Dale Kight of KightRadio.com accepted my money for a Chinese X1M QRP radio back in May this year (2013) and has neither sent me the radio I paid for nor refunded my money.
This person has ignored all of my emails trying to resolve the matter. It doesn't matter whether the emails were sent to his email address directly or were posted by filling in the "Contact" page on his web site. Whatever you do, he won't answer emails.
One month ago I decided to try a different tack. I looked up his actual telephone number and I phoned him directly. (Since I live in Australia, where Sydney daylight-saving time is 11 hours ahead of UTC/GMT, I was forced to get out of bed at 3:00am my time to make the call to reach his number at around 10am his time. To my amazement, Dale answered me.
I told him I hadn't received my radio and that my emails had gone un-answered. He made genuine-sounding sympathetic noises and told me that he was in the process of selling his business and that is why he was not answering emails. I told him my order number (found by searching back through months of emails) and he told me he was sorry my order had somehow "fallen through the cracks" and that he would have a radio sent to me immediately from the factory in China.
Amazingly, I believed this man. After all, he is/was a fellow Ham. Would he really behave badly?
Well. It has now been a month since I spoke to Dale Kight, and now no-one is answering that telephone number. On a couple of occasions (again phoning in the middle of the night my time) the phone went unanswered at around 10 or 11am Oklahoma time. And the last time I called, the ringing stopped suddenly as if someone had answered and immediately hung up the phone. I also note that the phone number and the email have been removed from the KightRadio.com web site.
I love to see the police to press charges on the guy.
I suggest that nobody should attempt to do business with Kight Radio or Dale Kight unless a miracle occurs and he makes good his promises and pays back the money to us suckers who trusted him. Even then, would you want to wait months for an outcome? No. I didn't think so either.
And by the way, the shopping guarantee on his website is quite valueless. I emailed them. The conditions are they guarantee a refund for 30 days from the date of the order. If he takes longer than 30 days to deliver, or never sends the product at all, then they won't help. Yet these people also took a fee from my order, selling me this valueless "peace of mind".
73 de David VK2DMH
in Sydney Australia.