Beware Diamond House - Michael R. Glaser

Please beware dealing with the company Diamond House in Cape Town run by Michael R. Glaser. He offers a jewellery buying service claiming to make an immediate offer to purchase after doing a valuation. I brought numerous items of jewellery to him that had belonged to my late mother. After the valuation which took several days (I have no problem with that) he made an offer to purchase on Wed 20 Dec 2023 which I accepted. He claimed that payment would be made the following day i.e. Thu 21 Dec 2023. However on that day he already began evading payment. Instead of paying he sent an email falsely saying that payment would be actioned by close of business on Fri 22 Dec 2023. However he did not pay and instead phoned me and said that he was late with payments and that the payment would only be made the first week of January 2024. As I was concerned that he might still not pay in January I made plans to take the jewellery to another potential buyer on 5 January and informed him that payment needed to be made by COB Thu 4 Jan 2024 or I would need the goods returned. He assured me that he would be make the bulk of the payment well before that date with a small amount remaining until that date. However by that date no payment had been made. When I informed him that I would be fetching the goods the next day he finally paid 75% of the amount owning and promised to pay the remainder during the course of January. However this promise was not kept and the remainder has still not been paid. When I tried to contact him he claimed to be travelling and had cash flow problems. To my horror I discovered that a warning about him had been posted in a Facebook group already in Oct 2023 that he makes false promises to pay and sends **** payment advices, claims to be away, with other people having been similarly ****med by him. He is also listed as the director of several companies that have been de-registered due to lack of compliance. I now find myself having to lay charges against him to recover the owing amount.