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:
And the other:
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.
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.