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Post by Alan on Feb 11, 2009 15:27:35 GMT -5
Some of you may have noticed that a couple of threads on this part of the forum just dissapeared, to those of you who were in trades with this person I am sorry, but as it turns out this guy is a major scam, not only in regards to seeds but myriads of other subject matters and fake web-sites on the net. Thanks to those who let me know and sorry to those who may have had trades out, but he is now banned.
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Post by pugs on Feb 11, 2009 20:36:50 GMT -5
Wow,
Wish I had waited one more day.
Oh well, I would have sent him the seeds, if he had asked.
Pugs
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mostlypurple
grub
SE Michigan, Kitchen garden, Z 5b-6a
Posts: 86
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Post by mostlypurple on Feb 11, 2009 20:52:57 GMT -5
who, seed junkie? too bad. it did seem too good to be true. I did pause briefly when I saw his email is "ceo@tlpn.org". Check out tlpn.org; kind of fishy.
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Post by tuttamatta on Feb 12, 2009 0:54:02 GMT -5
I think this is pretty sad! Scamming good ol' gardeners? What was he after? On this forum he was only asking for a SASBE, so, was it the stamps? I read about him on Garden Web and TomatoVille, sounded pretty extreme to me, I guess I should have paid more attention since I responded and sent the SASBE for Peruvian Purple corn and potato seeds (just yesterday) and I will probably have to kiss them goodbye... oh well, another lesson to learn!!!! His list was very impressive and this is very disappointing, what gives? Anybody else in the same boat?
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Post by michaeljohnson on Feb 12, 2009 1:50:23 GMT -5
There are unfortunately- much worse scammers than him within the boundries of the three or four tomato forums most people frequent. although I was fortunate enough not have had any personal dealings with this chap, I have however been taken for umpteen packets of seed in the past by people of whom you would never dream it would be possible for them to treat you like that, as they come across as nice respectable people in most cases. In the worst case senario some of them are absolute con men,or woman, smooth talking with promises of sending seeds by return on an exchange deal etc- and the inevitable happens the seeds never arrive. Usually if that happens I never send them another single seed again or ever bother with them again. Over the years I personally have maintained a 100% percent honesty policy and will continue to do so, and these days trade only with people that I have learned to trust and can rely upon implicitly , it is a great pity that these various forums are not run on the same principle as E-Bay, with a points system of 99.5 or 100% etc for each trader in seed exchange deals, with boxes to tick and short comments etc, however things still sometimes go wrong even on e-bay despite the points system. And the repertoire of amazing excuses some of these people invent for not sending your half of the seed exchange is absolutely amazing,but I have pretty much learned to recognise them all after a couple of e-mails to the person involved. In the worst case scenario- one chap in another continent took a very good Russian tomato enthusiast for 200 pkts of seed in one go, he also took me for 22 pkts of seed last year and has been promising to send them ever since, almost on a weekly basis to date,with a huge repertoire of excuses that are almost too funny to print,I have learned since that in the past two years he has conned at least fourteen people out of their seeds on a regular basis and never sent them anything in return, I have also encountered several more recent scams within the last four months even on here where at least three people have tried to con me to date-but I am pleased to say that the majority are honest and good people,a favourite con mans/womans trick to gain your confidence is to respond fairly quickly on the first exchange to lull you into a false sense of security especially if you actually receive any seeds from them, and then they hammer you for as many packets of seed as they can get out of you over the next three or four weeks with promises of the seeds are on their way etc, etc, I have seen this done many times in the past even as little as three or four weeks ago. At one time things were so bad that I and a bunch of other reliable good friends resolved that we would form some sort of bad deals black list, which we did and passed it round to each other. What I personally find most annoying about the whole scenario - is that a person spends the whole season growing, harvesting , and drying the seeds, sometimes with lots of hard labour and great difficulty in a bad year, only for someone to rip you off at the end of the season after all the hard work you have done, GW, used to be the worst for being ripped off at one time, but they have a hatefull lose-lose policy for victims over there, because anyone who complains at being ripped of by another member is immediately banned- you just cant win with them, which is all wrong to me
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Post by iva on Feb 12, 2009 3:15:33 GMT -5
Oh, gosh, I never even knew these things could happen. I mean I only just started the 'trading business' but I'm sure I will be careful who I trade with. And yes, it must be awful after so much work to simply loose those seeds. I know I would be very upset as I have a very small garden and to get enough seeds for trading is very hard for me to do. In the beginning of the tomato season I don't even let my family taste the first tomatoes because I always hand pollinate them to get pure uncrossed seed... Now if those were taken from me in such manner, grrrrr, I wouldn't know what to do...
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Post by grungy on Feb 12, 2009 4:52:47 GMT -5
Actually in the hundreds of trades that we have done, I think that less than 0.5% of them were done with "scam" artists, definitely less 1%. Most folks are quite honest and if you notify them that the seeds haven't arrived after a reasonable time (say a month for our rural PO), they will resend. In fact one of my trades involved resend 3 times, and eventually 2 out of the 3 packets arrived at their destination. Please remember once the seeds leave the traders, hands, they can't do anything to speed up the delivery by the PO. You can only keep resending until at least one packet makes it through. Cheers, Val / grungy
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Post by ottawagardener on Feb 12, 2009 8:34:34 GMT -5
I have only ever had one trade that didn't arrive back to me. Normally when I send the seeds off, I wish them well in their new independent life. I don't remember this scammer?
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mostlypurple
grub
SE Michigan, Kitchen garden, Z 5b-6a
Posts: 86
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Post by mostlypurple on Feb 12, 2009 8:43:34 GMT -5
Why would anybody want that kind of bad karma (if there is such a thing) anyways? Look at how many kind folks here at this forum sent me seeds without a trade, just 'cause I asked! A big THANK YOU!!! to everyone who sent me seeds, and to everyone who merely OFFERED me seeds. I am definitely going find ways to pay your kindness and kind intentions back, and pay it forward too...I'm keeping track of the screennames, and y'all will get first dibs on my saved seeds in the fall, whatever I end up growing and saving. That is, after AmericanGardener, of course .
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Post by canadamike on Feb 12, 2009 10:05:57 GMT -5
I tend NOT to see seeds I give as a gift, not a trade. To me, as longas they are out there... There is a trading site in France where I have stopped to ask for seeds, I just send stuff. I suffer from the Grunt and Grungy syndrome... I DON'T want to see another tomato seed in my mailbox Of course, there are always exceptions... ;D Speaking of seeds, I had lost/misplaced all mine in the move. I found most of them. I suppose somebody's wife needed the pails they were in and put them in beer cases with nothing writen on it... That is only a supposition of course... But while it happened, my computer died and have a new one. I had kept files on ''trades'' but lost them of course. So if anybody is waiting something from me, it would be nice to send me a pm....I try to remember as much as I can but my memory of these things ia only partial. I acted as a bridge between here and Tomodori in France for maters and I was a bit overwhelmed by the demand. itall happened while I was working on our Perennial Grains Pionneer Project....
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Post by michaeljohnson on Feb 12, 2009 11:10:18 GMT -5
As a general rule- from my experiences in the past, most scammers tend not to scam people who live in their own country, but tend to concentrate more on scamming people from other countries where they think you have no chance whatever of getting at them or ever getting your seeds from them. Funnily enough I find the most honest and straight country to date is Germany- I have traded with German based people from there for several years and all have been 100% honest, in fact most of Europe and the middle eastern countries has never let me down either,one well respected German friend found that the stamp I put on the letter and seeds to him had not been franked by the post office, so he carefully cut around it with a pair of scissors and posted it back to me to re-use with his exchange seeds included, hows that for honesty I find the Majority of friends in Canada are 100% honest too as I have been trading with five or six different people from there for several years now and never had a problem, although I have come across two doubtfull ones in the past. Australia- well I cant really relate upon that other than the fact that I have had my worst experiences ever-from there from three different areas- so I have virtually stopped trading with Aussies unless they are women who strangely enough are quite honest by vivid comparison. Some of my best friends on the net- are of course from the USA where I enjoy real good trading for over five years now, which amounts to over twenty well know faces with whom I regularly do seed exchange with on an almost annual basis and only come across about five people in the whole of the USA so far who are very difficult to trade with or are outright scammers. But the excuses they come up with always make me laugh, some of which are amazing, one chap gave his reason for not sending seeds to me as the fact that he had broken his office chair, or the container in which he keeps his seeds fell on the floor and they all got mixed up, his computer was playing up or had broken down, feigned heart attacks, and in one case cancer to gain sympathy, he has been playing this cancer sympathy tune now for over five years to my knowledge, in reality he is fitter and better than you and I, and the excuses go on endless, the car broke down on the way to the post office, My favorite one this year was- I was on a bus to the city and lost the envelope with your seeds in it=please can you send me some more, so you take pity on them and send them some more- but funnily enough your exchange seeds never seem to arrive from there,
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Post by pugs on Feb 12, 2009 12:41:10 GMT -5
I just don't get why people would do this. If this guy had asked for seeds, I would have sent them without a trade. No big deal to me. But then, I don't have a huge list like some of you have.
I'm still trying to think of a way to even the scales between me and a couple of the people on HG as they have been extremely generous to me and I have had little or nothing to send back. Of course, when someone has so much, it is difficult to send them something they don't already have.
Oh well, my mind is still working on it. I'll figure something out yet.
Pugs
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Post by plantsnobin on Feb 12, 2009 13:09:40 GMT -5
It just doesn't make sense to me either. How much fun can it be to get a few packs of seed for nothing? I haven't traded really myself, as I have never bothered to save seeds from my garden before. I did send off a couple of packages of paw paw seeds, as a gift instead of a trade. I will be saving seeds from some perennials this year to give away. I can see how it could get to be a bit overwhelming to keep track of trades though. And I can also see that sometimes real life circumstances could keep someone from coming through on a trade. But outright conning people is a different matter altogether, and should be called out on these forums in order to keep people from becoming too fed up and giving up on trading.
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jason
gardener
Posts: 246
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Post by jason on Feb 12, 2009 13:22:56 GMT -5
I've come across a couple people doing this, mostly at gw, however like most people here almost everyone I have ever traded with has really tried and if there were issues it was for other reasons. Did seem strange how that person was changing names around, but oh well good to have it dealt with I suppose.
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Post by grungy on Feb 12, 2009 13:37:11 GMT -5
Actually some of them turn around and sell them on E-bay. No cost, just profit, which is what irritates the heck out of me. I have no problems sending free seed to who ever requests it. Especially if I know that they are going to get personal enjoyment from the seeds and are willing to share with others. But profiting from my labour is another thing. Sorry to rant. Just irritated.
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