Re: Unofficial Hot Toys web-shop--legit?
I have some very bad news for the people who have not received their items yet.
File a PayPal claim *immediately*, because you will probably not receive your figures!
I've followed this thread closely, carefully contemplating if I would risk ordering from
www.hottoysonlinestore.com. When I read posts from many people on this, and other forums, receiving their items, I decided to place an order with them.
On Friday, Feb 3 I placed an order for 4 items, with EMS shipping:
-Hot Toys MMS 117 Terminator 2 T800
-Hot Toys DX02 The Dark Knight Batman
-Hot Toys MMS 103 Wolverine
-Hot Toys DX01 The Dark Knight Joker
I got a response through mail from "Dave" that my offer would be accepted, but on the condition that he needed at least one week before shipping the items. He needed the money to be cleared from PayPal to his bank account.
At this point, several alarms went off in my head, but I already had a strong suspicion that his site never actually had any items in stock, and needed to buy the items off local retailers/contacts before they could send them. This would explain all the delays, and cancellations which had been reported.
As this was well within PayPal's 45-day claim limit, I decided to risk it.
On the 9th of february, I received an update mail, informing me that the money still was not cleared in the bank, but that the shipping date was estimated to Tuesday Feb. 14th.
On the 14th I received a valid EMS tracking number, as promised, and for a moment I felt relieved.
Today, I went to pick up the "package" at my local postal office and the attached images show what I received;
An envelope with about 10 pages of random, illegible documents. The envelope is marked "TOY", as you can see.
I have sent an e-mail informing "Dave" to explain the situation within 12 hours, or I will report his site to local authorities. I do not expect to receive a reply, as the people behind this operation are most likely long gone by now.
For me this will probably just be a matter of wasted time, as I will most likely get reimbursed by PayPal anyway. What I don't understand is the amount of effort spent on this whole scam operation, as well as the risks these guys are taking with all the electronic trails left behind.
Between the domain registration, e-mail and paypal accounts, postal shipments, forum registrations etc, these guys should be possible to track down by local authorites, even if they are hiding behind proxies and operating from Internet Cafe's.
A message to the administrators of this forum: Please keep a backup of the IP-addresses used by the user 'HTOS', pending further investigation.
