Northmen Collectibles NMC Toys - not impressed

[Ransak The Elder]

Anyone else surprised he has not popped into this thread yet? Am I wrong in remembering a situation where he did before?

[Yonoid]

His rant would probably go beyond the character limit per post on here

[The Nemesis]

One additional thing I wanted to make a separate post for because it's kind of important:


So he charges a 5% cancellation fee, which he says is to cover transaction fees from Paypal or credit card companies or whatever. Fine. As I said I believe he is legally allowed to charge cancellation fees for whatever reason as long as he's up front about them (and he is since the fee and its amount is listed in his FAQ/help section)


That said, I did look up Paypal's vendor fee rates and learned this:


Paypal charges sellers a rate of $0.30 Cdn per transaction plus about 3% of the transaction value as a processing fee. That would make his 5% cancellation fee's stated intention of covering paypal fees relatively reasonable.


That said, Paypal also states in their help section that if you process a refund in a specific way, they return the 3% charge to the vendor. In other words if he uses Paypal's transaction tools to directly issue a refund on a transaction instead of setting up a separate refund transaction (which it appears is what he does) he would only ultimately be out the 30 cents.


I don't believe this negates his ability to charge the fee since he is still (near as I can tell) legally allowed to do so, but it sure does take away the moral/ethical grounds on which he frames it and makes it kinda look like a combination of a deterrent to people just cancelling orders willy-nilly (which isn't the worst thing in the world and he does make an explicit point in his help/FAQ writeup of telling people not to place pre-orders with him if they have any inclination towards just cancelling it on a whim or because it was solely a back-up plan to finding the item elsewhere) and a bit of a naked cash grab.



Also while he certainly gets some free money from this practice, I don't think for a second that it's of any real consequence to his business. Think about it: To even make $1000 a month in revenue off of cancellation fees he would need to be cancelling $20,000 worth of orders for that month. Even if we said that the average person cancelling their order had bought $250 worth of stuff, that would work out to almost 3 people per day on average having orders cancelled. There's no way he could operate like that as a small business and survive. And that's only to make a relative pittance off of cancellation fees (because that $1k hypothetical is just revenue, not net take-home profit). If he was actually making sustainable living income off of cancelled order fees his reputation would be far more bleak than it already is and he would've probably been driven out of business already.


It's why I don't think he's necessarily a scam artist. I just think he's not very good at running a business.


It's basically Hanlon's Razor: "Don't attribute to malice what can more easily be explained by stupidity."


Because on the one hand you have a guy that is willfully cheating customers and risking total ruination to make somewhat marginal amounts of money off of cancellation fees and the few orders that just eat their entire order cost as the price of failure (because those that take store credit aren't making any additional value for him, just swapping the goods they would've gotten for other ones. Unless he plays the world's longest shell game which at some point would almost certainly blow up into something worse).


On the other hand you have a guy that is just all-around bad at this job. Bad at securing stock, bad at not over-extending himself, bad at adapting to negative situations, bad at dealing with unhappy customers, bad at owning up to shortcomings, and bad at making changes to address and fix the obvious issues that cause all those other things.



I know which one feels more sensible to me. And to be clear I am not defending him in any way. I fully support nobody buying from that store anymore based on the number of terrible stories that have made the rounds. I just feel like maybe we need to dial it back from outright calling him a con artist and settle on the idea that maybe he's just not cut out to be a retailer in this market.

[Dark Rage]

Originally Posted by Ransak The Elder

Anyone else surprised he has not popped into this thread yet? Am I wrong in remembering a situation where he did before?

He did. Starting on page 2.
Hasn't been back since.

[The Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Ransak The Elder

Anyone else surprised he has not popped into this thread yet? Am I wrong in remembering a situation where he did before?

I'm a little shocked. Especially since this thread was linked in the Reddit thread that was taken down. You think he would've followed that here given how aggressive he's been at going after any/every negative review he's received on every platform.


and yes, he has been here before. He has an account that hasn't been active since the end of August 2019


http://www.cybertron.ca/boards/member.php?u=17148


and that was for him to respond in the first few pages of this thread with basically the same song and dance he's used in every other excuse for his inability to deliver. That it's not his fault and everyone else sucks for being mean to him.


Of course it also includes the gem of claiming that if someone says they're never going to shop with him again then he feels no inclination to resolve their issue satisfactorily because he's not getting future business from them either way. That pretty much sums up his entire problem.

[Moogleknight]

Originally Posted by The Nemesis

Also while he certainly gets some free money from this practice, I don't think for a second that it's of any real consequence to his business. Think about it: To even make $1000 a month in revenue off of cancellation fees he would need to be cancelling $20,000 worth of orders for that month. Even if we said that the average person cancelling their order had bought $250 worth of stuff, that would work out to almost 3 people per day on average having orders cancelled. There's no way he could operate like that as a small business and survive. And that's only to make a relative pittance off of cancellation fees (because that $1k hypothetical is just revenue, not net take-home profit). If he was actually making sustainable living income off of cancelled order fees his reputation would be far more bleak than it already is and he would've probably been driven out of business already.


It's why I don't think he's necessarily a scam artist. I just think he's not very good at running a business.

I think what you're not taking into account is that this isn't the only source of non sale revenue he's been receiving.

By all accounts he's also been taking pre-orders, then not filling them, and delaying correspondence until all the payment protections (e.g. chargebacks and PayPal) are time exhausted. In those instances, he keeps 100% of what was paid without delivering anything at all.

In the cases where he kindly offers store credit, the buyer gets to choose from his undesirable remaining in-stock items, allowing him to sell for full price what other vendors would have to discount to sell.

These, combined with cancelled order fees, and items he actually fulfills pre orders for, maybe he eeks out a pretty good living.

[Metrotitan]

In all my 20+ years of collecting I've NEVER been scammed until I ordered from NMC. I don't care what the circumstances are if you make a customer pay FULL PRICE for preorders and don't send ANYTHING for over 7 months, you are a terrible businessman at best and a THIEF at worst.

I called PayPal today, they basically told me to go f%& myself and talk to my bank. I could not navigate the labyrinth of automated menus and computer voices to even talk to a real person when I called them, so I'll need to set aside a bunch of time for that, and even then it looks doubtful I'll ever see my money again.

I think banding together and putting this guy out of business would be the right thing to do at this point, reporting him for fraud and launching small claims cases against him enough might be able to do just that. In the meantime I will loudly tell everyone I know: DON'T ORDER FROM NMC. Maybe we can save others from getting ripped off.

[The Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Moogleknight

I think what you're not taking into account is that this isn't the only source of non sale revenue he's been receiving.

By all accounts he's also been taking pre-orders, then not filling them, and delaying correspondence until all the payment protections (e.g. chargebacks and PayPal) are time exhausted. In those instances, he keeps 100% of what was paid without delivering anything at all.

In the cases where he kindly offers store credit, the buyer gets to choose from his undesirable remaining in-stock items, allowing him to sell for full price what other vendors would have to discount to sell.

These, combined with cancelled order fees, and items he actually fulfills pre orders for, maybe he eeks out a pretty good living.

I know that it would be possible to get full money if he just plain never fulfills a pre-order. But if he was operating at a scale enough to make that a viable revenue stream then I figure there would be far more backlash than we're seeing. And he would likely operate more smartly than he does, where he loudly and belligerently calls out everyone he stiffs and draws a bunch of obvious attention to himself.


I still think the easiest explanation is just that he's really bad at this and really bad at taking responsibility for the failings that are on him or are fixable but ignored.

[Moogleknight]

Originally Posted by The Nemesis

I know that it would be possible to get full money if he just plain never fulfills a pre-order. But if he was operating at a scale enough to make that a viable revenue stream then I figure there would be far more backlash than we're seeing. And he would likely operate more smartly than he does, where he loudly and belligerently calls out everyone he stiffs and draws a bunch of obvious attention to himself.


I still think the easiest explanation is just that he's really bad at this and really bad at taking responsibility for the failings that are on him or are fixable but ignored.

I respect your position, but I most certainly disagree.

In an industry where one complaint is probably representative of 20 real life cases (this isn't eBay here), I think 30+ pages of almost unfettered dialogue seems to represent a lot of blowback for a business that essentially only operates in a tiny market (Toy collectors in Canada).

30 pages of complaints for Walmart is nothing. 30 pages of complaints about an online collectable toy store that probably sells mainly to Canadians? Seems like a lot to me.

Now, I would like to clarify that he probably does make the vast majority of his revenue by fulfilling orders. But let's say he doesn't fulfill 15% of his orders and keeps half of that without sending anything out. That's still a significant boost to his revenue, and more importantly profit margin.

Then add to that the majority of Canadians' to just believe the best in people, and a lot people just probably let it all go.

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by The Nemesis

One additional thing I wanted to make a separate post for because it's kind of important:


So he charges a 5% cancellation fee, which he says is to cover transaction fees from Paypal or credit card companies or whatever. Fine. As I said I believe he is legally allowed to charge cancellation fees for whatever reason as long as he's up front about them (and he is since the fee and its amount is listed in his FAQ/help section)


That said, I did look up Paypal's vendor fee rates and learned this:


Paypal charges sellers a rate of $0.30 Cdn per transaction plus about 3% of the transaction value as a processing fee. That would make his 5% cancellation fee's stated intention of covering paypal fees relatively reasonable.


That said, Paypal also states in their help section that if you process a refund in a specific way, they return the 3% charge to the vendor. In other words if he uses Paypal's transaction tools to directly issue a refund on a transaction instead of setting up a separate refund transaction (which it appears is what he does) he would only ultimately be out the 30 cents.


I don't believe this negates his ability to charge the fee since he is still (near as I can tell) legally allowed to do so, but it sure does take away the moral/ethical grounds on which he frames it and makes it kinda look like a combination of a deterrent to people just cancelling orders willy-nilly (which isn't the worst thing in the world and he does make an explicit point in his help/FAQ writeup of telling people not to place pre-orders with him if they have any inclination towards just cancelling it on a whim or because it was solely a back-up plan to finding the item elsewhere) and a bit of a naked cash grab.



Also while he certainly gets some free money from this practice, I don't think for a second that it's of any real consequence to his business. Think about it: To even make $1000 a month in revenue off of cancellation fees he would need to be cancelling $20,000 worth of orders for that month. Even if we said that the average person cancelling their order had bought $250 worth of stuff, that would work out to almost 3 people per day on average having orders cancelled. There's no way he could operate like that as a small business and survive. And that's only to make a relative pittance off of cancellation fees (because that $1k hypothetical is just revenue, not net take-home profit). If he was actually making sustainable living income off of cancelled order fees his reputation would be far more bleak than it already is and he would've probably been driven out of business already.


It's why I don't think he's necessarily a scam artist. I just think he's not very good at running a business.


It's basically Hanlon's Razor: "Don't attribute to malice what can more easily be explained by stupidity."


Because on the one hand you have a guy that is willfully cheating customers and risking total ruination to make somewhat marginal amounts of money off of cancellation fees and the few orders that just eat their entire order cost as the price of failure (because those that take store credit aren't making any additional value for him, just swapping the goods they would've gotten for other ones. Unless he plays the world's longest shell game which at some point would almost certainly blow up into something worse).


On the other hand you have a guy that is just all-around bad at this job. Bad at securing stock, bad at not over-extending himself, bad at adapting to negative situations, bad at dealing with unhappy customers, bad at owning up to shortcomings, and bad at making changes to address and fix the obvious issues that cause all those other things.



I know which one feels more sensible to me. And to be clear I am not defending him in any way. I fully support nobody buying from that store anymore based on the number of terrible stories that have made the rounds. I just feel like maybe we need to dial it back from outright calling him a con artist and settle on the idea that maybe he's just not cut out to be a retailer in this market.

Except he used to charge 15%. He only lowered it when he got called out so often. So while it might not bring in much money now, it certainly started that way.