Monarchcomputer using customers money as a float, anyone have recent experince

Status
Not open for further replies.

hardwarephreak

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 13, 2002
Messages
1,283
Look, this thread by its very nature is about a difficult subject, but I hope we can keep it civil becuase I think something very serious is happening over at Monarch.
I have recently noticed quite a few similar posts in several of the forums I frequent, and lately the same thing has been being reiterated over at reseller ratings. The charge: Monarch accepts payment immediately and then sits on your money for an absurdly long time before giving a refund. This has personally happened to me TWICE. I gave them a fair shake, a second chance, and it happened again. I have personally spoken (face to face) with at least 5 people that have had similar experiences at a LAN here recently.

Reseller ratings had this notice up not to long ago:
9/27/2006: We have detected and removed 37 fabricated "Very Satisfied" reviews for this store which were submitted between 9/8 and 9/23. The party responsible for submitting those reviews is unknown. This note will disappear after 30 days.

The Monarch Rep has walked out at OCFourms.

Here are two comments that seem to reiterate the same point:

I will chime in with a completely unsubstantiated claim, back by experience with other businesses. Again, this is a plausible guess. Here's what I have seen with similar scenarios, when an organization goes from great to questionable in a short period of time. Let me restate that these are unsubstantiaed claims and merely a guess.

All the signs point to serious financial troubles. Most likely, they're over-extended on credit or owe suppliers some big bucks; or, there's some mismanagement going on and funds aren't accounted for - I've seen this time and time again with private family businesses. They may have expanded quickly, experienced excellent growth, and can't afford to pay their creditors on time. At any rate, the company is short on cash. Assests may be in the millions, but they're barely liquid as an organization. This funnels down to every aspect of the business, from customer service to shipping to product availability.

I'm making this deduction based on the sudden downturn in customer satisfaction at Monarch, and the fact that most complaints are related to very delayed shipping and the inability of the company to refund money. It's not that they don't want to - it's that they don't have the resources to do so. The smoking gun, to me, is that they're using customer's money as float - in essence, a free loan for an extended period of time. This catch-up game almost never works unless an outside infusion of cash is made available or re-financing takes place.

When a company is having a hard time refunding customer's money or is holding customer funds for an extended period of time, things are bad. The other scenario here is that their customer service department suddenly became incompetent overnight - this is unlikely. Again, there could be some management and control issues not related to finances, but all th signs point to financial trouble. I'm sure these are great people who are trying to do their best, but the wheels are coming off the train right now. The number of chargebacks alone must be making the CC companies think twice about their contract.

And the other:

"Monarch has started in on a very negative trend of "floating" with the consumer's money.

Just one year ago, I would have recommended to anyone to purchase from Monarch. Indeed I made a number of purchases from them, and considered myself one of their biggest fans. This encouraged me to keep an extra close eye on all their offerings, advertisements and sales.

Unfortunately, I got caught up in something that I should have had the foresight to see was coming. In the last 2 months (since early Aug 2006), Monarch has had a TON of clearance sales, or extra good sales, on items that would otherwise cost quite a bit more at other vendors. I usually obsess over checking prices with other places. I had started to question how and why Monarch was able to dump all of these products at such low prices...

I should have paid more heed to my own observations. I ordered two graphics cards at ridiculously low prices from Monarch on 25 Aug. A few days later, Monarch emailed me to say that THEY were cancelling the order because of a lack of available stock. OK, fine, it was out of stock. Sort of silly to charge a person's credit card immediately on an item they neither have in stock nor are able to ever replenish stock with ...

Well, the email stated I would receive a full refund on the entire order that they had cancelled. This would occur within 30 days.

45+ days later ... nothing. No refund. No attempt on my part to contact the company has been successful. I called them -- and you get to leave a voice mail message. I emailed them: No response. I used their web form twice, which it states receives a response within 24 hours: No response. I don't know what the purpose is of having a web form if the business never responds to the entries on that form...

Anyway, as I have continued to watch the "sales" roll in to my inbox during Sept. and now October ... sometimes 2 or 3 clearances announces in the same week ... I was like -- WOW, I get it -- they are doing this to lots of people. They are charging our cards right away, on stock they do not have, and then they float on our money to pay their bills for 30-60 days. This is normally a very bad sign for the health of a company. I hope their doors remain open long enough for me to be able to obtain a refund. My current burn is for $86.57. At this point I do not know if I will ever see it back."

I posted those two comments because these two people seem to have a better grasp of the financial aspects of the situation than most everyday hardware forum posters. Since this is dedicated to computers and gadgets I thought it most appropriate to start a thread here.

Please, again, no bashing or flaming, just a discussion about peoples experiences. Most people only post when they have had a negative experience, that's just human nature. In business they tell you that a satisfied customer may tell one or two people. A dissatisfied customer will tell at least 10. So there is bound to be more people willing to gripe about their problems, but I think something bad is going on over there, and I want to save some people the hassle if it is a bigger problem than just a few isloated incidents.

Edit: There is also a thread over at Anandtech that states that the Georgia Gov.Sonny Perdue's Office Of Consumer Affairs is "Investigating Numerous Complaints, and may take further action soon."(IE: Restraining Order/Shut-Down)

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=40&threadid=1932843

The mods over there have posted an addendum to the OPs post, that the thread CAN be useful if everyone stays civil, and I hope the mods here will help keep this thing in check, as there are a lot of people who can't afford this type of behavior that Monarch has been exhibiting lately.
 
Something is going on with monarch. I too have had issues with them and it sucks to deal with them or should I say not be able to deal with them because they do not respond to email or ans phones.

There was a thread in the hot deals section about monarch and hardOCP not having adverts for them anymore but that thread was deleted, not just locked.

I have seen the threads over at oc forums which are highly entertaining plus monarch is using different handles (see resellerratings forum). Monarch is saying they are innocent with the 37 reviews at RR but it is now clear to me that they are lying due to them using different handles on forums to gain support for them.
 
They have great deals on hardware, but the support after the sale is what seems to be sorely lacking. It just seems like things are going from bad to worse. I always wondered why it took them over thirty days to refund, many people having to resort to calling their CC company and disputing the charges. Then I started seeing tons of people whose situations had the same MO. It sucks to see a company fall apart like this...to me it seems like poor management, or company policies put in place by management that are not really desiged to help satisfy the customer.
 
I am going to allow this thread because I think it is something that needs to be openly discussed. BUT HEAR THIS. Anyone and everyone that decides to call names or rant, or act in a way that is other than proper and civil will be banned permanently. So if you have something to say, I suggest you put on your daddy's shoes and act like a grown up. Childishness will get you banned.
 
I feel sorry for them, as I understand business is hard, and I've always enjoyed my experiences with them. But these practices are unexcuseable.

I think Kyle's comments above as well as the sudden disappearance of Monarch ads and the deletion of the thread discussing this fact are likely indicators that HardOCP wasn't getting paid by Monarch either. Things go from bad to worse when a company is in trouble like this. The apparently false resellerratings don't help the situation, and reek of a desperate attempt to try to remedy a bad situation.

Please keep in mind that Monarch employees are likely not to blame here. They are probably being laid off- or worse- not being paid for their work. Again, assuming all the rumors are true, the major mistake here is management over-extending the company and not having enough foresight to slow down a bit once warning signs started to pop up.

Good luck to Monarch, I hope you pull out of this. However I would advise buyers to stay away from them for the time being.
 
This is really unfortunate. They have always been a pretty big name. I've never personally dealt with them, but I have seen some of their very good deals. And I've heard friends talk about them before.

I, as well, hope they can pull outta this. The computer industry, especially sales (and online at that!), is a tricky field to be in.
 
I hate to see Monarch going downhill. I have made several of my purchases (MB, CPU, Videocard, Ram, HDs) from them and have recommended them to friends in the past. I haven't purchased anything in about a year from them and a friend/coworker bought his MB/CPU from them about 6-7 months ago without issue.

I haven't looked at any of the OCForums posts concerning Monarch and this situation.

PCPER.com (aka AMDMB.com) still has them on their forums there and a new rep posted in their hot deals sections (although the last post was on 10/17/06).

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=428965

I'm pretty wary of making any additional purchases from them for now. I think it will be a hard road for them to regain the trust of the community. If they cannot regain their customers, then I really don't see how they can recover from all this. I'd hate to see a loss of competition in this area. When I lived in San Diego, Monarch was the only tax free store with prices similar to or below that of Newegg and ZipZoomFly which charge tax in CA.
 
hmmmm, feel bad for the customers who have gotten caught up in this. Hope everybody gets their money back. Just read through the reseller ratings and most of the recent comments have a common theme.
 
This really saddens me, as they just had a contest on the Hot Deals forum and I won, and they gave me some really cool stuff.
But if any of the things you are claiming to be true are true, then it could mean Monarch is about to lose its throne.
 
I had a similar situation when the 7900 series was launched in March of this year. I ordered a EVGA 7900GT CO for a not the best price but it was instock, verified with a phone call. My bank account was charged immediately and days later still no word on shipment. I called and was told that they were out of stock even though the web site still showed instock. I canceled my order and was told that I would receive a refund in about 30 days. I called to notify them that unless they were paying interest on these funds that this is unacceptable for services not rendered. After a week or so of e-mails and phone calls I contacted my banks fraud department and lo and behold my money was back in my account the next day.

I would be curious to see if they are commiting any accounting fraud by not recording cash received for services not provided as a liability (unearned revenue). If they are a public company all anyone should have to do is file a request for their financial statements and look for unearned revenue in the current liabilities portion of their balance sheet along with an audit of their revenue recognition practices. This should show with out a doubt, assuming GAAP is followed, if they are using customers money to "float" the company.
 
i just ordered a 7950gt from them a few days ago for a damn good price. FedEx says nov1 and i hope everything is good. I always wondered why they charged $35 bucks for stuff that should come free like (like customer service/return policy). I have ordered in the past from them without any probs so hopefully this will be a continuation.
 
strikeout said:
i just ordered a 7950gt from them a few days ago for a damn good price. FedEx says nov1 and i hope everything is good. I always wondered why they charged $35 bucks for stuff that should come free like (like customer service/return policy). I have ordered in the past from them without any probs so hopefully this will be a continuation.

Please let us know how things go.
 
fedex dropped it off today. I guess for me it can be a worst case scenario. A clearance PNY 7950gt from monarch. So far things are looking good. Next post will be from my rig(using mac right now). Im not gonna OC but i am gonna try to put a AC silencer on it. If all goes well it will a good $240 shipped well spent.

I really want to see monarch succeed. Im tired of newegg and their damn CA tax. Tired of their damn UPS shipping. Tired of them in general. We need someone based out of cali to offset newegg.

*just got done playing some CS:S and FEAR Combat on my new card/2007. Looks damn good and smooth. I'll do some benches later on. Right now off hand, I thought that a bigger monitor(2007 from generic 17") would kill my fps. Now with the card its like pushing pixels and not breaking a sweat.
 
strikeout said:
fedex dropped it off today. I guess for me it can be a worst case scenario. A clearance PNY 7950gt from monarch. So far things are looking good. Next post will be from my rig(using mac right now). Im not gonna OC but i am gonna try to put a AC silencer on it. If all goes well it will a good $240 shipped well spent.

I really want to see monarch succeed. Im tired of newegg and their damn CA tax. Tired of their damn UPS shipping. Tired of them in general. We need someone based out of cali to offset newegg.

*just got done playing some CS:S and FEAR Combat on my new card/2007. Looks damn good and smooth. I'll do some benches later on. Right now off hand, I thought that a bigger monitor(2007 from generic 17") would kill my fps. Now with the card its like pushing pixels and not breaking a sweat.


lol. Your bashing a well known, VERY highly regarded company for following tax laws? And they ship fedex shipping too, ya know?
 
hardwarephreak said:
They have great deals on hardware, but the support after the sale is what seems to be sorely lacking. It just seems like things are going from bad to worse. I always wondered why it took them over thirty days to refund, many people having to resort to calling their CC company and disputing the charges. Then I started seeing tons of people whose situations had the same MO. It sucks to see a company fall apart like this...to me it seems like poor management, or company policies put in place by management that are not really desiged to help satisfy the customer.
ive had GREAT support from them! I RMAed a few things to them and they fedex overnighted them without me asking. they also bumped me up from a 7900gt to a 7950GT for free :). Ive had great experiences with them.

Also, no california tax :) unlike newegg :(. Thats why i go to monarch before newegg whenever i want to buy something expensive.
 
jcll2002 said:
Also, no california tax :) unlike newegg :(. Thats why i go to monarch before newegg whenever i want to buy something expensive.


Isnt that highly illegal? Or maybe they just pay the tax for you in order to have something over Newegg. Maybe thats why they are in financial trouble. They have all these California buyers that they are having to pay hefty tax for. Or the IRS cracked down on them for not charging tax to Cali people.. Hmm...
 
Astrogiblet said:
Isnt that highly illegal? Or maybe they just pay the tax for you in order to have something over Newegg. Maybe thats why they are in financial trouble. They have all these California buyers that they are having to pay hefty tax for. Or the IRS cracked down on them for not charging tax to Cali people.. Hmm...


Californians pay tax for Newegg because thats where their warehouse/business is situated (Cali). Same goes for Monarch. You pay tax if you are shipping a Monarch product to Gerogia (i think thats where they are located?). I pay tax for products purchased from Dell's website because they have stores in my state.

Regardless, if a business has a physical entity within your state then expect to pay tax.
 
synergyo1 said:
Californians pay tax for Newegg because thats where their warehouse/business is situated (Cali). Same goes for Monarch. You pay tax if you are shipping a Monarch product to Gerogia (i think thats where they are located?). I pay tax for products purchased from Dell's website because they have stores in my state.

Regardless, if a business has a physical entity within your state then expect to pay tax.
correct
 
synergyo1 said:
Californians pay tax for Newegg because thats where their warehouse/business is situated (Cali). Same goes for Monarch. You pay tax if you are shipping a Monarch product to Gerogia (i think thats where they are located?). I pay tax for products purchased from Dell's website because they have stores in my state.

Regardless, if a business has a physical entity within your state then expect to pay tax.


Yea, I knew this. For some reason I thought he said monarch was in cali and he still didnt pay cali tax.
 
My last purchase at Monarch was a PSU. It showed as being stock and they immediately charged my credit card. When it didn't arrive after about ten days I sent Monarch an email. No response. So I sent another email. Again no response. A few days later my PSU showed up, but it took about two weeks.
 
synergyo1 said:
Californians pay tax for Newegg because thats where their warehouse/business is situated (Cali). Same goes for Monarch. You pay tax if you are shipping a Monarch product to Gerogia (i think thats where they are located?). I pay tax for products purchased from Dell's website because they have stores in my state.

Regardless, if a business has a physical entity within your state then expect to pay tax.
True, dat. There's some kind of "minimum presence" requirement for a business to have to collect sales tax in a state. That doesn't mean only just where the headquarters or warehouses is located. When you buy from outpost.com, you pay sales tax on orders from any state where they have a B&M Fry's.

For the record, California income tax forms "require" you to report out-of-state internet purchases on which you did not pay CA state sales tax. You are then supposed to calculate this into your return so you can pay CA state tax on said purchases. Will you get busted (audited) if you don't? I'm by no means a tax expert, but at this stage of the game, I don't think they have the resources to determine that you didn't voluntarily report this info.

But I do seem to recall an article about another state (I want to think it was someplace like Michigan?) that subpoenaed records from an out-of-state internet (American Indian?) cigarette sales site and then billed in-state residents for sales tax on their out-of-state tobacco purchases.

Seems like it will only be a matter of time before the states start acting in collusion on these matters.

Edit: Found an article on the Michigan cigarette tax situation.
 
Thanks for the heads-up on this, folks. It does sound disconcerting. I'll be sure to think over any monarch orders accordingly until reports change.
 
ive had no problems with refunds with them nor purchases. Ive had the best service ive ever had from a company in terms of tech support and the entire process.
 
Astrogiblet said:
lol. Your bashing a well known, VERY highly regarded company for following tax laws? And they ship fedex shipping too, ya know?

well what the hell is the benefit of an internet company anyways from a B&M store in cali? There are lots of small businesses that run warehouses that will let you do a local pickup. For example SVC sells good accessories for dirt cheap like yate loon fans for $3.99 and old style CM stacker for 89.99. I could call on my lunch hr and pick up it up after work in less than 10 mins ( one street down in san jose ca)

newegg on the other hand, i pay 8.75% tax, wait 2-3 days, pray UPS doesnt play hockey with my package or pay more for Fedex. All for $10 cheaper?

when i first made my rig(first rig ever) i got 85% of it from newegg including the monitor. Prolly $1200. So with tax i paid 105+ shipping. I got my case there so shipping was huge like $50+ for all the components. I think i had like 3-5 shipments even tho i ordered at the same time. On the other hand, i had a friend do 85% of his stuff from monarch. He got some nice stuff at the time like a 7800gtx whent they were still $450 etc etc. I think he spent 2k overall. How much did he spend on tax? 0. how much on shipping? very little because they had free shipping on a lot the stuff for the holidays. Both of us havent had major probs, both of us have gone to lans and pwned in BF2. Niether of us missed out waiting for parts.

so all in all, monarch to me is 'true' e-tailor while newegg acts like a B&M with a website similar to outpost. I'll only buy something for either newegg or outpost unless its super hot where shipping/tax/price are all at rock bottom prices.
 
How can [H] learn from this?

Clearly when a vendor is sponsored by a site and is permitted to advertise, it's reasonable to expect that the site in turn has an implied responsibility to its members to assure that the vendor is living up to its end of the bargain.

As this is a higher standard, member criticisms, especially those that show a consistent and repeated nature, need to be resolved in prompt fashion, not in knee-jerk reaction such as thread deletion or member ban. It looks pretty hypcritcal for members to be banned only to discover their complaints were indeed justified and the vendor is pulled.

Perhaps a sponsored vendor subforum might be in order. After all, poor service by the vendor makes the site look bad too. On the other hand, successful resolution in a public forum is seen as a great characteristic, a company we'd like to deal with in the future.
 
Over the past 14-15 months, I have purchased 2 raptor drives, at least 12 sticks of DDR, DDR2 and DDR ECC memory, an Athlon 64 cpu, an Athlon X2 and a higher-end fan from Monarch. I have never experienced any problems with shipping or billing.

One of the DDR2 chips sent was defective and Monarch refused a return/exchange - asking me instead to turn to the manufacturer because I didn't buy Monarch's service contract. Kind of a pisser, but no big deal and resolved itself in a week (with the memory manufacturer) at no charge to me.

I know I could have fought it (cancelled the charge to my CC for the stick, etc), but business is a two-way street. You help them out, they help you out. I do most of my shopping at directron, tigerdirect, or monarch picking vendor by lowest price. At one time or another, I have heard negative reviews about all of these vendors but I personally have never had any experiences that would make me doubt their honesty or trustworthiness.

Whatever problems Monarch may have, I hope they are resolved because I like their product offerings, prices and service.
 
Monarch is horrible @ returning money.. its always 5-6 weeks + from my personal exp. :eek:

And they have a credit dept. that never picks up, its always a voicemail. :mad:

Other then that monarch is good as long as they have the item in stock and you dont cancel:)
 
So it seems the moral of the story (at least ATM) is that you want to make sure you want to buy it before laying down the dough, lest you want a long refund period. Note, if you're with a nice credit card company, you can ask them to flat-out negate the charge to your card if a refund is taking a long time. Fire up those credit disputes and let your credit card company do the dirty fighting for you.
 
I have seen a lot of companies like this come and go over the decades. Holding customer money is really the first sign of problems. The worse case scenario is what happened to the customers of NC based "thezeb.com" a couple of years ago. They were very much like Monarch. Great prices and stellar customer service for a couple of years. They were not a houshold name, but all of the folks that were in the hobby knew about them and ordered regularly. One day they started a MASSIVE clearance sale with some top dollar products going for as low as 50% off and over a million dollars worth of items being put on ebay as well.

The Sell went through for several weeks on the web site and the auctions concluded. Everyone was so stocked over the sale in the community. Then no one received anything. Nothing at all. The phones were disconnected and they were gone! These people had advertised all over the web and sponcered many large events. They were "trustworthy" and then bam... Gone. Several weeks later everyone received a letter from bankruptcy court stating that they were listed as a creditor to the company or taht they had paid "thezeb.com" for services and products not received. There was nothing anyone could do. The Bankruptcy was discharged and everyone lost their money (that didn't get it back from their CCs). TheZeb's onwers, since they filed bankruptcy got away scott free.

Beware of the warning signs folks...
 
The moral of the story is to always use a credit card, not a debit card and certainly not paypal. If you use a creditcard you're 100% protected. Frankly I don't know why that guy let them stall for 31 days, after a week I would have charged-back.
 
strikeout said:
well what the hell is the benefit of an internet company anyways from a B&M store in cali? There are lots of small businesses that run warehouses that will let you do a local pickup. For example SVC sells good accessories for dirt cheap like yate loon fans for $3.99 and old style CM stacker for 89.99. I could call on my lunch hr and pick up it up after work in less than 10 mins ( one street down in san jose ca)

newegg on the other hand, i pay 8.75% tax, wait 2-3 days, pray UPS doesnt play hockey with my package or pay more for Fedex. All for $10 cheaper?

when i first made my rig(first rig ever) i got 85% of it from newegg including the monitor. Prolly $1200. So with tax i paid 105+ shipping. I got my case there so shipping was huge like $50+ for all the components. I think i had like 3-5 shipments even tho i ordered at the same time. On the other hand, i had a friend do 85% of his stuff from monarch. He got some nice stuff at the time like a 7800gtx whent they were still $450 etc etc. I think he spent 2k overall. How much did he spend on tax? 0. how much on shipping? very little because they had free shipping on a lot the stuff for the holidays. Both of us havent had major probs, both of us have gone to lans and pwned in BF2. Niether of us missed out waiting for parts.

so all in all, monarch to me is 'true' e-tailor while newegg acts like a B&M with a website similar to outpost. I'll only buy something for either newegg or outpost unless its super hot where shipping/tax/price are all at rock bottom prices.
Are you saying you don't pay cali tax at a B&M in cali?
 
Sad to see, really. This could not come at a worse possible time for them as well, with Black Friday and the Holiday Season steadily approaching. Retaining customer refund money over an unreasonable amount of time is bad business, period.

Whatever is going on there, I do not think we will ever know. Monarch's sales have grown over the last year and a half. This may be a management problem. If we had access to information such as total credit sales that were due to be refunded, and the time frame in which the refunds were withheld, it might bring to light accounting procedures that are designed to deny refunds and carry the sales on their books until monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual financial results are due. With little/no accounts payable on their books, it can do a lot for their bottom line on paper.

I personally haven't had a bad experience with Monarch. I've made two purchases with them and was pleased with the products I received.

To them I say good luck, as it is we customers who benefit by having substantial choice when it comes to online [H]ardware purchases. More choice = more competition = lower prices. Unless you're an early adopter in which case you pay through the nose anyway... :p :p (guilty!)

Now, we need Kyle to step back further from the [H] network and open [H].com - his own online retail outfit. :D (I'll speak to you later about my consultant fees Kyle. LOL)
 
Just stumbled onto this thread. I was wondering what other people thought about Monarch. I just cancelled an order for a CPU cooler last week and I called verify that it was being charged back to my credit card. The rep said that it would be about 30 days. I thought that it seemed like an awful long time. Makes sense now.
 
The first order I made from them went great.... They shipped it out fast and the prices were good. After that I realized I needed a new PSU and the site said it was instock but it never shipped and they wouldn't reply to any of my e-mails. after two or three weeks I e-mailed them asking them to just refund my CC and they did that pretty quick and I got the PSU from Newegg.

I ordered an Opteron 165 after that and it took a while to ship and they didn't keep me updated on the status but I did get it and a good price on it. I was kinda surprised it came though.

After hearing all this I don't think I'm gonna be shopping at Monarch at all anymore. Sad to see Monarch go downhill like this.
 
I live in Georgia and have never been to Monarch (mapquest says it'slike 20 minutes away). Do they sell parts b&m in addition to online? If they do, do they honor online pricing?
 
Well when I shopped there, things went smooth, but slowly compared to the mighty newegg.


They took awhile to ship, I had to call. The $20 heatsink I bought needed a signature, which was very frustrating for me, but that's thier policy so I shouldn't complain about it.

Overall it was a good experiences, besides the shipping policy. ( signature required in person ) And a little slow shipping.

From reading this thread, the bad things seems to only happen to items of great value that are limited. etc.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top