Thanks for checking back in Feenix, I hope you are doing well and if I haven't said it before, thank you for your service to this country.
As far as I'm concerned I've washed my hands of this: I sold these rings off to another member here after he read this thread and was OK with them being lapped. I am glad to be rid of them, even at a loss. Continuing to pursue Mike in an attempt to have him honor his word became an exercise in futility and only resulted in raising my blood pressure.
As this thread got somewhat off topic over the course, trending into whether lapped rings are truly less valuable than unlapped ones, let me clarify that my problem with Mike was only partly in that what I received was altered rings. Never before have I posted a negative review of a seller and I probably wouldn't have in this case if Mike had simply told me to **** off when I noticed the rings were lapped. I've written off sellers before for not fully describing an item's condition, and this would have been the same.
My primary problem with Mike and what lead me to post this thread is that the last time he contacted me was on 2/26/15 (the entire content of that message is in my first post) and in that message he told me he was going to send me a refund. Given that is is now 8/31/16 and I have not received another message from him, nor a refund, his false promise of a refund is what really troubles me. I genuinely believed that he could not come up with the money at that point. After all, many guys are living paycheck to paycheck right now, things are tough.
The fact is the ad didn't mention the lapping and that may have been intentional or simply an oversight, I don't know.
That he acknowledged the fault, told me he was going to send a refund and never did is simply disingenuous.