Avoid Trading With Anthony "Tony" Rizzo from 'Awesome Cheap Guitars'

To preface this, I don't believe that Tony Rizzo intended on scamming me but rather that he simply found himself in a situation where he made a mistake and he didn't want to face the consequences. I learned a valuable lesson about always obtaining good photo evidence even if the person seems trustworthy because of their role; people don't like to admit they are wrong.

Anthony "Tony" Rizzo is a moderator of the Awesome Cheap Guitars Facebook group and fancies vintage Japanese guitars. If you ever get the chance to

He resides at:
818 East Washington St.
Joliet IL 60433

The situation:

We agreed to a trade; my green Greco beatle bass for his sunburst Winston electric 12 string. My instrument was packed in a full sized box with care and his instrument was packaged with less care in a very small box. I confronted him and discussed working something out and he blocked me leaving me with a broken instrument.

His mistakes

1. He left it strung to tension in the middle of a hot September
2. He put it in a small box with insufficient padding
3. And he didn't purchase shipping insurance

My mistakes

1. I didn't take photographic evidence of the neck bow
2. I didn't notice that he did not purchase shipping insurance
3. I trusted that a 51 year old man who runs a guitar Facebook group would be trustworthy

I raised attention to this in the group in September and was ignored by moderation and received no official word about it. I contacted the page admins again in October and was similarly ignored.

After months of giving up, I made another post in March trying to follow up on the case and FINALLY after 6 months I received a reply by Jack Rainwater saying that he didn't think my evidence was sufficient enough and so he did not respond to my earlier messages. I was furious and Tony Rizzo made disparaging comments towards me but kept me blocked so that I was unable to see and respond to them. People used the logic that because I did not respond to his rebuttals (because I could not see them), I was a scammer. Overall it was a complete disaster and I was not thinking straight because of my sheer frustration and how Tony's friends accused me of being a liar and scammer so I left the group.

People who did question Tony and why he had continually kept me blocked instead of trying to reach a civil conclusion were temporarily muted in the group. While this gentlemen below was a little more aggressive than I was, I think his point still stands.

Finally

I fixed his guitar up after leaving it sitting on a shelf for months because it irritated me so much to think about. It needed a new truss rod because the old truss rod was not strong enough to get the warp out of the neck and the neck was twisted. The separating body plys are unfortunate but appear to be stable and so I left them alone. I then had to plane the fretboard, refret it, and restring it. Its a decent guitar but nowhere near as good as the bass I traded him

I know not all of my evidence is concrete and I've learned a lot from this. I just wanted to make sure people know what he did