To be frank, George, it's not a lack of guts, but on the topic of Gary Murrell and Custom-HT / Custom Home Theater / CHT, words just about fail me. I also question the value of posting here given that I understood that Mr Murrell has rightly been banned from ever selling anything on this forum again.

Over the last couple of days (late Jan 2010) he's finally refunded me first "$650". Then a further "$50" after I pointed out that the difference between what I paid in June 2009, and the value of the modded Oppo which he finally delivered to me in late November was actually $760 (a number he disputed as too high, but which I took directly from his website). I have put the amounts refunded in inverted commas because when I logged into PayPal to check my account I discovered that I was the one paying the PayPal charges for the refund. The whole sorry saga is beyond parody.

If people are struggling to find an address for Gary (he wisely doesn't put one on his website), this is the address given by the Pixel Magic Systems website:

Custom Home Theater
1940 Little Paint Road
East Point, KY 41216-8745
United States
Fax : 508-819-5184

For those people still with outstanding issues (as I have), here is a link to the Kentucky Attorney General's Consumer Protection division. Thank you to the HHer who provided me that one.

For visitors who've thrown up this link via a search engine, looking to get a sense of whether Mr Murrell is worth doing business with, if you haven't managed to work out my thoughts on this (and those of the poster above) then I'll spell it out clearly for you:

Please trust me when I say that I believe that no Hi-Fi modification is so special or unique that it's worth getting involved with Gary Murrell and Custom-HT for. There are plenty of highly reputable, customer-focused modifiers who will bend over backwards, communicate with you clearly, accurately and on a timely basis, and deliver you a quality product on a timely basis. Mr Murrell is the antithesis of these.

Feel free to peruse the following links. To be honest I believe that some of the comments about Mr Murrell on these forums get out of hand, but you have to ask yourself how bad does the customer service of a small business have to be to create such a string of invective from such a large number of people on such global basis? Mr Murrell complains about a "witch hunt" against him, and a lack of proof. It's quite difficult to "prove" something on the internet, but I have to say that my experience of dealing with Mr Murrell is mirrored in a lot of the negative comments on the threads I've linked to. I find the retorts and threats that Mr Murrell levels at some of the posters equally revealing. Read between the lines.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/member.php?u=78558

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/view...ays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1220120

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=shady&m=5134

Do I think Mr Murrell is a fraudster? I think that depends upon how you define fraud. Has he lied to me in the course of the last seven months? Frequently. I have the emails to prove it. Does he still owe me money? At present, yes.

Sooloos, Roon, G series (with LPS upgrade), 800 series (with LPS upgrade), HD621, AC200, Prime and PS, DSPs old and new.

Purdeys, Moke, Leica, 'Blad. Only the best.