Daniel R Berg KC9VZI or Dan Berg ham call KC9VZI Scammed me out of almost $500, damaged my radio and didn't send back over $150 in accessories Coal City Illinois
Daniel Berg is a ham radio operator, call sign KC9VZI. Beware of dealing with him. I sold him a radio on ebay and he had it for almost 2 weeks and had already told me that it worked fine, but then suddenly opened a case saying the radio was broken and held up my money in paypal.. The way he described the problem, I knew that he had transmitted too close to the radio with another radio and had blown out the "finals" in the receiver. Since he had just gotten it, I offered to repair or swap the radio for him..
He agreed to that and then went behind my back and contacted ebay and got a refund because I had asked him to close the case. It is against ebay rules to tell someone to close a case and you'd refund their money and then not make the refund, but the ebay rep. was obviously confused about that rule and issued him a refund anyway. He contacted me a couple of times after getting the refund to "feel me out" to see if I was aware of the refund and I even asked him why ebay had issued him a return label, and he said he had no idea why.
Well, he didn't know I already knew he had gotten word about the refund, so I kept going along with it to see how far he would take it.. He took it all the way.. He was trying to get a free radio out of one he had already broken himself! I contacted him and told him the gig was up and I knew about everything and he just denied denied denied and made excuse after excuse after excuse..
That's pretty normal for scammers, so I didn't really expect anything but that.. After he was pretty much totally busted, he agreed to send back all of the accessories he got with the radio... I have yet to see any of them come back, though.. I guess I should write them off.. I plan on posting up all of our ebay msg/email msg's so everyone can see exactly what went on.. I am ashamed and it makes me sick that another ham would do something like this.. Very sad! I will post rebuttals with updates as they occur.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Deejay
Austin,Texas,
Regarding his reply to report
#3Author of original report
Fri, June 07, 2013
Because of his reply I am compiling a website with documents from ebay and emails from Mr. Berg to show he is not telling the truth about anything in his rebuttal. Here is a paste of his rebuttal with my reply (the truth) about what really happened.
paste of Daniel Berg rebuttal:
While it is true that I bought a radio from a guy off ebay, that is about the only fact that he has correct. I tried to deal with this guy in a reasonable fashion from the get go. He was aware of the issues of the radio not working properly from the beginning and that is why a complaint was issued through ebay.
DJ: The radio was functioning properly from the beginning, the only problem was the FPP function was not enabled. I took very prompt action to fix this for him and took care of it immediately. At this time he had told me he had programmed the radio with software and it was "working great and was very happy with it, but wanted the FPP function enabled"
His only concern ever was why his money was locked up.
DJ: my only concern was to get the radio to work as stated in my ebay auction and make my buyer happy. I have the ebay messages that I will post and I never mentioned money.
I am offended that he would say that I would blow out the radio or cause any kind of harm at all to a radio that was malfunctioning from the start.
DJ: this is a complete fabrication. The radio was "working great" and the only issue was the FPP. When I post the messages and evidence this will be very clear that he is making this up.
It wasn't ebay that refunded my money, it was paypal through the buyer protection plan... which protects against instances such as this.
DJ: This is a complete lie. Ebay refunded the money and took it from my business Visa card, PayPal was not involved at all. I have direct messages from ebay that will show this is not true at all.
The only reason that I had to go to the measures that I did was because of the lack of communication on the sellers part after he received his payment.
DJ: I was in communication the whole time with Mr. Berg. My posts will prove that he sent the message regarding FPP (not a malfunctioning radio) and then opened the first complaint some 8 hours later. Ebay provides 48 hours to reply to any message and I replied within 24 hours.
The radio was shipped (not as described) without the proper software, and reconditioned and tested as described in the aution, so that was why there was a two week wait before i found the radio not working properly. If there had been proper communications previously, this could have been resolved very easily.
DJ: I was in communication with Mr. Berg when he contacted ebay and got the refund. We were working on getting a replacement radio sent out, even though it was clear that he had damaged the radio by transmitting too close to it with a different radio, but I take good care of my customers which my positive feedback reflects. I got a message moments after he got the ebay refund to feel me out to see if I still had the money in PayPal after ebay had refunded his money. When leaving positive feedback he told me that he had tested the radio an he was going to test the 2nd radio before he left feedback for that one, which was also positive feedback.
He never mentioned a refund and was still going ahead wiout the plan to send the radio back and have me send him a replacement, even though he had been refunded at that time. He has still not sent back the accessories he owes me, even though he told me he had sent them back and mentioned my address. I got a lame excuse from him today saying that he had sent them to the wrong address. I seriously doubt I will ever recover them, but I will update this post if I ever do. Maybe this post will prompt him to send them back. I am busy working out of town currently, but plan to have the emails and messages posted in the next week or 2. This will clear up everything and show that Mr. Berg lied in his rebuttal and everything I have said is true.
kc9vzi
coal city,Illinois,
kc9vzi
#3REBUTTAL Individual responds
Fri, May 24, 2013
While it is true that I bought a radio from a guy off ebay, that is about the only fact that he has correct. I tried to deal with this guy in a reasonable fashion from the get go. He was aware of the issues of the radio not working properly from the beginning and that is why a complaint was issued through ebay. His only concern ever was why his money was locked up. I am offended that he would say that I would blow out the radio or cause any kind of harm at all to a radio that was malfunctioning from the start. It wasn't ebay that refunded my money, it was paypal through the buyer protection plan... which protects against instances such as this. The only reason that I had to go to the measures that I did was because of the lack of communication on the sellers part after he received his payment. The radio was shipped (not as described) without the proper software, and reconditioned and tested as described in the aution, so that was why there was a two week wait before i found the radio not working properly. If there had been proper communications previously, this could have been resolved very easily.