I have a golf ball cannon and carriage, all of steel and was advertised by a place that offered several different types of cannon/mortar both new replica's and used as well. It took me awhile to figure out that the folks I placed the order with were not the one's making the cannon. When I sent my "Yes I want one" email in I received a snail mail letter a week later saying to send a chunk of money to the folks I'd been talking to, but then to also send a really big chunk of money to another fellow I never heard of (maybe the builder?). I found out later that the other party didn't make the cannon's either. Apparently a retired machinist was making the cannon, a next door neighbor was selling them for him through a third known cannon seller on line. I got confused something awful. Then the shipper said that he could NOT ship to a home address only a business address? Swore that's what FedEx told him. I then contacted the first guy and that's when I found out the little triad that was going on.
After a little belly aching we found out that the "business address" problem was taken care of with a ten dollar bill (some surcharge FedEx had due to the weight.). Then when I got the cannon, the knob was busted off the end of the barrel. It went from bad to worse. The shipper offered to make good on it but do to shipping charges I was better off fixing it myself. That's when I had a local machinist cut 3/4" off the end of the barrel, face and chamfer the end, and drill and tap for a towing ball. With the use of Brownells Acraglas epoxy filler I was able to permanently attach the trailer ball to the cannon and repaint it flat black.
There were several time's I got a little ticked during our dealings, but in the end I got the cannon I wanted and the shipper refunded me all the money he collected from FedEx so I knew he was aware of the problem and trying to get a good result. One thing that did happen was the advertiser chose not to carry the product anymore (his loss really) and now they are being sold on GunBroker.com. Smithy.