I need some help.
Does anyone know anything about this company, Utopia Creations, Inc???
You can visit them at:
http://wwww.utopiapc.com
I ordered $11,000 worth of computers 5 weeks ago, they won't respond to emails, faxes, voice messages or live chats via
thier website's chat feature (it's always offline).
Their Merchant Account holding company "PaySystems.com" unexpectedly called me yesterday without my provoking or request (Nov. 12th, 2002) strangely asking about the order I'd placed thru Utopia Creations, Inc. over a month ago (a very interesting out-of-the-blue-call). They asked if I had received my order yet? I told them what I am going to tell you now...
All of Utopia's phone numbers are UNTRACEABLE through reverse
lookup (InfoSpace.com, etc.), their fax machine number is not real (VirtualFax thru eFax.com), they don't have a street address, it's a P.O. Box only.
Same P.O. Box for InterNIC WHOIS DNS reg lookup, another way to find who people are. Every time I call their non-800 number (now daily) I get the same voice message, "We're not available
right now! We're busy doing what we do best: Making Computers for you, our valued customer!"
Every time I send an email (about 27 now) it kicks back with 1 of 2 boiler-plate auto-responses;
<<<! This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:
The user(s) account is over quota.
User id: <utopiacreations@attbi.com>
Please reply to
postmaster@attbi.com if you feel this message
to be in error !>>>
... or I get this autoresponder email (about 17 of them over the weeks, Note the date on the email has never changed! Last email that I got yesterday (November 12th, 2002), is exactly
seven days over the time operations should have been mysteriously back in service). See 2 of 2 alternate autoresponse below:
<<<! Due to emergency circumstance beyond our control, Customer Service for UtopiaPC.com will be unavailable from 11/1/02 until exactly noon eastern time on 11/5/02.
Please bare with us during this unexpected difficulty or send us an email:
refunds@utopiapc.com if you wish to get a credit card refund. All refund requests are granted, but cannot be processed until or after 12:00 PM, on 11/5/02.
Please axccept our apologies for this inconvinience. Stay relaxed and be assured that we'll address any problems you're having during this most difficult time on or AFTER the date of 11/5/02.
During no other time than those specified in this notice, should you attempt to communicate with us.
Sincerely,
The Utopia PC Sales and Customer Service Team !>>>
Notice "Customer Service Team", it's only 1 guy, Jeremiah, and
possibly his wife, running this company, one dude with a P.O.
Box somewhere in Colorado (real location of company is unknown
or untraceable, PaySystems.com will not divulge if asked so
don’t bother). If you want to burn some money, send it to this
void and watch is magically vanish before your very eyes!
By the way, as it appears, I found out tonight that Utopia
Creations used to sell PC’s on eBay, but have since stopped
because their account was unexpectedly terminated! If you ever
have the opportunity to actually talk with the owner, ask him
why he doesn’t like PayPal anymore, (or more realistically, why
PayPal dropped UtopiaPC.com because eBay/PayPal doesn’t
appreciate scam-artists who leech the living blood out of their
customers.
Utopia Creation’s alleged falling out with PayPal
had something to do over 30 thousand dollars and a law suit
against them), or so I’ve read after giving them my money
(after the fact).
Never got a reason why my 11 thousand dollar order is now 30
days past due, no notices, no response, no real emails (besides
the autoresponders), nothing, zip, nadda, no UPS tracking
numbers like I had been promised, ZILCH! This is criminal.
Initially, UtopiaPC.com was very eager to sell their integration (gray/black market??) services, answering every email in order to convince me that they were the only company that could deliver all the systems I needed, and not to bother with Gateway or Dell because they are unfriendly, impersonal self-serving giants that don't give a rat's ass about anyone except bigger profits.
So he convinces me to give them last month's grocery, mortgage and car payment money to buy the PC's for my new LAN-party part-time business. They send me a couple of forms to sign, take my money and email a receipt. All clean and simple, right? Then I never hear from them again.
I the beginning... I was impressed by thier prices, with a minimum of 10 or more systems, they gave me a deep discount and tossed in, willy-nilly, any upgrade I wanted on the base system for free, (128 DDR Geforce 4 Ti's, 120 GB HDD's, ect..) I thought that was strange, giving hardware away so easily like that, hey but what the heck, these guys really are THE BEST!! ...or so I thought.
Cost-wise, they are the best I've found on earth, only problem is you never get anything for your money. This way they can upload just about any ridiculous price they want, not stupidly ridiculous, then people would think twise, but just enought so that it's plausible, enough in so much that people will fall for the scam hooki-line-and-sinker.
In the end, they weren’t sending you anything to begin with so what's the big deal with a few fake prices? Or are they fake? I still don't even know myself and I'm the one who shelled out the cash just to find out?!! One thing's for sure, them prices up there ain' no retail I've ever seen. Even the whoesalers guffaw when they see the price, "Must be stolen parts!"
Here’s one theory: You've heard of Warez? High-end, exact
duplicate software with COA's et. al., or the usual illegal
downloadz, backup CD's, hard loading, casual copyright
infrigment, flash-fxp, WinMX, AsianWarez.com, the whole
"software piracy" scene... We've all heard of that stuff. But
have you ever thought there might be such a thing as
"HardWarez?"
And what I mean by hardWAREZ, is Pirated hardware that is
manufactured by the high-end, oversea underground facilities
that churn out exact duplicates of various integrated circuits
like a counterfeit currency outfit. SoundBlaster Audigy cards,
nVidia GeForce cards, ATI Video cards, motherboards, yadda,
yadda...)
Would/could something like that really exist? Why I throw this
question out is because an associate and I were thinking that
this is the only way UtopiaPC.com could offer such a high-end
system for such a low-end price (and still make a profit!).
What we did was to systematically ran down the list of parts based on my associate's wholesale vendor list (IngramMicro, Synnex, Tech-Data, Merisel, etc.. with parts coming off PriceWatch.com's lowest day-to-day average to even it all out).
The best deal we could find, component-for-component, to match
Utopia PC's most "expensive" unit coming in at a whopping $499
was $613.82 (before shipping!) The Utopia system we used to
bench mark our bottom price was Model No. 'UtopiaXP 200+', or
see the exact parts list we used for our tests found at --->
http://www.utopiapc.com
but don't be tricked into buying one, you'll only end up waiting far longer than the "minimum 30 days or more build time..." due in part, they say because demand is so high, there's an apparent backlog of order coming in.
They tell you, expect 30 days for a system build, and another 5-10 business days for delivery! WTF?! Building a server takes me 5 hours or less, and I thought I was slow at that?! 45-days for a single PC!? They aren't being bult, they are being illegally dropshipped inside a container of blackmarket contraband from a clandestine location hidden somewhere in Hong Kong. No wonder it taks so long!
What I'm getting at is this. Here you've got a fully-loaded PC with all the trimmings (I ordered 17 of these puppies @$544 a piece shipped, so-called 10+ volume discount pirks) and nothing left out except a monitor [the lowdown spec list in case you havn't been to the site yet]:
AMD Athlon 2000+ CPU
Major/3rd 512 DDR 2100
Biostar or Asus MOBO
Geforce IV Ti 128 MB DDR Video
SB Audigy 5.1
3Com 10/100 PCI NIC
CD ROM 32x30x48 CD-RW
IBM Deskstar or Maxtor 60 GB 7200 HDD
350 Watt Case+fans (black case? Don't know, may never??)
56k .v92 PCI
Altec Lansing AVS 500 4.1 w/sub
3.5" Sony Floppy
Microsoft US 109 Keyboard
Microsoft Optical Intelli-mouse
Custom system software & quick start guide
Choice of Windows XP Professional
or Windows 2000 Professional Workstation
System is fully sourced, integrated, assembled & 48 HR burn-in, all for a lowly $499, guaranteed to best price on earth with 1 year, all inclusive labor warrenty and 3 year limited on parts.
UtopiaPC claims THEY ARE MAKING HUGE PROFITS!? HOW?! This was not possible in our real-world price testing, even with volume price breaks with all major wholesalers. The margin for profit simply isn't there. Unless of course, you're using overseas child-laborers and black-market counterfeit HardWarez components designed to act and behave just like the real thing but without the costs of 'the real thing.'
Would this sort of thing be possible? Or are these just the wonderings of a lunatic fringe who's minds have been so damaged by lack of response from the company which took all of their money and (apparently) ran!?
You be the judge. Personally, my judgment was skewered at the
time of purchase. I am the victim here, I am the one who was
suckered into thinking their bogus facade-website is raising a
new standard on the of future computer entrepreneurialship.
They even offered me a logoed T-shirt “…because your order is
so good!” 4.. 5, 6 weeks into it and still waiting. The stinkin’ shirt isn’t coming either, is it? I have already read the ResellerRatings.com review (1 guy) and it didn't seem such as bad company at the time, especially when they gave me every upgrade available at no charge. But 5 & 1/2 weeks and counting... Zero response from every attempt to get any answer whatsoever on anything about my order has failed utterly.
These people (person) have vanished with my money and my order, as it’s now becoming apparent, has also vanished! (or never really existed to begin with...)
Can you tell me how this company functions? Where do they get parts? How could they even be remotely be profitable when a copy of Widows XP Pro wholesale alone, costs like btwn $100.00 and $120.00 bucks? How can they keep ripping people off like this over and over and over again and keep getting away with it? If anyone can privately or publicly give me any inside info on
this seemingly-scam-run company, I and many others like myself
will be forever grateful for your insight!
But when when it comes out in the wash, all I really want from these assxoles is to know if I will ever get my computers or not. I hate being in limbo with nowhere to turn. And someone to talk to so I can why I have been absolutely ignored (I'm really starting to wonder if other people out there have had similar experiences with this fraudulently run outfit and if so, why the lack of info anywhere on the web or Google Search?).
So have I been had or what? I dunno, maybe I have. What do you think? Better yet, what do you know?
Disclaimer: Everything I've said here is true. If you don't belive me, risk some cash and place a so-called "order" with them (or try the cheaper method, just try getting an email reply). Perhaps they will reply back to you because you havn't sent them any money yet, but once you do, you will be put on an email blacklist database and you'll never hear from them again. They know which emails (newbie customers) to reply to, and which others (already-suckered) to delete or autorespond.
I'm was just thinking... I need to go create a fake Yahoo or
Hotmail account, send it off enquiring about a few systems, see
if I get a reply. That's something I havn't tried yet. I'm desprate to know where my eleven thousand dollars went and why I am waking up having wet myself in the night, drenched by a dread-gut feeling that is so right... that I've been cashed out and anally raped by a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic! (I'm told the owner is
"special" in that way).
Of course, since I had never ordered a system from UtopiaPC.com
before, and since I have YET to get anything in return after 5 and one half weeks of hellish mute-silence in trade for a new-found reason to smoke again, whorrying about my 11-G's of pure debt, (I know I'm pushing it here, always the optomist) but I may be wrong about these people in the end... given the fact that something really serious or tragic must have happened to the company or the crippled owner (conveniently AFTER hundreds of people, including myself had already paid for a component (or 17 full-blown Game Rigs in my case), at which we should all either hold tight, kneel and pray, or say fxxk it! and file for a class action suit against the baxtards (and other hardcore explitives not allowed here).
Sidenote: Is there any way someone can find out how long an
owner (Jeremiah*) has been renting a certain Post Office Box
address?
Insider Info: *(Jeremiah, Owner of Utopia Creations, Inc., refuses to give me his last name, goes under alias when you’re a new customer (how does he filter new from the already-suckered!?) and lucky enough to catch him online for instant chat session on his website, he goes under the name of "Patrick").
Am I grabbing at straws? Probably. And I shooting in the
dark? Perhaps. Am I blaming them too soon? I dunno, 5-10
weeks to get a reply on emails, phone calls and daily faxes?
They've never given me any room yet to say or prove otherwise.
It's all conjecture at this point because customer's like me are left with nothing but thin-air to work with, and not an ounce or hint or tiny smidgen of hope that you'll get anything in return, once the money transaction has concluded... once you've been left for dead, broke and anything in between.
Anyone spare 2 cents of advice?
PS: When U visit the site (
http://www.utopiapc.com ), please be away that you will be tempted to buy. Read the disclaimer, then watch out... Buyer beware... Okay, so what more can I say, I'm in hell, wanna join me?
You've been warned... Utopia Creations, Inc. is a scam. Or is it?
Linear Mode
