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| Here’s the deal
We agreed to go fishing with previously mentioned guide Hans Nordin for seven full days with four people and we had him book us a cottage for two weeks. Total sum was approximately 3700$ for four persons. As an extra we had to book a second boat (five in one boat is not possible) which was 1300$ for the 7 days. We made an advance payment of 1860$ to cover the costs for hiring the cottage, for costs he made booking the lot and as an advance payment for his guiding services. Now take note I have been emailing this guy for two years now. We made arrangements that we liked a "cheaper" cottage but that we needed the basic things like flowing hot water, a kitchen to be able to cook for four persons, a freezer and a fridge, hot shower and toilets. Sure, no problem ... we have a written letter that says he booked us such a cottage and that he made the payment for it. We received a proof of payment from the camp we were staying at. So far no problem. After a trip of 32hours of driving non-stop to Sweden from Belgium we arrived at the cottage and we were chocked: it has no sink, no water tap, a freezer and fridge had been dumped there (not normally included I suspect), the beds were for very young children (one adult sized bed) with bed bottoms of 2cm thick (less than an inch) and mattresses of 5cm thick which were like sponges, there was no room to unpack our things and store them in closets, no electricity, one light bulb (60watt) for the room, no mirror, one cooking pot that was full if we filled it with three eggs and one small fire (to put the pot on), no table to eat with the four of us, not even four chairs, the showers didn't work all the time (just a few hours a day) and it was freezing cold water, toilets were disgusting. We called our guide and he was surprised we didn't want to stay there for ten days! He said it was just what we agreed on and he obviously has a good time seeing us sitting there all looking like hell. Ok, no problem so far. He talked to the guy that owned the place and me and a friend were sitting in the guide's car while our two other friends were driving around looking for a place to spend the night. The owner gave back the down payment of 265$ for the cottage but when he returned to the car I noticed the guide put 50$ in his wallet, gave us back 190$ and hesitated to give back the remaining 25$. He did eventually so this is where it started to go wrong. He had taken some money of us and claimed the owner of the camp decided to keep it for administration costs. Not true because my friend and I saw that he gave back the entire sum.
So my buddy and I went driving around looking for hours together with the guide without finding a place to stay. He claimed all houses and hotels were full. I started to notice he didn't even know his way around this place we were staying at even though he is born and raised in Stockholm and he conducts his guiding business there. So I started phoning our other two friends who were driving around. Eventually they found a place to stay and that hotel was empty. All this time the guide was phoning around, laughing in Swedish (so we couldn't understand what he was saying), not making any effort to find a place to stay. We booked a room for the four of us and the guide was supposed to go home and find us a place to stay.
After we freshened up and had a quick meal, I phoned my friend in Stockholm, Kjelle Lundberg, and we agreed to meet with him. He had taken the week of to go and fish with us during the evenings when the guide stopped his business. He was very helpful and he started looking for a place to stay for us right away. It took him three phone calls to find us a very good cottage to stay at for one week and one more phone call to book us two decent boats for the week. After seeing how little effort this guide put forward to find us a place, we decided to call it quits with this guide and to find our way around the fishing waters ourselves. Kjelle was so extremely kind to take us fishing for the 7 days we had left. He didn't know the place himself but as it turned out he is a very skilful fisherman! I can't express my gratitude enough for what he has done for us during the week we stayed in Sweden and we went fishing with him.
After having discussed it with the four of us, we phoned our guide (who was given time to find us a place until 12AM the next morning, at this time it was 10PM) to call the deal off because he had betrayed our trust too many times in one afternoon. He had even talked to Kjelle (in Swedish again) that it was all my fault and that I was childish, that I had a large imagination, that I knew what I was expecting, that it was because of language differences that we had both different idea's, that I had a mental picture of this place and he had seen it himself, ...) Kjelle went to have a look in the cottage and said he would never stay there (even though Hans told us this was the Swedish standard cottage), even the guide himself admitted to us in the car he would never stay there, so why should we? We had spoken to him before he went home at 4PM to agree on what would happen when we decided not to continue fishing with him and he immediately said it would be no problem to return all of our money when we called it quits but he would look for a place for us. Immediately after we called it off, this guide started phoning us back several times to insult us, to say we were children of five years old to do this, that he had found us a place to stay (we would have had to stay in his daughters apartment for another 265$ for one week!), to threaten us that he would go after our friend (who was not impressed by all of this), that we should carefully consider what we were doing because he would get us for that, that I bruised his ego, that he felt emotionally hurt, that he would loose a lot of money if we didn't go and fish with him, ... I would like to show him our bill for all the conversations we have had to make with our mobile phone, booking our hotel rooms, gas for driving around, ... his costs are peanuts compared to our bills.
So we agreed to meet with him at 9AM the next morning in our hotel. At around 7.30AM we were having breakfast and this lady from the hotel delivers a letter to us. Guess who wrote it? Our guide! He delivered it five seconds before we got it and immediately ran away to go and fish so we couldn't reach him. The lady from the hotel confirmed to us it was our guide. The letter is dated from the previous evening and already states he decides to keep all of our money and that he was going to claim the second halve of our money but for three reasons he didn't want to do that (no reasons mentioned in the letter itself). We phoned him right away and demanded than he would be at our hotel at 9AM as agreed before. At 9.30AM there was no guide in sight so we called my friend Kjelle and we went to the police to press charges against our guide for theft and for larceny (making arrangements, doing nothing and running away with the money, it could be it is named differently in English). They made a report and told us to go to court the next morning.
The next morning we went out and the guide called us again, to ask whether we had already gone back to Belgium, to say he still expected us to go fishing with him once he found out we were still there, that he would pick us up where we were staying, ... He didn't know where we were so he was trying to find out. When we said no again, he said he was going to press charges against us as well for robbing him, for braking an arrangement, for threatening him, ... because we had the nerve to go to the police! Can you believe this? I hardly can myself. This guide is supposed to be one of Sweden's top guides, he has a website, he sells lures, he makes fishing tapes, he fishes tournaments, and he writes in magazines, he writes books, he takes tourists on short fishing trips (clients from companies that travel abroad and have a day or two of and want to go fishing), ...
He admitted to us that he had never seen the cottage himself, that he only phoned the owner to make arrangements but that is was my fault that it was no good (what the hell did he expect: that I would come all the way from Belgium to see whether we had gotten a decent cottage?????). I also discovered that we had paid too much for the cottages: the official price was 80$ per week, not 135$ per week as he charged us. So he robbed us twice for the same things.
The lady from the hotel also said to us that it was impossible that his guiding prices were so high because she had heard from him before (maybe through doing business with him for customers that stayed at the hotel).
We also pressed charges against him in the Swedish customers' complaint office.
just when I got back I received an email from him again to accuse me of all sorts of things, that he is prosecuting one of our friends because he had the nerve to yell in the phone to him that he better be in our hotel at 9AM as we agreed before (we didn't talk about the police yet at that time), that I'm a baby, that he is going to ruin us, ... If anyone wants to read it, post something in this thread.
Does this sound like a guide to you guys? I don't think so. Remember the name Hans Nordin when you go to Sweden and make a right turn when he approaches you for fishing.
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| All I can say is that is terrible. How can someone who needs word of mouth runa business that way. Sorry to hear about your " vacation"...hope you did catch a few. Thank for letting us all know about the SOB
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| we did catch a few and some nice ones too (4 big ones of 94-105cm) but that was only thanks to my friend Kjelle Lundberg. Thanks for reading this and for caring about my problems. | |
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| wow Divani- really sorry to hear things went so badly... in america- we call people like that "scam artists"... and when it comes to fishing- i guess it is really easy to scam people out of money- because you have to place so much trust in someone's word, with no former experience with them... i think you shouldn't worry about all his threats... he is trying to scare you off... if you end up not getting your money back- i guess you just have to consider it a hard lesson...
remember - what comes around, goes around- he will get what he deserves eventually... hope your next fishing trip is amazingly good to make up for this bad experience... | |
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| Ah, yes, that's why I go on vacation:
to relax, do a little fishing, meet new interesting people!
So sorry you got burned so badly. The money loss hurts, but losing valuable time away from work and not getting the fishing done that you should, how can one put a price on that loss? I hope you get this guy. good luck, m[:bigsmile:] | |
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| That really sucks divani. I just hope your word gets out so no one else gets screwed by that guy. | |
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| This isn't a guide problem, it is an International Incident!! I have had similar experiences many years ago, but none recently.You were fortunate to have a friend to turn to, and get a trip out of a disaster. Don't let the guy off the hook, keep up pressure until you get ALL your money back and a complete and public apology.
I have a Guide License for the State of Wisconsin, and to acquire it, I have to promise to behave in a business like manner and conduct myself according to the laws of Wisconsin. If this guy is bound by his license in a similar fashion, you may have recourse there.
[:(] [:blackeye:] | |
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| Dirk, that totally sucks. I know you have really been looking forward to this trip for a long time. I hope justice is served to that guide. Well at least you know what to do next time and that's fish with your buddy. At least you were able to catch some fish and I bet you will go back a much wiser and more successful gent.[;)] | |
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| if he is bound by such an organization in Sweden, I haven't heard or read about that. I don't think there is one.
the problem is he keeps threatening me, supposedly he has started a law suit against me and my friends for ripping him off (what the ... ?!). Would you believe in his last letter I got through email, he says I cost him so much money because I cancelled the trip (wonder why??) and because he had to refuse other clients. So he wants to sue me for that amount of money + for the second halve of our payment to him (both the second part of the payment of our trip + the money he supposedly lost by refusing other clients). I know for a fact he was fishing that very next monday already! So he wants double pay-checks for doing nothing.
any further developments, I will keep you guys posted. Just make sure everybody reads this if they intend to go to Sweden. This guide works in and around Stockholm | |
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| He's writing and threatening you as a smoke screen. He's hoping that you'll decide it's not worth fighting out in court and drop all charges against him. He's bluffing.
Keep pushing him with the legal authorities in his area. I'll bet he'll back back off at the last second to avoid getting into trouble.
First, find out what you can do to further your case against him. SAVE ALL OF HIS E-mails. You may be able to use them. Do not e-mail him in an emotional or threatening manner. When you do contact him simply lay out your plan of action and state what his options and deadlines for compliance are. Avoid getting into verbal battles. It'll make it seem like your not serious about persuing the matter.
I've dealt with similar, but not nearly as bad, situations like yours in this manner. It's never failed.
Don't let him get away with it.
Brian | |
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| thanks brian. I also think it's a smokescreen, more like a cat driven into a corner with no way out. We are talking to some lawyers now to see what we can do. I'm gathering information first.
Just for the record: my friends nor myself have ever spoken abusively to this guide (even though we were angry, more like at the verge of exploding) because that doesn't help our case, nor did I reply to his last email with all the threats because we will discuss it first and then reply with a lawyer. I have kept all of his emails, and I also showed our arrangements and agreements in these emails to the police in Sweden. They made a report of that as well. I know from school that email is no proof but a beginning of proof. If I have other evidence of these agreements (which I do in the form of two signed letters from him) I can use these emails to make our evidence more substantial.
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| bttt | |
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guide problems