Chula Vista, CA, Same bullshit, CA lic plate 43FT488 which is not a valid plate. It was a SWM with a tattoo on his right arm and long hair. He was driving a Green or dark colored dodge minivan.

Shelly, don't feel bad... they got me too in Stroudsberg in the Home Depot parking lot... I ponied up $350... the speakers are servicable, but we should know better... I was worrying about the bad charma, but now I know all I got was bad speakers...

On 01/27/05 03:00 ET, shelly said...

Yoga, I can't figure out how to email you, but I would love more info... I'm going to go and stake out my HomeDepot parking lot with a bat and wait for them to come back...

Does anyone know where to track down these a-holes in Illinois. I am in the industry and one of my friends was dumb enough to get screwed by the same deal and now I want to do some screwing!

Is there any way to get these guys for fraud?
I have a cell phone number.
They were in Irving, Texas on 02/15/05.

Doubt it. They are selling a product and claiming subjective claims, like audio quality. Perhaps selling without a business license or something.

I was thinking that as well. As misleading as it all is, it isn't legally fraud.

Boy oh boy. I think PT Barnum may have just been right!

MY input.
I own a small custom av shop. I did a name search on the sec. of state website before renaming my company when I became a s-corp, chose a generic but workable name, registered it, life was good...until
I start getting calls...are you x company
Yes I am
Well your guys sold my crappy speakers in a parking lot and I want my money back, over and over and over again, four, five calls a month.
Finally I did some research and these guys where calling themselves my registered name. I was in the phonebook, online yellowpages, people naturally thought they were me.

When I got the call form a county sherriff saying he had to verify my address so he could pay me a visit, something had to happen.

What popped into my head was these guys are not legit because they are not registered, nor do they collect sales tax. Sherriff agreed with me, we found out who was running the show and the sec. of state paid them a visit with I hope one hell of a fine for back taxes.

The nasty calls have since stopped.

Now that's a good story in this topic. Glad it worked out ok. Sometimes things like this can damage you irreparably.

There are alot of people buying these speakers from guys in vans, been going on for decades, the "scam" part is that they tell you they are supposed to be worth $1,000's. What the majority of you pay for them is what they are worth. I haven't seen anyone say they got a box full of rocks, everone says they work (maybe not the best sounding speakers, but what did you expect for a few hundred). It's the way they are sold and the fact that you got hooked that makes you mad. Think about it, electrolux went door to door selling very over priced vacuum's for years, with some pretty high pressured tactics. Heck lots of you retaillers out there feed a line of crap to your clients when trying to sell the 200.00++ cables that they "NEED" for their systems.

Found this on another web site-food for thought.

Basically, after reading all the "victim posts" I think if you bought these speakers it was because you VOLUNTEERED to doing something morally questionable (at best) and by doing so were hoping to save (or make) a bunch of money and get a pair of 'really good speakers' at a fraction of the cost. The 'van guys' essentially come out and TELL you they are DISHONEST ("...no plans to return the speakers...") so you JOIN IN on the DEAL!?! Basically you try and cheat and then blame others for cheating you...worse yet some of you are willing to hurt or even KILL these kids who are only taking money from greedy, un-informed and apparently quite gullable people. If their story WAS true, by purchasing those speakers you are agreeing to assist them in cheating the "imaginary" distributor. This makes you as guilty as they are. I would be reluctant to tell anyone at work you went for such a story. Your ethics and moral standing may suddenly come into scrutiny.
If you don't know (or live by) "If its too good to be true - it is..." Maybe its time to grow up and stop being such a "victim".
Mike

wow ronk
that is one way to make friends
but I do agree, the buyers are as guilty as the sellers of ethic conflict
retail may be for suckers, but a fair price for a fair product is what this country should be about, damn straight "if it is to good to be true..it is"
KARMA

I'm not making a judgement. I guess I should have put the paragraph in quotes, since someone else wrote it. It was part of a larger article explaining how these guys operate. From what I understand, they have to pay their "distributor" 200 bucks for these speakers. Anything above 200 they get to keep for themselves.

I spent literally years looking and listening before I bought my main speakers. That someone can buy speakers in a couple of minutes, without even hearing them, is amusing.