Abe's of Maine Westfield Electronics Bait and Switch Internet

I orered a camera and equipment set from Abe's of Maine after Thanksgiving. The price for the camera was lowere than other advertisers and I had been steered there by a price comparison program called PriceBlink. I placed my order online using Paypal which was available on the website.

About six in the evening that day, I received a phone called from "Miles" at Abe's of Maine. He said that the camera I had ordered was not the "American" model and that if I bought the camera that I had ordered all the manuals and information would not be in English. However, if I wanted the "American" version I could buy it but it would cost me an additional $150. When I pressed him as to what language the information was on the original camera, he dodged answering and asked me what languages I spoke. We went around like that for a while.

At that point I said I wanted to cancel the order. He argued with me and finally I said that I wanted to talk to his supervisor. He kept asking me to justify why I needed to speak with the supervisor. Finally he said he would transfer me to a supervisor. Actually what he did was to disconnect me. When I called back, I got a recorded message telling me that the office was open only until 6:00 pm.

At that point, I called Paypal and spoke with someone in their fraud division. As soon as I explained my problem she asked me to hold. When she came back on, she informed me that she was aware of problems with this company and that they had not only put in to be paid for the original order, but had also put through an invoice to get an additional amount for the"American" order that I said I didn't want. She immediately put on fraud hold on any billing to my account from Abe's of Maine and Westfield Electronics.

Within 15 minutes, I got a call from Abe's of Maine wanting to know why Paypal would not release funds to them. I told her everything that had happened and insisted that the order had been canceled and furthermore they had no authorization to place a second order. She said she would be sure to cancel the order.

Over the next 2 weeks, Abe's of Maine called repeatedly about the order. I did not take the calls and everytime a message was left to call a different person at the company. The calls stopped after about 2 weeks and I have not heard back since. When I did a Google search on the company, I found website with hundreds of complaints about Abe's of Maine and Westfield Electronics. Virtually every complaint described the exact same bait and switch scenario that I had encountered. Fortunately, I had ordered through Paypal and when I contacted them they helped me avoid losing any money to these frauds.

I can only urge everyone to never order from these crooks.