What is the ModernVespa forum trying to hide from you?

It's a shame you still see such dishonest tactics as from staff/insiders at the ModernVespa forum in the US who constantly attack Asian shops in order to profit themselves and friends' shops.

Regular forum members are great everywhere and good forums must promote honest unbiased information, so forums do a real disservice when they manipulate debate and force their personal prejudices - economic, racist, or otherwise - upon others, often causing people to badly overpay for things until they find out the truth for themselves. Other US forums were infamous for a few members using such tactics - European forums are more civil -, but you only see forum staff dishonestly manipulating debate at ModernVespa.

Previously the ModernVespa admin, Jess Devine, hypocritically told us he wouldn't do anything when his “moderators” posted bizarre or very creepy attacks on us - one often posts about urinating on people and giving them diseases after he failed to get free items from us - because we hadn't paid him any money as a sponsor. (Can you imagine that as an excuse for manipulating debate? No other forum admins do that.) When we asked the admin simply to apply his own rules consistently, before his moderators caused a bigger problem, he banned us for “threatening” him.

Apparently banning people is common there if you dare question the official (paid) orthodoxy. When we first raised a problem after the admin did nothing about wild personal attacks and claims that we used child labor, he actually told us, while strictly applying forum rules elsewhere, not to respond as that would create an “argument.” In other words, blacks to the back of the bus.

As an example of how dishonestly the ModernVespa admin manipulates the info people see, recently someone posted a logically impossible story about our stealing their Paypal info - retailers never even see that info - on about 6 forums. All forum admins acted very professionally and deleted it entirely within a day. Only the ModernVespa admin, Jess Devine, refused to respond to numerous emails and Twitter notices and has deliberately left up the offending false headline for people to find in searches and such. Of course, if it had been about a paid sponsor you wouldn't see it.

[Update Oct. 22: one decent mod there just removed this after 6 months. Thanks! If only on the same day Modern Vespa sponsor “JimH” wasn't posting false info there yet again and insanely blaming ScootRS for all the bodged Vietnam scooters for sale in the US. Do these people have no shame about deliberately deceiving forum readers?]

And rather than allow people to post freely without intimidation, from the comments forwarded to us you can see that every time we are mentioned there the same 3 or 4 mods/insiders worriedly jump in to try to scare people away. Then maybe lock the thread so no one can contradict them with information! If actual customers respond and compliment us, the admin/mods will often try to undermine them, or - get this - claim it must secretly be us then shamelessly refer back to the story they've made up to justify calling us dishonest! Incredible. Which makes one ask: why are they so afraid of free discussion? No money in it? Chauvinism? Ignorance?

We even get new US customers emailing us about how pleasantly surprised they were with our good quality and service, as though it were completely unexpected. When the sponsors people are bullied towards have lower quality at 2-3 times the price of high quality parts we do inhouse, or don't even have the cool modern Vespa parts we make (leather covers, stainless trim, etc.), it's not surprising that people are a bit shocked after hearing nonsense.

The lesson as always on the internet is: think for yourself and don't be bullied. When people abjure polite logic and use insults and scare tactics to manipulate you, you know they are up to no good.

If you're in the US and a new scooter owner looking for honest feedback, ignore obvious scare tactics, listen to dozens of actual customers, and check forums in Europe, as we're very well known in the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, etc., where the admins and insiders go out of their way to promote honest unbiased information, not force prejudice upon you. Try a small order and see for yourself why we're the fastest growing scooter parts supplier to others in your country.

Or as the Spanish are allowed to freely post on their forums without an inquisition:

• Hola a todos, yo en las ultimas semanas he realizado un par de pedidos a scootRS.com y todo perfecto, rapidos, bien empaquetado y todo el pedido completo, ademas de baratos.
• Gente como esta no hay mucha, hacen nuevos productos, tienen buenos precios, responden y por lo menos lo que yo he comprado es de calidad. Y encima dan explicaciones. Si los Ingleses, Alemanes, y media Europa, por no decir que el mundo entero les compra será por algo no??

[Google translation:]

• Hello everyone, the past few weeks I've done a couple of orders scootRS.com and everything perfect, fast, well packaged and complete the entire order, besides cheap.
• People like this there are not many, make new products, they have good prices, they respond and at least what I've bought is quality. And explanations given above. If the English, German, and half of Europe, not to say the whole world buy from them it is for something, no?

Hopefully one day ModernVespa will allow its members the same freedom.

[UPDATE Nov. 5: see where MV staff prove exactly what we just said.]