I'd prefer to handle something like this privately and avoid unnecessary public confrontation and/or potential arguments, and I don't like to make public accusations/call-outs (and I don't necessarily intend to do so right now), but I need to clear some things up and possibly call some other things into question.
Stephen contacted me in late December asking to purchase the Nintendo Gay Boy from me. Standard buyer/seller convo ensued, he talked me down on the price a little bit, I got his address, and we came to an agreement. No, I was not accepting Paypal. I myself had recently been scammed out of quite a bit more than $85 and a decent amount of merch/parts, and the lack of a proper resolution left a bad taste in my mouth. I recommended payment directly through Facebook Messenger, as a lot of my other artist and modding friends have been using it as an alternative to Paypal for little one-offs and commissions. I'd heard nothing but good things about it, used it a couple times myself without issues, it's supposedly just as safe as Paypal but a little easier to deal with on both ends when a deal goes weird. Stephen was apparently unable to use this method for some reason. He said the service probably wasn't available where he lives, which, looking back, strikes me as a bit odd considering I've previously used it with friends who reside in the UK without any issues. He instead recommended a direct bank transfer through a service called TransferWise. Never heard of it before and generally when you hear stuff about bank transfers in online deals you'd stay away from it, but Stephen had a couple of trusted mutual friends on Facebook so he seemed legit, and I needed the money. After a quick googling of TransferWise to see whether or not it was legit, everything looked A-OK for the most part, so we proceeded with the transaction, and I sent him the Gay Boy. We didn't use international tracking because that stuff is expensive AF and any issues like this are few and far between, if they even happen at all. I'll admit, that was my bad. As previously mentioned in this thread, from now on I will only be doing international shipping at my own discretion, with mandatory international tracking.
Fast forward to last month when Stephen made a couple public posts claiming I'd scammed him. I made my previous post in this thread vowing to either figure out what had happened to the Gay Boy if I could, and if I couldn't I would send him a new one, since I was planning on putting a few more together anyway and frankly this whole ordeal was causing me more stress than it was worth and I didn't want to have deal with it for that much longer.
The post office of course had no clue how to help me so I ended up making him a new Gay Boy. I had it packaged and ready to go out Monday night and I dropped it off at the post office yesterday morning. Curiously, Stephen seemed to ignored the message I sent to him about the matter but sent me another message asking why I wasn't replying. I'm... confused by this. "Facebook says he's seen the message, but maybe we're just experiencing some weird hiccup in Messenger or something?" I wonder. I send him another message. He doesn't reply. I figure if I don't hear back from him within the next day I'll shoot him an email and maybe a PM here on CMO. (sidenote: I just realized that I don't have your email address, Stephen. I'd appreciate it if you could PM it to me or send me an email at [email protected])
But I didn't have to do either of those things. He replied. I woke up today to a message calling me a charlatan and several Facebook notifications to let me know he'd left some comments on my original sale post from December in the ChipWin Facebook group while I was asleep. A few people responded to his comments, a couple of people unfriended me, and Hoodie disabled comments on the post. Not sure what else to do, I decided to check here, found that this thread was still active, and here we are.
tl;dr recap:
-Sketchy bank transfer was not my idea, I was hesitant but I took the offer anyway because Stephen seemed legit and I needed the cash.
-Communication with Stephen has been pretty sus, especially with Facebook over the last couple of days leading up to the most recent post, and for some reason he won't just email me directly or PM me on here.
-I've now sent this guy two Gay Boys, and I at least have the tracking on the latest one to prove when he receives it.
-This is starting to feel like borderline libel and harassment from where I'm standing and I really don't appreciate it.
The dude is getting his Game Boy. The only reason he isn't get a refund instead is because apparently the only option we have is sketchy bank transfers and I'm not comfortable dealing with that again. I have done all that I can do, and I'm done.
P.S. I'm PMing him his new tracking number here on CMO right now. I'd also send him an email but I do not have his email address.
