357 Customs, Daniel 357 Customs, Chad Dyer, Zakk Wylde ripoff, black label society, Naturally Wired Designs, Tim Bolin Internet, Tennessee, Florida, Minnesota, California

Towards the end of 2005 a company called 357 customs (357customs.com), supposedly they are manufacturer of custom motorcycles for the stars, began to offer packages in their internet based store (357store.com) that included items such as gift certificates, die cast model choppers, mp4 players and laptops.

The common bond between all of the deals ... along with each package came a free Zack Wylde edition Epiphone Les Paul Guitar. Different deals were offered at different times throughout the following months up into approximately March of 2006. It was sometime in January 2006 when these deals started appearing in the forums of a website (our protagonist in this story) called www.slickdeals.net.

attracts thousands of users on a daily basis who share good deals they find on the internet and in their local stores with each other. Deal posts are rated by members and individuals are given "Reputation points" that are basically an indicator of how many good deals a person has posted. But .. this isn't a commercial for slickdeals.net, so, lets go back to our story.

Allow me to begin with an introduction of our cast of charachters.
The bad guys:
1. Daniel Baguess - The owner of 357 customs.
2. Tim Bolin - Someone associated with 357 customs.
3. Chad Dyer - The evil webmaster of 357 customs websites AND of zakkwylde.com, also the owner of his own "web development" company called Naturally Wired Designs.
4. Zakk Wylde - Guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and Lead of his own band Black Label Society. (*sidenote - While he may be the most enduring replacement Ozzy has had for the former Randy Rhoades(may he rest in peace) Zakk will never ever approach Rhoades in greatness or ability!)
5. Bob Ringe - Attorney or Liability Management for Zakk Wylde (or something like that.

The good guys:
1. Everyone who got ripped off by 357 customs.

And now ... we begin.

Setting the Scene:
It was a dark and stormy night, lightning crashed! Despite the dangers involved with running a computer in the middle of a lightning storm a dedicated slickdealer (myself) sits in a dim room straining his eyes in search of deals.

Act 1.
It was there that I first found a posting about the free Zakk Wylde guitars being given away as a part of packages purchased from 357customs.com. This particular deal consisted of 1 die cast Zakk Wylde model chopper, 1 mp4 player and a Zakk Wylde Epiphone Guitar. Seeing as how my Peavy 212 amplifier has been sitting in my parents closet since I sold my Ibanez ... I was immediately interested in the deal. However .. I'm not idiot enough to jump on a deal that appears to be too good to be true without doing some research first.

Act 2. The Research
First of all I checked their website, 357customs.com and 357store.com. It seemed reasonably legit. Then I went to resellerratings.com, nothing there. I just couldn't find enough information to warrant risking $200 on this deal so I let it slide .. for the time being.

It was the next day at work when my associate showed me that the deal was ALSO posted on Zakk Wylde's official BLS forum by Zakk Wylde's webmaster, Chad Dyer of Naturally Wired Designs.

After checking out this new info I then decided this deal was seeming more like it could be legit .. Zakk Wylde guitars, Zakk Wylde's website, a company trying to make a name for themselves .. it could be legit. Well ... I bit .. I bought the package.

Act 3. The Transaction
The first indication that something was wrong was when I first placed my order, even though it stated right on the website that the guitars would not be shipped until May but your credit card would not be charged until the items were shipped, it was charged immediately! This was explained off by the zakkwylde.com webmaster, Chad Dyer as .. it was a default in the commerce package and he didn't know how to change it. (It was at this point, I believe, that I realized Chad Dyer was the Webmaster of both www.zakkwylde.com and www.357customs.com)

Act 4. The non-responsive customer service.
After waiting for some time, I finally decided to write customer service and ask about, 1. why had my card already been charged and 2. why hadn't my diecast and mp4 player shipped yet. I received no response even though I included my order # etc with the message.

However, other people were able to contact customer service and did get responses.

Act 5. The deal goes sour
I waited a while longer and saw a LOT of BS going on ... for example:
1. Chad Dyer was very abusive of his powers on www.zakkwylde.com and basically told anyone who asked about where their stuff was or tried to do any questioning of whether this deal was legit that their stuff was coming and they needed to shut the f*** up.
2. There were many grumblings in the forum thread at slickdeals.net about their treatment by Chad and 357 customer service.
3. No one had received their merchandise, dates passed where Chad and 357 representatives had said guitars would ship and nothing had been received.
4. Many lies were tossed around about the guitars being in the warehouse and they were shipping them out as fast as they could, (some of these directly from Chad Dyer), at one point someone said the guitars had been received and they had defective pickups so they had to be returned etc...
5. Many many times dates were given and then retracted when nothing happened.

Act 6. Fast Forward
In the interest of not taking forever to report this I'm going to try to just stick to the major events.

Basically - end result was
1. A couple of people did get guitars! (How many, only a couple and I don't even know if that is a fact! I suspect, however, that a couple of guitars were purchased and shipped out so people on the forums would post that they had received it, and others would be quite long enough for the standard 3 months that most credit cards offer chargebacks would be exceeded.
2. A couple of people received cheap die-cast chopper models.
3. No one I've heard of received an mp4 player.
4. Some people received refunds directly from 357.
5. Some people received refunds from their credit cards after filing for a chargeback.
6. Most people are still screwed.

FORTUNATELY, I was one of the people who requested a cancellation of my order at an early stage and got a refund. At the time I thought that was an indication that they were actually legit (I only cancelled my order because I didn't like the way they treated people, especially Chad Dyer)

However, there are still many people who are out a LOT of money. This scan is HUGE, affected a lot of people and took a lot of money. Also there have been some mentioning that Daniel Bauguess also ran a similar scam with Nascar Fans previously and under a different company name.

There was also a point when 357 customs issued a statement claiming that everything was still going to ship .. that EVERYONE would be receiving refunds and they were going to still ship the items to EVERYONE even those like myself who cancelled their order ... obviously ... so far this seems to be untrue.

Since then Zakk Wylde has "become aware" of what went on, Chad Dyer has stepped down from being webmaster at www.zakkwylde.com along with issuing a statement that Zakk knew nothing about what was going on on his website and that he was totally to blame.

Zakk has filed a lawsuit against 357customs, http://www.zakkwylde.com/357lawsuit.pdf, however it is widely believed that all this does is cover his own a*s.

Basically, almost everyone who ordered is screwed, this is a huge scam effecting many people but I just can't type any more right now.

Some links:
First Slickdeals Thread - http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=93828&t=193076
Second Slickdeals Thread - http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=259238
http://home.mchsi.com/~erock85/357.html
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller13378.html
http://www.zakkwylde.com/357lawsuit.pdf

Nathan
Clovis, California
U.S.A.