According to Market Place, a Canadian news magazine show, there have been many examples sited that says Carfax is a scam & doesn’t help consumers when they are purchasing a used car.

I can’t speak for myself, this is just what I saw on TV in case you are going to use them.

Michelle

I called to inquire about their services that they posted on Kijiji for snow removal & the first time Nikki picked up the phone she hung up on me.

I thought something was wrong with her phone, so when I called back & she answered, I said hello, can you hear me because she didn’t really say anything & she says, “Yeh, what do you want?” in this mean nasty voice.

Nice lovely person & company.

Michelle

P.O. Box 26
Dayton, Oregon
97114

So I happened to come across this site online when searching for something else that was organic. I found the site confusing & it was all in flash which should have forewarned me that the company wasn’t very “with it”, but I forged ahead anyway because I was interested in getting organic produce at a good price.

I called, left a message & Jerry (the owner) called me back within the hour which was great. We talked on the phone for a while & he described the basic concept of his company, & although he told me I couldn’t order produce because he wasn’t able to ship to Canada yet.

Despite that, I loved the entire concept overall, & figured it was a great way to make money as well as help people, so I signed up for his free membership until I understood everything.

Jerry mentioned that they have teleclasses 2-3 times per week, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to make most of them.

I wanted to help Jerry (it’s in my nature to help people), so I told him I would send him information on other types of healthy farming & I did. He had given me his java e-mail address & since it was a gmail account, I didn’t think for one minute that he didn’t receive the e-mail. Gmail is the best for free web e-mail. Their delivery rate is top notch.

I didn’t receive a response back to my e-mail, so a week later I called & left a message.

Jerry called me back & left a message & when I called him back, he was on the phone & he said he’d call me back when he was done. 5 hours later, still no call. I thought he was just very busy & forgot, but little did I know this was to be a foreshadowing of the terrible customer service I was about to receive.

I ended up making it to one of the teleclasses, but only after struggling to get on the line.

While I am not on VoIp, my phone service is a type of voip service & his free teleclass line couldn’t read the keys when I would punch them in. This had NEVER happened to me before so I was very confused & frustrated, as I go on a LOT of teleseminars & classes & yes, some of them even use free services.

No biggie, despite Jerry not returning my call & me having problems with his teleconferencing line, I took it all in stride.

During the class I asked a few questions, but it was hard to hear him at times, so I decided I was going to e-mail him again to firm up how the system paid out, what I would have to do to sign up, etc. You see I would have to sign up for the program & pay his monthly fee even though I wasn’t able to buy any organic produce from his company. I was willing to do that, but I wanted to make sure I understood a few things first.

I had already started telling people I know in the US about the company. My sister wanted to know how I could be sure this Organic Acres was a reputable reliable company & me being the trusting person I am said “why wouldn’t it be.” I was very excited to get everyone I knew involved in this & start marketing.

I e-mailed Jerry again & again 5 days later still no response. At this point I was getting a little teed off. I’m a STRONG believer in responding to e-mails within 24 hours. If you can’t, you shouldn’t have a website or give out an e-mail address, or you need to hire someone to handle your e-mails. That’s what a responsible professional company should do. It’s very rude & disrespectful to have a website or e-mail address & not respond back to e-mails regarding pre-sales questions or customer inquiries. That’s no different than having a phone line, receiving voice mail messages & not returning calls.

At this point I had already gathered that Jerry was the only one running the show. Not once had anyone else called me back & no one was answering the phone during business hours. It always went to an answering machine. I started to feel like he led me to believe that the company was a lot bigger than it was. I mean why would the owner of a company be fielding preliminary questions? They wouldn’t, not if they knew what they were doing. The only other reason is if they had no capital behind them, so they couldn’t afford to hire staff. Even start ups have to plan for all of this WELL in advance before launching. I had to assume Jerry had capital behind his company otherwise how could he start shipping out this organic produce all over the US?

I called the main line & left a message saying that I was disappointed that once again my e-mail had not been answered. Jerry called me back & left a message on my voice mail saying how he has a problem with people who think e-mails always make it to the other person’s inbox & that e-mail is not reliable. He tried to push me to ask questions on the teleclass & curb me from speaking to him one-on-one saying he’s too busy. Since he hadn’t read my e-mails, telling me to go on the teleclass wasn’t going to help since I couldn’t get on it.

I called back & apologized to him saying that I know all about e-mails getting lost (I am a netrepreneur), but because he has a gmail account, he should be getting them. My assistant has a gmail account & he gets 99% of all my e-mails & him & I e-mail each other at least 10-20 times per day. I also told him my questions would take all of 10-15 minutes to answer & that I had private things I wanted to discuss with him that I don’t want to discuss in front of a whole bunch of people. I then forwarded the 2 e-mails I had written to him & this time I used my own gmail account so there would be no way he wouldn’t receive them.

I again waited all day & didn’t get any phone call back from him & of course no return e-mail.

I waited for the next 5 days for a phone call or e-mail & NOTHING.

At this point I had to assume Jerry wasn’t going to return my call, that he was acting in an immature unprofessional manner, but I hadn’t given up. I called on the 6th day saying that I had forwarded him the 2 e-mails again & there is no way that all 4 times he didn’t receive my e-mails, not unless something on his server was causing problems & that if that was the case, a company should fix it. Blaming e-mail for ineptness is just a lazy way to get out of running a company properly. I told Jerry that this would be my last time calling & if I don’t hear back from him, that I can’t in good conscious support his company.

It’s now 2 days later & you guessed it, Jerry is ignoring me being very disrespectful & so I’m letting everyone know how I was treated & how Jerry runs his company.

Just to show how serious I had been about this, I had already started planning how to advertise this company & setting things up in order to help Jerry get his My Organic Acres off to a good start. I was even thinking of him in other ways & had come across a product to help him with the gardening - something I had e-mailed him about. I did all of this for free to help a guy I thought was nice. BOY was I WRONG & I guess my sister was right.

I hope someone else starts a company like My Organic Acres because I would really like to back a company that offers that service & product line, but they better be a solid professional respectful company who doesn’t disrespect & ignore people.

Michelle

So actually I wasn’t going to post about this company even though they wasted our time, but then when they deleted the thread I had going on their forum, that not only took me by surprise, but got me angry.

We had been looking for plugins or add-ons for Magento & my assistant Andy came up with this company Ahead Works which I believe is owned by Russians.

He was talking to Alexander Malkov - malkov@aheadworks.com starting around December 22, 2009 & we were really excited that we were going to FINALLY solve our Magento issues so we could move from 1shoppingcart over to Magento (I’ve been waiting a while). They had been talking for 1-2 weeks about us buying their products.

Anyway, their reoccurring billing plug in would only work with Authorize.net & not USA epay (our gateway), so Alexander told Andy that he would bring it up in the next development meeting & would let him know after Christmas.

My assistant said he’d e-mail him after the holidays, but in my opinion, Alexander should have told Andy when their next meeting was, & should have told Andy he would get back to him. That’s what I would have done had I been in charge, but anyway closer to the end of the month I didn’t want to wait any longer, so I told Andy I would take over from here & I started e-mailing Alexander on December 28st. At first he was speedy in his response, but once I gave him the ticket number that went back & forth between him & Andy, I never heard back from him.

I was very anxious to know if this was going to move forward, so I started a thread on their forum that I was disappointed that I wasn’t getting a response back. It was already January 4, 2010. It doesn’t take that long to shoot someone a 1 minute e-mail.

First I got some nasty response from someone…

“If you’re so short on time, why are you whining on this forum?”

I was shocked & wanted to know if this was one of the people who worked at Ahead Works, so I asked, but I never got an answer.

Then someone who does work there or owns the company (didn’t divulge his name which in my opinion is also very unprofessional) said they respond back within 1 business day & it states that ALL over the site. Guess what, I didn’t read their site, I was given the contact info, but anyway, I wrote back saying “well it’s been more than 1 business day. He writes back saying, “Alexander did respond back to you on January 4th.” I said well I didn’t receive it. I guess they aren’t too bright over there, everyone knows e-mails get lost, why would I waste my time posting a thread if I DID receive a response. All he had to do was get Alexander to forward me the e-mail he supposedly sent on the 4th.

Then he says something not too bright again, “check your customer login”. I told him I’m NOT a customer, I’m trying to find out if I’m going to be one.”

Then he writes back… “No, we do not have USA epay support yet and won’t implement it in the nearest release., check your spam folder, blah blah.”

I have no spam folder, everything comes into my inbox. Anyway, I was pissed. Clearly they knew they weren’t going to be implementing USA epay & they didn’t just make that decision today. Why Andy wasn’t told this weeks ago is disrespectful & unprofessional. Not only that, but Alexander wrote Andy last night around 4 am & still NEVER gave him this information so if this guy on the forum knew this information, why didn’t Alexander JUST TELL Andy?

Like I said, I wasn’t going to blog about it, but when Andy wanted to see what they said because he was now shocked, he told me the thread had been deleted. That made me feel others need to know what kind of company this is.

Michelle

His other products - Google Cash Detective and Google Cash Automator

So I decided to take a chance on Chris’ program because I belong to a list that his friend puts out, & he said that Chris Carpenter was misunderstood, other people were ripping him off, he’s being sued by Google because of them, etc.

I’m actually going to take myself off Anik’s list now even though I’ve purchased from him before. This is the 3rd questionable person I’ve come across that he’s associated with & I believe strongly that you are the company you keep.

Anik Singal
Affiliate Classroom 2
Lurn, Inc
100 Lakeforest Blvd.
Suite 610
Gaithersburg, MD
20877

Being a sucker for the underdog, I figured what the hell, if I only have to pay for shipping, I’ll see what the CD or DVD  is like.

Well I still haven’t received the CD or DVD for the Google Cash, but then 2 nights ago I get this strange phone call which was on the rude side, so I felt I had to blog about it, because I literally had to hang on up this Chris character to get him OFF the phone.

He calls me, barely introduces himself, doesn’t ask me if I’m busy, & then just BAMMM, launches into a sales pitch about how HE’S looking for people who are SERIOUS & want to make tons of money. He doesn’t even ask me if I received his first product yet.

I told him, I’m busy right now can you call me back. I was on the other line on an important call, but instead of him saying, “oh I’m sorry, when can I call you back?”, Chris Carpenter just ignores what I said & again goes into the same schpeel like a robot, “But I want to know if you are a SERIOUS person who wants to make money, we ONLY want serious people!”

I would NEVER commit to anything let alone answer a question from a total stranger without knowing what the hell this guy is selling. Of course I’m SERIOUS, I’ve been an entrepreneur since 1989, but I run a full time business & don’t have time to take on another full time new business.

Finally it was clear to me Chris wasn’t going to respect my time, so I said, “well I guess I’m NOT serious then.”. I heard hims gasp in disbelief & I hung up on him.

What a *&^%$$# LOL. This guy doesn’t know how to run a business AT ALL. He’s RUDE, clearly hyper active, doesn’t care about bothering people in the middle of their calls & I tell him I’m busy & he just ignores me as if his time is worth MORE than his.

Thank god I haven’t dolled out any money on him, now I know that all the posts I had seen about him are true.

Just thought you should know my experience.

Michelle

Update to post…

Just found out today that everything I’ve read about Chris Carpenter is true. Chris tried to steal from me by charging my credit card $97 above & beyond the $1.95 shipping charge.

His site specifically says that’s ALL we will be charged & then 15 days later, he goes ahead & with NO WARNING, charges my credit card again. That’s stealing Chris. You get what you deserve from Google.

What also upsets me, is that Anik Singal made me believe that others were doing this to Chris Carpenter when CLEARLY they weren’t doing anything to Chris, Chris was doing this to everyone else & I believed Anik!

Here’s what his e-mail from his list said…

“Hey Michelle,

Check this!

Chris Carpenter has gone MAD because
his Google Cash brand was destroyed by
over 250,000 FTC complaints thanks to a
bunch of nasty scammers.

Now, he’s turning the tables and giving
away his best products for FREE.”

Alltribes.com
75 W. Baseline Road - Suite 6
Gilbert, AZ
85233
1 800-417-0024
altribes@alltribes.com

purchased an opal necklace that came broken and the opal stones at alltribes.com
are fake.  Poor customer service refused refund, hung up on me and they claimed
it was authentic indian jewelry.  It is not. The opals were fake and looked
fake. Delayed shipping and broken merchandise.

The other thing that I failed to mention is they promised a $32 gift card if I ordered from them which I never received.  Spoke on  Dec 2 to order but didn’t get broken merchandise until December 16th..   Spoke on Dec 16th when It finally arrived to the Mary.
Spoke to the owner Ken on December 17th,  Spoke to John yesterday and Ken and Richard and Mary. I sent 2 email to altribes@alltribes.com They refuse any type of refund only credit towards their site but I do not want any fake jewelry poor quality from them.  I only wanted my credit card to be refunded.

I purchased ecloth’s clothes a while back & after a cleaning lady used the cloth for mirrors & glass,  it turned black, I needed to know how to wash it & their instructions had me asking questions, so I e-mailed e-cloth.com 2 times from their site & both times they didn’t bother to respond back.

Either ECloth has closed down & they haven’t shut their site down, or they don’t care about their customers.

CBS Interative aquired CNET Network back in 2008. The reason I’m even blogging about them both, is because CNET sent out an e-mail advertising this program called CNET Tech Tracker. It’s supposed to notify you when a piece of software on your computer needs to be updated (the version). I thought this would be a good tool, so I stupidly downloaded it.

We are now finding out that when I downloaded it, CNET decided on it’s own (WITHOUT MY PERMISSION) to also install this software called Open Candy & Xobni.

Here are other reviews about CNET & their terrible ethics.

I had completely forgotten that CNET also owns Chowhound, & I had problems with Chowhound a few years back. You can read that post here...

This is my opinion about Future Shop.

Here is what happened…

I walked into the store to buy a laptop.

Not only did the laptop have problems (that’s another story), I am now finding out that Future Shop’s NEW 3 month payment plan rips people off.

I have purchased from Future Shop in the past using their yearly payment plan & NEVER have I ever been ripped off like this. That’s when they were with Wells Fargo.

I expect a high interest, but this isn’t high interest, this is highway robbery!

Here’s what they do. If you don’t pay the full amount off at the end of the 3 months, they don’t charge you interest on the remaining outstanding balance, they charge you interest on the FULL amount you paid for the product.

THAT to me is a COMPLETE RIP OFF.

It gets better.

When I tried to call to complain, I had nothing but problems.

1. First Future Shop’s customer service number 1-800-663-2275 voice mail system is terrible. None of the options would allow me to speak to a live person, so I had to start pressing whatever was there to get a live person. When I tried to get them to get me to someone to help me, I was told they couldn’t.And by the way, their site sucks. I’ve tried to get around Future Shop’s site before & it was a nightmare in my opinion.
2. I called the Future Shop store in Windsor, Ontario & asked for the head office number. They said they didn’t have it & gave me the customer service number. I told them how pissed off I was & how that number is terrible & not easy to use. The floor manager who was at least nice & competent, took my info, called, found out the extensions I needed to press, called me back & gave them to me. He also gave me the e-mail address service@futureshop.com. He said I could complain there so I e-mailed them asking for their head office number.
3. They responded to my e-mail & gave me run around telling me to call the customer service number. The guy Luke told me what to press, but of course gave me the wrong extensions. It’s NOT 1, 5, it’s what the floor manager at the store level gave me, 1, 1, 5.
4. I call the customer service line again thinking this time someone is actually going to help me. I spoke to someone named Robert. He wanted to transfer me over to HSBC, & I told him NO, I am NOT going to let Future Shop pass the buck.HSBC is the financial institution that is ripping the customers of Future Shop off, BUT Future Shop is the one who chose HSBC. If Future Shop wants me to speak to their bank, that’s only to pass the buck so THEY don’t have to take responsibility for their decision to go with HSBS who offers this terrible 3 month payment program. I didn’t purchase from HSBC, I purchased from FUTURE SHOP!

   Of course we know what HSBC will say, they will say that’s the payment plan I chose & there’s nothing they can do about it.

   This is exactly what Robert said to me on the phone, that this is what the contract stated & I should have read it before I signed it.

   No one takes the time to read long legal contracts when they are about to purchase something from Future Shop, they rely upon the staff to give them the correct information. I also relied upon my previous buying experience with Future Shop, & my common sense about how every other financial institution charges you when you get a loan from them.

   I was NEVER EVER told that if I didn’t pay off the full amount, I would be charged interest on the FULL amount of the purchase even if there was only $1 left owing. I was just told if I didn’t pay it off at the end of 3 months, there would be high interest. Of course it’s assumed that’s ONLY on the balance owing!

   I’m not about to pay $25 interest on an outstanding balance of $80 or $40. That is a ROYAL RIP OFF & they know it.

   Robert puts me on hold, goes to speak to his manager & guess what. The manager refuses to talk to me. Robert says the manager(s) are too busy with other customers to deal with me.

   Can you believe that?

   I’ve given Future Shop my devoted business for years now & this is how they treat me???

   Robert also said he had no information about their head office.

   You know what kind of companies refuse to give you the number to their head office? The kind that RIPS CUSTOMERS OFF.

   If they weren’t conducting unethical business, they would have no problem at all giving out that number to customers. They wouldn’t be hiding.

5. So my next step was to call Best Buy since we all know they purchased Future Shop several years ago.There I got much better service (typical). The voice prompts were easy to follow, & I got a customer service rep almost immediately.

   Unfortunately he too told me they aren’t given any head office information, he only has an address.

   Even though this was at last more than I got from Future Shop, anyone who knows anything about how businesses run, know that when they make you snail mail a letter to them, they are doing this in hopes you will just go away. If they actually cared, they would at the very least provide you with an e-mail address.

   So I’m going to write to Best Buy Headquarters & complain, but I can tell you right now that I’m NEVER going to purchase from Future Shop or Best Buy again. They just lost my business for as long as I buy products, & I hope to god I get my laptop fixed, because now it’s completely dead & I only purchased it back in August of 2009, so it’s only 3 months old.

Michelle

Room 225-226, Block B, Focal Industrial Centre
21 Man Lok street
Hung Hom, Kowloon
Hong Kong

I personally have never shopped at Deal Extreme, but I read this thread about Deal Extreme, & thought that if that many people have had such terrible customer service, their products always break, they don’t give refunds when they say they will, etc. then people need to be aware of this before they decide whether to buy from Deal Extreme.

Michelle