First of all, I can only speak about my own experience with Patrick De Swert. Nico De Swert, Dirk Schuurmans, Steven Dewindt were business contacts that he mentionned in his own replies and communications that he made publically. The company he operated under in my specific case is called 'Oromono' and is located in Belgium. My story and comments below therefore do not apply to any other name or company mentionned above. That does not mean that I vowdge for these names that are unknown to me.
Based on my experience I do advise anyone to proceed with great caution whenever doing business with Mr. Patrick De Swert. Especially if a payment in advance is required. Do not be fooled by legitimate looking websites. Over the course of several months he changed the entire look and feel of his website multiple times. Even if your payment directly goes to the so called supplier, even if some sort of legitimate looking logistics company is in between the transaction or if a company is involved that does some sort of stock management and verification. Tripple check everything and don't have blind faith! Mr. De Swert is as smooth as baby oil.
A couple of months ago, Mr. De Swert operated through the website http://www.phoneworldonline.com reselling high-tech products (iPhones, Apple products, HTC phones, etc.) at lower prices. He targeted consumers. When placing an order you had to pay a certain amount in advance, the order was going to be delived in a matter of days. I placed an order and never received anything. I demanded a refund (which is my legal right under local law) but never received anything.
The website is no longer online but the URL www.phoneworldonline.com is now redirecting to www.phone4real.com. The company phone4real appears to be offering high-tech products and targets wholesale buyers. The contact e-mail is a guy named 'Patrick' and the address is still the same.
Dozens of consumers are in exact the same situation as myself, paid money in advance an got nothing in return, waiting for a refund. Some of them filed complaints, others gave up.
So in relation to point 1. of Mr. De Swert's statement I can tell you that he is not telling the truth. I am a buyer, he took my money.
In relation to point 2. of Mr. De Swert's statement I can tell you the following:
The Belgian Government's Economical Inspection (division in Antwerp) confirmed to me the following: following several complaints from customers, they made a visit to Mr. De Swert late 2008 pointing out that he was in violation of national trading law and that he needed to pay these people back. Mr. De Swert showed great willingness and promissed to comply. But, he had to leave the country for a few days for a business trip. He would resolve the issues upon his return. A few months have passed since then and the situation is not resolved. The inspection authorities have tried to get a hold of Mr. De Swert, stopping by at the address that he is referring to dozens of time (so they claim). However, they were unable to get a hold of him. These people just don't ring the bell, they leave letters, notes. If a government instance like that is telling me that they are unable to locate someone, I tend to believe them. I urge you not to take my word for it, you can contact the government's economical inspection in Antwerp at +32.3.206.94.43 on weekdays between 9am and 17pm CET.
In relation to point 3 of Mr. De Swert's statement I can tell you the following:
I do not have a complete list of all consumers that are in the same situation as myself but from what I can tell, there are a lot of people in my situation. I do urge you to GOOGLE on 'Patrick De Swert' and 'phoneworldonline.com'.
The following website is a notification website where people can report what they believe to be fraud. The word 'internetoplichting' litterally translates to internet fraud. The link http://www.internetoplichting.nl/index.php?topic=15969.0 is a thread dedicated to Mr. De Swert's activities and it lists names of consumers even official case numbers submitted to local police.
These is a Dutch website and I can understand that it is not of much help to English speaking people but I urge you to use the following service http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ which will enable you to translate the website from Dutch To English. Please take your time and browse through these pages. You will find some valuable information.
Other websites are http://miphone.web-log.nl/mijn_weblog/2008/08/nieuw-blogske.html and http://www.9lives.be/forum/apple/587425-phoneworldonline.html
Complaining customers come naturally to doing business. However, these are a lot of complaints in this case and all about goods never received and money never refunded. There is no way you can minimize this situation to a matter of one individual customer that talks bad of you. There are too many websites and too many testimonies of people that tell the same story.
Mr. De Swert's has given many explanations and told some really incredible stories about his setbacks which lead to the current situation. To make a long story short: he claimed to be the victim of a scam himself. All the money that people paid in advance was most likely used to place an order in hong kong (or china) and he claims that he got scammed (loosing a lot of money). He briefly believed that playing the victim role would generate sympathy among consumers and that they would exonerate him from having to pay their money back.
Naturally, consumers did not agree so he started to have an avalanche of really bad luck on a daily basis which naturally delayed his legal obligation to pay people back. He claimed that he was scammed again, suddenly offered the opportunity to people to pay extra money in order to speed things up, then his hard drive containing all consumer contact and payment information fell on the floor and he lost everything, naturally you could not reach most of the time because his mobile phone didn't work well ... the list goes on and on ...
Mr. De Swert claims in his statement above that he is working on the problems but he has been claiming that for months now. He's claiming that he would pay everyone back 'eventually' but message disappeared rapidly. Often he made statements such as 'if I was a scammer, I would not invest so much time in making things right' or 'if I was a scammer, I would be long gone but I'm still here'. He plays the victim role perfectly, always blaming other people, even the consumer. According to his own statements, consumers that file a complaint would not get their money back because they don't deserve it, because it's childisch of them to file a complaint for a couple of 100 Euros and simply because these complaint are really making his life difficult. At some point he blamed the consumer for the situation.
Mr. De Swert has my contact information through my original order information, numerous e-mails and reminders that I have sent him and to which he replied. I did resend all my information again when he dropped his hard drive. If he does not know or can't remember then this is because he does not want to.
I have no alternative motive in telling you this information except to warn other consumers not to make the same mistake.
Don't take my word for it, GOOGLE! |
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