I won a lot and paid for it, but the shipper told ...

I won a lot and paid for it, but the shipper told me that when he went to pick it up, the auction house claimed they couldn t find it. I then made several attempts to contact Altair, which did not respond. Fortunately, I had paid for my purchase with a credit card, so I put the matter into dispute . Altair apparently never responded to my credit card company, either, because the money was credited back to my account. What a way to do business! Also, the lot that I supposedly won purported to have a sterling provenance, from a major London dealer and subsequently a known private collection; I now wonder whether it ever existed at all - or were the description and pictures of that and certain other phantom lots just included in the catalog to generate interest in the sale. Whether Altair Auctions are crooks or merely incredibly incompetent, they should probably be avoided.