Saturday, January 1, 2011

HOW TO TOAST A WEB COCKROACH

PHONY JAGUAR AD USED BY SCAMMER
Many of you know my acute apathy for scammers. When I come across such Web cockroaches, I go after them and try to neutralize their unlawful activities to avoid other victims being scammed. A few years ago, single handedly on eBay I developed the MILLION DOLLAR BID strategy that quickly put an end to a Russian Mafia ring that for YEARS were running a scam selling non existent Jaguar E-Types, XK 120s, XK 140s and XK 150s. Dozens of victims before that had been taken by these bastards involving serious sums of money. I called these episodes eBay-Gate as eBay were fully aware of the scam and were covering it up. On Sept 7, 2010 same thing happened again with eBay pretending it never happened and covering it up. I again used the Million Dollar Bid strategy and was able to thwart the scammer from ripping anyone off. I chronicled the episode on Facebook that you can see in photos HERE. More cockroach scams we stomped on HERE and HERE.

This next new cockroach/scammer is a Shipping/Moving Company who are trying to rip me off for $565.80 (it is still ongoing) which was supposed to be for transporting car parts from Pennsylvania to Toronto, Canada (approx. 400 miles) for my JENSEN HEALEY project. The scum behind this ripoff organization is a fink called ERNEST KEITH Jr. a sociopath of the worse kind and compulsive liar. The company he runs is called MANTRUK. You can see a photo of  this creep HERE. He has taken my money and the shipment has been sitting idle for nearly a month OUTDOORS and rusting. He tried to extort an additional $220 to complete the job and threatened to withhold any refund for 60 Days. CANCELLING and keeping the money for as long as he can IS THE SCAM. Very often victims give up trying to get a refund so he gets to keep the money.

USHIP ERNEST KEITH (aka Ernjun) QUOTE
I had an account with USHIP that I had never used so I decided to give it a try. Ernest Keith bid on my shipment and I  accepted his bid (above photo). A few days later I paid him the full amount by PayPal. I admit making one mistake in that I did not do my "homework" as I normally should have done prior to paying him. Had I done my homework, I would have found out that this guy is ONE BAD APPLE on USHIP. His FEEDBACK sucks. 22 Negatives, 16 Neutral (most of them negative in nature), 175 Cancellations, 66 Excessive Cancellations. Overall Feedback 95% (very poor number). Add to that another victim who decided to air his grievances in a PUBLIC FORUM on the integrity of that creep Ernest Keith and his company MANTRUK. All these would have raised a red flag.

After weeks of phone calls, bull shit promises and dozens of emails I decided to take action after I received this email from him (copy and paste):

"no i never said supplying pallets i am a freight shipper not a packer-i deal with things that are already packed and ready to go ,What we will do is cancell the deal but it will take 60 days fro refund-Please post your ad on uship again for another provider i am not having luck with this-but if mark can wrap all goods and get it ready i will send him a payment and truck.

ernest"

 On December 30th, 2010 I filed a dispute with USHIP and PAYPAL. I strongly doubt I will get any satisfaction from USHIP as scammers like MANTUK are secretly protected and most often they (USHIP) lend a blind eye to their illegal activities. Why? Simple, they get their money up front from the poor victim. In my case USHIP  skimmed a cool commission of  $100 out of the $565.80. As for PayPal, not much better. They are holding the funds until January 5th even though Ernest Keith had no choice but to issue an immediate refund as USHIP were now about to suspend his account (see below). There is a 1% chance if the PayPal person reviewing the dispute is competent they will suspend his account for all the cancellations as these result in PayPal chargebacks. Normally a definite no-no on PayPal.

I received more than 30 emails from Ernest Keith on Dec 30th, trying to extort more money, saying the shipment is packed and ready to go, he would personally pick it up and deliver it, he had no money to pay me back, he would be there first thing in the morning etc. Just one monstrous lie after the other. Unbeknown to him I was forwarding all these emails one by one directly to USHIP. Here is a hilarious email he sent  me on Dec 30th saying that any refund had to be okayed by his Board of Directors:

"I can't do immediate refunds my company policy and owner of mantruk is refund in 10to 14 days with explanation
I will review your bid and shipment first thing monday morning if we have issues and problems I will cancel with a explanation and issue refund but not immediate I have to explain to board of directors
I as owner do not like refunds I would rather ship and be workable I am a workable guy" 


From the huge amount of emails I was forwarding, here is what USHIP had to say as they watched the whole thing unfolding blow by blow on December 30, 2010. Notice the docile and appeasing language they use even though it is very clear to USHIP that the whole transaction is fraudulent.

"Hi Ernest and tiktokok,
If the shipper is unwilling to pay for additional services [the additional $220 that Ernest Keith is trying to extort] on their shipment that was not specified at the time of bid acceptance, than the shipment will need to be canceled and a refund will need to be issued immediately. If a refund is not issued immediately, then the account for Ernjun will be suspended until the refund is completed.
In the future, if your refund policy is that it will take 60 days for reimbursement, this must be outlined in your contract and the shipper must agree to this before payment is received and item is transported.

Regards,



Marisa S.
Associate - Community, Trust & Safety"


On a final note. To lessen the chances of Ernest Keith taking in more victims I wrote a COMPLETE REVIEW of the incident in the highest ranking Google Portal for shippers and movers called MyMovingReviews. Anyone from now on doing a Google search on MANTRUK will fall on that review as the first search result. Happy New Year MANTRUK and Ernest Keith. 

4 comments:

  1. If anybody knows of a reputable shipper/mover in the Pennsylvania area please leave a comment with their contact details

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's a small but good sampling of what you can expect when using UShip that can be seen on TWITTER
    at:

    http://twitter.com/ThePriorty

    You can also learn a great deal about UShip, how to protect yourself, how to check for legally operating transport businesses and the on-line shipping pandemic, by visiting this link on FaceBook.

    http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=163961417683

    ReplyDelete
  3. For more information Google “uship scams”. Sadly uShip may be one of the most dangerous sites on the web. It purports openness, but it is really a platform for thieves and scam artists. Nine out of ten of uShips "carriers" are illegal. And since almost all of the people that want to ship on uShip have little or no experience in shipping they become easy victims of over charges, extra fees, damage, and theft. The vast majority of uShip "Service Providers" are just a guy with a truck. They haul without license, authority, bond, or insurance. uShip executives are fully aware of this, but deny any responsibility saying that the users police the site. The problem is that the users are amateurs and they don't realize that they are being scammed in most cases. Further, since uShip limits communication between carriers and users it is impossible to determine if a scam is in the works until it is too late.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Argh! I just got completely screwed over by Ernest Keith. I can't believe that I didn't do any googling before accepting his bid.

    In February, I paid him $600 to pick up my shipment. He pocketed my money, called UPS, put his name in the bill-to section, then stiffed UPS. UPS simply designated me (the shipper) as the responsible party. Of course, it took a few months before this process played out, so I only just learned that I'd been screwed.

    The UPS bill he stuck me with is $4,385, and it has gone into collections. I am also receiving crazy lying emails from him.

    I filed complaints with the FTC, BBB, FBI, DOT. He told me to stop, because that was considered harassment.

    ReplyDelete

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