by Sheng-ji » 04 Jan 2014, 13:40
I think I was partly the trigger for his demise on these forums, I contacted him as he seemed perfectly respectable and helpful to buy a custom made chair from him. He replied with the most obfuscated answers, once he heard what my condition was he started to prey on an aspect of it which may make me difficult to understand by saying that I wasn't making sense etc. Fortunately I knew that the emails I sent were precise and clear because my brother sent them. When he started doing that I literally cut contact with him.
I decided to build my own chair and went hunting on ebay for a second hand one. I find one listed, a green one for a reasonable price and I snapped it up. Too late did I realise that Value$foru or whatever he was calling his ebay account was based in Brighton, same as Martin O Refurbisher and he was calling himself here and probably warranted further investigation before buying. Well I had a chair on the way but I started to investigate anyway. I discovered a number of worrying signs that this ebay account was not all it seemed. He at the time claimed to be a "legal aid lawyer", though legal aid has had no dealings with any lawyer by his name. He claimed to be a charity yet no charity was registered in his name or at the address he claimed his workshop was at. The nail was in the coffin when he contacted me through ebay trying to sell me "extras". Do you want it powdercoated in black, do you want it fully refurbished do you want x y and z. The costs were extortionate so I clearly and precisely declined. I want the chair in the photo for the price I paid, I insisted. The messaged confirmed my worst suspicion however, they were clearly from Martin O Refurbisher, his unique way of treating his customers with confusing and unclear statements was shining through.
Well, whatever, I wasn't asking him to do any work, simply arrange his specialist courier to pick up the chair and drop it off at my address.
Unfortunately on the day my wheelchair was to be delivered by "a specialist delivery firm" that Martin had charged £100 for, I was in hospital so my wonderful brother was there to receive it. When I returned from hospital, a chair stood in my front room charging and it looked amazing. It was very clearly not the chair I had purchased, it was not green, it has a fresh coat of black paint. Warning!!! On closer inspection, once you look past the shiny paint job, the internals, the bits that were most important to me, the bits I had paid for and were clearly described in the advert were not bolted onto that glorious frame. What was bolted on was the literally worst, cheapest, oldest and lowest quality components available.
I contacted martin and asked for him to deliver that chair I had paid for, Martin kicked up a fuss, claiming the chair in the picture didn't exist and essentially said no, you paid for a wheelchair and I delivered a wheelchair. Deal with it. I turned to the power of paypal and disputed the transaction. They pulled the money into the resolution centre. It's worth pointing out that this was my life's savings. When I came on here to warn people of Martins behaviour, he threw all his toys out of his pram and threatened to sue me. I publicly challenged him to, reiterating my claim that he was a conman. You can see the gory details on the board, though I think the origional post got deleted, search for "A public apology and retraction" to find the good stuff :/
This didn't go amazingly well for me with users of this board. Some, including Burgerman were very supportive and had already encountered problems of this sort with Martin yet had not yet seen enough to call him out on his BS. I had discovered the fact that his "non profit for charity" work was very much for profit and not for charity. This was enough for me to call him out. When I did so, he revealed that he was the one who had personally delivered the wheelchair. Which I considered an invasion of my privacy. I would not have bought the chair had I known that the seller would deliver it personally, he went to great pains to describe the speciality of the courier he used. I was also very surprised. Martin had been elsewhere on the forum helping people with their benefits citing his own personal experience with motability and his disability. He had a very expensive vehicle on the motability scheme. What was odd was that the two gentlemen who delivered my chair were caught on camera, walking down the path to my house and back up. Neither were unable to walk the hundred or so of meters along the path to my house twice, once wheeling a chair, which they lifted from the boot of a very expensive van which matched the one martin said he had on a motability scheme. A feat which would exclude him from the motability scheme, it's not for people with that level of ability.
The list of his skullduggery is growing:
Charity conman
Ebay fraudster
Benefits cheat
Dishonestly claiming to this forum to have a level of disability he does not
Anyway, eventually I got my money back, got the chair I needed it back quickly for on ebay, thanks to the wonderful people selling it being very understanding of my situation and agreeing a sale with me, removing it's listing and even offering to send it before I knew when I could pay them and that chair is fantastic and going strong, though I wish desperately that I could reprogram it.
Since all of that, I have kept half an eye on Martin. He runs a recycling firm, that was newly set up not long after he told me he was never going to sell a wheelchair again. It's website proclaims that it has been in business for generations. (Lies). My friend in Brighton popped a tracker into an old tv and gave martin a call. Said TV was picked up and we tracked it. All the way to a National Trust carpark where it had been flytipped along with a bunch of builders rubble. We contacted the national trust and helped clear it up. When we told them who did it, the warden rolled his eyes, literally. He's been seen doing this before. We gave our evidence to the local authority in Brighton and I hope it causes him pain in the future if it hasn't already.
To put it bluntly, who is martin? Martin is the most despicable kind of conman. He is neither brave or clever, he is a coward who preys on those who he considers to be too weak to put up a fight. The disabled, the environmentally aware. Most of all, he is weak. Challenge him and he trys to weasel his way out. Stand firm and he literally cries over being caught, promises never to do it again then goes and does it again when he thinks you aren't looking. I I hadn't been dealing with my son coming to terms with the same illness I have, I would have already seen that man in prison for his crimes and make no mistake, pretending to be a charity will get you locked up.
When all this came out, I did promise to steer clear of these boards as I had rubbed a lot of regulars up the wrong way, people who had only ever found this man to be helpful and a valued member of the boards. If there is no objection, now that public opinion has swung to match mine, I would like to be an active member again.