Hi Guys
I felt it was time to update you on the Steel Dragons saga. This is a long post, but for the benefit of yourself and the hobby as a whole I hope you will read it and support myself and others in putting a stop to Richard Tripp and his unethical ways of doing business.
This guy is a cheat, a thief and is committing internet fraud by offering parts for sale in many cases without permission, using other manufacturers product pictures to sell recast parts or his own products he is passing off as other companies parts.
He must be doing well at this as after two years of being cut off by myself, Panzerwerk and Armorpax he is still here, and offering all these manufactures parts for sale.
About 80% or more of the products on his web site are mine, Panzerwerk or Armorpax. I stopped selling to him in Nov 2010 and the other two companies stopped shortly after.
I cannot speak for Panzerwerk or Armorpax, but here are the results of what I know of my parts over the last two years. He has around a 100 of my parts offered for sale, of which 20 are recast parts, another two were added to the site this month. There may be many other copied parts I am not aware of as he uses pictures of my original parts, not taken by me, but of my parts in many cases fitting to tanks from his builds or other peoples to sell them, many parts have no pictures at all, but still refer to my part numbers.
In the case of Panzerwerk and Armorpax he is using their original pictures so who knows if they are original parts or recasts. I know he has the ability to recast parts as he has recast mine.
Here is my take on what sort of sales he is doing. Below is a copy of his "Orders page", which only shows 6 orders taken since Jan 2012. Yet is you are to believe his order number are correct, starting at 1307 in Jan and finishing at 1487 in Aug, that's a total of 180 orders in 8 months. My orders in the same time period is 136 and I do a lot of business, and offer over 250 sets.
I have on several occasions asked members of this board if any of them have received any of my products over the last two year and never got one reply. If his order numbers are correct, at least a 180 people have order from him in the last 8 months. Are all these people not members of this board and not aware of what is being said here. I find that hard to believe in this small hobby. I firmly believe that there are people in this hobby that buy from him to save a few bucks, by doing so condone what he is doing and don't care that the true manufactures are being ripped off by him. It may be the reason his orders page has only 6 listings as these people do not want their names published for us all to see and have requested not to be listed. Either that, or his order numbers are a lie. If he has only received 6 orders in 8 months he should be out of business.
Now I know what some of you are going to say, this is all conjecture on my part. This is what happened in late 2010 when I tried to warn people about him and all of my posts were deleted. Look at what has happened since then.
Here is a copy of his order page.
Next I am going to cover some of my copied parts. To shorten the length of this post I have added comments to the pictures in red.
My 'C' Shackles and Tiger 1 Start Crank. Which he is claiming to be his own.
Here I am using pictures from his site on the FOA Tiger 1 build.
Here is a Armorpax part he is claiming to be his own.
Armortek Escape Hatch
Rear Mudguards
Correct Rear Mudguards for the Tiger 's
Comparison of the Armortek mudguard and the one Steel Dragons is offering.
The Steel Dragons mudguards.
To sum up this post I want to explain what my intentions are to take care of this problem. Last week I sent Tripp a e-mail demanding that he remove all reference to my parts on his web site, including my recast parts he is offering. I gave him one month to do this, cut off date is Sept. 8. To date I have received no reply from him, I am sure he will claim he did not get the mail. Which is another reason for this post and this sum up. I am sure he is reading this from time to time.
I have told him if he fails to do this I will be filing a complaint with the "Internet Crime Complaints Center" which is a department of the FBI. In that complaint I will be listing a link to this tread on this forum and all others that ave. any complaints against him on this board or any others I know of.
If you support me in this and have been a victim I would like to include you in that complaint. As a third party I can do this according to the web site, but would much rather have your consent. I assure you that any information you send me will be totally confidential and only myself and the Crime Center will be given the information.
On my side of things by offering for sale unauthorized copies of my parts and using my part numbers he is committing Internet Fraud according to the Complaints Center. By selling products by mail order and not delivering the products or refunds he is committing Mail Fraud. Do I need to go on.
Here is the link to the "Internet Crime Complaints Center" :
http://www.ic3.gov
Mr. Tripp you have been warned!!!!!!!!
For those wishing to see proof of my recast part you can download the following PDF file and also see my other posts in the "Cooler"
Link:
http://www.afceremonials.com/steeldragons/SteelDragons.pdf
With Respect to you all.
Mike Stannard
6th Scale Icons Inc
Email:
toyrific@mindspring.com