Has anyone heard from Kumabear? Especially those who paid for batteries they never received? Which I believe is a lot of people here.
As of late August 2013 looks like Bob was doing just fine. Here’s an excerpt from his profile on http://diydrones.com:
“I am interested in rotor-craft and fixed wing aircraft and am in the process of learning about the field and intend to incorporate FPV in my activities.
As a serial entrepreneur, I may also be interested in exploring the related business opportunities.”
He was a seller on Amazon in 2011 & 2012 and had problems there too.
This is interesting, first time I’ve heard negativity about him. I assumed most people got their money back through paypal etc.
Don’t want to jump to conclusions but on other forums there are members who gain the trust of the community then when they have a lot of money on their hands, disappear. Hope this wasn’t the case.
Interested in how many never received their orders & the cost. Refunded by paypal or money lost.
Never dealt with Kumabear myself. He seemed a bit ‘off’ somehow in the few posts I read. Also he didn’t seem to bother first looking into what he was selling, like what protection does. Skipped his threads mostly.
From what I remember reading he was asking people to pay via PayPal gift (although I could be wrong about this since I was not personally involved). I think we all know that is a bad idea. That means that you, the buyer, have absolutely no recourse short of taking recourse through the judicial system.
Moral of the story? Don't pay as a gift even if you think you can trust the seller. Even if they don't mean to rip you off, unexpected events can and do happen; such as a car accident, hospitalization, etc. I would love to save the 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction but I would never ask my customers to pay via gift. Just ain't right IMO.
This isn't meant to be a slam on any particular person/seller, just a general statement of caution.
Thanks RMM. I felt like I vaguely recalled paypal gift being used. Didn’t know if I was recalling it correctly.
Tho if many people lost money when he disappeared paypal gift is the best way for that to happen.
Amazon has started amazon payments a paypal alternitive. ‘Login and Pay with Amazon’
Really hope amazon does well with it! Paypal need to be cut down to size.
I bought from him a couple of times and did not have any issues. I was given the choice of paying him as a gift or pay a little extra for the PayPal transaction fees, which to me was reasonable.
Chloe?
How can you not support having kittens over for breakfast?
If there are neighborhood kittens around in need of a good meal how can you ignore them?
What?!
Surely that can’t be right…
…
Reading it again, I do believe your right! |(
Meet me out back. I’ll just call a couple friends and grab some torches & rope.
It would be nice to get a show of hands on who sent $ and didn’t get batteries. I ordered 4X 18650 and received without a problem. I would not use paypal ‘gift’ option. Would have to do some digging to find the purchase date.
….Just would like to know if he was a scam or something else happened to him along the way.
I got a couple of orders of cells - took a little longer than expected (nothing like RMM!), and he sent me the wrong cells but he ended up losing money - weird. Actually I wound up giving him some additional money to make up for it, though they were not what I ordered, but nothing wasted.
I kept an eye on his sales for a while, it looked like he was legit so I eventually placed an order (PP gift as he requested, yea, I know!). Kuma acknowledged the order promptly, sent me a photo of the package and said it would go out the next day.
Then he disappeared. I started following up about a week later, his address is literally 20 minutes from me. He posted again a while later but my batteries never came through, about $50 lost.
Not sure what I was thinking sending the money as a gift but somehow his being a local guy made me feel more comfortable. And at the time I’d seen only positive comments in his sales thread.
It’s almost funny, my first purchase from a similar seller on CPF almost went the same way. Long sales thread with loads of happy customers. I placed an order and the seller went missing for 6 months. Eventually made good with apologies to all, he ran into some personal problems.
My take away is to remember we are often dealing with other enthusiasts, usually with good intentions. We should not assume the same service/recourse as dealing with retail organizations.
Oh yea, and never Use PP gift because that is exactly what it will be.
