Dan Cobb

I can tell you that I have been dealing with these loosers since I was unfortunate enough to win one of their auctions on eBay on July 31 of this year. I paid for it the next day with my Paypal account.
After more than 30 days w/o a package or a response to my numerous emails and voicemails regarding the transaction, I concluded that I must have been the victim of a fraudulent auction. I filed claims with Paypal, eBay, and Square Trade.
Shortly therefter, I received notification that the claims would be dropped because the seller provided a tracking number for the package. It finally arrived almost a week later.
Too bad it was not the same part that was pictured on the auction, nor was it in similar condition. I contacted them yet again and finally received "authorization" to return the part (at my expense). I sent it via USPS w/ delivery notification to avoid further incidents.
I waited nearly a week after it had been delivered before I contacted them again. I was finally told I would get a refund. I provided them with every possible transaction # from eBay & Paypal necessary to correctly identify the auction and the dollar amount in question.
To this day I have yet to receive $.01 of a refund, or even a reply to my continued requests for such.
I want my experience with Partwerks @ 718 S. Prairie Rd in New Lenox, Il to serve as a warning for other unsuspecting Porsche owners who may find their prices and advertised product availability to be of interest.

Avoid purchasing anything from these people if at all possible, finding what you need elsewhere couldn't possibly cause half the headache. They are dishonest and without conscience.

If the dollar value of my loss was greater, I would pursue legal action against them.

Everything that I have said is the complete truth and if there is ever any issue of liability over my statements I will accept 100% responsibility for what I have posted here on this forum. Again I say ... be warned.

3.2SLANTNOSE

Sorry to hear about that Dan, I have seen several warnings about that place. I too have almost been tempted to buy from them, but after learning about others problems, wrong part, defective, not as described, etc. I don't even look at their auctions, as soon as I see it is them, I go back to the listings. Good luck with the problem.

theasphaltgambler

What about recourse through your C/C company? It is clear by your story that they must be shiesters. I have seen people "list" a item for sale as a complaint/ warning. Go to Ebay motors, parts and "list" your item (complaint) naming them in the title and list the problem in the description area. I've seen this first hand and usually it will stay there for a while until the moderator removes it.

There were person(s) 'selling' Harley's at a very low "buy-it-now" on Ebay. The scam was they had figured out how to hack into a persons ebay account with excellent feedback and many transactions and then re-directed the emails to the scam artist.

Then you had to pre-register/qualify by submitting your CC info or bank acct# to prove you had the $$ ready to go. The auction was private so you couldn't see who was bidding and the 'seller' was overseas so once the 'winner' sent the money directly to an escrow account, the seller evaporated!

One guy listed his complaint in the sellers area about this scam. It stayed on there for about 4 days.

84_Carrera

I purchased a set of cams once, they came in damaged (didn't see it until I went to install them, and of course everything was torn apart on the top & front of my DOHC engine...).

I took digital photos, sent them. Then was told "no, we need to see them first-hand", so I shipped them back, but anticipating replacements, I kept the valve stem lash caps. Weeks & weeks go by, I am chasing them on it. After more & more back & forth calls, I finally demanded a refund, to no avail.

I know CC charge-backs are hated by vendors, and I didn't want to burn a bridge, but $750 isn't chump change, and I wanted to move on. So I called Citibank, explained the situation, and they basically said they couldn't process a credit until I didn't have the caps anymore - "put them in UPS' hands with a tracking number, and I can move forward with it". HOWEVER - one thing to keep in mind is (IIRC), after 30 days, the vendor has to approve the chargeback. I believe Paypal works the same way.

So, <30 days, you're in the driver's seat, >30 days, they are.

Sorry to hear you had a bum experience, thanks for sharing / giving us the heads-up!

theasphaltgambler

I'm a tech and hobbyist; both performance cars and motorcycles. I deal with(seems like) 24-7 with all sorts of parts people from all over the place. For me I expect a reasonable amount of service when I buy something. If the part arrives damaged or doesn't work I call ASAP and want an immediate fix. In most cases the company will send a post-paid return container, ship another out or basically do whatever is needed to make it right for me.

If I receive huffy customer service, phone tag play or just get the feeling that they're yankin me, I stand firm and tell them that I'll contact my CC for a charge-back. If it is off of a auction site I threaten to burn them on feedback. All I want is my new part to look right and fit right. I'm the customer and I just laid down some of my hard-earned $$ to buy their part.

purrybonker

Well known dirt bags. Safer in eBay mode within credit card refusal timelines as discussed. They do seem to have some degree of concern about their feedback on eBay.

I've have found this to be very important with eBay these days - guard your feedback religiously until you are completely satisfied. Once you enter feedback (good or bad) your leverage is gone.

I bought a spoiler from these scuzz buckets. A year and dozens of phone calls and emails and promises later I am $200 poorer and somewhat smarter. Lie to you in person, via phone or email - they are completely flexible and up to date on all the modern technologies that can be used to lie to the public.

The problem with my deal was that I bought it through information gained from one of their auctions not via an auction itself. i.e. I saw a spoiler on one of their auctions and sent an email asking if they had more to sell at the same price as the auction price - they said "sure - send us your money - we'll ship it right away".

uh huh. No auction - no feedback - good bye and good luck.

Silly me

theasphaltgambler

Rarely do I 'boned' from guys like that but the volume of car and motocycle stuff that I buy it is inevitable. Good story: I am into older BMW's, buy, fix-up, sell. I bought a rear spoiler for a E30 off of Ebay for $50. Fair enough I thought.

The guy had a lot of transactions and of those some negative. Sent the $$ with a M/O return-receipt mail. Never got the confirmation tag. Emailed. Nothing. Contacted the post office. The letter was sitting there but he ignored the notice. Email again. Nothing. Now I threaten. After 3weeks got a response. Several more excuses later took two more weeks before it actually arrived. He lives one state away. Opened the box, looks like s--t. The one I took off of the car looked better. The one in the pic on the website was not the one he sent. I s--tcanned it, and got another one; different seller.

I burned his a-s on feed back. Apparently my and one other buyers recent neg feedback was enough to ban him from selling/buying. Month or so later he contacts me out of the blue. Says that Ebay will let him resume business if I and a few other of his buyers would recant if he made things right. Thought some more. I emailed him. Said that if he refunded the $50.+ shipping I would add that to his feedback that in the end I got my money back and all is OK.

Know what his reply was?? F--k You !! -Can you believe it??

r911

You need to contact the Illinois Attorney General's Office - Consumer Protection. The feedback and credit card stuff is fine but doesn't get tot he roots of the problem.

Also, I think this moron changed his name to blondedd on eBay. I had him screened out of my searches but it seems like the same is poppin up again under that name.

Dan Cobb

On one of the several occassions that I actually spoke to a person there is either Jay or Kevin. (usually Jay, kevin only once or twice).
he told me some sad story about the "girl that did the ebay stuff quit without notice and left us in a really bad spot" to "people have been stealing from us and they were finally caught in a sting laast week. Now we have been so busy with the police and attornies we haven't had time to even answer the phones", to " I guess it just got lost in the mail", to get this, once he even had the nerve to keep yelling "blah, blah,blah, blah, blah" into the phone until I actually hung up on him. I called right back and he didn't answer. When he finally did, I managed to have a conversation with him where he actually accepted the blame and said he would refund my $$. I thought it was over, I had won.

not even close.
I never got the refund (nearly 4 months later), he lied on the phone again about the "girl that does refunds" was out sick. My guess is that she was probably either working 80+ hours a week or for only about 20 minutes a month.

I'm going to now attempt recourse through the credit card. The difficulty there is that the payment was actually made to/through Paypal. I hope that doesn't hurt my chances. If so, then I will be contacting their Attorney General's office. I wonder if it constitutes "inter-state commerce" since he has a business license (this wouldn't matter if he was an individual or a business would it?) And there must be someone responsible for investigating internet fraud within California that might help shut these bozos down. Anyone have any ideas?

r911

If all or even half the people who have complained about these guys for years will wirte the Ill. AG's office they'll be shut down. The interstate commerce thing is an interesting angle, but a subsidiary one. You could cc the AG in your home state.

Dan Cobb

I just disputed the charge. CitiBank Rocks. I was concerned about the amount of time that had elapsed, but they assured me that within 6 months after the charge appears, all you have to do is call and they will issue a credit (conditional of course) and begin the process immediately.

BTW, Partwerks doesn't care about eBay anymore. They are either selling their stuff to unsuspecting customers under the recently appearing bblonde (or whatever it is) screen name or they are not selling on eBay anymore as they never have any new listings.

richard glickel

I had my experience with these thieves about 10 years ago. Too bad they're still in business. I believe they continue to advertise in Panorama, and they should not be permitted to do so.

A couple of months ago, PCA banned another advertiser (Windward) after receiving numerous legitimate member complaints. I think we should try the same approach with these pests. Get them the hell out of Pano and Excellence too (if they're in that mag), AND off of ebay.

The burned out piece-of-crap of a part those creeps sent me was laughable. I was able to successfully dispute my Amex charge and did not take the matter to the Illinois AG.

Ciao.

Richard

Edward

Dan,

So sorry that you had to go through this headache! Thanks for posting, though. As someone who is constantly looking out for "a deal," I appreciate your giving us all a heads up. Only sorry that it was at your expense. Here's to better P-car experiences


Edward

umfan866

Sorry you had to go through that. Thanks for warning us, and thanks purrybonker for the ebay tips.

84_Carrera

Yeah, in the SHO community we had this type of vendor with SHO Shop, Huntington Beach CA (check out the BBB complaints against them - IIRC, it's in the thousands). Great products when you could get them to actually make / deliver. One guy I know in TX with a supercharged SHO had his car there for something like a year & $15k worth of stuff later, he got his car back in pieces.

Problem is, you MAY have to go the interstate commerce fraud thing with the FBI, rather than with your state AG, since it's outside of his jurisdiction unless they're both in the same state.

FYI, SHO Shop's owner opened up a new business at the same address called EVOSport (www.evosport.com), so I hope he's not doing more of the same with the MB / BMW / Ferrari crowd, because they'll usually have more firepower than the Taurus crowd.

Anyway, every car group has them, and the best thing is to keep people aware (while sticking to the facts).