HEADS UP! FRAUD ALERT! Buyer Beware

[madcat209]

I ordered an AMD Duron 900 MHz CPU for $26 from l-Buy.com on 10/5/02

On 10/7/02 I received TWO emails from FedEx.

The first one said ESTORETOGO.COM shipped out my order, and the tracking # was: such and such.

two hours later, I got another email from FedEx saying ESTORETOGO.COM deleted my order.

I NEVER issued an order cancellation.
They conveniently stopped answering their phones after the last email was sent.

I called up in the afternoon to L-buy and the customer support lady first said there was a problem with the order, then after holding for 5 minutes - she came back and said nothing was wrong and the order was being shipped out.

It was interesting to note ESTORETOGO was shipping the order and not L-buy.

The whole point of me going to l-buy was because it was in New York City, very close to Northeast NJ. Why the fuc* are they shipping it from California????

So I did some investigative work:

L-buy.com is listed under the BBB as:
LOW BUY COMPUTERS
901-11 pine Grove Street
Jamaica, NY 11435

The street # does not exist.
However that is what is listed in Pricewatch as well.


Now I did more investigative work:
I did a whois on:
l-buy.com
z-buy.com
cnetpc.com
estoretogo.com

And I got these:

Registrant:
Frank (L-BUY-DOM)
109-11 Pine Grove Street
JAMAICA
NY,11435
US

Domain Name: L-BUY.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
SUKHDEO, SEWNARINE (SSV1011) sales@SECUREPAYEE.COM
Low Buy Price Computer, Inc.
109-11 Pine Grove Street
Jamaica, NY 11435
US
718-785-2976 718-785-2976 718-785-2976

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.195
NS2.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.222
****************************************

Registrant:
ESTORETOGO.COM, Inc (ESTORETOGO2-DOM)
30075 Abern St.
Union City, CA 94587
US

Domain Name: ESTORETOGO.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Cheah, Ben (HNQ348) sales@ESTORETOGO.COM
ESTORETOGO.COM, Inc.
30075 Ahern St.
Union City, CA 94587
US
866-621-5118

Record expires on 11-Apr-2004.
Record created on 11-Apr-2001.
Database last updated on 8-Oct-2002 09:55:39 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.195
NS2.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.222

********************************************

Registrant:
CNETPC.COM, INC. (PEKXICZDKD)
315 Harmon Cove Tower
Secaucus, NJ 07094
US

Domain Name: CNETPC.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Zhang, Deming (BSBJHUILYI) sales@CNETPC.COM

315 Harmon Cove Tower
Secaucus, NJ 07094
US
877-542-3792 201-559-1024

Record expires on 29-Apr-2003.
Record created on 25-May-2002.
Database last updated on 8-Oct-2002 09:56:28 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.195
NS2.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.222


*************************************

Registrant:
Z-BUY.COM, Inc. (Z-BUY3-DOM)
210 Meadowlands Pkwy.
Secaucus, NJ 07094
US

Domain Name: Z-BUY.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Koh, Fong (FFK97) sales@Z-BUY.COM
Z-BUY.COM, Inc.
210 Meadowlands Pkwy.
Secaucus, NJ 07094
US
888-577-9289

Record expires on 13-Apr-2003.
Record created on 13-Apr-2001.
Database last updated on 8-Oct-2002 09:56:48 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.195
NS2.SECUREPAYEE.COM 160.79.101.222

*****************************


what pissed me off more was that L-buy.com charged me NJ sales tax!!!!!!!! they're in New York and shipping the product out of California and charging me NJ sales tax! So unless they want the IRS up their a$$, they must have a NJ business presence.

Cnetpc.com looks like its the NJ division of their shady business operation.

Fong Koh - Z-buy.com
SEWNARINE SUKHDEO - L-Buy.com
Ben Cheah - Estoretogo.com
Deming Zhang - Cnetpc

Those are the 4 administrative contacts for their respective businesses.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened to my $30.04 for the AMD Duron 900 MHz CPU.

They cancelled my order without telling me what was going on.

If they do not respond today, the BBB will be informed of this. I suggest you contact the BBB regarding your experiences with the stores even if they're not members of the BBB (and contact Pricewatch, Pricegrabber, etc) - bring on the heat. I'm sick and tired of buying stuff from Pricewatch expecting decent service only to find a shady operation at the other end.

[madcat209]

UPDATE:
I called up L-Buy.com at 10:16AM EST and the customer support lady said that it might have been too late for the store to ship out the product via FedEx so the tracking # was deleted - not the order itself.

Does this sound like BS?

[seversphere]

very peculiar. I got an email recently (sept 30th) from cnetpc rma that was 197k in size and said subjext: meeting notice but it was blank and had no attachment. I sent a reply asking how they got my email and wtf was their email to me about. Still no answer but just thought I'd let you know.

My biggest concern is how my email got on their list. I've never even visited anything related to those 4 stores.


I've gotten something like this before -where the email size was big but nothing was in it- from some scam reseller and I promptly berated them for having my email. WTF is going on. It's my hotmail addy btw

[madcat209]

it was most likely a virus - Hotmail deletes Viruses but lists the attachment size (I think)

[seversphere]

thanks for the info, makes more sense now.

[madcat209]

OK update:

Turns out ESTORETOGO shipped it out too late so they had to delete their FedEx tracking #, NOT the order.

After an angry fax and a telephone call, L-Buy shipped it out of their Secaucus Store (either CnetPc or Z-buy or something) and I got it the next day.

Their automated e-mail program needs a LOT of work, and their site needs total revamping.

But overall the AMD Duron 900 MHz is working "well" - the mobo that I had might be flaky but everytime I go into the Award BIOS, it crashes. It will run for hours w/o problems in DOS but as soon as you go into the BIOS, it freezes up.

I don't think its the CPU that's bad (they sent me an AMD Duron 900, that as far as I could tell, was unused! - no signs of thermal compound use or any scratches)

[georgex]

L-Buy screwed me too! When I first ordered the RAM I got a reply saying ill recieve an email in a 3 days after the order processes with tracking number. I just Paid for 3 day FEDEX, Now im a liitle ticked. There Order status page doesnt even work. 5 days later I call and they say it was sent that day. The 8th day it shows up at the door. In Pricewatch they had the Samsung DDR 3200 listed as the newest release( faster TinyBGA chips). Instead they sent me some old PC2700 CAS 2.5 Samsung that runs PC3200@ CAS3 in TSOPII chips. Now they want %25 restocking fees, SCREW L-BUY. I'LL TAKE IT TO MASTERCARD YOU PRICKS AND CHARGEBACK.