I want to preface this by saying that I didn't get scammed. At least with what knowledge I have, I don't think I did. Y'all be the judge.

I was looking for an inexpensive laptop to run not only my UTEC (just requires hyperterminal) and my Delta Dash.

I got PM'd on ForumsHawaii by a guy named Jason (or Jayson, Jasen...). I don't know his last name, but his s/n on FH is "AkaiNoHachiroku".

He seemed like a very nice guy. He said he knew you, Barry, from the tracks; specifically from drifting. He said he knew you, Wes, from when he used to work at Toys N Joys (back when you had the Focus). He's about 5'5" or 5'4", Asian/local, with long hair on top, parted in the middle.

Anyhow, we made the transaction down at Circuit City because it was a good, known point to both of us. In my car, while he was there, I started up the laptop off of battery power. It worked fine.

I drove home, plugged it in, and installed the Delta Dash software and restarted it. No go. All it would do was show the initail 'Sony' screen (it's a Vaio, obviously) and then the screen went black. No sound of the HD working or anything.

The next day, after having repeatedly trying to start it, I got online looking for a possible solution. A website I found said that older Vaio's had a problem with their RAM, so I decided to take some other laptop ram I have from another computer and swap it with what was in there. Still nothing.

Since then, I've tried hitting all of the function keys during startup. The only thing that occurs is when I hit F1, it makes some noise and then says 'hard drive not found'. It doesn't do that anymore, though. Now it says OS not found. I've even tried a floppy boot disk. No luck.

Well, I called him up and explained the situation. He wasn't too happy when I told him I wanted my money back, but offered to take it back and see if he couldn't fix it. He also was curious about my RAM solution, acting like that was probably what broke it.

He called me a few days later and told me he had tried to swap the HD and it still wouldn't work, and because I had swapped in the RAM, he wouldn't give me my money back so I'd need to come and pick it up.

When I went to his house, he didn't bend an inch. He said he used my money towards buying another laptop.

Thanks for reading this, guys. I guess all I'm looking for is if you know the guy and if he's shady at all. I figure, if you know him to be shady then I know I got scammed and I'll take action. But if you know him to be a good guy, I'll probably try and fix it myself. With my small understanding of the law, I think I must be out of luck because it was more or less bought 'as is'. On the other hand, if he's a joker, then he probably knew the thing didn't work in the first place. A court ought to be able to see through his BS...that or my Ruger.

 

i don't mind helping ya take a look at it pat.

 

only really knew him as an acquaintance. Do whatever you gotta do to get righted in this situation.

 

John, I'll shoot you a PM later this week.

Thanks Wes. Right now I think I'm stuck.

 

Sent ya a PM...i'd be more than willing to take a look at it for ya.

 

Sent one back to you.

 

sorry pat. like i said, i think he may know another barry from drifting. there are at least 2 others that i know(one other has both a hachi and 240 also). plus, if i knew anyone that worked at toys n joys, it would be over and i'd be broke. i only know a green hachi jason and he doesn't drift.

hope someone can help with your computer problem. if i knew computers, i'd be there. good luck. b

 

Thanks anyhow, B.

You're probably better off.

 

Pat,

I can also help help with the laptop. I work at PTC and depending on the ram that Vaio uses, we should have the ram for it. If you can bring it by I test it with the ram we have at the shop.

Brandon

 

Brandon,

Yeah, Richard referred me to you. Actually, I've been down to see you once but you were off.

I was already thinking of bringing all 4 of my laptops down to you to see if you couldn't get one of them to work...then I was going to offer the other 3 in return (but I'd probably still owe you some money.)

Thanks

 

Sent you a PM, Pat.

 

Got it. Thanks

 

Same offer here Pat. Got lotsa ram I could try and been working on comps for more years than I like to admit. Sounds like you have enough offers, but consider this another one...