In Neil's most recent message, he accused me rather harshly.


Lies and hearsay, huh? Well, since Neil can't be bothered to wade through all the press I've managed to generate for him (and he's confused into thinking anyone besides Rich has actually defended him), I've boiled things down to direct quotes from the various UMD members who have commented publicly on getting screwed by Neil. All but one of these members go back 5-17 years on the UMD and all but two have several hundred or more UMD posts to their credit in the last four years alone. Neither I, nor any of the rest of these folks can reasonably be considered trolls. We're respectable, active members of this community, with one exception -- sorry newbie dfaraday, you'll need to stick around awhile to gain respectability. [Unless otherwise noted, all of these quotes came from the thread I started, "Neil Edwards, Rip-Off Artist."]

First off is my own summary. Readers will need this, because a lot of the responses to it that follow are along the lines of: "Almost the exact same thing happened to me."

1. pieromaniac_too
UMD member since 5/3/98, 180 posts in the last 4 years
In summary: 8 DVDs paid for in in 2010, about a dozen emails from me, including two sent in 2014 when Neil re-emerged promising to make amends. Neil answered a lot of my early emails with excuses and "i don't know what happened to those DVDs" and vague promises he'd send them out "again"; he ingored my later 2010 emails altogether as well as my 2014 emails. Never. Got. Shit.

2. blueslimed26
UMD member since 5/3/98, 287 posts in the last 4 years
"My situation is almost exact to pieromanic_too's & I had someone messaging me on UMD with a similar situation as well.... he [Neil] kept saying him or his wife would send them [my DVDs] out asap. When it was like a year later I thought it'd be too late for MM to do anything though."

3. staniac
UMD member since 2/11/09, 70 posts in the last 4 years
"i never got my DVDs either."

A man of few words on the post, staniac elaborated to me in a UMD PM: "Everything you described, i went through to a tee, with the back and forth e mails and such. Because of his long standing with UMD, and my previous purchases that actually had gone right, i just chalked it up to miscommunication in my part and let it go. I wasn't aware he screwed others." (MessMaster, feel free to check my inbox to verify that staniac mailed me exactly these words.)

4. lchris26
UMD member since 5/3/98, 236 posts in the last 4 years
"Unfortunately, I too had a similar experience with Neil a few years back ... I actually purchased a pretty large orders and got maybe 80% of the DVDs. Unfortunately, Neil did not mail out the final set of DVDs, and some of the DVDs sent to me were also blanks."

5. sgbsgb_1999
UMD member since 7/22/05, 16 posts in the last 4 years
"After having several excellent customs from him [Neil] I comissioned one which he was more elaborate than the others with the aim of getting a specific model. This was a costly experience and while Neil made contact every so often afterwards (when he was trying to sell videos mostly) and promised to get it done it never materialised."

6. Nollvane
UMD member since 1/28/10, 436 posts in the last 4 years
"Hi all, I'm another of those that got burned... I ordered and paid for some DVDs two years ago that I never received; as others have said, Neil was good enough at answering emails and promising to take care of things that I didn't report it ... but nobody likes to get ripped off."

7. dfaraday
UMD member since 7/21/15, 3 posts
"I'm not on here much, and am not really up to speed on whats going on all the time. I usually lurk ... I too was scammed out of a large DVD order where I received excuse after excuse, if anyhing, for several years. I've since given up on the chance to receive what I paid for, but glad to see others are calling this situation to light."

Want proof of how silly Neil's lies and excuses got? One of the above long-running, respectable UMD members -- who asked that I not name him when quoting his PM -- sent me a UMD PM in which he described his awful experience with Neil in some detail. Three different times, Neil's excuse to him was that he'd mailed the DVDs but something had gone wrong and they'd been returned to him (Neil). Here are the member's own words describing the stories Neil gave him:

1st attempt. Insufficient postage, came back damaged, whatever..

2nd attempt. Sent to wrong address, flipped by street number and apartment number...

3rd attempt. I forgot what the excuse was? I think USPS rejected and sent back to carrier something about improper packaging

(MessMaster, feel free to check my inbox to verify that one of the above long-running UMD members did in fact email me this information. Look specifically at all the emails marked "RE: Getting ripped off by Neil.")

This is clearly not just a situation where Neil should be able to get off with an "Oooops, I forgot to send a couple orders. I'll make good now, okay?" I mean, if he wants to actually fulfill DVD orders for a delightful change of pace, great. I just don't think anyone should ever trust him again. He clearly strung all of the people above along for months and months at minimum, sometimes for years on end, with ridiculous stories and excuses and lies, wearing us out until we just gave up in the end. Only one of the above seven people ever got anything out of Neil, and even that was only a portion of what he paid for.
We should've spoken up, yes, but Neil never should've put so many people in a position where they needed to; he was all too happy to take advantage of his reputation as a trustworthy producer and let people get screwed in the process.

Neil has dismissed everything I've said as "lies, hearsay, and vendetta." But hey, it's not like he gave us any "facts" himself, just his own bald assertions, his own "hearsay." He did manage to essentially call myself, sgbsgb_1999 and protostar8 liars -- but where's the proof that we are lying? It's just your hearsay against ours, Neil. Really, as with almost any case like this, all we've got is one man's word against another's. Or, in this case, seven men's word against one. And that one man is looking pretty damn shady at this point.

What reason do the seven gypped customers have to lie? This is not some conspiracy to ruin a man's reputation unjustly. It's an attempt to bring the truth of his petty deceits to light. No, for fuck sake, I'm not calling him a master criminal, or saying started his whole career in WAM videos intending to fuck people over and steal their money. But he is without a doubt a slimy bastard who doesn't hesitate to lie when his back is to the wall. And now Neil himself has got plenty of reasons to lie -- he needs to save face. He even mentioned in one of his recent posts the possibility of getting back into WAM when his non-compete clause with the new PFG owner expires. So he may actually need the UMD's trust again one day. So now we get Neil, the penitent politician, with a new round of promises.

There are of course a number of email threads between individuals below and Neil concerning all these unfulfilled orders. That's getting a little closer to "facts," isn't it? But trust me, Neil, you don't want us publishing those; then you'd really have egg on your face. As you yourself noted, I was even really polite to you back then... and yet you didn't hesitate to deliver an endless string of bullshit and ultimately fuck me over. See what you've done? You turned me into a moster! :devil: