What would you do if you were Ripped-off like this?

[HomerJ]

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As some of you might already know, there is this person called Matt Yabsley (username pricethat) advertising his price comparison / datafeed management software on this forum.

I ordered the software from him a year back and so far he has not delivered anything except innumerous failed deadlines and lot of misguiding information. I am out of pocket by £13000, hundreds of hours of time and nothing to show for it. I have asked for refunds on numerous occasions, tried to negotiate etc., but to no avail. He has shut off all communication and is not contactable.

I have recently been contacted by a few other people who are also in the same situation, having lost a few thousands each.

I have bought sites, domains and services worth tens of thousands of pounds worth with many well known members of this forum. Every transaction was smooth and all these people were trustworthy. It is just the shame that people like Matt Yabsley are spoiling the trust factor.

I don't know how many people are out there who have lost money to him, but this scam appears to be to the scale of tens of thousands of pounds - ripped-off this forum members.

Together with the people who contacted me, we are planning combined legal action, complaints etc., We do have lot of evidence against him.

If there are any silent sufferers on this forum who want to join us, please do get in touch or post here please.

What would you do if you were in this situation?

Any advice on further options would be much appreciated. (Courts? Police? Trading Standards?)

[OLBG]

Id be careful what you say on a public forum however mad you are and however true what you say is!

I believe Lea Beven had some trouble with the same user in the past - slightly different issue I think about him retaining her data or something. Havent seen her on this site for ages though

[Itchy]

Id move this thread to the real world forum as it would stop lurkers reading it and make them log in to read it and at least you may know a lurker is still around lurking

[axod]

Looks like a similar thread:
http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=56363

Seriously though... Why spending money on software? And never mind spending thousands on software.... ??!! Not just that but payment up front??
What a seriously weird business decision.

[Maxafi]

Why spending money on software? And never mind spending thousands on software.... ??!! Not just that but payment up front??
What a seriously weird business decision.

If you want to do something well, you either need to buy something that is going to do the job, or you develop it yourself. Quite often, unless you already have a team in place, it's cheaper to buy something you can adapt.

A short time ago, I looked at Pricethat's stuff with a view to buying it and adapting it for my own needs. Before I committed, I saw threads like this start to emerge - and therefore decided to pull back from it.

If you're doing stuff at the 'price tapestry' level, then yes you can get by without having to buy anything - but if you are aiming higher, you're going to have to fork out some significant cash whether you are managing the project yourself or buying something off the shelf.

[axod]

If you want to do something well, you either need to buy something that is going to do the job, or you develop it yourself. Quite often, unless you already have a team in place, it's cheaper to buy something you can adapt.

You forgot the billions of open source projects out there.
It's not like anyone of us would pay for apache is it.

I agree, if it's bespoke software you need and it's pretty complex stuff, then perhaps you need to buy or develop in house. Still - from what I read this thing manages datafeeds... "normalizes" them... hrm. Doesn't seem that big a thing to me.

[Maxafi]

I agree, if it's bespoke software you need and it's pretty complex stuff, then perhaps you need to buy or develop in house. Still - from what I read this thing manages datafeeds... "normalizes" them... hrm. Doesn't seem that big a thing to me.

Well, in it's defence it does do a little more than that. You also have to remember some of the most basic tasks can be difficult to overcome - even just grabbing the feeds themselves and processing them can be a challenge. Imagine trying to grab and parse 20Gb+ of feeds every night - and then catch the errors you will inevitably encounter with some feeds. That functionality alone can, to an extent, justify the price.

On top of that, you then need to group products together despite virtually every merchant using a different name for the product (though I should point out that I don't think the pricethat software does this particularly well - though certainly better than any other 'off the shelf' solution).

After all that, you need to keep all the data constantly up-to-date.

Whilst it's not, in my opinion, powerful enough to compete with kelkoo and the like, it's £5k asking price can be justified in the head-start it would give you in the parsing element alone.

[beejeebers]

If you have enough information about him, surely your lawyer can take care of him?

[crazihos]

I'm in a similar boat although for much less money - the software did what I wanted and I wanted a Price Comparison site so I contacted Matt Yabsley. He said if I wanted the software I'd have to be quick as Pricethat was due to be floated on a the German equivalent of the aim market and he was unable to sell more copys after that (at the time they had ppc ads running everywhere so that seemed quite believable).

I negotiated a discount with him and agreed to pay £3,000 - £1500 up front and the rest on install of a working script/site to my server.

Thats when it went wrong - he doesnt answer the phone or emails and now he's taken his the down - it doesnt look good for my £1,500.00 does it!

Looks like Matt Yabsleys at it!

[HomerJ]

Yes, there is a solicitor on the job and he is positive we have a strong case. The tricky bit is locating Matt Yabsley, as he has given a few different addresses and numerous phone numbers so far and now changed the name on his (?) websites to a company called MSC Consultancy in Sheffield.

To my surprise, West Yorshire Police are also being very helpful and spent a lot of time with me looking through websites, gathering evidence etc!

[Shane]

Sheffield.. yikes.. full of dodgy geezers... if it's the same dude

Nice quote here from a post on the guardian website

"last year we generated over 50 million pounds of merchant sales i do feel compelled to perhaps contribute from time to time, especially when i see articles written in good faith but completely overlooking the real story.
Matthew Yabsley, msc-consultancy Ltd, Sheffield"

might be unavailable due to spending all that lovely commission earned from £50 million in merchant sales.. even at a lowly 3% that's £1.5mill commission before costs..

strange that he has to resort to selling £1.5k/£10k+ data feed solutions and can't even get those in place as he's a one man band by the sounds of it .. surely £1.5 mill commission means he can afford at least one staff even if it's an asian based one just to intsall datafeed solutions ?

just tumbleweed from camp Yabsley .. don't waste any more time just sue the dude and do it now.

[max99]

aye can agree with you there shane, sheffield dodgey lol,

Nah I was conned from some money online and have to say the police (south yorkshire) were extremely helpful and did get all of my money back through the courts.

[John Jupp]

I'm sure there is a genuine reason for no contact being made. Matt emailed me a short while back for a chat but when I replied his server bounced the mail. Now his site's down. I know his health was poor recently but surely if there is money paid in advance then he should reimburse if he can't complete a project. Judging by the number of complaints there must be some very serious money gone adrift. Was he sub-contracting?

Tailored solutions do cost serious cash. However it would help clarify things if Matt can reply to this thread. Nobody should be out of pocket.

That's why we hardly ever take money up front. Then again, we don't go in for providing tailored solutions that often. Off the shelf stuff like ours may not make as much money, but at least the purchaser isn't going to be stung for serious amounts.

[crazihos]

I'm sure there is a genuine reason for no contact being made.

I wish this were true but the timings far too convienent, since HomerJ made a post on this thread Beware - Possible Datafeed software Rip Off !! - Matt has stopped answering any emails or phone calls i've made - before homersjs post he answered every single day without problem!

And if Matts ill I doubt very much he'd have time to organise the flotaion of his company on a stock market.

It just doesnt make sense John, its a real shame as well as the product was good.

[HomerJ]

"I'm sure there is a genuine reason for no contact being made." - For a WHOLE YEAR?

If he is genuinely unwell that he can't pick up the phone, how come is well enough to continue taking money from people, giving demos etc?

He has taken money for this same software from someone as recent as the first week of this month, while he was too "unwell" to contact me or another person who lost £5k.

Yes, there is some very serious money gone into his pockets. I am not going into details for the sake of decency, but I have never seen anyone who is so economical with truth in my entire existence on this planet.

Moreover, I do not see any genuine reason for him changing my affiliate IDs to his own on one of my websites and sell televisions at my expense (and continue to do that for a few weeks until I changed the site over to my server). John, I have got a few medical degrees and as far as I know, there is no illness which makes people do this without them knowing.

It is this reason of his alleged health problems I waited and waited for a full year - offered him every possible help I can, including programmers, more money, medical assistance etc.,

I have tried everything possible repeatedly before I decided that he has NO intention of giving the product, or a refund.