I'm writing to inform members of the Bike Forum and the Road Bike Review Forum of my recent experience with an unscrupulous seller of bike stuff called "the pros closet". Last week I took delivery of a classic frameset advertised on ebay as a Zunow with a "chrome fork". Upon delivery I was surprised to find the carton contained a Zunow frame with a Basso fork attached to it. When I contacted the seller I was told "we did not know what the fork was so we didn't advertise it as being original". Since the fork dropouts are clearly stamped "Basso" and the logos on the fork crown are distinctly Basso I find it hard to believe they were unable to identify the manufacturer of the fork.

Since then I had the frame and fork checked for alignment and have determined that, whatever caused the original owner to change the fork, the frame seems to be ok. I notified the seller that although I intended to keep the frame I expected them to adjust the price of the frame (since the value of a classic frame with a different manufacturer's fork is not the same as one with its original fork). I left the amount of the adjustment up to them.

Needless to say, I have not heard a word from them since. It's entirely possible they are incapable of understanding what a "sin of omission" is and think failing to point out the incongruity between the frame and the fork is just smart advertising. At worst, however, they realized the fork and frame were of different manufacture and chose to disguise the fact by merely referring to the fork as a "chrome fork" in their ad.

Although I doubt I will ever see a penny of compensation from the "pros closet", I thought it would be worthwhile to warn other forum subscribers about ethically-challenged businesses like theirs. Don't make the same mistake I did and assume sellers are honorable. In particular, review their language carefully for weasel words and similarly ambiguous terms and phrases designed to misrepresent the items they offer for sale.