On February 11th, I ordered an Odyssey 925 battery and also its corresponding billet aluminum mount, totaling $217.93. Both were listed as in stock. Rather than send money directly, I used PayPal as a bit of a shield against possible issues.
Mark emailed me pretty quickly and said he had to go pick up the battery to send, but he'd just sold the last mount and would have to get another.
I got the battery in a week or so. However, Mark told me he'd fired the guy who made the mounts and, when I asked specifically, he said he had no one lined up to make more and didn't know when he would.
I said it might be better to return that part of my payment to paypal, since indefinite delays get awkward and I didn't want things to get uncomfortable between us, since Dali's a good resource for parts. He said he didn't mind either way, but didn't actually offer or send the money back.
I then sent another email specifically requesting a refund sent back to my paypal address. No response.
A week later, I asked him if he got the previous email, and again specifically asked him to refund my money when he received the email. No response.
A week later, I filed a dispute with Paypal on the issue. (Trivia: This is the first point at which I stopped being artificially cheerful with Mark, as previously I had been trying to avoid the spiteful side I've heard about. I didn't get rude, but I was blunt and serious.) Paypal sent Mark email. No response.
A week later (today), I escalated the dispute to a claim for Paypal to resolve for me. Unfortunately, that's when I found out that Paypal had screwed me, because if you order two items and receive one, they call that "Not as Described" rather than "Not Shipped" and flip you the bird.
(Lesson for everyone: Never buy two items at the same time via paypal. In fact, since you can order an HDTV and be shipped a toothpick with equal results, just don't use paypal. Their "protection" is non-existent.)
Thus, I've now filed a dispute with the credit card debited by Paypal. We'll see if that works. The person who took my dispute said she hadn't actually had many paypal disputes, so maybe they aren't so fed up yet that they ignore paypal disputes now.
Oh, and I've also filed issues with the San Diego BBB, for what that's worth, and the FTC.
I want to point out that, this entire time, the battery mount has been listed as "In Stock" on dali's site, despite Mark's quite conscious knowledge that it is unavailable.
Summary: At this moment, six and a half weeks after ordering, and three weeks after requesting a refund because the item was indefinitely unavailable, Mark still has $60.00, plus $6.50 shipping, of my money, and refuses to respond to my requests for a refund.
It's just like everyone says: If everything goes well, Mark's great. If anything goes wrong, he keeps your money and ignores you. I got both in the same go. I'm just glad I've (deliberately) never ordered anything really expensive from Dali.
Buyer beware.
As an addendum to this review, I would like to recommend to any potential Dali customers that, as with any potential seller with an account here on Prim, they examine Dali's/Mark Johnson's/NSXGOD's (all the same) previous two years' iTrader rating history here: http://www.nsxprime.com/forums/itrader.php?u=4287
(Do be sure to ignore the roughly 100 fake positive reviews, all from the same person on the same day in 2004.)
Notice that, in the past two years, approximately half of the ratings are negative, mostly from people who sent Mark money and never received anything but silence. They have a name for that where I come from. Maybe where you're from, too?
Again, I advise that the buyer be very wary.
Mark emailed me pretty quickly and said he had to go pick up the battery to send, but he'd just sold the last mount and would have to get another.
I got the battery in a week or so. However, Mark told me he'd fired the guy who made the mounts and, when I asked specifically, he said he had no one lined up to make more and didn't know when he would.
I said it might be better to return that part of my payment to paypal, since indefinite delays get awkward and I didn't want things to get uncomfortable between us, since Dali's a good resource for parts. He said he didn't mind either way, but didn't actually offer or send the money back.
I then sent another email specifically requesting a refund sent back to my paypal address. No response.
A week later, I asked him if he got the previous email, and again specifically asked him to refund my money when he received the email. No response.
A week later, I filed a dispute with Paypal on the issue. (Trivia: This is the first point at which I stopped being artificially cheerful with Mark, as previously I had been trying to avoid the spiteful side I've heard about. I didn't get rude, but I was blunt and serious.) Paypal sent Mark email. No response.
A week later (today), I escalated the dispute to a claim for Paypal to resolve for me. Unfortunately, that's when I found out that Paypal had screwed me, because if you order two items and receive one, they call that "Not as Described" rather than "Not Shipped" and flip you the bird.
(Lesson for everyone: Never buy two items at the same time via paypal. In fact, since you can order an HDTV and be shipped a toothpick with equal results, just don't use paypal. Their "protection" is non-existent.)
Thus, I've now filed a dispute with the credit card debited by Paypal. We'll see if that works. The person who took my dispute said she hadn't actually had many paypal disputes, so maybe they aren't so fed up yet that they ignore paypal disputes now.
Oh, and I've also filed issues with the San Diego BBB, for what that's worth, and the FTC.
I want to point out that, this entire time, the battery mount has been listed as "In Stock" on dali's site, despite Mark's quite conscious knowledge that it is unavailable.
Summary: At this moment, six and a half weeks after ordering, and three weeks after requesting a refund because the item was indefinitely unavailable, Mark still has $60.00, plus $6.50 shipping, of my money, and refuses to respond to my requests for a refund.
It's just like everyone says: If everything goes well, Mark's great. If anything goes wrong, he keeps your money and ignores you. I got both in the same go. I'm just glad I've (deliberately) never ordered anything really expensive from Dali.
Buyer beware.
As an addendum to this review, I would like to recommend to any potential Dali customers that, as with any potential seller with an account here on Prim, they examine Dali's/Mark Johnson's/NSXGOD's (all the same) previous two years' iTrader rating history here: http://www.nsxprime.com/forums/itrader.php?u=4287
(Do be sure to ignore the roughly 100 fake positive reviews, all from the same person on the same day in 2004.)
Notice that, in the past two years, approximately half of the ratings are negative, mostly from people who sent Mark money and never received anything but silence. They have a name for that where I come from. Maybe where you're from, too?
Again, I advise that the buyer be very wary.
