I began speaking with Gabriel Bell of Puritan Cabinets in the summer of after finding one of his furniture auctions on Ebay... He was advertising a set of Bedroom Furniture, described as white cape cod bedroom set. The photos he was using in his auction were bedroom sets from Pottery Barn and another furniture company, which after the fact I found out that those companies had never authorized the use of those photos.
I had made SEVERAL contacts with Mr. Bell before I finally decided to make a purchas in November. He had provided me a quote earlier in the year and said that he would be glad to honor the quote he had previously supplied to me. We corresponded several times regarding EXACTLY what i was ordering... And I had received a confirmation from him as well. We paid half of the cost of the set, and the merchant said they were ordering the pieces for the set and should receive them within a week or so... I contacted Mr Bell many many times to verify the order status... There was always delays..ALWAYS.
INCIDENTLY, the merchant had me complete my transaction through his site, and not Ebay... Shouldve been the FIRST CLUE of a scamm...
In December they said that they were ready to ship and needed me to pay the 2nd half of the order. I did... And then didnt hear from the merchant for a while... I began to grow nervous, and tried contacting the merchant via phone and email... And until I threatened a chargeback to the credit card that I had used, I didnt hear from him. FINALLY, he said the furniture was definitly going to ship... Even provided me with a shipping confirmation number... Which, ultimately was a number he created on the shippers system online. I contacted the carrier by phone directly at the terminal as well as their corporate office online, they had no record of the shipment ever being even dropped off. THe merchant swore up and down it had shipped. ANother threat of a charge back two weeks later, finally got a real life shipping confirmation.
The furniture finally arrived nearly 3 months after our order. ANd ofcourse, it was the WRONG furniture... And it was only then that we realized that he was making this furniture and selling it using other furniture companies photos. HUGE misrepresentation.
We tried contacting Mr. Bell IMMEDIATELY via phone at his business, home, and as well as via email. And didnt hear anything from him for two days. We finally heard from him via email, and he proceeded to tell me that our order had been mixed up with another similar order, and that our order had actually ended up with someone else only 20 minutes away from our house... However, those people liked our furniture so much that they decided to keep it???!!! What! That was the furniture that we had paid for!
We immediately filed a charge back with the credit card company (to which the merchant accused US of fraud for), and gave the merchant our options as to what we wanted to do at that point... Once he realized we filed a dispute with the credit card company, he said he couldnt do anything.
We had made the offer several times that we would keep the set at a discounted price, he said nope, it was tied up with the credit card company. So we sat with this furniture crated up in our garage for 7 months... Until we got notification from the credit card company that we werent responsible for the charges.
I caught this guy lying left and right. It turns out that the local SHeriffs department began an investigation, and had over 40 complaints for the same type of situations, and a couple of weeks ago, we got a letter from the Attorney General from the state of Kentucky stating they had began a criminal investigation as well.
This guy, who we dont really know if he's Gabriel Bell or David Myer, but regardless, he'll gladly take your money, and he'll gladly cause you grief while you take months realizing that your not going to get anything for what you paid for.
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