This is my warning about John Frederick Barr AKA cosmokramer999, director of Johny Seven Ltd of 50 West
Hill, East Grinstead.
My company had the misfortune to sell John Barr (cosmokramer999) a
video camera on eBay. I suspect the John Barr we experienced is not
an exception, that this warning is well advised to one and all, eBay
sellers or otherwise. I believe the events show Mr. Barr to be a compulsive liar, and a vindictive insulting bully, devoid of any grace of humanity.
We try to offer the very best product and after sales service.
When John Barr contacted us for support at 19:00 (7pm) on a Tuesday
evening, we responded to him within 2 hours; I challenge anyone to
tell me where they can get that level of support on an inexpensive HD
video camera. Mr. Barr was experiencing problems which appeared to be related to the memory card. HD video cameras require high quality / speed Class 6 or 10 micro-SD / SD
memory cards of excellent manufacture because of their need to write a lot of data in a short
time.
We did not supply the SD Card that Mr. Barr was attempting to use
in the camera that we did supply. Unfortunately, it is a well know
fact that memory cards are often faked and are often unreliable. For that
reason, we provide a small PC program that allows our customers to
test their SD card, if the camera does not work with the card they
have.
Mr. Barr asked if he could return the camera for a full refund
without having to assess what was at fault. Even though Mr. Barr was
outside the returns period / his legal statutory rights, as the camera was likely working properly, we agreed. We see no point in arguing with customers and, on eBay, we believe it is best to accept a return and refund to avoid being given negative feedback, so often used by buyers to demand in excess of their rights. Negative feedback detrimentally affects your online business, not just on eBay, so we actually do more than meet our legal obligations to avoid it.
After we agreed and set this in stone on eBay's resolution system, John Barr then left abusive negative feedback for
us anyway. We were amazed as we were pretty sure the most likely problem was
with the SD card he was using, and that we had agreed to take back the
camera for a full refund in any event, even though legally we did not
have to. Regrettably, because we had agreed to the return for refund,
we then were unable to do anything about this, other than have eBay
remove the abusive comments and profanity, which they did, though
they said the negative mark on our feedback could only be removed by
Mr. Barr as it was his right to leave negative feedback even if it
were undue.
At the same time John Barr of West Hill, East Grinstead started
becoming abusive in emails to us. Especially when we asked him to
remove the negative mark on our feedback. He appeared to calm down at
this stage, saying he was simply "fed up with scammers not
delivering what I'm paying for". He asked us to provide the SD
Card testing software again, which we did.
The next thing we heard from John Barr was "I’ve
no idea how you use the software to check my card, all it says is
access denied. All I know is somebody is having me over." We
again explained that were were not having him over, that we had
already agreed to take the camera back for a full refund even though
we did not have to. We pointed out, that the fact his PC could not
access the SD Card was a sure sign that the SD Card was faulty and
the reason for the problem, but he could still return the camera for a refund if he
was not happy with that. We asked him to try the SD card in something else, or to use a different SD card in the camera. We asked this not to change Mr. Barr's mind about returning the camera for a refund, but to show that the object of his wrath should be the SD card and its supplier. We again asked him to remove the negative
feedback as he had received excellent service from us and we had
guaranteed him a refund if he returned the camera to us.
Mr.
Barr then went on to become even more abusive. Referring to myself
and my technician as Delboy and Rodney and asking how much I earned an hour, because it was clear I was a "(profane adjective) (racist noun)". John Barr claimed that he had taken the SD card to a PC shop and that they had looked at it and could see nothing wrong with it. Well, as we knew Mr. Barr bought this card online, we knew that any shop he took it to was not the original supplier and therefore would not have tested a third party's SD card for him. Also, if a PC / IT specialist had checked the card, they would have done more than looked at it, and would have reported / confirmed the performance of the card. We did not deliberate this aspect with Mr. Barr because we knew it would just incense him further, but we surmised at this point John Barr was at the very least a compulsive liar and probably delusional, as he seemed to end up believing his own falsehoods.
When
we finally received the camera back, we tested it and it worked first
time, of course. Unfortunately, it was returned to us in such a condition as we
are unable to resell it, even as a second hand unit. We refunded the
money to John Barr AKA cosmokramer999 of West
Hill, East Grinstead anyway, as once we had guaranteed this on the
eBay system we basically had no choice, and we were by now fed up
with his insults, bad behaviour and foul language. As a result of our
experience with John Barr, we have reviewed the way we automatically
grant buyers a full refund on eBay when they are not due it yet still ask for it. John Barr has made eBay and the Internet a worse place.
eBay to their discredit say that we can consider legal action against Mr. Barr but that they can not either remove the negative mark on our feedback, nor compensate us for the camera as we agreed to taking it back. Suing Mr. Barr obviously is not a viable option.
I have no doubt that Mr. Barr's antics, his apparent delight at
insulting people and making them beg to have unfair negative feedback
removed, speaks volumes about him more than anything else. I felt
compelled to wrote this warning, so that others can avoid enduring
such a bad experience.
Disclaimer
Written and published by myself, personally, on my own PC in my own time. Mr. Barr having provided his personal data to my personal email address when I once tried to reason with him from home about this. His / his comany's information being in the public domain.
