I appreciate your reply, but your answers don't add up to what the TX JP told me today.
They said I could sue the Nevada company, call up the Las Vegas courthouse and find out who "serves" in that area. And then pay that person to serve the company. (I will call them tomorrow and see what they say about your comment that it's outside of TX jurisdiction. I would think that would have been the first thing they told me.)
As far as blaming me for not doing "due diligence", well, if everybody who was cheated did what you say, there would be no need for small claims court. If you find out it's a scam only "after" they are paid (in my case a week later) then hind sight is 20-20. Remember, the sales pitch is very convincing, and unfortunately, they stumbled upon someone, me, that was motivated to sell my boat quickly and so they hit on a nerve. Under normal circumstances, where I wasn't as pressured to get the sale completed, I would have been far more wary of the place and most likely taken my time, thought about it, and probably would have done more research. But that doesn't excuse a scamming company. The jails are filling with Ponzi scammers where people are lured with false pretense and only later pick up that they were taken. They don't always get their money back, but justice is served. I have the FBI involved as of last week since there are literally hundreds of people taken by this outfit. Do a search yourself for "onestopmotors scam" and you will see what I mean.
>>The fact that I "admit" they violated your "no commercial contact" by calling you, and yet you aided them in screwing you.<<
Yes, I was taken quite by surprise by the phone call. I didn't know what to make of it. I had just placed the ad in craigslist 10 minutes prior to their call. They admitted that was where they got my number. The first thing you hear is a recording pitching how "we can help you sell your vehicle, etc. Please hold. (or similar)". This was the hook to catch the initial interest and, as I said earlier, I was motivated to sell quickly and thought, well, it's worth a listen. But I think, by human nature, most of us are programmed to trust that it's a legitimate call until it sounds so fishy that you want out. They are very good salesman and know how to keep you interested. Does that make it any less a scam? Does OSM scouring craigslist for victims make them any less slimy? I think not. My willingness to listen does not excuse their wrongdoing nor is it a very good legal tactic to attack me as if it's my fault that I was victimized. Nice try though.
>>As far as Chase goes, they tried to assist you.<<
That's your assumption, and it is wrong. I finally had a supervisor from Chase yesterday, and I tried to explain to him how all of the websites they "say" they have the ad in are bogus and made by OSM. They send links to a page they make with your ad, but if you go to the primary site, like say Ebay, you would search for what you want to find. In my case a pontoon boat. The search provided either zero results or results did not include my ad. Many of the sites were motorcycle or car sites only. It is a sneaky tactic. (As a web page designer in a prior job, I know exactly the trick). I walked the Chase man through these steps and, hmmm, he was dumbfounded at first. Then he came back after putting me on hold and sent me to this freebie website, adpost.com. He went through steps of putting the word marine in first, clicking on advanced and choosing vehicles from a list, then coming to another page and putting the specific model of my boat in and found the ad. So I said, "let me get this straight"; if you wanted to buy a pontoon boat at Ebay, you would type the word "marine" in the search square?" Who would do that? You would type "pontoon" or the model name of the specific boat or the mfg name (none of which worked at that site). But he was satisfied that he could prove that you could get to the ad in his half arsed way and that was good enough. That in spite of the fact that 3 of the other sites they offered were completely dead or expired. And these are all BS sites that no one would ever know about or look at. I've never gone to "adpost.com" in my life. And, when I told the man to go look at the rest of the links, he refused. I asked to speak to someone else, but he refused to let that happen. Lame.
>>But, that ain't happening , is it?<< Sarcasm is futile. I've sued UPS in past, corporate office in another state. One week before the case, I got a call from UPS. They were so nice and delivered a check from Dallas to my front door (a one hour drive one way).
>>Give up the ghost on this one, its going nowhere!!! <<
Like I said, I've heard that comment from people in the past. If you give up, you're right, you've lost. Even if the case does ultimately fall short, I will continue to pursue the situation with the FBI and I will continue to post at as many sites as I can about the scam. But I see you ignored my original question whether to sue Chase along with OSM. Now that you see how they were uncooperative above, I am looking for my agreement with the credit card that defines my protection. If I find that they were negligent in cooperating with my request to look harder at the evidence, and the unwillingness to get me to a second opinion, this may answer my own question. Humorously, I went to Chase bank, where they have my mortgage, checking accounts, saving accounts, and other loan, and the floor manager, coincidentally had received a call from OSM herself and knew exactly what I was talking about. She got the credit card bunch on the phone, and they were playing their violin with patronizing songs. And the lady could tell that. But, she was powerless to do anything since the CC company is fully separate from the bank. I left saying, "I guess it's time for me to find another bank." There was no effort at all to try and reach for a better solution. Ultimately, that is exactly what I will do. Never liked Chase. But that's another whole series of stories. This is just the icing on the cake.
