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

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Daithi

This might be worth letting your State Attorney General know about. It looks like a scam/fraud and they might take an interest.

Cherrypal is in California, so I'm in the process of filing a complaint with the CA Attorney General. And since I'm not in CA, this scam was conducted across state lines. Right now I'm trying to see if I can get a federal investigation started. I think wire fraud might cover it.

[NormHart]

Not sure this will work but...

http://sanjose.bbb.org/Business-Repo...pal-1000000896

Report gives Cherrypal an "F" rating.

The Better Business Bureau gives Cherrypal's address as
2134 Old Middlefield Wy
Mountain View, CA 94043
Tel: (650) 515-3570

Looking at Google Maps indicates this is a small warehouse with multiple renters.


Cherrypal's web site gives their address as
712 Sutter Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94303
Info: US +1 (650) 319-8300

Which, looking at Google Maps, is an apartment building.

You can contact
Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce
122 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Tel: 650-324-3121 | Fax: 650-324-1215
Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. PST
Email our staff: info@paloaltochamber.com


Office of the City Attorney
City Hall, 8th Floor
250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Phone: 650-329-2171
Fax: 650-329-2646
city.attorney@cityofpaloalto.org

Those are some places to start.

[bookratt]

Found this info on the CA Secretary of State site. If you file suit, this is your name and address to send stuff to - "agent of service":

-------------------------------------------------------------

DISCLAIMER: The information displayed here is current as of JAN 08, 2010 and is updated weekly. It is not a complete or certified record of the Corporation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corporation

CHERRYPAL, INC.
Number: C3105423 Date Filed: 8/14/2008 Status: active
Jurisdiction: DELAWARE
Address
2134 OLD MIDDLEFIELD WAY STE G
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94043

Agent for Service of Process
JONATHAN M KAPLAN
2502 STEVENS CREEK BLVD
SAN JOSE, CA 95128

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blank fields indicate the information is not contained in the computer file.

If the status of the corporation is "Surrender", the agent for service of process is automatically revoked. Please refer to California Corporations Code Section 2114 for information relating to service upon corporations that have surrendered.

[Robotech_Master]

Today I got a "cease and desist notice" from Max Seybold. He doesn't seem very happy about the coverage in TeleRead.

Guess I'm not going to be getting those review units after all.

[time4mercy]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Today I got a "cease and desist notice" from Max Seybold. He doesn't seem very happy about the coverage in TeleRead.

Guess I'm not going to be getting those review units after all.

I think that's frakking HILARIOUS.

That guy's got some huevos.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Today I got a "cease and desist notice" from Max Seybold. He doesn't seem very happy about the coverage in TeleRead.

Guess I'm not going to be getting those review units after all.

Cease and desist what? "Quit telling people that nobody's received their orders yet, and there's been a swarm of refunds from several different payment processing agencies?"

[KarateMonkey]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Today I got a "cease and desist notice" from Max Seybold. He doesn't seem very happy about the coverage in TeleRead.

Guess I'm not going to be getting those review units after all.

Was it just Max writing to tell you to stop, or was a lawyer involved too?

When will you be writing about it on Teleread?

ETA. This actually makes me more willing to believe that they're just comically incompetent. Seriously, if this were a scam to collect money from people who aren't persistent about bugging them for refunds why would he write a threatening letter to the last guy who seems willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Robotech_Master]

It was just Max. No lawyers involved yet (which means it's not actually a real cease-and-desist order—just Max writing "CEASE AND DESIST" in all capital letters).

As for when/whether we will write about it on TR, we will just have to see how it shakes out, whether Max makes any further moves.

It's funny: I had been planning on covering it whenever anyone actually did receive an Africa, figuring that the positive press might do some good. But now my enthusiasm for writing anything else about that company has cooled considerably.

[KarateMonkey]

Today we also got an E-mail from Cherrypal:

The comments for your order are

Unfortunately we had to cancel your order. The credit card processing company confirmed our refund request Friday 1/8/2009 and confirmed all impacted transactions would be processed latest by Wednesday 1/13/2009. We have learned from several customers that this didn't happen. We will do our best to follow up with the credit card processing company and expedite the refund process. If you would like to re-order we recommend that you wait until the refund transaction has been successfully completed. We apologize for the inconvenience. We will have a new credit card processing gateway operational early next week and will provide re-order instructions by email. Thank you for choosing Cherrypal.



Your order has been updated to the following status.

New status: Cancelled

Please reply to this email if you have any questions.

Reading the comment thread on the last cherrypal arcticle in TR, at least one other person got it.

Our order was originally canceled on the 5th, and we already got our money back last week by disputing the charge with our credit union. So this is yet one more example of Cherrypal not knowing its ass from a hole in the ground.

I do wonder though if it's a little more than coincidence that they're sending out a wave of E-mails telling people their order was canceled more than a week ago, and we don't know why you haven't got your money back, and telling Teleread to "CEASE AND DESIST".

[Yomero]

Originally Posted by KarateMonkey

Today we also got an E-mail from Cherrypal:



Reading the comment thread on the last cherrypal arcticle in TR, at least one other person got it.

Our order was originally canceled on the 5th, and we already got our money back last week by disputing the charge with our credit union. So this is yet one more example of Cherrypal not knowing its ass from a hole in the ground.

I do wonder though if it's a little more than coincidence that they're sending out a wave of E-mails telling people their order was canceled more than a week ago, and we don't know why you haven't got your money back, and telling Teleread to "CEASE AND DESIST".

I still haven't found anybody who has actually receive it. Some orders were made since early December last year and the only one that has received a tracking number was atari, but he has not actually received it yet.

Atari tracking

The reallity is that 6 weeks have passed and not one single Cherrypal Africa has been anounced to arrive to anybody.

Are the people who received them shy and they do not want to publish anything about it?

We'll see in a couple of days, but I am not very optimistic about this. Just as a note, my order has not been cancelled but they have not received any payment yet.

[Robotech_Master]

Folks may have noticed that all the articles mentioning Cherrypal are gone from TeleRead.

I did not ask my editor to do this, and in fact I really wish he hadn't. He did it not out of any fear of legal repercussions from Max Seybold—I did not write one single thing in any of those articles that would have been legally actionable, if he even actually had the ability to take action which I doubt—but just because I was worried about it. I really, really hate that this gives us the appearance of rolling over.

But it's not a total loss. After all, it also removes the only detailed positive press that Cherrypal's Africa has ever gotten. It removes my interviews with Max, of which I was rather proud at the time, in which I drew him out into explaining the Africa concept in a way much, much better than he ever managed on the website. Max really doesn't know how much he lost by getting that stuff taken down. And, of course, this discussion thread still remains for people to find in Google. Max might have wiped out a little of the negative press about his company, but he also wiped out almost all of the positive press.

Up until I got that email, I was still ready to believe in Cherrypal. I was still holding onto the slender thread of hope that there were just some minor shipping problems and everyone would get their Africas eventually—even me. I was ready to give the Africa (and Bing) a great review, and as much benefit of the doubt as I could.

Now, of course, I won't be doing that. It will, in fact, be a cold day in Hell before TeleRead publishes any more articles featuring the Cherrypal. And I will be quite happy to warn people off where I would previously only have cautioned them.

And if I don't get my review units after all, well, I probably wouldn't have gotten them anyway.

Don't do business with Cherrypal.

[Yomero]

I was just checking the Norhtec site and their edubook and I couldn't avoid to compare the presentations on the sites between cherrypal and norhtec. It's easy to tell from that, which one is for real and which one could not be. On norhtec you are offered the Xcore86 system, if you want it, for testing; the processor, the board and the power supply...although it will cost more than 100 USDlls, even when the main board is only one chip (1GHz system against the 400 MHz of cherrypal).

To me it is a shame that what cherrypal offered is not likely to be true. It would be nice to have a working and useful netbook under 100 USDlls.

[Daithi]

Why were articles mentioning Cherrypal taken down at Teleread? It seemed to me that they provided a warning to others that the company was committing a scam. Removing this information removes the valuable warnings. These warnings are sorely needed. After all, if you go to Google news and type in "Cherrypal" the only thing you will see is several articles from reputable sources announcing Cherrypal's remarkable $99 netbook. The only places mentioning that this was a scam is Mobileread, Teleread, and one sentence in Wikipedia that says it might be a scam.

[Robotech_Master]

Dalthi, I explained why in the message two posts above yours.

I'm not happy about it either, but it wasn't my decision.

[lilac_jive]

We could engage in some google bombing