DeanP
United States of America#2Consumer Comment
Wed, February 09, 2011
GOOGLE: "prisco Homeowners Beware" FOR CBS NEWS INVESTIGATION ON MICHAEL PRISCO (CONSTRUCTION WORKER ... NOW CLAIMING TO BE A “MASTER PIANO REBUILDER" AND CO-OWNER WITH WIFE MAGDALENA "MAGGIE" PRISCO OF SARATOGA MYSTIQUE PIANO (FORMERLY SARATOGA AND MAGDALENA HOUSE OF PIANOS). Contact your local police department and the Better Business Bureau for further information. Can also contact the FBI for wire transfers of $10,000 or more. I live in the Albany, N.Y area so I am well aware of this. Thank You. FOR CONSUMER REVIEWS: GOOGLE: “Michael Prisco piano” or www.ripoffreport.com or www.complaintsboard.com MICHAEL PRISCO AS POSTED IN HIS OWN WORDS:http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ogm4C76iFx0J:www.musicinstrumentshops.com/in/gansevoort-ny+hobby+michael+prisco+piano+for+my+wife&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com"Five years ago we got began as a hobby collecting and restoring pianos for our own private collection. I purchased a piano for my wife and paid a piano rebuilder locally to rebuild it so long as I could aid. I am Michael D. Prisco and as a musician of three decades playing five instruments including voice, I know what a nice instrument sounds like."Saratoga Mystique Piano2 Wallingford Crt, Ganesvoort, New York 12831
DeanP
United States of America#3Consumer Comment
Sun, January 30, 2011
GOOGLE: "prisco Homeowners Beware" FOR CBS NEWS INVESTIGATION ON MICHAEL PRISCO (CONSTRUCTION WORKER .... NOW CLAIMING TO BE A MASTER PIANO REBUILDER AND CO-OWNER WITH WIFE MAGDALENA "MAGGIE" PRISCO OF SARATOGA MYSTIQUE PIANO (FORMERLY SARATOGA AND MAGDALENA HOUSE OF PIANOS).Contact your local police department and the Better Business Bureau for further information.Can also contact your local office of the FBI if losses exceed $10,000 or more in wire transfers.I live in the Albany, N.Y area so I am well aware of this.Thank You.
FOR CONSUMER REVIEWS: GOOGLE: Michael Prisco piano or www.ripoffreport.com or (((ROR redacted)))
CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.
Zephaerie
El Paso,#4Consumer Suggestion
Sat, January 17, 2009
I was working very closely with several organizations such as the police in Rutherford, NC and the SEC to resolve the inquiries about Piano Superstore, AKA Asaph Music and Technologies LLC that also owned Wilcom Leasing. When I was working with them in April of 2008, they were in bankruptcy. Piano Superstore stopped doing business in May or June of 2008, as far as I was aware. That is around the time they took down their website and eBay store. If you have proof of your purchase of the piano and the request for their shipping services (i.e. proof that they picked up the piano) then you should file a claim with the bankruptcy court. Be sure to provide supporting documentation. I encourage you to contact the police in Rutherford. They are very helpful in getting appropriate numbers to file with the bankruptcy court or may be able to direct you to someone who can help you. This is certainly not legal advise and I have no way to ensure that you will be able to pursue your claim through the bankruptcy court, but it's worth a try. If you have been able to retrieve your money in another manner, please update so that the other users who are not used to dealing with such matters can be informed of all possible processes. I have already sent this reply to them.
J.Lopez
Miami Beach,#5Author of original report
Sat, November 29, 2008
Mike Prisco from Saratoga Pianos, Magdalena's house of pianos never sent me the piano that I bought from him and paid for. Then he also refused to send the piano wrongly deliver by Pianosuperstore John Terrell Willson. But the fact is that Mike Prisco kept all my money and promise to send my money back in several correspondances and never did it. So Mike Prisco kept the pianos, kept the money and never delivered anything. If that is not a scam artist...Until he pay back the amount he said Mike Prisco is the one that ript me off.
Michael Prisco
Fort Edward,#6REBUTTAL Owner of company
Sun, September 14, 2008
I was contacted some time ago by Mr. Lopez regarding a piano that he was purchasing from Terry Wilson at the Piano Superstore. Mr. Lopez requested for our company to install some decals on the piano and clear coat over for transport to Brazil at a later date at his expense. First let me state that Saratoga Pianos, Mike Prisco and Magdalenas House of Pianos is not affialiated with The PianoSuperstore in any way whatsoever. This is well known by Mr. Lopez and has been told to law enforcement agents who have contacted us regarding this bogus complaint that our company has any wrong doing whatsoever in this transaction. Jean Marc Lopez has manipulated and lied to both law enforcement and any other agency that will listen to his claim. His statements of facts are so far from the truth, he seems to be dillusional about the facts and is attempting once again to sew my company into a scam with piano superstore. All one needs to do is look at the reputation of the pianosuperstore to determine who the real rip off artist is. Jean Marc Lopez did purchase a piano from piano superstore, several months late it arrived at our restoration facility, please note that we own the largest piano restoration facility in the United States, the piano that arrived on Jean Marc Lopez behalf was not the one he had ordered, it was several years old and in very poor condition. We contacted Mr. Lopez and told him of the pianos condition and sent him photos of the piano the moment it arrived. He knew the piano was not the one he ordered and asked us to help him recover his money from pianosuperstore. We assisted him as best we could from our end and Mr. Lopez asked us to put the piano into storage until the matter was resolved. We purchased several decals for Mr. Lopez piano prior to it coming to our shop, the decals was custom made to fit a 5'2'' baby grand piano and the piano that was sent to us was 5'8'' inches and the decals was much to small. He then asked us to wait for the matter to be resolved and told us that a new one was to arrive at our shop on a given day that was what he had purchased, the piano never arrived. Jean Marc Lopez then called us back and told us that he would have the new piano replacement delivered on a Wednesday morning, we made arrangements for a decal maker to be at our facility to cut a new decal package custom for the piano for a rush order, the piano never arrived. Mr. Lopez and I talked on the phone and I told him that we had to pay the decal company over five hundred dollars for an onsite visit to make his custom decals for the piano and that the first decals purchased would not fit the new piano that was being sent. He told us to destroy the first set of decals for the 5'2'' baby grand and the new decals would need to be made for a piano that 4'10'' and that this piano would be fine for him. Even though we destroyed the decals we as a company should not have to pay for those decals as none of this situation is our fault. We should not have to eat the cost of the decal company making a special visit to our facility for his piano needs, we are not a non profit company. We did everything Mr. Lopez asked and then finally he asked if we had something in our inventory that would work for him. Mr. Lopez stated that his father was a well known Latino artist and that he wanted to have a couple of dozen pianos decaled with his fathers art work and then sold by him to people that would make a donation to a foundation he was establishing in his late fathers name. I explained that we only sell restored Vintage Antique World Class Pianos and what he was purchasing was a cheap piano made in China for 1/3rd the cost of what ours sell for. He explained to me that if we could provide him with one of our pianos in our inventory and allow a decal package to be installed, he would give us more business. He explained that he could receive donations of upwards of $30,000.00 for one piano that he had $10,000.00 invested in and the foundation could make a great profit. We told Mr. Lopez that do not have a problem with selling pianos to him however this seemed to be something that we have never engaged in and that we would agree to help him on a one time basis. We had a 5'4-1/2'' Wm. Knabe Baby Grand Piano with a beautiful Walnut case, the piano is worth almost $20,000 and he asked us to repaint the piano black and then to install the decals on the piano for him to ship to Brazil to a client who had purchased the first one stated herein. My advice to him was that he in the future not sell what he does not possess. He sent us a deposit and we reduced the price for him to literally cover his losses as we felt bad for his situation. He called us many times over the course of a couple of weeks about having a player unit installed on the piano, we gave him a price and then several weeks later he contacted us and by that time the prices had all gone up on the unites as the cost of gasoline went up so did everything else in the world. He got mad at me and told me that I had to honor the price I stated previous and I reminded him that our company does not make profit on player unit installations or sales, that we use a third party player installation company and that he needs to deal with those people. Now Jean Marc Lopez is mad at us because the prices went up and so I told him to shop out the prices for piano player units himself to see if he could get one cheaper. He sent me an email stating he would not send me any more money for the piano he put a deposit on that we repainted black for him as well he would not send us any money for the player unit to be installed, the funny part about this situation is I never sent him an invoice for any payment, I simply told him that if he wanted to have the player unit installed by the company we use, to send the payment to us or him, and although he said he would he never did. We really at this point lost all faith that Mr. Lopez would do what he said as so far through this whole process he had misrepresented everything to us and all we had tried to do is help him out of a jam he, got himself into. We told Jean Marc Lopez that the piano we received a deposit on was going to be put on the back burner until he had everything sorted out as to what he was doing with it. Please understand that the other junk piano that was sent to our facility has not been picked up and still resides in one of our offices in our facility. We asked him to have the piano picked up many times however he told us that the piano needed to stay until he had received a refund from the piano superstore. That never happened and the piano still sits in our facility, in one of our offices awaiting Jean Marc Lopez to reconcile the matter. I received an email several months ago and it stated that the piano can be released to the piano superstore and that they would come to pick it up, and once the piano superstore had possession of the piano, he would be refunded his purchase price. Well the piano was never picked up and is still here. I hope all of you that read this response would consider that we have many clients that send pianos to us from all over the United States for restoration services as well we buy and sell our own pianos as well. At any given time we have over one million dollars of piano inventory and several hundred thousand dollars of pianos that are at our facility for restoration services, we are not hurting for any money nor are we in need of any business as we turn down work all the time. Because we tried to help Jean Marc Lopez by putting him in the front of many other customers, we ended up being several weeks behind on our paying clients work. Jean Marc Lopez is a selfish person that feels as though he is the only client we have and because he got ripped off by the pianosuperstore we have to do everything imaginable to fix his problems. We did our best for him and yet he wants to paint us as being a company that has ripped him off and even to the point of filing false reports, not stating the facts, and attempting to disparage our reputation. I will say that of the hundreds of pianos that we deal with and the clients that we have done business with, we have received a couple complaints over the years, the only ones we have ever received was that the project took longer then expected and each client has always gotten the piano we rebuilt for them or the piano we sold them. We rebuild grand pianos that are worth upwards of 50 and 70 thousand dollars, these pianos represent the best made in the world like Steinway & Sons, Mason & Hamlin, Knabe, Baldwin, Chickering and the like, these are pianos that are made in the turn of the century and have over 10,000 parts needing restoration, they take several months to rebuild, and we make every good faith effort to honor the time we state to each client that we rebuild pianos for. We are not perfect and we do experience delays from time to time however most people tell us it was worth the wait. I am sorry that Jean Marc Lopez is attempting to involve us in the affairs of a company that sells new pianos made in china that typically are called junk by our industry, however you as the readers have to determine the validity of the claim put before you. Terry Wilson of the Piano Superstore is a rip off artist and has had more complaints in the past years then a used car dealer that is a fact, but to associate us with them as a receiver of the piano Jean Marc Lopez purchased, is nothing more than an attempt to blackmail us into giving him a free piano in return for removing this complaint from the Ripoff Report website. Jean Marc Lopez, you should be ashamed of yourself to attempt to manipulate our company and to make bogus statements. We rebuild pianos for clients all over the United States and you will not get me to give you a free piano no matter how many times you attempt to blackmail us.
Aweedee
Hubert,#7Consumer Comment
Tue, September 09, 2008
This man, Mike, is also being looked at for a variety of ripoffs/threats in New York State. Could the reporter of the first ripoff report please contact me? We have deep concerns and would like to help.