Agreed, Keith. Some sort of "feedback" thread ala eBay (your point about right of reply is well taken, though, as eBay provides this)??? Surely there should be some way our members can post their negative experiences--maybe a "Horror Stories" board without publicly naming the perps and then members can PM the originator of interesting stories to get details. I don't know, it just seems to me that as a pretty tight community we would want to help our forum friends avoid experiences such as Bill D's (who, BTW, is displaying honorable restraint in stating that he's chalking it up to an expensive lesson and moved on--Cheers to Bill D for his gracious actions!!)
As for the "...tried and proven commercial purchasing strategies", in the case of large purchases, such as kits and major components like engines/transaxles, many manufacturers/sellers are not willing to go through an escrow company, which would be my strategy of choice. What a shame--the RF fiasco might never have happened had this been industry practice.
Doug