I was recently contacted by a UK guy who paid $4700 (approx £3000) to Vietnamese company Avalon Scooters for a restored SX & TV Lambretta. Unfortunately the guy has not heard a peep from Avalon Scooters since making the payment. Without wanting to adopt a "told you so" attitude to this poor guy; most will know a restored Lambretta SX or TV singularly will sell for over double the price offered for this pair of models...
It would seem Avalon scooters have taken/misappropriated images of genuinely well restored scooters from Vnscooter, another Vietnamese company & passed them off as their own restorations on the Avalon Scooters website. Confusion has since arisen here in the UK that Avalon Scooters & Vnscooter are the same company or linked together which they are not.
Sy Manh Tran, owner of Vnscooter also contacted me & asked me to highlight this fact & reiterate he/Vnscooter has no connection whatsoever to Avalon Scooters. He did also offer to contact the Vietnamese police regarding this incident concerning Avalon Scooters & the UK buyer.
I would be extremely wary about parting with my money & buying an unseen scooter from the other side of the globe. I would possibly consider this if I had good contacts I trusted who could source a scooter for me, even then I would still be pretty nervous clicking send on the bank transfer! It's for all of us as individuals to make our own minds up but from this story it would appear scooterists' interests are best served by staying well clear of Avalon Scooters.
As for Vnscooter & owner Sy Manh Tran, he seems a genuinely decent guy, this certainly stands up in the email correspondence I've had with him. The scooters he has for sale & restored (see previous post), appear to be the real thing. However as I've not met him properly, given I've never visited Vietnam, I would still tread very carefully if you are considering buying a scooter from Vietnam. Fellow blogger Da Nguyen who runs the excellent Scooterist blog is a friend of Sy Manh Tran's & is another Vietnamese guy I have time for. If I were to consider buying a scooter from Vietnam, which I'm not, I would contact both Sy Manh Tran at Vnscooter & Da Nguyen - this is in no way acts as a recommendation to any of you out there & any choices you make are yours & yours alone I'm afraid!
Vnscooter Facebook page - www.facebook.com/Vnscooter
The Scooterist blog - www.thescooterist.com
Hi, if all this above is true how come the site is still running of avalon scooters? Can someone answer? For me that is strange in this site of avalonscooters.com are the feedbacks as they have only photos and no review of people who bought the scooter. Another fact was when i tried to talk with avalon scooters on skype they wrote that they have their speaker out of order and their boss of the company has no name. People who bought scooter from them should answer in this topic. I feel sorry also for the uk guy who paid them and no scooter was sent, infact recently i contacted the company of Avalon scooters and a certain Dinh T Ngoc Thuy told him about the matter and he replied that this is not true, i linked him all the negative topics including the above, by the way i could not found any positive topics regarding avalonscooters besides their pictures on their feedback's site with no comments (just for example: SATISFIED CUSTOMER FROM AUSTRALIA..), who i'm going to beleive?? Is the site of Avalonscooters scam or not? What about Vietnamese Police email? as i couldn't find it. Avalonscooters does really exists?? or is all invented? I wrote back again to Dinh T Ngoc Thuy (if this is really his or her name..) and he replied that he is going to reply all the negative topics about the Avalonscooters but i didn't read any reply from them since he promised to do so on all the topics/discussions. Anyone could check for me?? One time to be honest was interested in to order a scooter from this company but when i read this topic and others i changed my mind..:/
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