You should have counted your losses and sold them at a discount to someone.

 

Eh that might have been the best option but really the point is I shouldn't have to count my losses. If 223Hawk was the stand-up guy he claims to be, you would think he would show some interest in trying to get to the bottom of this. If you read the way in which he tries to defend himself it becomes obvious that he has just been trying to cover his *** from the beginning. Instead of accepting the possibility that I might be right and asking for proof, he tries to come up with any excuse he can think of. Suspicious if you ask me.

 

You're "proof" wouldn't have mattered much to me either since it was 40 days later. Anything could have happened to those wheels in that 40 day span.

 

Well apparently to Paypal, 40 days is an appropriate amount of time seeing as they allow you to dispute 45 days after payment. Unfortunately for me that is based on the payment date and not on the date you receive the items. Furthermore I could have easily went to the Discount I took my wheels to and had them write a letter not only verifying they were bent, but that they took them from the box they were shipped in and put them on my car. How would that not matter?

 

Just bc discount tire can write a letter saying they were taken out of boxes that they were shipped in means nothing to me. You could have gotten the tires taken off some where else and then went to discount with the wheels in the boxes. Or maybe you know someone at discount tire that could write something up for you. I'm not saying you did any of this, just stating that as a seller, there is no way to 100% trust the wheels hadn't been driven on. If you paid with a credit card, they can look at the situation and if they rule in your favor maybe they'll give you a chargeback.

 

There is also no way for me to know 100% that he didn't take a sledgehammer to them before he sold them. Just as there is no way to know that I couldn't have taken a sledgehammer to them myself. Neither of these a feasible. This is all about what makes sense and the facts. Thus far, no situation posted that would make me the dishonest one has made sense. First 223Hawk suggested that my car could have been in a wreck. Well if that happened it only makes sense that I would have insurance cover it especially considering I would imagine the accident would have to be pretty serious to damage 3 wheels.

Then you say I could have had taken them to one shop and then taken it another after the first dismounted them. Why on earth would I do this? What would I possibly gain from taking the wheels to be mounted (with new tires as the wheels did not come with any) at one shop and drive around on them for awhile before taking them back and asking them to swap back to my old wheels and take the tires off of the Firehawk wheels? Then I would go to the Discount I wrote about and have them swap them again. Well considering that I bought a set of new tires from Discount, what about the old tires that I would have to have bought seeing as the wheels I bought did not come with tires. So this would suggest that I paid for 3 trips to the shops and 2 new pairs of tires. For what? Seeing as I never asked for a refund, I asked for him to cover repairs, that would mean that I bought 2 pairs of tires and wasted all the time driving around to 2 different shops for $390? Yeah I would still be out of a lot of money. Furthermore this scenario also assumes that I would have been planning on trying to scam 223Hawk, and if it was my plan to scam him don't you think I would have told him the wheels were bent a lot sooner so I wouldn't risk him pulling any of the stuff he has pulled?

So let's have a recap of the facts:

-I paid 223Hawk $650 for wheels described in his ad as being in "great condition."

-I receive the wheels and look them over and they are seemingly fine so I put them in my garage.

-42 days later I PM 223Hawk to let him know they are bent after taking them to Discount Tire

-He makes excuses saying he can't believe they are bent

-I offer to get him any proof he wants me to get

-After another PM or two from him and he just stops replying

Now why would 223Hawk make up excuses and then just ignore me? Especially considering I was very civil throughout our conversation. That screams shady to me.

Now there seems to be a lot more scenarios that suggest that either 223Hawk knew they were bent when he sold them, He was unaware they were bent when he sold them, or that they were bent in shipping. Any of these scenarios would obviously still make him responsible and as you all can see he has done nothing and has even stopped replying in this thread.

Also I would like to point out that people rarely act without motivation. So why am I doing all of this? Surely if I was the dishonest one I would have just given up sometime within this past six months and accepted the fact that 223Hawk was not going to do anything. Quite the opposite is true, I was counting the days until I could post this thread. My motivation? The fact that I am out a lot of money for wheels I did not damage. To be heard and to get this out there for people so they will think twice before doing business with 223Hawk.

Furthermore, 223Hawk has not been able to discredit or disprove any of these options that would have him responsible. He has even stopped trying to come up with excuses to defend himself. And seeing as I have discredited the scenarios placing me at fault, it would seem far more likely that this one is on 223Hawk. He has had everything to gain (my money) and I have nothing but being out over a grand that I invested in these wheels.

 

Any before and after pics of the wheels regarding the repairs? Curious as to what was repaired. IMO the only problem with the argument is the time frame.

 

Im not going to argue and fight about whos right and who is wrong. If LS1tech wants to ban me for selling a set of USED wheels, that I knew nothing and stated all that I knew was wrong with them, being bent was not any of the issues that they had when I had them on my car, then thats up to them. I dont sell things on here for profit, I just couldnt use them with my new rearend and thought I would get rid of them. I dont have the time to get on here and try to prove my points. Im sorry but I didnt try to screw you intentionally.


I do not feel that I should help you, and after all this time I wont. I knew NOTHING about the wheels being bent. I have told you that many times. I feel the same way as Donohue96M6Z28, I have from the start of the first PM about being bent. I never had any problems with them and always balanced out fine. I stoped returning PMs because Im not going to help pay for something that at one time I owned and was in great shape. I have no idea how they got bent or damanged in anyway. I choose not to reply to any of this because I dont need to defend myself anymore. I told you..and have many times. I had drove my car with those tires the day I had the tires taken off the Firehawk wheels I sold you, never vibrated. I had put a set of Nitto Tires on the Hawk wheels right after I got it. No issues then. I had asked if they balanced out ok, they said Yes. So I knew nothing, felt nothing and still I tell you I didnt know that they were. I have no idea what has happened to them in those 42 days. Im sorry you feel I tryed to rip you off. Im not going to help pay for the repairs that were done to the wheels.

 

And yet the point you are constantly missing is that it doesn't matter if they were fine on your car because what arrived at my house was not fine. If they were damaged in shipping it is on you.

I will say this again, the seller (you) is responsible for shipping damages. As far as I am concerned you are lucky I didn't ask for a full refund and send the damn things back to you.

I did not say I believed that you intentionally screwed me over. I said that the most likely scenarios (seeing as I discredited the plausibility of all stories that would make me the one who damaged them) were that you either knew they were bent when selling, you didn't know they were bent when selling them, or that they were bent in shipping.

You were very adamant in saying that you did not sell them with the knowledge that they were bent and you actually know for a fact when they came off the car they were not bent. That knocks out two of the options mentioned earlier which only leaves one: shipping damage.

The reason why you can't really defend yourself is because you dodge all my key points and make sorry excuses about how they were fine on your car.

Again, as I have stated before many times, the amount of time that has passed is completely and utterly your fault. You are the one who ignored me all the way up until this thread was made, which I made as soon as I was allowed.

Also to further concrete my argument that you are responsible for these wheels being damaged is a PM from you.

Here you have it everyone, 223Hawk personally says that even he believes they were damaged in shipping. And as I have stated countless times, the seller is responsible for shipping. I say this a lot because even though I continue saying it, somehow 223Hawk just skips over that bit and continues to say the wheels were fine before shipping.

No, unfortunately I was very naive about this whole thing. Instead of gathering up as much proof as I could, I asked 223Hawk what proof he required. I didn't get any proof because he said he believed me but then after a few more PMs he ignored me. As for what was repaired, they repaired the outer lips of the wheels on the inside. Though that was not the only damage as two of them had (and still have) slightly bent spokes.

Which time frame? The time frame from then to now or the original time frame in which I told him they were bent after 42 days?

 

The 42 days.

 

Riddle me this. How in the HELL would you bend the spoke on a firehawk wheel? I understand they're thinner than a standard TA wheel, but they're still a really robust design. I can't even imagine what it would have taken to do something like that. I mean, we aren't talking an alumastar here....

 

Yes it is unfortunate that I didn't know immediately, but I still don't think it is an unreasonable amount of time, seeing as Paypal gives you 45 days to make a dispute.

I have wondered the same thing since I found out. What makes it even more troubling is what I found out after calling a few wheel shops for their opinions on shipping wheels...

I called a couple shops and a wheel distributor (they send out many wheels a week) and asked them what are the chances of wheels being bent in shipping. They said that dings and other purely cosmetic blemishes are fairly common especially when shipping UPS but that they have never gotten a wheel back that wasn't straight anymore. One of the guys I talked to went so far as to say that he had no doubt in his mind that the wheels were put into their boxes already bent. They also said it was impossible for the spoke to be bent in shipping.

This was far from what I was hoping to hear, because this paints a much grimmer picture than I had hoped. Though the fact still remains, done in shipping or sent to me already bent, 223Hawk is responsible.

 

BEASTBUSTER:

Don't take my post as supporting you or 223Hawk.... I'm just still trying to figure out how that much damage could POSSIBLY happen. At this point, from the outside, there are too many variables to place blame on either party from an outside standpoint.

 

Yes, I understand there are a lot of variables and information to sort through. Though the fact that 223Hawk said that he believed they were damaged in shipping and did nothing about it should be more than enough to show that he didn't take his responsibility as a seller and correct the issue.

I have some new stuff I would like to post. I decided to go looking in my car and was very happy to find some receipts...

This proves that I bought my tires when I said I did. This also proves that I had to pay $390 for repairs. I also posted a couple pictures of one of my wheels so that people can see it is the same tire as listed in the receipt.

 

i dont see how the wheels could be bent in shipping without evidence of damage to the container its in, and then you would have checked on them more closely. i believe the only two possible scenarios are that 223 hawk had bent wheels that he sold to you, either knowingly or not. but from the sound of it, it would be hard not to notice if 3 wheels were bent enough to require repair. and he claims he drove on them the day he shipped them. and the other possibility is that you did something to the wheels once they were in your possesion. since it was 42 days till you noticed the damage, alot could have happened. only you know for sure. if you did as you say and brought them to discount 42 days later and found they were bent, 223hawk mustve known about it.

and on a side note, i dont think it is uncommon at all for someone to buy parts and not use them for several months. and sometimes you dont notice the issues and problems until you are actually putting things together.

 

I'm not picking sides by any means, just interested and I don't envy seller or buyers positions, I agree exactly with what 89LS1RS is saying, but at the same time if the wheels were bent enough to need to be repaired, that should have been easily caught with a quick visual inspection upon arrival which at that point contact should have been made with the seller. I also wasn't trying to imply that they should have been installed right away, shoot, I wish I had time to get all the parts on and stuff done that I have planned, but oh well. Side note: I do wonder about the repeated term of "balanced out ok" used by the seller instead of " true or round or straight " because a bent wheel can easily be balanced, but they don't ride smooth if they're not round.

 

Lol, saying the wheels ''balanced out ok'' means they had 0, NO issues balancing or driving. I always ask as many questions as I can when I have my car worked on by someone other than me. So I would ask if the they balanced out fine. Answer was yes. I had NO vibrations at any speeds in the car. I have nice roads around my town and a lot of it is new highway. I bought the car in April of 09, those were the factory wheels that were on the car at the time I got it. I put 3500-4000 total miles since Iv owned it, probably 2000-3000 on the orignal wheels with Nitto 555s on them. Always smooth. I would have thought in that amount of miles I would have felt something if they were bent or damaged. I never knew that the wheels had any problems, and I had said it could have happend in shipping, and seems unlikely but then again I got 2 brand new wheels that came bent.

 

Hawk, I know what you mean, we have customers that ask that all the time. Which is the perfect opportunity to let them know if there are issues such as bent wheels or out of round tires, just thought it odd not to specify it with some different wording. Also, did you notice the bent wheels you received before they were spun on a balancer? Just wondering, seems it would be obvious.

 

Guys, I posted the receipt for a reason- it has the date on it. April 5th. So unless I was driving around on the wheels with no tires there is no way I could have possibly damaged the wheels myself.

Am I the only one who notices 223Hawk ignoring key points every time he posts? He comes on here to clarify what he meant by "balancing out ok" but has said absolutely nothing about why he never took any action despite the fact that he said (and just repeated a couple posts up) he thinks they were damaged in shipping. Why is this? Perhaps he is fully aware he ignored his responsibility as a seller to correct such issues and, as such, is trying to confuse the issue and distract people away from this detail...

I did look at the wheels upon their arrival, but seeing as the boxes showed no sign of abuse, I didn't inspect the wheels rigorously. I had no reason to believe anything was amiss. Upon taking them to Discount, even the employees didn't know they were bent just by looking at them. It only became obvious on the balancer. So no, I did not notice they were bent until I took them to Discount.

 

I'm being completely impartial here... You also posted the receipt from the wheel repair, which occured almost two months after you mounted and balanced the wheels. Why did it take so long to get them looked at by a wheel repair shop if you were concerned that they may have been bent. I wouldn't trust Discount Tire to tell me anything after seeing their work on numerous occasions.

Hawk didn't say that they WERE damaged in shipping, he admitted to it being a possibility. I can say him seing balancing out ok because if they did balance, didn't shake, etc. there would be no reason for him to have any thoughts that they might be bent. I don't send my rims to be checked for bends every time they are mounted or dismounted. Also, there's no way that the spokes were bent in shipping with no damage to the packaging.

At this point, due to the time tables, nobody can say for sure from the outside what happened. Even had you had the wheels repaired the same day you mounted the tires and they wouldn't balance, you could have put another set on and bent them prior to the receipts you are showing.

I know I sound like I'm attacking the OP, but I really just feel like there's no way anyone other than the two involved in the deal know the truth here. Bringing it here, and input from other forum members is not going to solve this.

Lastly, let this serve as a lesson... EVERYONE needs to check their parts when they get them. Shipping damage or poor sellers are much harder to recover losses from after time goes by. This is a perfect example.