Has anyone had experience with either of the following members? Dirtybiker002 or haywire farm?

[RickInMaine]

Why I'm asking - I ordered a part several weeks ago and seller hasn't shipped (and is rarely responsive).
In August I was looking to buy folding steps for my Freedom 255. Dirtybiker002 suggested that I try haywire farm whose email address is 66bulldoggy at gmail.com. Dirtybiker described him as a dealer and good guy so I reached out and his response was quick, helpful, and friendly. This is great, I thought.
The seller said he had several, price was $300 plus $50 shipping, make me an offer.
He was so responsive and helpful about installation that I ordered from him, paying by Zelle (of course...). Ever since, the 'seller' has not shipped, blamed it on the courier (?who uses a courier for shipping?), and responses have been vague and few and far between.
So, this sure feels like I was scammed, but before I go to town on this guy, I wanted to check with my fellow members whether they had experience with him. Once in a while someone might have personal issues in the way, and before I go after him (I have resources most buyer wouldn't have) I thought I'd see if anyone know either of them.
Both members have some presence on this Forum and I have reached out to both; Dirtybiker has never responded.
Feel free to respond by private message.
Thanks

 

[DennisG01]

Hmmmm... something seems fishy with Dirty - I looked at his posts. All simply/quick replies likely to get a post count up... and one of his posts said Happy 4th of July but was hyperlinked to some weird looking address that I didn't dare want to click on. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this Haywire is actually Dirty.... I hope I'm wrong!

 

[RickInMaine]

Hmmmm... something seems fishy with Dirty - I looked at his posts. All simply/quick replies likely to get a post count up... and one of his posts said Happy 4th of July but was hyperlinked to some weird looking address that I didn't dare want to click on. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this Haywire is actually Dirty.... I hope I'm wrong!

I fear you might be right…

 

[Mustang65fbk]

Haywire appears to be more on the legitimate side of things and has been a member since 2021, though he hasn't made a post since 2024. I generally always try to give someone the benefit of the doubt, within reason of course, but it is possible that Dirty Biker made up the story involving Haywire and just sent you a bogus email to some random person, or more likely it's probably a burner email address that sends to himself. In the past there have been dozens and dozens of issues like this before where a member will post that they're looking for something in the For Sale/Wanted section, then a brand new "member" will respond to them saying something to the effect of "I don't have this item but my buddy does, and here is his email, reach out to him." Those are scams every single time, especially since they'll do it for multiple different For Sale/Wanted postings involving multiple different models of boats. I always try to report them when I see something suspicious, or that's obvious spam/scamming.

I think that is very much the case here in that this Sunday will be November 1st, and you've been dealing with this guy since August, which has been over 2 months now. So, I don't imagine there's really any excuse he can come up with as to why he can't send you your parts, other than the fact that he doesn't have them in the first place. Going forward, I wouldn't recommend that you, or anyone else for that matter, do business with people online that they don't know or haven't ever met before. If you do choose to do business online with people you don't know or haven't ever met before, I'd be making sure that they're a long time member that has hundreds, if not thousands, of posts to their name. Or there are other sites like eBay with buyer protection, etc. Even if you're going to purchase something from a website and it isn't adding up, type into Google the name of the website and ask if it's a legitimate website or not. Chances are that other people have unfortunately had the same issues in the past and were scammed. On here, guys who just joined recently that have a handful of posts and are giving you an email address to a buddy of theirs that supposedly has the exact same item that you're looking for seems like a little bit too good of a story to be true. On the bright side, at least the item in question was $350, and wasn't thousands and thousands of dollars. Good luck!