now, others have said basically, hey, no big deal, just have Busse refinish it free, then sell it and get your $$$ back, well, not really, if Alpha is an honest seller, and i believe he is, when he sells the knife, he will HAVE to mention in the ad that the knife has been refinished! This absolutely destroys any hopes of this knife being called new or mint, and significantly hurts its collector value. I know that i wouldnt buy a refinished knife as a collectable. Now, if he plans on using it, thats more acceptable, however, he still has the right to choose whether he wants the knife as a collectable, hoping to sell it one day, or use it, but its HIS choice, he paid his money for that choice, and he can change that decision daily if he wants to.

Absent omniscience (working on it), we will never know whether Ranger knew about the mark or not, i personally think he didnt see it, because frankly, he seems like not such a horrible guy, and thus he really is wondering if somehow the knife was damaged after it left him, and feels that if this is the case, he doesnt owe a refund, but, it really doesnt matter, and i think he is wrong, because i do firmly believe that a buyer is free to return a knife for ANY reason, if it doesnt go with his wife's new drapes, if it's bigger than his "little general" and makes him look bad :) , he can still return it for a full refund, though yes, these examples arent exactly the best reasons to return a knife, but are here to prove my point that you just cant second guess and derive through ESP why someone wants to return a knife, either they are free to return it for any reason, or they are not, nobody knows what goes on in another person's mind and to open up the doors to restricting returns based on what we might believe a buyer was thinking is frankly a little too big brotherish to me. Think about it, what do we do, take a poll each time someone is accused of buyers remorse and vote on what we think the buyer thought? Isnt that a little ridiculous? Either we are free to return a knife or we are not. Yes, occasionally youll get a case of buyers remorse, but thats the price we pay for the fact that we can send big bucks for a knife sight unseen, knowing if it just isnt what we wanted, or our idea of its condition differs from the seller's, we can send it back, same as we can with any sort of internet dealer. I for one would not want to trade, buy or sell if i didnt have the confidence that comes with knowing i can return a knife if i dont want it. Like others have said, yes, it surely sucks if the buyer suffers from buyers remorse and sends it back, but thats the risk you take in selling sight unseen, and if a buyer does this often, people will find out and avoid them. Like they say, freedom isnt free. I for one, have not yet sent a knife back, but i absolutely REQUIRE that i am free to do so without sparking a BF poll to determine what i was thinking.

Edited to add:

I once sold a $700 custom knife here on BF. I bought it directly from the maker obviously brand new since he had just made the thing, and it arrived with a few very small scratches on the blued, damascus blade. I noticed them after a few weeks, but knew its just one of those flaws that every handmade knife has to some degree, no knife, particularly a handmade knife is truly without a flaw if you look closely enough. Anyway, i never once used the knife and about 6 months later when i decided to sell it, i didnt mention those scratches in the ad because i felt the knife was mint and brand new since, as i said, it came from the maker that way and thus was not damage. Well, the buyer received it and noticed the scratches, i explained things to him, he said he wanted to return it, i said fine, though in reality money was tight and i was really hoping to not have to refund the $$$. So, i asked him if maybe he would keep the knife if i gave him a partial refund, in the end, we agreed i would refund him $100, and we were both happy, well, i wasnt thrilled, but happy that we came to an agreement, otherwise, i would have refunded the $ though it would have hurt. In the end, i really took a beating on that knife because i was already selling it well below what i paid, and with that $100 further discount, i practically gave the thing away, but you know what, thats the cost of selling something, if the buyer isnt happy, you do whatever it takes to make him happy, or you give his $ back. From that day on, and this was a while ago when i first started selling knives on the net, i now mention everything, even if i think its normal and not damage, even if it came that way brand new, i mention it just in case, and let the buyer decide for himself, saves us both trouble and shipping, and im glad to say, having bought, sold and traded many tens of thousands of dollars here on BF over the last year or so, i have never been screwed and have never had an unhappy buyer or transaction. I like the way we do things here and i dont want them to change. Just one guys opinion.
 
"Unfortunately, this very issue is going to generate a new policy regarding inspection periods here at BFC, so there is no confusion in the future."
Click to expand...

Be careful what you muddle into. If you are going to give/offer an inspection period to the buyer, then you will need to include a restocking fee to the seller. You are talking about individuals buying and trading at price; not a retail establishment with a built in margin to deal with returns. There are very few knives in circulation that I wouldn't be able to find a small flaw on. You should not automatically grant preference to one side or the other.

Dealing with issues like this is a mutual risk that is inherent in this type of exchange. The fault is as much with the buyer as it is the seller. alphamaniv was only offered a photo of one side of the knife, but did he ask for other photos? Did he mention that he was looking for a knife in perfect condition? Communications is a two way thing. Words like "new" and "mint" are informative starting points but a 50 year old new knife is very different from a new knife that was manufactured yesterday, and even new knives are sometimes less then perfect.

Ultimately, this is for the buyer and seller to resolve to their mutual satisfaction. This thread does neither of them good. The knife may have been perfect, or defective, I don't know. But, both have so far demonstrated that they are unwilling to compromise.

The knife does not looked "used" to me, and the damage may very well have occured in transit, or even at the factory. The problem with coated knives is that rust can linger unseen below the coat only to be revealed when the coating flakes off. Take it up to 35,000 feet and subject it to temperature and pressure changes and the coating may finally fail and flake off.

The best of luck to both of you. I hope that Jerry can restore the knife so that one of you ends up with a good knife and the other with his money.

n2s
 
I've done only a small bit of selling compared to some of you, but I always try to describe *everything* on what I'm selling. Even if I think it may be insignificant, I still mention it. Scratches, scuffs, missing paperwork, whatever, it gets mentioned in the sale ad.
I have had one item come back to me. It was an LP I sold that was warped pretty badly. I totally missed it when I looked it over because I checked the surface for scratches, and never looked at it on a horizontal plane. I apologized to the buyer, asked him to send it back to me, and refunded his money to him. I didn't give him a hard time even though I was skeptical at first that I missed something so obvious, but sure enough, I did.

I only hope when I have problems with an item the seller is reasonable to me. Unfortunately, I've run across a few that aren't. :(
 
Again, I will state that there was not a mark on that knife when sent. I resent being accused of misleading and trying to act shady. That is not the case. IF a person sells a knife, they know to be in prefect condition and then an individual has the knife and says it is damaged - how does the seller not know if the buyer is the one who damaged the knife. IF the ARK has this mark on it and it is as noticable as Alphaman says then I do not see how it would even have been remotely possible that I could have missed it. So that is my dilemna, that a knife I sold that did not have this mark now does and then I get accused of sending a damaged product under false pretenses-this angers me. Especially if the seller never noticed any marks on the knife. I have tried to be fare and offered several solitions to the buyer including taking the knife back minus the fees I got selling it and also asked for the knife to be sent COD so as there is no mistrust on either part. What has really upset me is being accused of being dishonest and purposedely trying to resell a damaged knife. I actually did not want to part with the ARK in the first place, but was badly in need of funds. I would never have sold a knife under false pretenses as I have been accused of. What would you other forum members do if you sold a knife in perfect condition and then are told it was damaged. I actually feel that I don't have to offer any refund at all as the knife was in prime condition when sent. IF the knife was still in prime condition and the buyer expressed buyers remorse or financial difficulty I would be prone to offer a refund if I had the funds. But, when I get accused of things that I never did and told the knife is not good and that I mislead and sent a damaged product it upsets me. Again, I have offered to buy back the knife minus the fees, and send it to Jerry to fix. But now I am the one stuck with the knife with a mark on it that was not sent that way. It comes down to other forum members believing what they want-either one of us is lying or we are both screwed up. I again hope this situation can be resolved peacefully. Chad
 
Chad, I sent you a reply to the email that you just sent me. As far as the lying and screwing up are concerned. First off, I don't lie, I learned a long time ago that it is just too hard to keep a story straight, so you might as well tell it like it is. As for screwing up, all I did was open the package and unsheath the knife. Forgive the sarcasm but I could not have really left in the box, could I? Other than that and being photograhed, I have done nothing with the knife or to the knife. I hope that we are close to a resolution, because this is getting tiresome, probably for both of us.
 
Originally posted by Ranger288
Again, I will state that there was not a mark on that knife when sent. I resent being accused of misleading and trying to act shady. That is not the case. IF a person sells a knife, they know to be in prefect condition and then an individual has the knife and says it is damaged - how does the seller not know if the buyer is the one who damaged the knife.
Click to expand...


I understand your point completely. However,,Imho, the buyer is not at risk in a deal. The buyer does not have the advantage of physically checking out the knife at the point of sale. This is the risk that everyone takes when selling on the internet.
The GB&U stands as a record of both sides of the story. If this became common occurences of the buyer or seller,,I believe they would be dealt with.

Phillip :)
 
This may be a long one but it is important. First off, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, just have a phone conversation in the beginning. It can really go a long way.

I have just gotten off the phone with Chad and I feel like we had a good talk. He seems like a nice guy, and I do believe him when he says that he knew nothing of the problems of the knife. We are both at a loss over what could have happened to it and we are both going to lose a little money on the deal, but the matter has been settled between us. I will send the knife back to him COD and and he is going to refund $325. I can live with that and I think he can too. I regret that we did not speak to each other directly sooner, as it saves so much “reading between the lines” of posts and emails, and then stuff can really get bad fast. After we sorted this out, we talked for several min. about other knives that we either have or want and were on good terms. So, all in all it appears to be settled, and I thank Chad for having the wisdom to make a call and work it out like folks did in the old days, before the internet ;)
 
When in doubt, pick up the phone. I'm glad this could be resolved amicably.

Maybe we should have a sticky thread on "Suggestions for making sure your sale / trade / purchase is a good one" at the top of the GBU.
 
Originally posted by alphamaniv
...and I thank Chad for having the wisdom to make a call and work it out like folks did in the old days, before the internet ;)
Click to expand...

I was with you completely up until you alluded to a time before the internet? Please explain, i'm not familiar with this concept, hasn't the internet always existed? ;)

Im glad this has been settled, i had a feeling that nothing shady had been intended, and maybe im a little too sentimental, but it actually bothers me when i see stuff like this happening. Im a very sensitive person you know... :rolleyes:
 
Think that might be a good idea Spark for those of us who are new to the Knie exchange particularly(and I'm referring to myself before anyone gets offended. :)
 
Spark, i've sent you an email.

Alpha and Ranger, i'm glad this was resolved in a phone call. Hopefully this incident won't prevent either of you from participating in the Exchange in the future.
 
Originally posted by not2sharp
If you are going to give/offer an inspection period to the buyer, then you will need to include a restocking fee to the seller. You are talking about individuals buying and trading at price; not a retail establishment with a built in margin to deal with returns. There are very few knives in circulation that I wouldn't be able to find a small flaw on. You should not automatically grant preference to one side or the other.
Click to expand...

I strongly agree.

At least -- or, really, my suggestion would be, if this is to become a spelled out rule, that if the knife was misrepresented, the seller ought to refund the buyer's shipping (both original and return), and if it's "buyer's remorse" or similar, the buyer ought to refund the buyer's shipping (both original and return). That way, the person that is at fault is the one taking the financial hit.

Naturally it won't work in every situation, but I really believe that most folks here are honorable guys. I've done a whole bunch of trades and only had two complicated ones; one, the fellow made right, and the second, in a situation where a knife was VERY misrepresented, I ended up out shipping both ways to Canada. Admittedly, so did he, but he was the one at fault.

But that's only one sour trade out of a hundred, at least. I think a clause like that would make things a bit more fair.

JamesA
 
I've never bought a knife on here from a forum member,,,and i've watched this thread with interest,,,bottom line alpha has lost out on the deal,,,personally i think there should be a greater influence from the moderators,,,what i've read doesn't really inspire me to buy or trade on here,,,this may be a one in a hundred scenario but i wouldn't want to be involved in five pages of grief about anyone or anything,,,surely the moderators should have more clout and be able to protect buyers on here,,,for the record i consider this forum superb the wealth of knolwedge available is astounding,,,but i think this thread proves a greater degree of buyer protection is required.
 
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