BUYER BEWARE.[/SIZE]

All I felt it was necessary to inform the E55 comminuty of a Merchant that has failed to ship a E55 kit containing a pulley upgrade, cooling system, and headers upgrade.

I think this board should know this information so that you do not have to deal or suffer a financial loss or headaches.

I will periodically inform the board on this matter for your own protection as to the status of the refund.

Additionally I would hope we could start a thread on merchant reviews, kit reviews, customer service, etc.

<<Update on Stephen's 540rwhp Kit>>

Let me inform all of the facts so that everyone is very aware of this merchants activities and reliabliity.

Note: I realize I am a sample size of 1 but when I earlier attempted to see if anyone else in the US had purchased and acquired his kit I realized that I was likely the only person that had purchased it. Stupid me. So I will leave any inference of fraud or deception up to you but here are the facts:

Order Date June 26th
Purchase Date: Paypal $6,300
Date promised: 2 weeks (10 days shipping via TNT)
In stock amount quoted: 6 kits


Contact on my part to Stephen: 71 e-mails, 33 phone calls ($398 from home - rest from office.

Shipping/Tracking #s provided by Stephen: 2 bogus #s that do not register anything on www.tnt.com

Reason #1: Stephen Claims it was shipped. I verify by TNT's #800 number of no such shipment. Later Stephen says it was stolen by an insider.

Shipment #2: Stephen says customs would not pick it up.

Refund: Stephen attempted to issued refund but my bank said there was no such effort made. His reply: It won't go through internationally.

Refund #2: He would not refund via paypal because it would cost me $256 in a transaction fee.

I hope you all get the picture that this merchant is likely highly unethical and/or highly unresponse to customers. So far its been a nightmare dealing with Stephen as all I have to show is headaches and a loss of $6300 so far. My bank is now on the case.

While I can only speak for myself I would high restrain from ordering or dealing with this merchant. On a 1 to 10 I would rate my experience a complete zero. Please take heed and caution in dealing with this merchant. Its sad because if his kit exists (I have no proof it does) it would have been a decent buy. BUYER BEWARE.

 

Thank you for taking the time to share this very important information. I was ready to play, now I will have to go back to the sideline and observe.

Thanks again.

 

thats really fuc*ed up. I guess you have to live and learn. You are already down 6g's you might as well spend a few more and take a trip to the land down under and pay Stephens a visit.

 

E55 Baller,

I am so sorry to hear about your troubles.

I was worried about this very thing with Stephen because I would send emails and get no reply.

I am sorry you had to go through this. File a fraud claim against him with Paypal. Paypal will give you back the money without question if no merchandise was shipped from the vendor.

I have done this before and it took less than a week for Paypal to return the money to me.

Good luck to you.

 

sorry for ur loss, i hope u work something out and get ur funds back somehow.. that's why after reading all that.. i am purely interested and still am interested in the evosport stage 1 and stage 2. i think a reliable and respectable company goes a long way even if u pay just a few bucks extra.. i wish u the best of luck on this case dude...

 

Well...

Lets have Stephen to response to this thread before throwing anything on him...

If I were you, I wont order anything to modified the engine, unless is from major company as Carlsson. The E55 engine upgrade is about $7000US, which give you approx 550HP. Why bother to order from Stephen? Just get the Carlsson upgraded pulleys, drive belts, air filters, Carlsson's own VMax software upgrade. At least the product is been tested, unlike someone created somthing "good". The way you did just like buying a "Barbus Like" body kits for less. Dude, spend the money wisely!!

 

I agree, I would prefer to have Stephen jump on and explain to all because from what I can tell if he can ship these kits reliably or have someone do it for him since he is so busy they will probably fly off the shelf since there is a lot of value in the $6k kit.

I will update the forum as to my situation. Hopefully it gets sent but if it doesnt I will let you know about the refund.

 

Sorry to hear of your loss...and thank you for warning everyone...

 

When does paypal return all you money? I don't think this will happen, even with seller's that have buyer protection the maximum protection is $500. I know beacuse I just got scammed by an ebayer for 1400 for a Pioneer avic-n1 that was buyer protected through paypal.

 

Yes maximum protection is only $1500 so I will likely be screwed and you have to have a paypal credit line and have used that paypal credit line for the goods to be credited for it.

 

If the money is still inside Paypal and Stephens has not yet cashed out, you can call up Paypal and harass/threaten them to either hold it or return it back to you. A friend of mine bought some stuff on eBay once (turned out to be counterfeit) and he got his money back by harassing Paypal.

 

I feel your pain.

I hope this gets resolved soon and Stephen from Down Under clears his reputation and sends you the 540 hp kit or wires you a refund immediately. It is very simple for him to refund you the money via an International bank wire transfer. His excuse is pure BS.

Personally, I would demand your money back. Who knows what you are getting from this clown. Don't jeopardize your car with engine parts from an unknown and undependable source.

Good luck!

 

I'd listen to rusnakmb and not order one-off kits not produced and backed by a reputable company. We have AMGs not Hondas! Go with Evo or someome that actually has shipped and installed a kit. These kits in Australia could very well be vaporware.

Hope it works out for you.

 

Hi Cerberus,

Yes I have heard my share of complete BS to the point where I can't believe anything that is said. I am so used to dealing with people that "do what they say" that this comes as a complete shock.
Its interesting to note that no one in the US appears to have a) purchased and b) received a kit.

 

Funny how Stephens isn't posting on the board anymore.

 

I wonder if he was ever real? Perhaps he was a poser, and was waiting for a whale???

 

here is my suggestion:

when you sent payment by paypal, did you send the payment funded by creditcard registered with paypal OR by paypal balance? if you sent payment funded by credit card, don't bother talk with paypal, call your credit card company and tell them that the transaction is fraudulent, not authorized 99% you will get your money back!

if the payment funded by paypal balance, that's a little tough, paypal won't protect any user who sent money overseas (especially if it is non-eBay transaction). but you might still want to try and tell them that the transaction is UNAUTHORIZED!!. Unauthorized/fraudulent is the only word that will be accepted by paypal. If you said "seller didn't ship, item is not as described" paypal won't bother.

I got this from my colleague who's a power seller on ebay and ever deal with this kind of ****.

 

sorry to hear about your terrible experience e55baller

 

This is sad I spoke with Stephens over the phone several times to comment on my NOS mod's and seemed like a nice guy. I am very surprized . I almost sent the pay pal for the headers, I am going to buy the evosport ones.

Sincerely,
Manuel

 

Possibly we could find a member who lives in OZ and asks him/her to pay Stephens a visit.....

From the way he talked about cars he has, it seemed that he has way too much money to spend.... and he claimed he got all of this by doing what he likes to do... modify cars.... seems like it's just a

 

I always thought stephens was a moron. Don't feel bad E55 baller, he had everyone here hanging off of his every word.

 

I was going to get the kit (or pay it in bits to make sure the other half didn't see huge chunks coming out of the bank account and get it shipped when it was done) but never started sending the $$$ over as other priorities intervened (like a new home theater). Sorry to see someone get bitten but I'm now glad I didn't send any money. Stephens disappearance is indeed odd as he was formerly a very active participant here... there may be a good explanation for all this and you may yet get your kit. The excuses bother me.... and some of them just don't hold up. Stephens? The longer you're silent the worse this all looks.

 

His silence on the board is indeed interesting. I wish there was a good excuse but I think he may have just gotten his whale and gone into permanent hiding. Afterall why would he sell his E55? Did he even ever own one? Is that a ploy now to have an excuse to stay off the board?

BTW, I funded the paypal transaction via a credit card and have a fraud claim in with them. They are investigating it currently so hopefully I will hear something soon.

Its funny every day I get a new excuse from him. Its to the point where his credibility is near zero and everything he has posted or said in the past on this board IMHO needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Time to do business with real providers and not some vaporware scam. I can't even get anyone is OZ on this board to post anything about having his kit.

Apparently per Stephen, "There are a dozen E55 W211s in Australia" with his kit. Whatever. Will keep you all posted but please don't make my mistake!!!

 

Damn he seems sketchy. Hope this gets resloved for you. He hasn't been on the board in some while. Perhaps he is doing this with Honda's, Toyota's, BMW's etc.

Scam artists are excellent at what they do and typically they only get 1-2 whales before they move on to a new trick. I bet that is what he is doing. Maybe he has the Ferrari's and Benz's becuase he is very good at scamming people. Or...they are a cheap as the digital image. After all I could add a bunch of bogus pics, signature, pics of mods, and dyno's that are fake. Interesting if there are tons of E55s in down under that no one has verified this guy is real.

Again sorry. Sounds like he should be banned from this forum.

 

Not many people in here driving Benz willing to modify their car cosmetically let alone the engine, and yes E55 is still rare in my city (only seen 3 times in a year).