Anyone have a similar problem with Malibal?

I will try to keep this short but in all fairness, and for people to make their own conclusions I need to provide the greatest amount of factual information possible:

Not to long ago I get the following after putting together my Sager build from the sign-off from people on this very website. I received an email which made me quite eager to get this thing in my hands as I have read nothing about positive reviews.
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All fine and dandy right? Wrong. Malibal, in whatever god like telepathy they possess decide my order is "fraudulent" and cancel it without calling, emailing, verifying any information, etc. I don't find out till quite a few days later that it was even canceled due to me logging in, and checking to see what the status is of the build. Upon calling customer support I am given some half baked excuse that quite recently they lost $4000.00 due to an order placed in NJ(The state in which I live) on a Discover card(The card I was using) and my activity was also marked as fraudulent due to the shipping and billing address being different on the order being different.

Huh? Sooo, basically anyone who lives in NJ and/or uses Discover must be trying to defraud the company? Gimme a break.

I was then told that their "third party authenticators" flagged this(sounds like trying to place the blame but I don't know), hence why my order was cancelled, yet both the shipping, and billing address are verified addresses on the Discover card and I have placed multiple orders, on various other websites without a problem, EVER. I know people will ask so I will answer: My girlfriend who lives outside of Philly cannot have any packages delivered to her apartment, hence why she delivers them to my house.

I honestly do not understand why a simple phone call or email to check would not have ever crossed their minds. I'm honestly blown away by this. Long story short, I'm not putting money in these guys pockets, even more so since I was told I am about 50-100 down the build queue due to this happening.

Is this the type of "customer service" I can expect from places like XoticPC, PCTorque, or any other Sager/Clevo reseller? Anyone else have this type of experience with Malibal?

 

I can't speak for Malibal and I would hate to use this to bash them and pump up another. I can understand why you are less than happy I would be also.

I would like to hear Malibal or any other vendors response. They do have to be careful but I think contact would of been policy. And until they respond which they may or may not we only have one side. No disrespect to you.

 

Wait... not to flame you or anything, but it's 03/09/2011 at the time of me reading this. Was this a order placed before and it's a confirmation e-mail, or what's going on?

Something's not adding up in my mind. If you ordered it two days ago, the order being cancelled a day after shouldn't put you 50~100 positions down the queue...

 

Oh I know, exactly. None of the excuses that I was given make any sense. First off, if they are as worried about security as they say they are, why would they even discuss other internal fraud activities taking place at the company? I can think of half a dozen things that did not add up, times they back peddled, etc. I honestly cannot believe that because the billing and shipping address were wrong all these fraud warnings went up. We got a call from Discover today asking if the card was stolen as it was reported(By Malibal) that fraudulent activity was taking place on it. Every Christmas, MILLIONS of people order things and ship them to addys other then that of the billing. This is irrefutable empirical fact. If I order my girlfriend flowers, I don't ship them to my house, I ship them to her work. My billing address is not her salon, etc etc etc. Sorry to vent, I'm just really annoyed by this now lol.

As far as the order, I believe that is just the confirmation as we put the order in one Sunday night, which would have been the 6th, yet the email says the 7th. I'm guessing it is a one day lag?

 

So, let's get things straight.

1. What is the date you ordered the system?
2. What is the date you gotten your order confirmation e-mail?
3. What day did the order get cancelled?
4. What day did you find out?
5. What day did they respond to you telling you re-ordering will put you at the back of the queue?

It's nice to have these time-lines to keep things in perspective.

 

No disrespect taken, I am just honestly kind of blown away by this. When I had called and the guy said "You didn't get an email?" I told him no, and he just went on with the conversation, no apology, nothing. I'm not saying you have to be Captain Rainbow but show a little empathy being that I am willing to drop over a grand at your store and you just screwed up without even notifying me. What if I had not logged in for a week or two later?

 

Most sellers have a policy of shipping to the billing address or an alternate address that is on the card account and verified. We make phone contact with nearly every order that is placed. If we have any issues during the verification process we make email/phone contact to to get it rectified and so the order moves onto the next stage.

These are high dollar items and these policies are very common on items of this nature and dollar amount in this volatile industry. Sending a low dollar item such as flowers that has little to no fraud it quite a bit different.

Hope this helps..

 

Missed your edit on previous post, but fyi every reseller has a large queue at the moment. If it indeed was 03/06/2011, they have a queue of ~2 months to fulfill where the SB recall has put a stop to these Clevo/Sager notebook production.

So, if you're ordering now, it's pretty standard to be in that sort of position of the queue. It's not that you lost your position, therefore you are at the end of the queue, but that you were at the tail end of the queue to begin with.

The very first batch after the Intel recall (coming from the production stop near end of January) is barely beginning now.

 

No I understand, I just appreciate the feedback.



1. What is the date you ordered the system? 3/6/2011

2. What is the date you gotten your order confirmation e-mail? 3/7/2011

3. What day did the order get cancelled? No clue. I was never informed that it was even cancelled.

4. What day did you find out? 3/8/2011, I had logged in to the account section to see if there was any sort of update as I am selling my buddy my desktop which is paying off half the laptop. He more or less just needs to know when to have my money .

5. What day did they respond to you telling you re-ordering will put you at the back of the queue? They didn't respond, I had called them last night when I got home from work which was when I was told that due to the massive demand(which I can honestly believe, I will give them that) of the sandy bridge chipset i7's, I would not see the laptop till sometime in April, best case end of March and that I was further down the build queue and would keep going down until I placed the order with a card they thought was non-fraudulent).

 

valtzer does have a good catch on dates. And I must say if my card was suspect I would want my cc company contacting me, as it sounds like they did, not some vendor trying to save their sale while my card is being used up and down the East Coast. I wanna say Malibal might of done the correct thing here.

I know you are upset but I am not seeing the reason. And if you step back and relax I think it could be straightened out. Maybe even getting back in line?

Oh and $40 flowers is very different than $2000 notebook. The people who likely flagged this was the cc company and Malibal likely was instructed to not contact you.

 

Yeah... well for some perspective on my side, I placed an order for an 8150 with Mythlogic on 02/08/2011, and I still haven't received the system.

The Sandy Bridge recall put a thing to a halt, and the first batch is barely coming out. I'm hoping to receive mine in the next few weeks.

So...

 

His reason for being upset is that Malibal never sent him anything first to verify that the card was not fraudulent, I don't think hes pissed that they marked it fraudulent but more pissed that they did nothing to notify him of it. I agree though it was good thay they notified his company but could they have waited to hear back from Discover and not canceled his order thus negating this argument. Never know till we hear from them.

 

To be honest that is 90% of my annoyance. I know for a fact they didn't check with Discover as my home address is without a doubt on the account, no question about it. We did run into this problem one other time before when we bought a fairly large ticket watch which is how we got the alternate verified address in the first place. The company called us, asked if the order was legitimate and then conferenced in the bank to verify that shipping it to the address was good to go. The bank asked us, we gave the go ahead at which point Discover suggested the idea to add the secondary address so this problem would not happen in the future.

 

This is the most likely explanation. I've had my credit card company call me when I put through big purchases before to get my OK on them. If I didn't say it was good, they'd flag it and deny the charge to the merchant on the grounds of fraud.

On top of that, if you didn't call your CC company have them make your shipping address an authorized address on the account, then they'd also mark it as potential fraud when Malibal calls to verify the account when they go to charge it.

It sounds like you may have missed a call from your credit card company and didn't set up the authorized address and got burned for it. Credit card companies are overly anxious about the whole fraud thing now. I called up American Express and set the address on my account and had them note on there that I was planning on a $2200 purchase with Malibal just so that they'd not have to call me.

 

Odds are Malibal was informed not to tell the customer. I worked retail at an electronics store before and if we suspected a card was fraudulent or if it came up in the system when we tried to run it, we were just supposed to say "sorry, your card doesn't seem to work" or something similar. We were never supposed to insinuate it was fraud. I bet the op just missed a call from the credit card company asking about it, or never put a number on file for them to call.

 

Exactly. I don't care about the wait, that is not the issue. I know I will be waiting for the laptop for a little bit, but being told I am waiting longer due to someones screw-up? My issue is if I'm spending serious cash at your store and you can't even be bothered to verify the transaction and do any due diligence is kind of a big deal.

Best part of the day was when Discover called to notify us they were cancelling the card due it being reported for fraudulent activity.

 

If you read my first post, and the one afterwards, the shipping address on the order is without any shadow of a doubt a verified address on the Discover card. Discover also did not call us at all to verify the order, only to potentially cancel the card because it was reported having a possible theft. Discover also would had no reason to call as we have placed FAR larger orders then $2000 in the same manner with no problems. Only the one time(explained in a previous post), before we had the address added did we have an issue.

Again, this thread is not to bash the Sager/Clevo laptops or the build quality etc as I am sure that is all fine and dandy. It is more of an inquiry as to if this is the customer service I can expect if I go ahead and place an order with another shop.

 

It still sounds like a problem with your card issuer being a little tight with the fraud verification. I haven't had an issue with American Express/Malibal at all in terms of payment processing.

 

I can 100% guarantee it has nothing to do with the card. Not to flame but it sounds like your personal feelings of the Malibal product you own are clouding your judgement. You cannot possibly pass off this instance at fault of the credit card company when orders 2-3x the one we had just placed have all gone through fine without a hitch(except the first one where we added the address). We were also specifically told BY Malibal that it was them who "detected" the potential fraud. They made no mistake about it that the order was cancelled on their end, and picked up by them. This is verbatim to what the customer service rep reiterated to me when I had called. At no point did he ever say "Discover declined your order." If the had done that, then Malibal would have sent something out saying that such had happened and they needed an alternative billing solution.

 

I don't own anything from them yet. But just because you have an anecdotal case doesn't mean that everyone else is wrong either. I also placed an order with them and have not had an issue. You did. I am not wrong because you had an issue. Your anecdotal evidence is no heavier than mine.

I don't mean to sound callous but your one bad experience does also not instantly make them a bad company. And I'm hardly their only customer, and these boards aren't flooded with it.

Maybe they made a mistake here, but it's not like they just took your money and scammed you. You didn't go to eurocom, so at least they're reputable. It sounds like you're trying to insist there is some massive fraud conspiracy here to NOT charge customers. That just makes no sense. Why would they just decline all of their customers? There is no business justification behind it except if they truly were trying to protect themselves from fraud.

So it sounds like you just want to flame them at this point. Go to another reseller then if you're having so many issues, or take it up with them directly. I'd have been more concerned if they took your money first then canceled your order. It sounds like other than not notifying you, they've been completely above-board.

You're upset they didn't take your money and want to come here and discredit anyone who doesn't have bad things to say about them, so go to another company then.

 

Hi, yes - it is true that this customer's order was voided due to suspicion of fraud, however, this person has exaggerated many things.

Firstly, the order was received on 3/7/2011 at 8:51pm Pacific Time and the phone call occurred the following afternoon (8th) so it wasn't even a full day in between the time the order was voided and the customer found out.

Also, this person's account of why his order was marked as fraud is incorrect. We do not tell customers our full procedure for detecting fraud.

In addition, during the phone call we told this customer that we could try to work something out, but they said they didn't want to wait until the end of the month (due to back orders) and so they said they were going to Best Buy to pick up a laptop, instead.

Also, we never told this customer that he would be 50-100 spots lower in the build que, he completely made that up.

Lastly, we never asked Discover if it was a fraudulent order or flagged the order to Discover, that's not how it works - so the fact that Discover has actually cut this customer's card off due to fraudulent activity is very telling.

Our company had absolutely nothing to do with that.

 

Thanks for the official heads up. This sounds more in line with the experiences I've had with you guys so far. That was the kind of story I'd expect for eurocom.

Plus if there was a way to bribe myself farther up the queue I think I'd have found out by now...

 

Go back to all of my previous posts, I specifically asked:

"Have people had these same problems.."

"Is this what I can expect etc etc etc.."

"Is this what I can expect.."

When people respond with more questions, I provide more responses. That is not flaming, it is answering a question directed at a previous post and providing clarification. I also never stated "Malibal is a bad company", I am simply providing insight to MY experience and was asking to the community if any OTHER people had any other experiences with not only Malibal, but the other Sager resellers and if this is the type of customer service one can expect when ordering. To be honest it just seems as if you want to argue and be of no help. In each one of your posts you have attempted(without reading my previous posts which contained the information you attempted to argue against) to debunk the reason for the thread by insinuating it must have been the bank that was at fault.

Again, if you read my previous posts, I was looking for other peoples experiences and providing insight from my own.

 

This is what happens when you try paying for stuff with credit rather than money you actually have in the bank. I ordered a pc from Xotic PC using a personal check with all the funds in my bank and everything SHOULD go according to plan (just waiting for the check to clear)

Honestly, us Americans rely way too much on credit. You really shouldn't be buying expensive laptops if you don't actually have the money for it.

Just my two cents.

 

LOL - what a load of crap. I'm expecting you are the one I spoke to on the phone.

The order was not placed on the 7th, when we spoke is regardless, you never sent out an email to inform a customer you cancelled the order, no reply to this however?

And your manner for "working something out" was using a different card. And I told you, I will use an alternative billing solution with something off the top as I am now further down the queue(which YOU had stated) and not racking up points on my CC.

Read the posts - I never stated that Discover cut up the card. I said we received a call from them asking if the activity was fraudulent. It was also you who had stated your "third party vendor" was the ones who flagged it.

I said that I would pick-up a laptop from BestBuy because you had more or less estimated a time frame of April because of orders constantly coming in and those then taking priority in the queue due to the company cancelling my order your words, not mine.

And if I really had placed a fraudulent order, do you think

A. I would have come on this board looking for suggestions from members? Check my posts.
B. Asked if anyone else had similar experiences with your companies customer service? Give me a break, you are obviously wound wrong.

Bottom line, you have other awful customer service reviews on Store Ratings & Reviews - ResellerRatings.com - Find Trusted Stores. No one is doubting the build quality, that is not the issue here.

Why would I use a debit card or check, when this would have racked up 5% in cashback from the credit card which I would have paid off at the end of the month? That is just bad finance. You pay no interest, you build a solid credit history, etc. I'm not buying the thing and not paying it off with $10.00 each month for the next five hears. But, this post is not about personal finance lol.

 

I just want to point out that resellerratings has them listed at 10/10. Malibal

Not sure where you're getting the low review idea from.

 

You are the king of not reading anything, and then posting your own personal opinions off as fact: READ THE REVIEWS

"Lastly, the one negative I have against the entire experience. Customer service. It wasn't a nightmare like some places, but I definitely wasn't happy with the way I was handled as a customer. When I had a few specific questions they were addressed well over they live chat service, but when conferming my order over the phone, my sales person was obviously in a bad mood and had no patience. I understand that some small error in miscommunication was mine, but when dealing with customers, you should always be polite, even more so since this is a rather large $ purchase. Aside from the average to below average customer service, I am very happy with this purchase. One week to build, and one week on ups ground."

First one.

Thee are several posts where people knock the customer service, not the product but still give them a perfect rating. Again, not sure why I keep having to say this. No one is knocking the build quality, not once has this happened. The very first post was specifically asking if anyone had similar experiences with Malibal, Xotic, etc etc.

 

And you are the king of ignoring every other post to make a point see:

How many more do you want?

Why don't you take your own advice and READ THE REVIEWS? Seriously, are you trying to make troll posts or what?

 

This is where you said Discover canceled your card due to reports of fraudulent activity, and we weren't the company who reported it to Discover. So that proves the someone else also suspected the card was being used fraudulently.

The customer who stole $4000 in laptops, was not from NJ - they were from the Netherlands... and this scammer actually left us a review on reselleratings under the name: trolloos. And the best part is that he left the review to get a $25 Gift Certificate... which he then used on his 2nd order that he purchased with a stolen credit card. Now, why did this scammer use a discount on an order that he placed with a stolen credit card? People do weird things. I have other stories that are just as weird.

We do not have a single review on Resellerratings.com, where a customer states that they wouldn't purchase from us again. And we have a lifetime 9.81/10 rating. Source: MALIBAL - malibal.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings

 

Again, you obviously just want to try and argue your fanboy perspective. As soon as you read the first post and saw you had nothing to contribute to the topic at hand you should have simply left. There are more then one review where people knock the customer service on that website, why thy chose to give a perfect rating is beyond me.

 

I'm reporting this to a moderator, It's obvious at this point that you're only attempting to start a flame war. I've countered your points and all you've done is call me a fanboy for trying to keep things civil and actually put out facts.

 

I'm quietly closing this thread; at this point it has degraded into an argument and is no longer productive/helpful.

Original poster - if you didn't get your question answered, feel free to start a new thread.

Thanks.