dodgy forum members

[yetchh]

Sorry in advance.. this is long winded.


There are lots of them out there and most of the time we ignore them, but then one come along who is extremely convincing and BAM!! there goes your money...

So.. i dont know how many of you in vic are familiar with a guy that goes by the name of andrew, aka "coupe king" on AFF, or "mild to wild customs" to any body else. He's mid 30ish, short n stocky, big beer belly, semi balding, classic bogan (sorry) type of guy. some may have seen him at swap meets selling lots of xa xb xc stuff, been out to his(no longer, but was chocker with 7-8 coupes and tens of thousands in parts) warehouse in campbellfield or been in contact with him in other ways.

I was first contacted by him on AFF as a genuine guy who was interested in my project and had some truly good information to do with restoring coupes, he came and had a look at the landau, then invited me to his warehouse to show me what i would be in for. Everything he said has been right so far.. then the talk came.

"instead of waiting for a good parcel shelf to come up, i can make you one for $700"

"Why bother repairing bit by bit and wasting heaps of time with patchwork when you can replace the whole floor and firewall with a good sedan floor which, incidentally i have and you can have for $400"?

"I'm shifting out of this warehouse to one in coburg with twice as much room and you could do your project there with my help for $2000"

Now being that i am (was) an absolute falcon newbie this all sounded good to me and was the direction i almost started to take, payed him for the floor which wasnt in as good condition as i hoped but then how many wrecked classics are, thats why they're wrecked. Managed to let him persuade me to pay in advance for the parcel shelf as they were in hot demand with him making several each month for "customers and, he almost persuaded me to take the floor space as the carport with the roof i had built(which was the whole point of this exercise) wasn't good enough for restoration work.

Some people we know take a long time if ever to answer their phones or get back to you, this guy took it to new levels, the longest being three weeks!, in which i had changed my mind on swapping the whole floor. About 3 days after i had finally decided to pay for the floor (and about a month after i had decided to purchase it), i had descusions with a friend of mine who builds hotrods, he reckoned it was a waste of time changing the floor as i would lose the original structure and make it difficult to realign everything. I agreed, rang andrew straight away to cancel the floor, which at that point was still a whole car that i had seen the three day before i purchased it. Rang him about once every 2 days, txt 4 or 5 time telling him so, finally after the three weeks he rang me back.
Classic, he'd already cut the roof off for a customer, about three weeks ago. I've at this point lived long enough to think i know situations when people are lying to me, this was one such situation. The car had sat untouched for nearly a month after we decided to go down this avenue, in which time he had started to move his massive amount of stuff out of the warehouse (alarm bells should have gone off), he then told me that the shell would have to go into storage for a bit till he sorted stuff out and he was having massive issues with the warehouse owner and was having to involve the police. This was taking to long now, i had given myself 8 months to get the coupe to rolling shell stage.. and after the three weeks i got the hump and took thing into my own hands, had the shell sand blasted and purchased a p5 front cut and excellent xb rear cut of a very honest LukeGT (luke off AFF), after dealing with luke and a couple of other people selling coupe stuff, i had built confidence in the honesty of the people i bought stuff off with , in my mind, andrew being no different. But i digress, after he told me the roof was off and about his issues, and i persuaded him i was in the right about the floor since i had been trying to contact him with no answer for three weeks to stop him cutting it up and to sell me something else worth $400, i said i wanted the parcel shelf in about two months. Two months have passed, no contact, rung him maybe, 15 times, txt about the same, nothing.. so now i'm ****ed, this isnt how you do business, surely.

Three weeks ago i found another person on Aff who had given andrew money in dec last year and not heard from him, he is also very ****ed, that has spurred me into finally dealing with this, that is to go to the police.

So now finally to my question, has anybody had any dealings with this guy, been to his old warehouse or wherever he is now, pretty much any information on this guy at all would be very helpful in helping me get my money back and be done with this con artist..

Please PM me with any info I very much need you help, thanks, Thomas