[LONGISH] Beware: dealings with Bert Thomas

Hi all, Today is a sad one, as I had to part with someone I considered a friend, a new collector, and recent addition to the CCtalk community. Bert had trouble with getting his PDP-11/34 to work (as we have all been reading here), and, a while ago, I offered him to have a look at it. We got together, and I was able to fix the system. Took a while, but hey, that's OK. I did mention to him I just acquired a new system, and needed to have it moved to my place. To return my favor, Bert offered to move my system, as he had a van available, which makes it a lot easier than using my car. Great deal! The selling party and Bert were put in contact, so they could agree on a date and such. And that's the last thing I heard about it.. until I got curious, and contacted the seller if something had gone wrong.. I _am_ out of the area and country a lot, so could have missed something. Nope, everything went as planned, the seller replied - Bert had picked up the system that saturday morning, and all was well. He did mention that Bert said that since he picked up _and_ paid for the system, he considered it his, now. (The seller had not yet replied to my question about how to pay for the system- this is a bit different in Holland, as we usually just exchange bank account numbers here, and then just transfer the amount needed. Easy. So, I was waiting for him to reply with his account number. Rather, he did not reply, and when the pickup ocurred, he wanted cash. Even this is normally handled fine.. one pays the cash, and then gets reimbursed by whoever is supposed to actually receive the system.) Anyway... when I heard that, I tried to contact Bert, and eventually got a hold of him. And when asked about this, he indeed told me the above - as far as he was concerned, it was now HIS system. To make a much longer story short- I have taken legal action against him to get my system back, and the extra (legal and other) fees and costs reimbursed for. Sadly, Bert decided to not accept his being wrong, so this will be a full case of fraud in Dutch court. Your mileage etc etc, but I'd like everyone to take extreme caution when dealing with Bert, as his definition of "mine" and "yours", and the being right or wrong, might very well be different from what you consider such. This surely was the case for me. With kindest regards, Fred -- Fred N. van Kempen, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Collector/Archivist Visit the VAXlab Project at http://VAXlab.pdp11.nl/ Visit the Archives at http://www.pdp11.nl/ Email: waltje(a)pdp11.nl BUSSUM, THE NETHERLANDS / Mountain View, CA, USA