Anyone ordered from quartermaster-stores.com?

[Gene T]

It's a UK company specializing in reproduction leather equipment and ancillary parts. They have been in business for over 10 years and used to go by Soldier's Leatherwork and Goods, I think. The owner operator seems to be very busy, and isn't always quick to respond to inquiries. I placed a small order 1.5 months ago believing the item was in stock, only to find out afterwards it's made to order. As he never gave me a projected completion date for my order, I have effectively been put on indefinite hold since.

I'm in no particular hurry to have the item, but I also don't want to keep pestering him for updates every couple of weeks (which he mostly ignores) if this is just the way he works. Has anyone here bought from him before? If so, how long did you have to wait to receive your order?

TIA!

[Gene T]

It doesn't look like anyone here has dealt with him. But since there have been 200 views, I figured I should close the loop. As a warning to anyone contemplating placing an order with this vendor, here is a summary of my experience interacting with this man (Mike Redgate, a one man company located in Wolverhampton, UK), whom I now consider a willful fraudster.

3-7-19: I placed my order (my first and last) through the PayPal portal on his website (http://quartermaster-stores.com). There was no clear mention of the item being custom made and requiring wait time during the ordering process. As there are other items labeled "out of stock" on his site, first-time customers like me would naturally assume the "in stock" items are ready to ship.

4-25-19: After multiple unanswered emails and deflection over many weeks, he told me that there are 50 orders ahead of mine in his production queue, that he worked alone (so all those "we" and "us" on his website are majestic plurals, I guess), and that a custom order like mine would take 12-15 weeks to complete.

8-16-19: After ignoring my inquiries throughout July and early August, I told him that I will need to cancel my order if it is not shipped by the end of the month, because PayPal's buyer protection period lasts only 180 days, which is about to expire. He answered on 8-17-19 with "your order is cut out and ready to assemble". Taking him at his word, I allowed the protection period to expire without filing a claim.

9-26-19: Multiple emails were again ignored, until I informed him that I will seek third party help if he failed to respond. He replied on 9-27-19 that my order "will go out next week".

10-17-19: Same pattern as before. My emails were ignored until I told him that I intended to file a formal complaint against him with PayPal. He generated a shipping label on 10-18-19 using PayPal's vendor tool, which automatically forwarded a tracking number to me.

A month later, that tracking number still shows that nothing was done after the shipping label was generated. No parcel with that label was ever accepted by Royal Mail.

My subsequent emails to him were either ignored, or triggered indignant protestation that I was trying to ruin his business, that he had absolutely shipped my order, because "How else could I have gotten a tracking number?!", and claims that the post office must have misplaced my parcel, which "happens all the time. Why just today, a package from Canada was returned to me because the post office never notified the customer". When I informed him that there is a youtube video showing exactly how a paypal shipping label was generated, and that he needs to stop playing me for a fool and do the right thing. He stopped answering me altogether. It appears that as far as he was concerned, that fake shipping label constituted the final fulfillment of his obligations towards me!

His robo-reply instructs his customers to follow him on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/HistoricalOutfitters), but when I referred to his activities there, he accused me of "stalking" him on social media.

I reached out to other customers who had posted on his FB page to inquire about the status of their orders, just to see whether mine was an isolated case. One of the customers I contacted had been waiting for his order for more than 14 months(!) and had received nothing but empty promises and outright lies in return for his patience. Another customer is nearing the end of his 180 day PayPal protection period, and just received the "all cut out and ready to assemble" reply after threatening to file a claim.

PayPal is absolutely useless and unsympathetic after the expiration of their 180 day buyer protection period, when fraud magically becomes acceptable in their book. They only promised to "look into it internally" after I reported the issue, and flat out refused to examine any evidence I have or to keep me in the loop. They don't even offer a formal complaint option anymore on their website.

econsumer.gov is supposed to track online fraud from international actors, but they only promise to record the complaint and forward it to relevant agencies, nothing more.

UK police has its own fraud reporting portal - actionfraud.police.uk, but it too, is only a venue for reporting fraudulent acts, with no promise or means to followup.

Bottom line, I was a fool for allowing PayPal's magic 180 day period to expire; realistically, it was my only protection against a dishonest actor like Mike Redgate, who has a shocking amount of freedom to prey on unsuspecting customers worldwide; which he continues to do to this day through blatant lies (that fake shipping label and feigned indignation removed whatever doubt I had about his intention to deceive). If he was once an honest vendor (he does seem to have a fair number of fawning admirers), he sure as hell doesn't behave like one now, regardless of what personal demons he may be struggling with.

I would update again here if he does actually come through, but I don't think either of us will live that long.