Cherrypal customer service: lies, ignored emails, and technical incompetence

[mediax]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

LET ME PUT IT THIS WAY:

This thread is in danger of being closed

[Velcro_SP]

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[Velcro_SP]

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[Velcro_SP]

I deleted all my comments at this site (I had already changed or deleted some of them) because I noticed persons elsewhere much later were repetitively linking to the thread, which I find to be combined with the title and content and inline advertisements a deliberate marketing of accusation and negativity. I didn't want my words to contribute to that.

I came with civil and straightforward intent, admittedly became negative myself, and regret that I furnished any hateful or unchivalrous comment. There was one comment that I privately apologized for.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Velcro_SP

Oh, I understood your comment, TGS: you said you wanted to hit me.

The website really shouldn't tolerate that kind of talk, but it does.

I told you that I can defend myself, and that that would be your mistake. That doesn't make me a tough talker.

I'll say I can defend myself when you say something like that but I don't go around in threads saying I'm tempted to hit this person and that, it's not my style.

And this rubbish where you say it's my behavior that makes you act so, is just that, rubbish.

I'm not scared of you in the least, TGS, and your cheap insult at the end makes you look bad, not me.

As much as it pains me to admit it it, you are probably right, in part at least. I have been out of order in the tone of my response to some of your posts. You are wrong on the particulars, but I accept that my overall tone has veered towards the unacceptable and I apologise for that - to you and to others who might have read them.

[KarateMonkey]

Originally Posted by KarateMonkey

My wife tried to order a Bing laptop from them a few weeks ago. A few days after she placed the order she got an E-mail with the subject line: "LIFESTYLE BRANDS SUGARROMANCE Customer Refund Notification". Sugarromance is skeezy looking dating website run by the same company as Cherrypal. When we ordered, at least, they were the ones doing the credit card processing.

Somehow the message made it through her spam filter. She opened it to find that, because they had neglected to charge us shipping, our order was being canceled, but if we would resubmit it they would include “something sweet”.

I’m sure you can imagine, alarm bells were ringing at this point. After a day with no refund in sight, she wrote back to ask when we could expect to get our money, and got a reply from Max Seybold saying that had been submitted to the credit card processor and should only be a day or two and it was out of his hands now.

After most of a week with no refund, no reply to further E-mails, or answer to phone calls we reported them to our bank and got our money back that way.

In the vain hope of bringing this back onto topic, I'll give an update on our experience thus far with Cherrypal. We E-mailed Cherrypal to let them know that we reported them to our bank and got our money back that way. That prompted an E-mail from Max saying he was sorry things had ended that way. A few weeks later , most of a month after we were supposed to get it, they refunded us our money. I told my credit union and stashed the money in my savings account for them to clean up.

Our consensus after all is said and done is that Cherrypal is probably not an intentional scam, but they're not ready for the big time, and even if the are sending computers out now, we wouldn't want to have to depend on them to be around to handle any problems that came up.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by Velcro_SP

You can join the cheap jabs at me, but somehow, I don't think you actually look like your cutesy avatar, Aceflor.

You're right, I am much cuter

This is of course a joke (to think I have to write this...)

Sorry if you felt offended, the pic was hilarious, I wish you could laugh about it too, it would help release the tension. But I apologize if your feelings were hurt by my post, I did not think you would take it that way.

Concerning the subject of this thread, for your information Velcro: the customers in the UK never got their money back and that was 2 years ago, so there is little hope now I guess.... ?
I think... no, correction, I hope that'll be my last post here, everything has been said.

[Blah...blah]

I was not looking for complaints about CherryPal when I found this thread. I was looking for solutions and improvements to adding features to my CherryPal. I find this whole thread rather distressing and disturbing. If I had read this thread prior to purchasing my CherryPal, I would not have bought one.

Since CherryPal appears to be unreliable as a distributor (and I seriously doubt any connection with sugarromance, as I've recieved the spams too). (Some spammer has obviously hacked CherryPal's address book.) I feel very uncomfortable with placing orders for more units from them.

I would like to know how to set up a decent yet inexpensive website for online sales? One that would be immune to most forms of hacking and safe for online purchases. What software would you suggest? Just kidding.
No, I think that would just be asking for disaster. How can one track who's paid, who's check bounced, bank fee's for rubber checks, charge-card fees, returned units, servicing repairs, shipping expenses? No thanks!

I think I've found the factory that makes the CherryPal and other inexpensive netbooks/notebooks. I'm also looking for alternative software to turn these devices into very useful tools not merely gadgets primarily for websurfing. I will be buying more and in bulk, but for local consumption not websales, these will be given to students who come to our classes to be used as part of the class material.

I'm in the process of setting up computer training classes for young students in our town located in a new third world country formerly known as the USA. The classes will be free and offered after school hours as a means to keep kids off the streets and away from drugs and trouble. Our schools dump the kids out into the neighborhoods between 2 and 3, Mom and Dad don't get home from work till 5 or 6. Where these children spend this unsupervised time is turning out to be a real disaster in our town, we have a serious drug problem, theft and delinquency issues. I and several other local business persons are trying to do something positive and these little CherryPal-like gadgets may be one of the solutions. We're also setting up to train in wood-working, welding, machining, electronics, arts/crafts, music, sewing. Some of this will be funded by local churches, some by local businesses but most will come from donations. The teachers are volunteers from existing businesses and local retirees. The point being..... we want our kids to have the chance to grow-up, learn something useful, get inspired to learn, stay in our town and be a functional part of our future. The alternative is to become a ghost-town has been like Detroit.

I'm only mentioning the above because every town needs doers! Every town is having this problem and largely, collectively, we are just throwing our futures away by letting someone else take charge of our children, i.e. public schools. Get involved, find something you can do for your town. Maybe later we can get together on means of supporting each others cause. Let's worry about those poor children in Africa, but we too, need to worry about our own children! What's that quote? Do not look for evil in other lands lest ye find purchase in your own house?

[Worldwalker]

You've got a double post there; you might want to delete (or at least edit to one line) one of them.

I would like to know how to set up a decent yet inexpensive website for online sales? One that would be immune to most forms of hacking and safe for online purchases. What software would you suggest? Just kidding.

No, I think that would just be asking for disaster. How can one track who's paid, who's check bounced, bank fee's for rubber checks, charge-card fees, returned units, servicing repairs, shipping expenses? No thanks!

Answering this seriously, the Yahoo Store works very well for a lot of people and small companies. I've never been very fond of it personally, but it works for a lot of people.

As for tracking who's paid, whose check bounced, etc., there's a legacy technology that works very well for a small company, and that doesn't expose any customer data on the Web: it's called a ledger. Yeah, the paper kind. They still work just fine. If Cherrypal has such problems with data security online, maybe what they need to do is go over to Staples, buy a ledger book (you can still get them) and a package of pens (quill pens are not mandatory), and start writing. Also a pack of index cards for customer data, and a box to put them in. A pain in the neck? Sure. But it beats sharing their customers' private data with every random hacker on the planet, and having people making fun of their company on MobileRead.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. A paper record system is far from perfect, but if their security situation is as people have said, it's good enough to keep the company going while they work on setting up something better. That's something people (including me) have a hard time realizing: Good-enough now is better than perfect later, because if you don't have something now you're not going to have a later to worry about.

[JerseyBiker]

Originally Posted by Blah...blah

I was not looking for complaints about CherryPal when I found this thread. I was looking for solutions and improvements to adding features to my CherryPal. I find this whole thread rather distressing and disturbing. If I had read this thread prior to purchasing my CherryPal, I would not have bought one.

It seems like they have a decent product but have a problem keeping up with the demand and they have terrible customer service. They shouldn't take orders that they cannot fill in a timely manner. There are probably better options out there for your kids. There are several schools in my area that buy laptop computers for their students. I assume they get big discounts for buying in bulk.

~eddie

[CherrypalAsia]

They did it again:


$100 netbook switches to Android

Cherrypal Asia and the “underwear crisis”



Their explanation for the issues:

The Cherrypal scam story

[DawnFalcon]

"The fact that we accept Western Union payments is supposedly already proof of attempted scam"

Yup. Like it or not, accepting card payments - and it's not expensive these days, far cheaper than Western Union - provides customers with piece of mind by allowing people to use card guarantees to ensure they won't be scammed. WU offers no such guarantee.

Cherrypal is a minor laptop reseller with a bad reputation, nothing else.

(And the China thing? You didn't do due diligence, and this bit you in the ass. Well, guess what - this is going to reflect on you, from now until forever since there are still quite a few people without units and given it took a MONTH for you to realise you'd been conned...)

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by CherrypalAsia

They did it again:


$100 netbook switches to Android

Cherrypal Asia and the “underwear crisis”



Their explanation for the issues:

The Cherrypal scam story

OK, I read the blog post, and it still sounds like a bunch of whining to me.

You didn't *have* to send a 'cease and desist' to Teleread. They were one of your first big supporters. If anything, this is what tarred you as a scammer in the first place. A letter with an explanation of what was going on and a promise to fix the problem, as well as a plea for patience, would have given you the breathing room to fix any problems you had with your distribution channel.

Instead, you resorted to legal intimidation, and a lot of people *still* don't have the machines they ordered. If they have anything at all, they have stripped down versions of what you originally sold them.

Maybe you're not a scammer, maybe you just don't have a clue.

Either way, I wouldn't buy anything from you and I'd recommend anyone else to stay away from you as well.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by khalleron

OK, I read the blog post, and it still sounds like a bunch of whining to me.

I think you're confusing the poster with the company. I don't think the 2 are related.

[disney_mommy]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I think you're confusing the poster with the company. I don't think the 2 are related.

I think they are. The username says it all.