hippie.gifts I was scammed for fake merchandise never intended to be sold to the consumer. Albuquerque NM

This website supposedly sells the artist Michael K Viner's authentic caricature sculptures of famous people and celebrities. This website has many pictures posted of various sculptures to choose from all listed with a pricetag of appx $26.00 and up. I placed an order for one of these items and a phony order number was generated with a confirmation that once the order ships, further notification would be given.

Over 4 weeks had passed and I never received any notifications of any shipment, that it was legitimately being processed or any notifications afterwards at all. 

Luckily, I had made the purchase using my PayPal account and that I was fully protected under their buyer protection guarantee. Before contacting PayPal, I gave this company the benefit of the doubt as I tried to contact that of a Jason Baca who is indicated on their web page using the phone number that was listed on the website but ultimately I was unsuccessful.

In addition, during this time I also did a search for the artist Michael K Viner and after finding his legitimate website I found a warning that was posted there to beware of duplicates for his original sculptures as well as other existing scams for his work. It was only after that time of this discovery when I decided to contact PayPal directly to notify them and they immediately refunded my money. It turns out that they must have been aware of this from other previous customers who had similar experiences.

As a final note, buyer beware and steer clear of this company. Even though I did get my money back from my purchase protection PayPal guarantee, others who don't use or have PayPal may not be so lucky. For this reason I wrote this report in hopes that others will not be affected by this scam, that eventually they will be caught and permanently be put out of business.