Potential Comic Art Fans Scam Alert 0

[comix4fun]

Bill shut down the scammers gallery and did not tell me until after closing my gallery.

 

I did not and will not post Bills responses to me, but not once was "sorry it happened" and "I'll see if I can help" said. If I run a site and someone was hosed, I would try to help and let the person know I will try to help.

 

 

You'd create a duty for yourself that didn't otherwise exist?

 

You'd expand your personal liability and the liability of the site by apologizing for something that wasn't your fault or your duty in the first place?

[Nexus]

I was just banned from comic art fans and my gallery deleted. Why?

I was ripped off for $2k from another member and I emailed the owner, Bill Cox, asking for the persons gallery to be pulled so others also don't get scammed. His response was basically that CAF is not involved and bears no responsibility. I wasn't pleased with that and said "It's comforting to know your site takes no responsibility".

 

Afterwards he told me he closed the scammers gallery and will be closing mine too.

 

That is what being a member of a site for 12+ years gets you.

 

Were you a premium member? Did you at least get a partial refund of your membership fee?

[AnkurJ]

Comix4fun: apologizing and offering help doesn't mean he's liable. It's just courtesy that a business owner might give. I do it everyday in my business because I want my company's image to stay positive.

 

And I was not a premium member. Maybe his response would have been different if I was.

[comix4fun]

Comix4fun: apologizing and offering help doesn't mean he's liable. It's just courtesy that a business owner might give. I do it everyday in my business because I want my company's image to stay positive.

 

And I was not a premium member. Maybe his response would have been different if I was.

 

 

I'll take it from you then, I am sure you have more experience with liability issues than I do.

 

 

[comix4fun]

This was just sent to me from Bill Cox, owner of Comic Art Fans.....he's not a user here so he's asked me to post this on his behalf:

 

 

 

Last Tuesday afternoon Ankur emailed me letting me know he felt he was scammed. No proof. No request to spare other CAF members the same possible indignation. Just that he felt he might have entered into a bad transaction. Typically, depending on the hostility of the email, I might just close both gallery owner's galleries and let them know to settle their differences. However Ankur has been a member of CAF for a pretty long time, so I chose to shut down the gallery of the seller right then. I sent the seller an email explaining why I closed their gallery, and that I expected her to resolve the situation even though the buyer was taking matters into their own hands. I then replied to Ankur with my standard email reminding him of CAF's position on transactions between members, that he agreed to when he registered years before.

 

12 hours later Ankur replied telling me I should shut down the seller's gallery, which of course I already had done 12 hours earlier. I let him know that when he owns CAF he can do things however he likes, but that I will not tolerate being told how to handle any situation on CAF by any member. That's when he suggested I should have some responsibility for his lack of due diligence in vetting the Seller. That's when I let him know that I had shut the seller's gallery down when he emailed me earlier in the day, and that I would now shut his gallery off as well - which is my standard practice and I should have done it originally. I was just trying to be fair to Ankur. His reply - which isn't one that he has shown you - was less than courteous.

 

At that point I reminded him that in the almost 13 years he's been a member of CAF he has never once been a premium member, never once supported CAF in any way, yet he feels I owe him some form of special treatment because he's had a gallery on CAF for so long. As the owner of CAF I have to treat all disagreements the exact same way. That wasn't good enough for Ankur. To be clear, being a Premium doesn't have any bearing on how I handle a situation whatsoever. If the Seller were premium my email to them might have been a little different, but I would have still turned off the seller's gallery as a precaution.

 

For the record, Ankur is not banned from CAF. I never said that to him. While I personally couldn't care less at this point if he turns his gallery on again after our correspondence, once I know the issue is resolved (I would need confirmation from him or the Seller that he got his money back), he and even the Seller could do so and I won't prevent them. Their accounts were not deleted, I only turned their Galleries off. I also left Ankur's Lowry on so he could participate in the Best Of 2015.

 

Do I still seem petty, churlish, and priggish?

 

[thehumantorch]

This was just sent to me from Bill Cox, owner of Comic Art Fans.....he's not a user here so he's asked me to post this on his behalf:

 

 

 

Last Tuesday afternoon Ankur emailed me letting me know he felt he was scammed. No proof. No request to spare other CAF members the same possible indignation. Just that he felt he might have entered into a bad transaction. Typically, depending on the hostility of the email, I might just close both gallery owner's galleries and let them know to settle their differences. However Ankur has been a member of CAF for a pretty long time, so I chose to shut down the gallery of the seller right then. I sent the seller an email explaining why I closed their gallery, and that I expected her to resolve the situation even though the buyer was taking matters into their own hands. I then replied to Ankur with my standard email reminding him of CAF's position on transactions between members, that he agreed to when he registered years before.

 

12 hours later Ankur replied telling me I should shut down the seller's gallery, which of course I already had done 12 hours earlier. I let him know that when he owns CAF he can do things however he likes, but that I will not tolerate being told how to handle any situation on CAF by any member. That's when he suggested I should have some responsibility for his lack of due diligence in vetting the Seller. That's when I let him know that I had shut the seller's gallery down when he emailed me earlier in the day, and that I would now shut his gallery off as well - which is my standard practice and I should have done it originally. I was just trying to be fair to Ankur. His reply - which isn't one that he has shown you - was less than courteous.

 

At that point I reminded him that in the almost 13 years he's been a member of CAF he has never once been a premium member, never once supported CAF in any way, yet he feels I owe him some form of special treatment because he's had a gallery on CAF for so long. As the owner of CAF I have to treat all disagreements the exact same way. That wasn't good enough for Ankur. To be clear, being a Premium doesn't have any bearing on how I handle a situation whatsoever. If the Seller were premium my email to them might have been a little different, but I would have still turned off the seller's gallery as a precaution.

 

For the record, Ankur is not banned from CAF. I never said that to him. While I personally couldn't care less at this point if he turns his gallery on again after our correspondence, once I know the issue is resolved (I would need confirmation from him or the Seller that he got his money back), he and even the Seller could do so and I won't prevent them. Their accounts were not deleted, I only turned their Galleries off. I also left Ankur's Lowry on so he could participate in the Best Of 2015.

 

Do I still seem petty, churlish, and priggish?

 

 

I'd like to see Ankur's less than courteous reply. Ankur, if you're gonna give us your messages to Mr Cox you shouldn't limit yourself to ones that make you look good.

[kav]

My apologies Mr Cox

[kav]

I always look carefully at the facts before launching.

[Meeley Man]

Bill is the guy who has single handedly transformed the OA collecting hobby in th least 12 years with very little benefit to himself. He is free to run his site as he sees fit. He's not afraid of anything. He's busy running his site and his business and doesn't need to entertain every attempted character assassination on every message board to prove to you he's a big strong brave man.

 

On the flip side we've got collectors attaching themselves like a remora to the underbelly of CAF never contributing one thin dime or one small moment of earnest appreciation to the site or Bill, and reaping the benefits of buying and selling and profiting for well over a decade. Then, when a too good to be true deal blows in in their face and they think that Bill is not moving fast enough, they are quick to imply that Bill owes them something beyond everything they've already taken for free and without heaitation.

 

Just once try and figure out what's going on before launching into the usual silliness.

 

[Meeley Man]

[Actually, you misunderstand. Bill has already provided everything. For free. To everyone. The result of that is people can and do transact at their own risk. When their greed or desire outpaces their common sense and they run into an issue they are not in a position to make demands of Bill and the site off of which they have sought to profit without fee or cost.

 

I've run into scammers on caf before. I make note of it to Bill and he handles it. Like he handled it here. He had blocked the sellers account 12 hours before Ankur demanded he do so implying CAF owed him something, and without realizing it had already been done.

 

Then he began his campaign here.

 

Bill,has already provided the site, for free, to everyone. The least we can return is respect towards him when a problem arises beyond implications that more is owed and demanded.

 

[Mmehdy]

You guys are acting like our board member is "sub-human" because he did not pay a fee to the web site..that still does not justify his site to be closed

[comicwiz]

This statement shouldn't be directed at anyone in particular, just a general one based on my experience in dealing with troublemakers and people who should not be allowed to own a computer, and should be banned from being able to have an Internet connection for the rest of their lives.

 

A few months back, I entered into a transaction with an individual on Facebook. He had dealt with numerous other people, had some pieces I was interested in. We went back and forth on a price, nailed it down, I sent him money. Up until that point, the guy's communication was steller. As soon as I sent payment, he disappeared off the face of the earth.

 

Nearly a month had passed and I had no message from him, even though I had asked for a tracking number and update through a single PM in an 18 day period. Not wanting to find myself in a situation where an opportunity to file a PP claim might lapse, I started to try to get a hold of this person. Not a single message I sent was answered.

 

I then posted a very similar thread on a forum alerting people of "bad sellers practices." Now keep in mind, up until I had started this thread, this guy was deemed a good apple who had done numerous deals without a hitch. When I start the thread, someone connects him to an eBay alias that used the name "hotcarl." Next thing you know, I start getting people posting, why would you trust doing a deal with a guy who uses such a name? Must have been one of those "too good to be true" deals didn't trail too far behind.

 

When I pressed the matter, I found a few others had been in problem transactions with the guy. A handful only got things sorted after filing a PayPal claim, and several didn't fare as well because they allowed too much time to lapse. In one situation, a site admin had to get involved to get him to deliver on his end of the deal. If not for the intervention of that site admin, or an attitude that they didn't owe the guy anything and that he should be thankful to be a member who uses the site free of charge, the guy would have been out a good chunk of money.

 

Long story short, what started out as a public service warning to others to steer clear of this guy suddenly turned into a situation where my own motives were questioned, even though what I paid was fair market value on the piece, and thankfully, I didn't live in such a morally depraved way that I would know WTF a "hotcarl" was before everyone used that as a knock against my better judgement.

 

So in reviewing this situation, I guess it's one with knee-jerk reactions on both sides, and I can certainly understand how tempers can get heated when someone becomes the victim of a scam. It's even hard to know what is what in this particular instance because the sellers gallery was pulled, and I know it was some Red Sojna pieces (only by way of checking Google's cached link of the gallery page before it was pulled, which had a name underneath a blank image thumbnail) and we know a little about the artist, but was it that "great a deal" that clouded the OP's judgement, and is it really one of those cases where greed got the better of him?

 

I also want to add one further comment, and that is with OA being an only example category of collecting, you sometimes don't have the benefit of being able to apply context and comparables as readily, nor do you have the luxury of being able to sit idle too long when negotiations put you in a favourable position to proceed. Obviously, rushing any deal is a bad idea, but perhaps some measures on the site to tighten things up might help. Perhaps a member endorsement being required from "newish" members, which sends a notification to people who have visited or viewed their gallery to upvote them to a ranking that makes a person eligable to even post something for sale.

 

It's apparent site responsibility and accountability might be too much for one person to handle, so perhaps delegating some of it to a self-regulating function to long-standing members of the community who are trusted might be one way to address it. Hearing a long-standing members gallery being shut down in a problem transaction, when the person selling is the one who caused it, and resigning to believe the buyer brought it on themselves purely through blinding greed, just leaves an impression there isn't enough being done to make that member feel like their participation is valued, and that things are rosy as long as they aren't relegated to nuissance complainer, even when they have legitimate reasons to be complaining.

[eewwnuk]

World's longest post.

[Meeley Man]

I didn't say it was a charity site. I said the site isn't a cash cow for Bill. That's especially true when you factor in and average the 12 plus years of operation, and all the expenses appurtenant. Then add in the free users, some of which buying and selling 5 figure pieces on a regular basis yet contributing nothing to the site other than strain on bandwidth and storage space and you'll see that there is as much giving from Bill than taking by him, if not more.

 

None of which is relevant to what is being discussed here of course. People getting something for free, then blaming the person who gave it to them for free for not ceding immediately to their demands, when the blame lies with the seller who screwed them.

 

Bravo! Bravo! Encore! Author!

[comix4fun]

You guys are acting like our board member is "sub-human" because he did not pay a fee to the web site..that still does not justify his site to be closed

 

 

 

Is "sub-human " defined as, navel-gazing, self-entitled, blame-shifting, and unappreciative?

 

If not then no one is calling anyone sub-human,

 

They may be saying that demanding an expansion of liability by a site they have used for free to profit off of , buying and selling , for over a decade without the slightest contribution of any kind other than soaking up bandwidth might be a position that will meet with resistance from more equitably minded people of all backgrounds.

[Nexus]

Comix4fun owns this thread.

[MyNameIsLegion]

If I"m reading this correctly, Bill didn't delete Ankur's account, he just turned his gallery off, as he did the sellers. Let's keep in mind that Bill stated this was his standard practice, which makes sense, because the scam could have been the other way, and the seller sends the art, and the buyer claims not to receive it, and demands a refund, etc. Bill has no way of knowing who the actual guilty and injured parties are. Yet Bill deviated from his standard practice and gave Ankur the benefit of the doubt, for having been a member since day 1, despite not being a paid member.

 

So, the question is: Can Ankur just go back in and make his gallery visible again? And even if not, he can still get into it and see his gallery, and view his favorites and dashboard (oh, wait no, he can't, I forgot, he's not a premium member)

Edited January 18, 2016 by MYNAMEISLEGION

[Silver Surfer]

Not to side track but didn''t Anjur sell a Cap #74 that he had graded and it came back as a 1.8. He wasn't happy with the grade so he quickly deslabbed it sold it raw as a 2.5 on these boards with no disclosure about the recent grading. I seem to recall that all the scans, etc were removed faster than you could say "CAF". Anyways, carry on.

[alxjhnsn]

I think Bill's policy of shutting down both seller and buyer sites until they indicate that the dispute is resolved is about as much as he can and should do.

 

[Lambo]

Not to side track but didn''t Anjur sell a Cap #74 that he had graded and it came back as a 1.8. He wasn't happy with the grade so he quickly deslabbed it sold it raw as a 2.5 on these boards with no disclosure about the recent grading. I seem to recall that all the scans, etc were removed faster than you could say "CAF". Anyways, carry on.