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                               Positive Reviews from Users and Dealers

                                        Negative Review:

Despite of hundreds and thousands of positive feedbacks received from happy customers, we've also encountered one negative review that has scared off a lot of our potential customers. 

To give people the full story, here is the exact phrase posted on Internet by the unhappy customer/complainant, Mr. Bruce Snell:

Quoted:

Unquoted.

The complainant posted the same phrase quoted above on www.complaints.com, and www.complaintsboard.com, but after he realized the words he chose were too far away from fact and could bring himself legal troubles, he removed it from the web sites. 

However, several months later, the same phrase strangely appears on www.merareview.com. According to the original complainant, it was copied and posted without his authorization. 

We tried several times to post a commend on www.merareview.com under the complaint. The comment box of the web forum took our comment but never published it. They never replied my emails. 

We hope people who read one side of story of Bruce Snell have the time to read the truth that we present here, to not only defend reputation of Aqua Vim and Alex (who have been serving aquarium stores for more than 8 years and make 99.9% of hobbyists happy), but also, to let people with hearts of fairness determine who is right and who is wrong, and maybe even give me a suggestion what to do under such situation:

Here is what happened:
After we shipped Bruce Snell or Marcia Snell, a set of 5' aquarium and accessories, we sent an email to him, just like to every buyer expecting delivery, specifically requesting that he must open and inspect the goods at delivery to make sure goods are delivered in good condition. We even emphasized it in highlighted red fonts: "Do not sign any paper admitting goods are received in good condition unless you are sure there is no damages".

According to his own story, he did not inspect the tank that was in an easy-open-top wood crate on a skid, rather, he chose to sign his name next to "received in good condition" then added "pending inspection".

24 hours after the driver was gone, he told us that the tank was damaged. He sent us a picture showing that the cracked tank that was already lifted onto top of the stand. We asked for pictures showing packing materials that might indicate any sign of outside shipping damage. He told us the packing materials were all thrown away. – The tank weighs about 250 lbs and needs 3 to 5 people to lift up - we did not understand why the tank was all unwrapped but nobody noticed such a big damage, until it was lifted up by multiple numbers of people and placed on the stand.

He insisted we should be responsible it, and demanded we send him a replacement right away, and threatening all along the way. The funny part was, the replacement he wanted now was a 6' room divider aquarium set that is several thousand dollars more than the 5' one he paid for and received.

With a view to limiting both his loss and ours and still attempting to make him happy, we told him: a). We needed to have the accessories and stand of the 5-ft aquarium stored in his place, so he did not have to spend money and time packing and shipping it back to us; b). We would have to find a new buyer interested in a similar aquarium from his area, and when we do find one, all we have to do is just send a glass tank only, without stand and other accessories. This would save both his money and at the same time help us reduce the loss from his failure in inspecting the goods.

With the above in mind, we gave him a proposal in his favor, with all 3 pre-conditions laid out clearly: We would send him a 6' aquarium complete set, at a deeply discounted price, minus the amount he had already paid for the 5-ft aquarium, even if the shipping company does not pay a penny to settle the damage claim, IF he: (1). Agrees that shipping damage was not our responsibility; (2). Leaves positive feedback on E-bay; and (3). Agrees to make the remaining undamaged items available for us to sell to other buyer.

He paid the difference and did (2), making it look like he agreed. But he tried to avoid (1) and (3). When we asked him to assure us his agreement on (3), he unusually muted for 2 days, until we told him we had finally prepared the 6" aquarium for trucking but were still waiting for him to assure us that he would make the 5' aquarium stand and accessories available to new buyer.

Then he said he did not want people to come to his home. - We felt very disappointed at the fact that, after all the efforts we made, after taking the risk that is a certainty of not getting paid by the trucking company for the damage, and the 100% certainty that we would loss money on both the 5' aquarium and 6' aquarium, all trying to take care of the mistake he made in not inspecting the goods on delivery, just to make him happy, we did not even get a small cooperation that requires him to do nothing but showing it to a buyer at the convenience of his home? Worse than all, he still thinks we should be responsible for shipping company's fault, completely disregarding wholeness of the conditions we laid-out previously.

We felt strongly, if we went 100 miles, shouldering all the consequence from his mistake, trying to help him and make him happy, he should not slam his door in our face, making our attempt of helping him impossible.

Because of his attitude, we did not feel that we could comfortably rely on his willingness of letting other buyer to pickup the remaining undamaged items from the 5' aquarium set unless we bond him financially to the success of such a sale. Therefore, we told him we could either refund his payment he sent for the 6-ft aquarium set, or we could ship him the 6' aquarium set replacement only after he send us $1000 security that will be refunded upon the undamaged items currently in his place are sold and paid for.

After receiving the above email from us, he first sent us an email in the middle of a night, saying he would agree the condition mentioned above, and within 2 hours right after, before he could wait to the next day morning and before we could have the time to say a short "yes", he filed disputes and claims with Ebay and Paypal trying to get all his money back.

Although we have spent more than 12 hours in wood-crating, Styrofoam-packing, double-boxing, shrink-wrapping, and banding the replacement tank, we have agreed to refund the payment for the 6' aquarium set that we did not yet shipped out, to relief ourselves from the pain in dealing with him any more. We refunded $2507 in full.

He then wanted more: Refunds for all the items he already received, by first telling story that the items were "not as described", then realized it did not make sense, and changed it to "Internal Damaged". This was after he threatened both the shipping company and us trying to force both to pay for his mistake.

Then, Paypal Resolution Center determined, without getting the full story from us (Only half of our contention ended up reaching Paypal Center because of their text space limit), that he could return all the goods to us for a full refund. We did not even fight after getting this result, and we did not say a single "No" when he said he wanted to keep the damaged tank.

The problem was, unlike us, he did not protect the furniture with sufficient packaging when he shipped, and only wrapped a thin paper around, and the fine wood furniture got damaged during return.

Although the stand was damaged, we told Paypal, it could be repaired and sold at discount, we could accept the furniture and refund her but only if he could pay for the damage, that would consists only small part of the amount of the refund.

Then he became uncontrollable and was saying we commit “fraud” and Alex was a “con man”, and post such words on almost all the major Internet forums, including www.complaints.com and www.complaintsboard.com. These slander went on without us knowing for months, and during the period of time, we even gave up the request for partial payment holding for the damage of the returned furniture, and refunded him all the money in a wish to put this unpleasant matter behind us for good.

The result, is that, he did not lost even one single penny, and was able to keep the tank, the accessories, sump, light, pumps, even extra bonus items. The only thing he sent back is the damaged furniture. As to us, the shipping company had officially denied the claim because he signed “received in good condition” on cargo receipt, we lost not only the above items and shipping charge, but also, at least $75,000 worth of business loss due to his compulsive, irresponsible words on Internet scared off a lot of potential buyers. This amount is still adding as of now.

Realizing his own words defining us and Alex as “Fraud” and “Con Man” were too much out of line that could give himself legal troubles, he removed his posts from www.complaints.com and www.complaintsboard.com many months after. However, www.merareview.com still has his same exact words posted. He stated he could not remove the posts because www.merareview.com copied it from www.complaintsboard.com without his authorization, and no one from www.merareview.com responded to his request.

Summary:
Since the beginning of the matter, we have endured a great deal of patience, trying to make this person, Marcia Snell/Bruce Snell, who claimed to be a law student and know a lot of lawyers and kept threatening us every step of the way, happy. We frankly told him, if he did not threatened, result could have been a lot nicer.

We also have to point out:
The glass tank shipped to him was banded onto pallet in wood crate built with easy-open wood strips, he could have easily noticed any outside packing damage. It’s unbelievable that, After the driver left, he opened the packages, and threw away all the packing materials, without noticing such a large crack so obviously appeared on the outside of the aquarium. Then he had quite a few people altogether, who all had to grabbed tank bottom with their faces facing the big crack, still not seeing the crack, and they labored, and lifted it onto the stand. Then he unscrewed the door handler from inside canopy, mounted onto the outside. Only after all these, he told us the tank was cracked !?

It doesn't make sense! If it were cracked during shipping or before shipping, he and all the people helped would have noticed before he managed the laboring of lifting it onto the stand. They would not bother spending so much energy struggling to lift such a heavy glass tank, not to mention that he had a mood to spend time installing the door handler.

Although we have strong reason to believe the tank was not damaged during shipping, but after, in his home, we did not even used this as the reason to refuse him.

What troubled us most, knowing unlucky things happen, we tried to help and made things easier for him. At one point, I almost got ready to take the loss myself and ship the 6-ft aquarium set that he found he actually wanted, provided that he shows some understanding that taking care of the mess he made was difficult, and provided he gave us some cooperation to make the task less difficult.

But all he did was to threaten and press us trying to make us agree and do things within his time in his way, without having to admit his part of responsibility, completely disregard our good will. We kept taking his threats until we finally could not take any more and said to him: If you want to slander, go ahead but if your slander damage our reputation we would make you pay for our damage too. Thus in his words, became the source of his saying that we "legally and physical threats" to him.

Finally, we hope an attorney specialized in civil slander case happens to read this article and get in touch with us. These untruthful postings have caused our business monetary loss and also reputation damage.

Questions regarding legitimacy of www.merareview.com: 

The web forum implies it is operated far from the country of Indian. We don't have the authority to know if this means it can keep getting "click" money without the obligation to remove posts as per original complainant's requests. We did a little research on www.merareview.com, and found a few interesting sites describing it, for your own discretion:

http://www.consumercomplaints.in/complaints/merareviewcom-c271649.html

and:

http://scamfraudalert.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/whois-merareviw-com-aka-complaintsboard-com-aka-whoismark-com/

and:

http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.merareview.com

and:

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/scam-website-c346843.html

Want to know more about the quality of Aqua Vim products? click below:

How do we pack our aquarium for shipping?

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