Fair enough, but you have to admit there are tons of active vendors on this site. I think avoiding "motivated" advice is one of the impetuses behind the "vendor" status.
Furthermore, buying one part from him years ago doesn't exactly equate to "continued support". The twisting of words and protesting too much is exactly what leads to a scepticism of forum dogma. My post is expressly purposed to fill precisely that gap (hence my reference to even "innocuous" parts). Franky I feel more embarrassed about the fact that some on this forum can't resist the opportunity to broadcast their perfection than that I got a part from eBay and it happened to be Prothe. While your quote (which is a favourite of many of the high-priced small businesses I often have as clients) mentions the "sweetness of low price", back here in the real world it's often the sweetness of being able to get to work because the part is simply unavailable for these cars.
Dude. You're blowing this out of proportion. No-one is calling you out for a 3 year old mistake. My comments are in reference to others on this site, usually not vendors, who continue to buy non-critical parts from Rothenbacher.
They do this knowing that his critical parts have destroyed countless engines, and those are only the ones we know about due to the owner finding their way here to TDIclub and posting their misfortune.
My guess is you will not likely buy from him ever again, even if he has the cheapest price on something hopefully due to spite over your lost weekend.
Just today I went to search for a door molding for my Passat, and Hans auto parts came up as the cheapest source. I could care less as I will never have anything to do with his sites other than to educate about his scummy business practices.
You learned your lesson - this thread will be yet another to help others learn theirs, hopefully before he has a chance to ruin more engines and weekends.
