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Copper Penny Galleries/Ancient Byways

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Copper Penny Galleries/Ancient Byways Reports & Reviews (1)

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I have purchased and sold thousands of coins in my life but have now had two bad experiences with Wayne Hardenberg and his business Copper Penny Galleries/Ancient Byways, this most recent, completely inexcusable, and the worst experience I ever had in 35 years of collecting coins. The first bad experience with Wayne was in 2021. I ordered a coin from him that I never received. Somehow, it got "lost." Wayne did not provide tracking either, so this coin could never be found. With respect to him in this case, he did refund my money, and I went on to buy a similar coin with a different store. I purchased another coin from him on July 12th of this year for $49 on his website. I tried to pay with PayPal, but strangely, the transaction would not go through, and it said on the site something along the lines of "This transaction cannot be completed at this time please try again later." I tried a few times over 24 hours but could not get it to work. On July 13th, I tried a manual purchase on the site using my Mastercard. I received a confirmation email stating that the payment was received. However, 24 hours later, the transaction was still showing as processing on the website, and no payment was debited to my Mastercard. I called Wayne using the number on the website and he answered, and we had a pleasant initial encounter. He explained to me that he was having problems with PayPal as well, and that my Mastercard payment was not received. I was as patient and understanding as I could be, and asked if there was another way I could pay. He said yes, I could pay on PayPal with an email address, [email protected]. Wayne also pressured me mildly at this time saying "Are you willing to check for more order now ? So all can be shipped at one’s." In spite of his unprofessional bad grammar and this request to buy more from him, I politely answered no, that the one coin I ordered was all I wanted at this time. I paid the $49 and it went through, but then within a matter of minutes, the payment was reversed, I was refunded, and Wayne emailed me asking to email [email protected] using Friends and Family. I assumed that Geoffrey Mutegi, the owner of this email address was his business partner, and I complied, but had to pay $53.17 in total because of additional PayPal fees. That payment went through, and I received an email from Wayne June 14th saying "Ok. Your payment as been accepted and I’ll be working on shipping your order now. Thanks." The next morning, I received an email from Wayne saying "I’m sorry but the payment was reversed same yesterday. Maybe I’ll be sending you another PayPal mail address today, but you’ll have to send from your PayPal balance not from debit card linked to your PayPal acc, and you should send as Friends and Family." This payment showed as going through completely fine on my side, and I told him that I am not sending him another payment until this one was refunded. By July 16th, it hadn't been refunded, so I checked with Wayne, and he claimed that the man I sent the money too, Geoffrey Mutegi was cheating him, and while Geoffrey may have received the money, Wayne claimed the money didn't reach him. At this point, I tried to be compassionate towards Wayne and filed a dispute with my bank, explaining to them that Wayne had been cheated by his business partner. I then told Wayne that I still wanted the coin and asked him if we could close this deal the old-fashioned way, by sending him a check in the mail. Very strangely, he responded that he can't accept a check "that small" so he told me I could pay him $50 with either a Steam Wallet gift card, Razer gift card or Sephora gift card. I found this to be a very strange request coming from a coin dealer, but I decided one last time to be nice, and I bought him a $50 Sephora card July 20th. July 21st, he told me that the "price of coins has increased" and the coin is now $110, and he needs another $60. At that point, I lost it with him, and I hope that you will agree with me, as he is holding me ransom to a higher price, and this behavior is absolutely inexcusable. I told him at that point that his actions were deceptive, unethical and despicable and gave him one absolutely final chance to send me the coin for what we agreed on or refund my $50 spent on the Sephora card. He begged me in an email to send him another $60 gift card and I told him absolutely not, that he had completely crossed the line, and demanded that he refund me, which he did end up agreeing to. Right now, however, I am out $53.17 which is tied up in a bank dispute, and until Wayne refunds me, if he does, another $50. I talked with Wayne by phone about 4 times through all of this. I have to tell you that during these calls, he was slow-witted, forgetful, and confused a lot. I think that IF Wayne was a good and honest coin dealer at one-time, best-case scenario, he is suffering from mental illness. Worst case scenario, he is dishonest, unethical, seedy, and now could care less about his customer's satisfaction. By the way, I have saved all of our email interactions, and I will share them with you if you like. They will demonstrate to you, step by step, how incredibly unreasonable and disgusting this experience has been.

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