Dealer warning - Real Koi
Dealer Warning:
I wanted to bring attention to a specific koi dealer that myself and several other dealers I know have had negative experiences with in the past. Real Koi run by Evan Philips in Buffalo, NY has done very poor business and he is a dishonest person.
I was first introduced to Evan when he contacted me and wanted to come visit my farm last year. He came and he purchased some koi and I received payment from him. Overall it was a good experience. He was really happy with the purchase and wanted to come back. This time he purchased over $7000.00 worth of koi and wrote me a check. The check bounced twice and I contacted him for months in order to receive some form of payment. Every time we spoke “the check was in the mail.” After close to 6 months of this I contacted the local authorities. Since Evan crossed state lines with the merchandise there isn’t much they could do, but issue a warrant in North Carolina for his arrest. I then hired a collector to go after him. The collector managed to get about 60% of the payment from Evan over the course of the next 6 months. Yesterday I receive a call from the collector saying that Evan used his mother, Betsy’s, PapPal account to pay one of the payments. She disputed the charge saying that it was never authorized. Long story short, I just had to write a check to the collector for this payment.
I usually don’t like to speak badly of others, but twice now I have heard from dealers that are friends of mine getting screwed by Evan too. In one instance he told the dealers that he was shipping koi that were 14-16” mixed breeds and charged them for those, but when they received the shipment all the koi were 5-7”. Big difference!
I just want people to become aware of the type of person he is and to be wary of him. I hope this post helps others in the future!
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