mcgees.org

Meditations on Glen Stephens

Glen Stephens is a Sydney-based stamp dealer. He claims to have the most-visited stamp website in the Southern hemisphere, to be the largest stamp dealer in the Southern hemisphere, to be the largest stamp buyer in Sydney, and, I believe, to have cured polio.

It was he who offered the $500 prize that I described on this page. It started at $200, but he made a post where he said if the thread reached 10,000 posts, he would up it to $500.

At 5,000 posts, he started a new thread because of “stability” issues. The second thread met the 10,000 mark.

He is not honoring the $500 prize because “the thread” did not meet 10,000 posts — the thread that he closed.

Glen, as you might have guessed by now, has always had a gruff demeanor, high-pressure sales tactics, and an ego larger than his continent. I always figured there was a heart of gold underneath. I have long contended that stamp dealers fall neatly into two bins: those to whom you would entrust your house keys, and those you would cross the street to avoid. Despite early warnings (such as charging obscene amounts for Machin booklets that were covered with pencil writing, which is inexcusable to not mention) I’ve given him chance after chance. And it was a waste.

He posted on the site telling me that if I was not satisfied with the $200 prize, he could surely find a runner-up who would be. Good for him. Have fun, Glen. May I suggest Waroff49? I’m not intimidated by his threats, and I’m not intimidated by his deletion of my posts calling him on it. I imagine that deletion of my user account will follow. Such is to be expected from slimeballs.

The site is stampboards.com. May I strongly recommend you do not visit?

For the search engines: “Glen Stephens sucks”.

Farewell, stamp boarders. It’s been a pleasure knowing (most) of you.

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:07:41 -0600
Under assholes, people who suck, stamp collecting
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4 Responses to “Meditations on Glen Stephens”

Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:54 pm
If you’ve been screwed over dealing with Glen Stephens, just do me a favor and link to this page. We’ll get the Google rank above his own site.
Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
December 6th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
I’ve deleted about 15 posts worth of hue and cry from both sides. Glen was avidly and manically posting for a while here. I was magnanimous at first, but I’m not going to stand by and have my readers spammed. If you want to hear his side, he can be reached at glen@glenstephens.com.

For the record, let me try to distill it, without drama, into a timeline.
1. Glen Stephens announces a contest on his discussion board. The contest works as follows: people post numbers sequentially from 1 (0 is later added) to 9999. Then, at the close of the US stock market on 30 November, the last four digits of the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be examined, and the matching four-digit poster would receive $200 in store credit. Glen pays for this out of his own pocket, or maybe out of advertising expenses.
2. On the second page of the contest thread, someone asks what would happen if the “winning” number was not chosen by anyone, for instance, if it was 9999.
3. Glen makes a post saying that if the thread reaches 10,000 posts, he would increase the prize to $500. If he was joking, this was not clear to me or to anyone else I’ve talked with on the board.
4. The $500 gets my attention, and I decide to play and to help guarantee that the thread reaches 10,000 posts.
5. At 5000 posts, he closes the thread to new posts, and starts a new thread, quoting site stability issues as the reason.
6. I notice that Glen has listed over 200 Western Australia 4d Swans (from the letterpress issues) as a lot. As is his custom (this is not unprecedented in retail) he picks the highest price he can find for the Swans to base his discount off of. Sometimes for Glen this is a catalogue, sometimes it is auction prices, sometimes eBay prices, sometimes it is retail price lists. In this case, he chooses retail price lists as his baseline price for the items.
7. I contact Glen by email and ask if there is any movement possible in the price of the Swans, as Scott catalogue prices are much lower than his cited prices. He tells me that he does not know and “do[es] not care!” what Scott lists, and applies the high-pressure tactic of telling me that he is sending out an advertising email to 5,000 people in the next hour, guarantees me that the Swans will sell, and tells me if I want them to order them now.
8. I note the high-pressure tactic, consider when the next time I’ll encounter 200 Swans together will be, and authorize my credit card to be charged (I have never intended to deny this.)
9. The 10,000 posts are reached in the first and second thread combined. I assume, and others assume, that the $500 prize is now on the table.
10. Days tick away.
11. November 30th comes around, and I win! In good faith I place an order for $525 worth of stamps, believing the prize to be the aforementioned $500.
12. I email Glen and post on the site to confirm the $500 when I read a post from another stampboarder who says there is still “wiggle room” for Glen to reduce the prize to $200 because no single thread reached 10,000 posts. I do not believe at this point that he would actually resort to this.
13. Glen returns an email to me, mocking me. He asks “where the 10,000 posts could be hiding” on that first thread. He posts on stampboards, and threatens that if I am not happy with the $200 prize, he could easily find someone who would be.
14. I become livid. I conclude he is a scoundrel and a bully. I post on the site that I am not impressed by his high-pressure tactics and threats, and if he wants to give the prize to someone else, to go right ahead. I also call him a son-of-a-bitch.
15. Glen claims that he is donating the reward to a charity. I call his honesty on this claim into question.
16. I tell my email program to automatically discard all email from Glen, reasoning that the only two options are abuse and apology, neither of which I’m interested to hear.
17. I make a post at mcgees.org decrying the incident and impugning his character.
18. Here the timeline gets a bit murky for me. I’ll try to arrange it in the order most favorable for Glen.
19. Glen reads my mcgees.org post, concludes that I am a scoundrel and a liar, and worries that I might be a thief as well. Reasoning that I could simply claim not to have received the Swans and instigate a fraudulent chargeback, he (through some process unknown to me, at some price unknown to me) retrieves the Swans from the mailstream.
20. Apparently, he emails me to let me know. I don’t know, as my email program automatically discards the email.
21. Glen goes through the contest thread and removes my posts, posts from other people that support my posts, and his responses to my posts. I become more livid, and conclude that he is without a doubt a scoundrel.
22. Glen posts on the sales thread for the 4d Swans that I have already purchased and that he told me he shipped already. He says that due to a “minor glitch” with my order the Swans were available for sale again. I was not going to editorialize, but let me say that, to his credit, he does not impugn me on that thread and chalks it up for the public as a glitch.
23. I read his post and assume that he was lying earlier when he claimed to have sent the swans. This was apparently not the case. Apparently, he did send them, then was somehow able to retrieve them.
24. I further impugn his character on mcgees.org.
25. The personality conflict between the bullheaded, big-egoed American and the bullheaded, big-egoed Australian degenerates into name-calling on mcgees.org, the two of whom are probably more similar than either would like to admit.
OK, I hope and believe that that paints a full and honest picture of the incident. We both took offense, we both considered the other a scoundrel, we both were willing to believe the worst about the others’ motives. We (presumably) cause irreconcilable differences in our relationship and, barring Glen’s rebuttal on this thread (he’s now banned), probably mark the time where we cease communicating forever … assuming my credit card is never charged further.
Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
December 29th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
This post has been quite a phenomenon. I have gotten many emails, from at least three continents, from people with complaints about Glen Stephens. They have been unable to comment here because I had closed comments due to Glen’s flooding. Cautiously — ever so cautiously — I’m re-opening comments. I’ve also unbanned Glen’s ISP, for now.

I’m not going to restate any of the complaints about Glen Stephens I have received, unless and until I have permission from the people who submitted them to do so. I am not going to post any of the threatening missives penned by Glen towards some of these same people. I am pursuing information from professional organizations and auction sites to verify whether claims that Glen Stephens has been expelled from them have merit. Some people seem rather frightened of him. I’m not. I’ve reopened comments. Feel free to comment.

This paragraph is directed to Mr. Stephens. I will permit you to post one (un, uno, ichi, one) comment summarizing your case. You are not permitted to spam. You are not permitted to flood. You are not permitted to lie, including, but not limited to, saying that I am the only person who believed the prize to be $500. You may restate your case, which I believe consists mainly of calling me “petulant”, and you may provide evidence that you in fact made a >$200 charity donation. I don’t need to allow this, but I will allow it. This is your only warning. If you go nuts, you will be deleted.

Here is an example of an acceptable post:

“Mr. McGee behaved as a petulant child. He should be happy with whatever prize I decide to give him and not to complain. He is unabashedly behaving like a [insert name of loathsome bush creature], is decidedly not behaving like a [insert name of charming bush creature], and is persisting to [insert Australian verb that presumably has something to do with farming]. Here is a link to a scan of the receipt I received from St. Vincent du Paul charities acknowledging my donation: http://www.———.tld. mcgees.org is worthless, and I have a successful business to run, and will not deign to post here again.”

Here is an example of an unacceptable post:

“Mr. McGee is lying through his teeth. He knows everything he is telling you is a lie. I, Glen Stephens, always keep my word and Mr. McGee never does. He is insane, and is the only person who believed the contest to be for $500 and not $200.”

Are we clear? Mr. Stephens, you get one attempt not to lie. If you abuse this, I have no qualms about blowing it out of the water.
Dan Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 3:22 am
I too had a ‘misunderstanding with Glen, aka OzStamps on another website. Needless to say, I keep an eye on him when he trades ‘bearable’ instruments on that travel website. I pray that others don’t have the same ‘misunderstandings’ with you.