Papa Wells

** Before I start this post, I want readers to understand that this is not a slanderous-post meant to sway anyone's opinions towards myself or the other party, this is just the sum of my experience with Randy Castelluzzo (herfc00 on this forum) in the hopes that other sellers, and possibly buyers, will be cautious when dealing with him. **

On 5/4/2017, I made a sale ad in the C6 Z06/ZR1 section for my 19/20" cup style wheels that were mounted on my 2008 Z06. Here is the link to the thread. (https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...verything.html)

I had recently bought my Z06, and the car already had the wheels with nearly new PSS tires on them. Beautiful wheel and tire set up, but I have always wanted a set of CCW classics. So, I postd the wheels and tires for sale on here. All I knew is that they were 20" rear wheels with a 335/25r20 PSS in the rear, 19" fronts with a 285/30r19 PSS, and that the previous owner said they are cup wheels. So that is what I posted, as you can see in the linked thread, along with many high quality photos of them on my Z06. Randy commented, asking if they will fit his Z06 with the Z07 brake package, and I said that they should fit. I looked the wheels up and it says they will fit any 2006-2013 Z06 with or without Z07 package, any 2009-2013 ZR1 (which has the large carbon ceramic brakes), and any 2010-2013 Grand Sport.

Fast forward to four days later, 5/8/17, Randy (herfc00) purchased the wheels through PayPal. I was asking $3,250 shipped, and I ended up agreeing to take $3,000 and pay for shipping myself. Obviously, the 19/20" wheels with tires are going to be heavy and will certainly need to be shipped on a pallet. So I got a pallet, stacked the wheels with roughly 3/8" thick material in between each wheel so as not to scratch them, and then had them wrapped by a huge industrial saran wrapping machine (not sure what the actual term for the machine is).

I took them that day to try and ship them, but they were going to charge nearly an extra $100 on top of the already almost $200 shipping fee, because the address he provided was a residential address. Alright, no biggie, I'll just call him to see where else I can ship it. When we talked, he said that he didn't know of any loading docks, and that was it. He made zero effort whatsoever to even attempt to locate somewhere the freight company could ship it to. So I took the wheels back home, waited a week, and still didn't hear anything from him. After telling him I guess I will just have to refund him since I was not going to pay an extra $100, he all of a sudden thought of his neighbor who has a loading dock on his farm. Wonderful, so I go and take them to be shipped and they ship without issue.

Fast forward to 5/22/17, I receive an email from Randy, which I will attach a photo of. I am paraphrasing, but it says "...the wheels are in great shape, as are the tires....looks a bit more than 1500 miles but they'll work." Perfect, always glad to hear people are happy with things I have sold to them. I had been holding onto the money until I heard from him about them, so the day after, I called and ordered the CCW wheels I had been wanting.


Fast forward to nearly a MONTH after receiving the wheels, Randy filed a PayPal claim stating the wheels were "not as described" and that he wants a full refund. He claims that the front wheels were rubbing on his brakes, and that he had driven about 50 miles on them but they won't work. I replied to him with a very long message stating that I'm sorry they aren't working, but that maybe he messed them up road racing (which he said he does, just like many others with Z06 cars), and I said that I do not feel obligated to issue a refund due to him having them for so long and after telling me they will work. After all, I am just a man and not a business. I do not offer warranties or guarantees, and I do not offer refunds unless I am at fault. I was not rude to him at all, nor was he rude to me, but I just did not feel obligated to issue him a refund, especially after the wheels had been damaged and I did not have the money to refund to him. He then escalated the claim, which was expected. After that, he said that the fronts are "Chinese knockoffs" that have a "longer tapered barrel on the inside of the wheel" which is causing it to rub on his brakes.

I cannot say whether they are or aren't "Chinese knockoffs" because the thought of them being knockoffs never crossed my mind. I told him this, and he told PayPal that I sold them to him as a GM wheel, which I did NOT. I posted them as "Corvette Cup Style Wheels" which is exactly what they are. No one ever asked me if they were real or not, and like I said, I never even thought for a second whether they were real or not. I just took them off the car and sold them. Had I known that they even made the replicas in that wheel, I would have checked before selling and specified which they were. I still do not know whether they are real or not, just what Randy is claiming.

Fast forward to 6/21/17, I receive an email from PayPal saying that they have ruled in my favor. I hated it for Randy, but I feel that they made the right choice. I described the wheels to the best of my abilities and with total honesty, and his "not as described" claim was not warranted. I thought that would put an end to it.

However, earlier today 6/22/17, I receive yet another email from Randy. Paraphrasing again, he restated the issue with them rubbing and said that he "expects credit from me for the fake fronts, and my reputation depends on my reply."

I am new to the corvette forum and corvette world, but I am NOT new to forums and LS cars. I have sold countless items in the past and have never had a single complaint issued or refund requested. If he wishes to slander me on this forum or change the story, he is more than welcome to, but this is step for step what happened. I hate that it came to all this, but unfortunately it did and I have to move on from it.

Again, the point of this post is NOT to try and get anyone to side with me and I am not asking whether anyone thinks I am in the right or in the wrong. I just wanted to let others know so if they try to sell something to Randy Castelluzzo (herfc00), they need to be aware of the issues he may try and cause.
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* Edit 6/23/17 - I did not even want to make this post, but I figured I might as well since he seems to plan on trying to tarnish my reputation. I wanted to get the story correct so everyone knows what actually happened. Thank you for reading. *

tyler318

Dang man that's unfortunate he's acting that way, don't worry about your reputation or anything else on this forum for anyone reading Jordan is a A+ person and seller that wouldn't under any circumstance try to screw anyone over. Thanks for the heads up about buyer we all appreciate the notice.

Papa Wells

Thanks man I appreciate that!

Papa Wells

Why all the deleted posts? There were comments here from a few other people. Looks like someone is deleting them all?

vettebuyer6369

There was a side conversation about Paypal that was not related to your transaction. I was one of the posters. It had gotten long enough to be considered distracting from your post's subject in my opinion, so I cleaned it up.

herfc00

I just saw the post by Papa Wells regarding the sale of his wheel and tires. There are two sides to every story! I did purchase tires and wheels which were advertised as Corvette Cup wheels. I received the wheels 10 days after I purchased them. When I put them on the car, I discovered that the TPM's did not work because GM had changed the units on later Corvettes. I took the tires off the car and had them replaced. It took a while because my Chevy dealer did not have the equipment to handle the 20" rears. When I finally got the wheels back and mounted them on the car, I found scratch marks on the front wheels. I discovered that the brake calipers were rubbing. I took the tires off the car and inspected the wheels. That's when I found out that the "Corvette Cup" wheels were Chinese replicas instead of GM wheels. I took the front wheels and my original GM Corvette Cup wheels to an independent tire and wheel dealer. They inspected the wheels and found that the Chinese front wheels did not have the same taper inside the wheel and that was what caused the scratching. While the wheels looked the same they were not manufactured to the GM specs.
I contacted the seller because he sold me the wheels as Corvette Cup wheels and that they would fit my car. He refused to accept the wheels back. I did contact Paypal and they denied my claim because they said the wheels were damaged by the brake calipers.
I offered to keep the tires and return just the wheels for a partial credit and was turned down.
Let's assume the seller did not know they were fake wheels, I would think he would want to make it right instead of passing the counterfeit wheels on to someone else. If he did know they were fake, he committed fraud.
It's sad that you can't trust the members of the Forum when it comes to money.

vettebuyer6369

NOTE: the other person involved in this transaction started a separate thread to respond. I have merged the 2 threads in the interest of clarity.

I combined the 2 thread titles.