AllThingsRenaissance*com All Things Renaissance Leather Mystics Robert Wesner, Ebay scam artist, SCA/LARP Renaissance goods that never arrive Medford Oregon

Ah, what a nice dig that was.....

First, I was not a "part time employee for a short period of time". I worked week days and over 30 weekends a year for SEVEN YEARS - is that a short time?? hmmm......

Yes, they are right, their reputation is WELL known on the west coast Renaissance Faire circuit. This could be the reason they are no longer welcome at many faires on the west coast. If they choose to rebut this, contact the coordinators of Faire Oaks Tudor Faire-CA, Folsom Renaissance Faire-CA, Valhalla Renaissance Faire-CA, Willits Renaissance Faire-CA, or Gig Harbor Renaissance Fantasy Faire-WA and ask their opinions of Ravenswood Leather's reputation.

My reputation and the reputation of my booth and wares at Renaissance Faires and SCA events from Seattle to Phoenix are also well known. And you will STILL find ME vending most of these faires.

How juvenile for my competition to go to such a pathetic attempt to use THIS FORUM to promote themselves shows their character. A shame that they feel their wares can't stand on their own merit for they produce a fine product line. I should know, I helped design and make a lot of it for years!

My reasons for leaving Ravenswood Leather were personal ones... reasons similar to what they just wrote........

~"Robert the Hair" Wesner
Owner
Leather Mystics

I'm not going to waste endless time rebutting each of this person's comments.

Frankly, it's not worth my time. (And this was a MAN, not a WOMAN trying to play off like some poor abused little old lady.) But, whatever, they can play their games.

What I will say, is this:

Some of the items we sold on eBay and our website we do not produce ourselves. We are at the mercy of the makers. In prime season, they can run behind in production and our stock can run short (especially during Halloween!).

I tried to explain this to these buyers at the time but all I got was negative responses. Everyone was mad and throwing tantrums because they weren't going to get to be a Pirate of the Caribbean for Halloween. I tried to offer reasonable substitutions but few were willing to accept them.

(*a little advice to all you readers, if you have your heart set on a certain costume for Halloween - don't wait until OCTOBER to try to get it!)

Yes, it is true, my wife was the one that was supposed to be answering all the emails and dealing with filling the orders. Something she failed at miserably. All the while she was telling me it was all taken care of - obviously was not. By the time I was able to realize what was happening, loads of buyers were reversing their credit cards or filing complaints with Paypal. I was working 14hr days, tired, stressed, and rapidly watching my bank accounts being sucked into the red and the business I spent 6 years building crumbling down.

I'm sure not all of my responses to some of these buyers was pleasant. But you can be sure, neither were their emails. Many of them had waited so long, the grace period on Paypal to refund their payments directly had expired. Some I tried to use the 'send money' option to refund their payments, but if they did not have a registered Paypal account, it wouldn't go through.

Yes, these were not happy times.



In short, and just so everyone is happy with this 'justice' served here, I'll give you an update as to what happens when people like this go this far and post bulletins on websites like this:

It's now almost 6 months later. I'm broke.

My wife has left me - we will be divorcing soon. She is now living with a 'friend' of ours on his yacht. Her kids that I have been raising for the past 5 yrs are gone.

My two part-time employees are more-or-less out of work.

My bills are all so past due that I'm only able to keep the internet for work, heat, water, and lights on.

Everything else has been shut off. No cable, not even a trash can.

My eBay account has been permanently suspended. Even though I had a 99.6% positive feedback rate before last fall, I guess getting a dozen negatives in a week is all it takes. 6 yrs building my eBay account up to over 1800 feedback - now made completely worthless in a week by people like this.

At this moment, there's $23 in my Paypal account. After the last couple checks clear, there will be about $15 in my checking.

I drive a 30yr old car that's in serious need of work.

I have a couple of faires I'm doing later this month. But if they get rained out or attendance is low, I will be out of options. Everyone's yelling "recession" so few are buying much these days. I went from record sales in Aug 2007 to this. I face bankruptcy by the end of this month (April 2008).

This is not meant to be a bleeding heart response.

These are the facts.

Everyone complains about the Wal-marts of the world putting the mom-and-pops out of business. But it seems some single individuals are more willing to rip us little guys apart than to take on the corporate giants....

I do the best I can to provide the best quality possible. Not some cheap crap imported from China.

I'm a little, home-based business. That's all I am.

......or was.



Thank you for your attention.

~"Robert the Hair" Wesner
Owner
Leather Mystics

I promised I would update with the results of Paypal. Unfortunately, as he provided Paypal with a link that says he was "planning on shipping", it was deemed acceptable. So when he did ship the item, Paypal ruled in his favor. They did not once contact me about this.

I contacted Paypal immediately about them allowing a seller merely to prove he shipped 6 wks after the Paypal payment and nearly 2 wks after the dispute was filed. Therefore his proof wasn't proof for him but in fact, proof that he DID NOT ship until after the Paypal 30 day policy would have expired had I not filed. In the world of politics, Paypal had no comment.

However, I continued the fight. I wrote Ebay numerous times and wrote others who had purchased, warning them of Paypal's 30 day policy, just in case they needed to be reminded. I also encouraged the others who had left negative feedback to write EBay about allowing such violations on their site. As he wrote me threatening emails telling me to stop reporting him, I forwarded that to EBay's safe harbor team. Then I concluded by reporting him to a violation of EBay's seller performance. As I said above, his feedback listed 13 negative/neutral feedback and 46 positive. That's basically 25% unhappy buyers. The month before was roughly the same. A seller is allowed only 5% before he is in violation of the Terms of Agreement for sellers.

He has now been kicked off EBay. However, I am sure he will get another account and he still sales from his website. While I have been able to protect people from being scammed on EBay by this seller, the RipOff Report has a valid position in society to inform others on how to protect themselves from Fraud. Thanks RipOff Report.

Phantom Vixen,
My company, Ravenswood Leather, was mentioned in your report, and I wanted to make sure you know that we are not associated with any of Robert Wesner's assorted companies. He was employed as a part time employee by us for a short period of time many years ago and the mentioning of our name on his website is his way of showing his "independance" from our company. We have never been sure what he meant to accomplish by this negative action, but we certainly would not want you or anyone else to think we treat customers as you have been treated, nor do we have association in business or otherwise with said person, business, website, or ebay store.


You are welcome to come take a look at our website (www.ravenswoodleather.com) and I am confident that you will find that our reputation is solid and our dedication to customer satisfaction is a point of pride and foremost with our company. We also take pride in producing high quality leather clothing and accessories at affordable prices. We look forward to doing business with you in the future. Thank you for your consideration.
-Larkin
Ravenswood Leather