4 replies to this topic

[ManRT]

Hello, my hobby mates.

May 2019: I paid around 140€ for a Fiat Croma to " [email protected] ", the PayPal account of https://www.vartmodel.com/
After more than a year they start saying that someone took their money and they are cancelling the project and refunding us. No car, no refund, january 2021. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts have disappeared.

I didn't feel very comfortable with the web and the reservation system, but I bought the model because it was the last car my grandfather drove.
Is someone on this board affected by this too?

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[Craig]

Moved here as this is not Hobby Talk.


I have to be honest, there's no way I would have left it so long to find out. PayPal give 180 days now to raise a dispute and get your money back. After that you won't be able to claim via them.

Sadly, I think it's safe to say that the seller has cut and run.

[ManRT]

Thanks for moving the topic to the correct place, sorry for my mistake!
I waited all this time because they posted various pictures of the process, prototypes, different color choices, etc. It was a preorder with -I don't exactly remember- a 6 / 10 month delivery time , they were creating the models as other manufacturers do (OTTO, Laudo...). Then COVID came and it felt normal to expect some delays, they were telling us that, that production were slower than expected and blah blah blah...

[ManRT]

...am I the only one?

[jazzy426]

very sorry to hear your misfortunate mate. Can't really offer much other than my sympathy. EUR140 is still a fairly significant amount of money. Sounds like the seller has done a runner. I wonder if others received their respective refund as well or it was all just lip service and the fund is long gone. Not sure if it helps at all if you try to get in touch with Paypal and see if there are options they can offer, and if the pre order payment was funded via credit card through Paypal I wonder if they could help you in any way. Their Paypal handler also does not look very professional seeing that they were using free yahoo email instead of their own proper web domain.