I’m working on the next update to the story including the last set of emails I got from Gary Bodimeade which instructed me to take the site down. I didn’t do that and he’s sworn not to repay me what he owes me.
That’s his choice. I choose to tell the truth about him and his company, Compuquest 2000.
Sorry, I’ve been very busy and I also have another skiing trip coming up (a real week long trip rather than something small like my trip a year ago to Blue Mountain).
When I get back from that I’m going to carry on with the story including all the details on the European story I mentioned last time.
I did receive a couple more emails from Gary Bodimeade. I’ll post those when I get back soon. The first was another demand that I take the site down coupled with a promise that if I did that I’d get back the money he has repeatedly said he owes me. That was never really the point of this site so I’m not about to pull it down. The second email confirmed that he keep my money and had no intention of paying me.
I’ve received a couple of things from Gary Bodimeade at Compuquest 2000. First there was a take down notice sent to the domain name registrar that handles the compuquest2000-sucks.com registration and then forwarded to me. I guess he had to try this one.
Nice try, but it won’t be that easy. I took all the photographs and made all the images used on this site and the only time Compuquest 2000′s logo apears is either in one of those photographs (on a truck of his) or in his emails, some of which he has specifically requested I publish. I wrote a nice letter back to the registrar apologising for them having to deal with Gary Bodimeade.
The second email is another promise to pay “once the sire(sic)” is taken down. Seeing as how Gary’s promises have a habit of not being kept, I’m going to ignore this one too.
Finally I’ll share one other. Gary is correct: no interest payments were ever discussed between us because I never expected to pay Compuquest 2000 for goods in June 2011 and still be waiting to get my money back in February 2012. I took the terms I’m using from the invoices Gary sends to his customers. I was never in the situation of owing money to Compuquest 2000 because I paid (stupidly) up front for goods.
It’s important to understand the main purpose of this site: it’s about letting people know how Gary Bodimeade operates and helping other people avoid making the same mistakes I made. If he chooses to repair his reputation by doing the right thing subsequently, that’s up to him. I’ll certainly let people know when he does that (as I have done already regarding one re-payment he made).
I have received a few non spam comments but as I can’t verify the veracity of the information, I will not publish them. This applies especially to comments left without valid emails or that give clearly fake emails. If you want to talk to me, please send me an email direct from a valid email account and I will listen to what you have to say. It is my intent to publish only the truth on this site.
It’s time to pick up the story of my dealings with Compuquest 2000 and it’s owner, Gary Bodimeade. You may remember the last time I left you I had just enjoyed a weekend skiing at the Blue Mountain resort to the north of Toronto. That had been my first visit to see Gary.
After meeting him and discussing the various issues that had led me to fly out to him I thought we’d arrived at a working understanding. We both agreed that direct communication between us would be important going forward and we had agreeded on precisely what goods would be shipped and when for the next order.
Once I returned home, however, it pretty quickly slipped back into a situation where Gary was communicating only through my rogue employee. I tried to call and email but it was very difficult for me to deal directly with him. I didn’t really understand why but I had other business to attend to so I was probably to quick to allow my employee to run the relationship.
I started to hear more and more about a proposed deal involving a European source for refurbished computers. I was reluctant to consider this for two main reasons:
Whilst some of the prices I was being offered looked attractive I couldn’t get around the fact that I would need my own EU based company through which I would deal. I actually have suitable dormant company in the UK but it hasn’t traded for some time and is not registered for V.A.T. That’s an issue because I would have been required to start this company up and immediately purchase goods and export them. I have actually worked within Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK and I know how the V.A.T. compliance and regulation systems work. I know that a dormant company springing to life, registering for V.A.T. and then immediately exporting goods (and thus demanding an immediate V.A.T. refund) would be highly suspicious.
For these reasons, while listening to the proposed deals, I didn’t think there was much likelihood of any of this happening. In the meantime we believed we had ordered more goods from Gary and Compuquest 2000. In June we sent $20,000 and $40,000 for an order we believed was ready to ship. Negotiations, however, didn’t seem to go anywhere and after believing that certain goods had shipped I didn’t discover until mid July that actually nothing was on the way.
To say I was shocked is an understatement. I demanded that Gary return my money and, via my employee, was told that this would be done. We also agreed to pick up some goods for air freight again because we were in danger of breaching promises we had made to customers. Again we took a beating on the freight costs and these last machines Gary’s people sent were the most dirty machines we’ve ever seen. Their return rate was the highest we’ve ever had with leaky caps and other problems. It was at this point I resolved never to do any business with this man and his company again.
I was still being begged to send details of an EU company (especially a V.A.T. number) to Gary’s european contact so we could do a deal with Europe. Eventually I was sent an email that included the contact details of Gary’s contact in Europe. This was probably a mistake, I was not supposed to deal directly with these people.
I fired off an email, direct to the europeans explaining exactly why I couldn’t give them a V.A.T. number at that point and what it would take in order for me to do so. Having been so thoroughly messed around by Gary at this point, my desire to do any sort of deal involving Europe with him was almost non existent.
That was a good thing because the effect of my email was immediate. The deal was off and Gary was furious and, in emails to my ex-employee was calling me a “retarded boss”. My now ex-employee then begged Gary to allow him to continue the deal on his own.
It was, of course, about this time I have a number of emails from Gary, or via my ex-employee, promissing that he’d already wired back my money and stating that he wanted nothing more to do with me. That would have been fine with me: I didn’t want to buy from him either. Those were the lies that led to me writing: Lies, Lies, More Lies and The Check Is In The Post.
Next time we’ll talk about my final visit to Compuquest 2000 in Canada and Gary Bodimeade’s refusal to come down the stairs and talk to me after I’d flown across the world. Whilst that trip proved frustrating from the point of view of seeing Gary, it was wildly successful at finding other suppliers for refurbished computers and we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars since then with new suppliers.
True to his word announced here, Gary Bodimeade started paying me back the money Compuquest 2000 has owed my company since June 2011. He sent (after wire fees which I’m no longer prepared to absorb) $4,980.
Please note: this post was scheduled to go live when I received an email from Gary. That email will be published shortly as Gary is now saying he will start paying me, I will post that email in full shortly.
It’s been quite interesting looking at the search terms that lead people to this site. Obviously this is not the busiest site I’ve ever worked on but that’s not the point. I have noticed that of the people who search for Compuquest 2000 or Gary Bodimeade, a high proportion are choosing to click here and the engagement level is very high. Numerous pages are read and visits often last more than 5 minutes.
Rather amusing is that talking about my trip to the Blue Mountain Ski resort has drawn a little traffic, this site is probably not much use to them but there is a nice picture to reward their clicks.
If you’re new here, I recommend you first read this page on why I put up this site.
I’ve been busy doing other more productive things than attending to this site for the last few weeks (there was one auto-scheduled post that I set to pop up in between Christmas and New Year). In a rather strange coincidence, however, that post seemed to occur either right before or right after (I can’t be bothered to work out the exact times) Gary Bodimeade noticed this site!
I know this because of the flurry of email I got from him. He kicked it off with a threat (of course).
At least he compliments me on my web design skills and calls me smart, which is nice of him. 
Funny though, that was more than 2 days ago and I haven’t heard from his lawyers yet. Obviously this threat is about as reliable as his promises to pay me back the money he owes me.
After a few more unanswered, assorted threats he came back with an offer (under legal advice, I haven’t and won’t reply to him, I will have no further direct contact with Gary Bodimeade by email).
The next move is still yours Gary. If you think you can sue my New York based company in a US court for publishing a full and true account of it’s dealings with your Canadian company, Compuquest 2000, go ahead. If you prefer, just buy another fancy car and ignore this site, the first site that anybody will see when they google Compuquest 2000 or Gary Bodimeade.
That’s all I have time for this morning, I will write the interesting details of what happened next and the deal I was asked to participate in, shortly.
As a short note, in one of his emails Gary Bodimeade tries to maintain that I was in breach of contract because (via the employee that had the prior relationship with Gary) I issued purchase orders for which payment and supply were never completed. This is somewhat true but stemmed from the fact that it was very hard to pin Compuquest 2000 down on what they actually had ready to ship. We would issue PO’s only to be told the goods were a few days away when other goods that we really needed were ready to ship. This made the whole process very frustrating and led to a bewildering number of substitutions and swaps.
Just a quick hello to any new readers who’ve stopped by for the story on Gary Bodimead and his Compuquest 2000 company in PIckering, Ontario. Don’t worry, we haven’t finished our story, there’s plenty more to come.
As soon as we’re back to work after the holiday’s be sure to look back here for the full story of the deal that my former staff member tried to negotiate with Gary and the well known source of ex-lease used computers that seems to have a very tight relationship with Compuquest 2000.
