Hi, everyone. I'm the OP's partner. This is going to be a long post to try to give you insight into what I know.
I have no history on the forum, so you'll have to ask quick1unc and kebabman to verify I'm the person they talked to on Skype after they filed their PayPal claims.
So if I were in your shoes, I'd want some peace about this situation, and OP is... well... he's bad at communicating. Consistently anyway. Which is bad. Not necessarily scammy, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. And my experience with him is that he's overly optimistic on delivery times, which has probably entered into this equation.
2 things I want to say before I give some history:
1.
If this is a scam, I'm the mark and not you. Why? It's my PayPal account/balance at risk. If you're one of the 3 open orders that paid me and everything goes south, you're actually still in good shape from a transaction perspective. PayPal will refund you. Downside is PayPal is slow. Upside, you get your money back. So, we'll all see what happens and I'll be really sorry for all of us if this goes haywire.
2.
Presently, I believe you'll get the cards, but based on the timeline from the one verified completed purchase with BCT user unc0nnected, it may take up to 3 weeks to arrive. (Ask quick1unc to verify he spoke with him on Skype. For what it's worth, I believe that transaction to be 100% legit. More about that toward the bottom.)
So let me back up and tell you what I know. Some of this will be unrelated to GPU cards, and my estimated dates might be a little off, but I want to give you context.
I've worked with kii552007_alt for about 8 months. Talked with him almost everyday. I know him by his English first name + Chinese last name. I've talked to him on Skype, both chat and face-to-face.
I first met him via UpWork around June 2017 where I ordered some anime style art from his anime/manga art studio. First a few small orders, then larger ones, then bigger multi-thousand dollar deals. All these bigger deals were direct - not via UpWork/PayPal or any escrow system. During all of these deals, he was incorrigibly honest. We agreed in advance on prices, deadlines, discounts, reimbursements, etc - and we always honored our agreements with each other down to a penny. Two times stand out as worth mentioning regarding his character when things didn't go well - once I wasn't satisfied with the quality of one of the pieces of artwork, and he personally paid a different artist to do a better version - basically delivering 2 things for the price of one. Another time we had a big deal paid upfront where he couldn't complete it, so he paid me back a huge chunk for the uncompleted portion. That was actually the conclusion of my art deal with the OP as I had hired an in-house artist at that point.
Around late January, I'd already been researching other current commercial trends like dropshipping or private labeling goods from China. OP approached me to ask if I'd have any interest in dropshipping GPUs. At this point the only thing I knew was: (1) the OP had proven himself trustworthy (2) GPU sales could be a good opportunity
So I took the risk of acting as a dropshipper for the OP for a few test orders for a fairly small margin.
The question you should ask is, "Why did you think OP would want you as a middleman when he could just sell direct?"
Based on our previously dealings, I knew there is an issue with PayPal and Taiwan.
https://www.paypal.com/tw/webapps/mpp/system-enhancement-faq?locale.x=en_TWSince September 15, 2015, Taiwanese citizens can have a PayPal account in order to take international payments, BUT they can't use its balance to trade with people inside the country. So this presented a problem for OP. Buyers typically either want escrow or PayPal for protection, but he can't do escrow because he doesn't have capital, so that leaves PayPal. Distributors within Taiwan want cash. So how can he go from PayPal to TWD? He can't trade it for cash with anyone inside the country. But the other bigger problem is that PayPal will often hold the money Taiwanese receive seemingly at random for 10+ days, and from my experience attempting to use PayPal with OP, at a much higher percentage likelihood than citizens of other countries. (Although, admiteddly, that could be sample size n=1 issue.)
So by acting as a non-stocking retailer, I could take the payment as PayPal and send it to him in some other way. The end goal was to do a few orders this way to see how things went, then switch to a more traditional importer approach in which I'd buy inventory and sell from the US.
I sent 5 invoices for orders.
1 invoice was paid but was instantly withheld by PayPal, possibly because the buyer had an unconfirmed address, but I'm not sure. Rather than attempt to resolve this issue, I refunded them in full.
1 invoice never paid so I proactively cancelled the invoice.
3 invoices paid and I used those funds to pay OP to purchase cards and send them on (regardless of what happens next, they'll get their money back, but yes OP literally received that money)
By the time I sent invoices, OP had already been talking with at least 1 person and arranged a small order
The one happy buyer I know of is BCT user unc0nnected, who I also think is his first buyer. I've spoken with him on Skype. quick1unc has spoken with him. As much as anyone can ever know anything about a person, he seems legit, and his story checks out with screenshots I've seen from OP's phone of shipping notifications.
- He paid OP on Feb 5 for an RX580.
- OP says he managed to get the RX580 to the local post office on Feb 10, just before Chinese New Year
- OP gave unc0nnected the EMS number on the date it hit Customs on Feb 21. unc0nnected says the tracking number immediately worked on this date.
- unc0nnected received the package Feb 26 and is happy with it.
I think I saw someone have a question about receipts.
Google: "Uniform Invoice lottery"
In Taiwan, it seems to be, that businesses will sometimes give you a discount if you choose not to get a receipt, essentially helping them dodge sales tax. They've attempted to fight this problem by turning receipts into lottery tickets, but OP is obliging his suppliers by not taking the receipts.
The only thing I can think of now, is that there's hope in unc0nnected's story. There is a disconnect in Taiwan between the mailed date, and the date that the EMS number works. While a shipper could pay EMS extra to track both inside Taiwan and Internationally, my understanding is that OP arranged it so only the international portion of the trip would have tracking.
At best, it takes awhile to arrive.
At worst, you get your money back, and I'm screwed.
I'm in contact with OP as recently as a few hours ago.
Why isn't he talking on here?
According to him, he feels that his limited English is not helping with making people feel more safe about this transaction, and instead, simply adds fuel to making them distrust him more. And he feels like the proof will be when packages arrive in the mail and everyone is happy from his actions and not his words.
I have more to lose than anyone, but I think it will all check out in the end. We'll see soon enough.
