This message is intended for anyone who is willing to set aside the personal animosity for ten minutes and engage their critical facilities. If that’s not you, then you might as well just skip it entirely and get back to calling me an asshat or a POS. Whatever. Enjoy.
Who is Zafer?
If you look at his post history on this board, he seems to have only posted twice, once to complain that source X had ripped him off, then once to pose as a wholesale intermediary for source Y.
I’m no expert in the cigar trade, but it seems to me that if I were a wholesale intermediary for one cigar merchant, or even if I just wanted to credibly pretend to be one, I would not make a big issue out of buying cigars retail from another cigar merchant—especially one I knew so little about that I got burned on the deal.
Does something smell a little fishy here?
Can agree that Zafer is a phony user id that is used by a person or persons unknown for motives which might not be altogether straightforward?
From Zafer’s first post, it seems that he got ripped off in a deal. Perhaps because open discussion of sources is frowned upon, or perhaps because he didn’t want people to know that he had been gullible enough to get ripped off, he decided to create a phony id and spam this board to get his own back on source X.
My feeling is that this would have to be someone who easily loses his temper, knows the rules of the board well enough not to want to get caught breaking them, but doesn’t hesitate to break them to satisfy his own craving for “revenge” if he thinks he can get away with it. Hmmm. Do we know anyone like that?
In his second post, Zafer appears to be presenting himself as an intermediary for another cigar merchant, source Y. Here I would only invite you to consider a couple of questions.
- Does this post look like a serious solicitation of business? Compare the details to other solicitations we have received in the past from other professional cigar merchants. Do you think anyone would seriously suggest a $5,000 minimum purchase in their second post?
- Do you think anyone serious about doing business with the members of this board would deliberately piss everyone off by posting several times?
- Do the details in the post Zafer’s post correspond even superficially with the terms of business in source Y’s website?
- How about the use of language? Do you think Zafer has poor English skills, or does it read more like someone parodying someone with poor English skills?
- Has anyone come across mention of source Y recently in any other context?
I believe that there are one or two people out there who have seen the text of Zafer's post before, who know who sent it originally and under what circumstances. Perhaps one of them would be good enough to venture an opinion as to why the same text has surfaced again, publicly, and at this particular time?
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