radiobob

I'm posting to relate a bad experience I had with someone I just saw recommended in the post on relacquering vintage horns. This person does a lot of Ebay business and frankly, with 1,386 transactions, 11 negatives and 13 neutral, for a score of 99.2%, his record isn't bad, which makes my experience all the more bizarre. This fellow, John Cyfer, offers relacquering and valve plating work on Ebay, and also sells horns he refinishes, and last spring he listed a 1930's Lyon & Healy trumpet, gold plated by himself, although he didn't mention that in the ad, with a nice engraving of two hunting dogs on the bell. I contacted him off Ebay and asked him to sell outright (I know, don't beat me up) and he came back and offered to sell for $180 plus shipping. I asked him if the valves were in good shape, and he said they were perfect and if they hadn't been he'd have replated them himself. I asked him this twice before I bought it. Imagine my surprise when I received the horn and the valves were shot! Also, he had replated it right over the imperfections, tiny dings and such, and the plating was wavy and looked kinda amateurish close up, but looked nice from any distance, I could have lived with it for the price. He said send it back and he would replate the valves, so I did at my expense. After several weeks I got the horn back, and guess what, they hadn't been touched! Again I contacted him asking for an explanation, I figured maybe a flunky had been handling the horn, as he seemed honest and had a good rating. He told me he had replated the valves. I took pictures of the valves, which were plainly worn to hell and flopped around in the casings, with bad compression. He said send it back again and he would put another layer on them, implying I didn't know what I was talking about. So I did, again at my own expense. Got it back several weeks later, and you guessed it, not been touched! I was dumbfounded, and he wrote saying he had replated the valves, I insisted he hadn't and demanded to know what was going on. Understand i really liked this horn and still do, I was hoping it was just some fluke by a flunky, he didn't respond at first, then wrote and said his mother had just passed, and to send the horn again and this time he would send it to Andersons and have the work done, which seemed strange since he does his own work, and he complained that it was going to coost him $80 to have the work done, again strange because I know they charge repairmen $47.50 per valve. Well call me guillible because I did. After a few more weeks he e-mailed and said the work was done and it had cost him $147 to do the work and he was losing big time on this horn, to which I replied I had put $45 extra into a horn that was supposed to be right the first time. Got the horn back and just about fainted because, that's right, nothing had been done. Got on the phone to the music store he ships from, the guy there knew him andd said he had just moved to Ohio, I asked him about his reputation and he said he thougt he was a decent honest guy. I've e-mailed repeatedly and did once more before I wrote this and haven't heard from him since, even after threatening him with mail fraud. So here I sit with a $235 horn I can't play and a sad story. It doesn't help that this year I also had my car stolen and was ripped of for a ton by someone else, I'm fed up. I don't know what to think about this, it's just bizarre. I don't know if he's just having a rough time right now or what, which I can relate to, but if you're thinking of having some work done by him, I would be cautious. If anyone else has any experience with him good or bad I'd be happy to hear it.

Bob