I completely agree, but I think another part of the problem is that maybe Mike honestly believes that it was simply "bad business decision" and not intentional criminal fraud that led to this point. I think there's a chance that he's simply a young idiot who thought it would be OK to "borrow" some money from BigCD.com to use for his band, in the naive belief that it would be a short term thing, and now that he simply cannot replace those funds, he is looking at all of the reasons for that and assigning blame where he sees it, not realizing that this is all the natural consequence of his criminal action. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he isn't responsible and shouldn't be held accountable, but I'm starting to believe that he believes his own BS. Maybe its just because he wants to believe it, and view himself as the victim, but whatever the case, I find it quite pathetic. I also honestly believe that anyone with a pending order that has already been charged will be doing him the biggest favor of his life by contesting the charges and reporting this to the authorities, or he'll simply continue this pattern of behavior on an increasingly larger scale until even more damage is done. This little (seld-admitted) idiot needs tough love and he needs it now.

Caveat Emptor
 

After reading this thread my take is that Mike's not the only one who can learn something from this debacle.

Bottom line: if you're willing to send your money to an entity you know nothing about (how many folks would have ordered from BigCD had they known the "company" was a guy living with his mom who only gets online every three days or so?) in order to save a couple bucks on a DVD, you assume a certain amount of risk.

Which of course in no way excuses anything fraudulent/criminal/stupid Mike may have done. But I know I myself am going to limit my online purchases in the future to companies with established track records of customer satisfaction.

This has to be the most entertaining thread I have ever read here. Every day there are new revelations!


What no one has pointed out is that Mike just returned here and bascially said "Oops, sorry. I've been away for 3 days and was unaware of these issues."

That post doesn't really explain why his site was unavailable on 2/12-2/14 with this message: "Sorry, BigCD.com is closed. BigCD.com can no longer take orders. We are being forced out of operation for the time being."


Mike doesn't even mention that... what the hell? Shouldn't this merit at least a brief comment? You shut your site down for two days with an "out of business" message -- and then you are away from a computer for 3 days? :lol:

Anyway, I think everyone (except Mike) is on the same page here. Clearly, everyone should immediately contact their CC company to get the charges reversed... actually, I think that was a pretty obvious course of action when this thread first started and we all got a sense of what this "store" was like. This individual is unable to run a business and amazingly unable to accept any sort of responsibility for his own actions.

I never thought I would thank Oderbox.com, but I do. If I hadn't had such a bad experience with their new site, I might have tried BigCD.com.

This guy is the typical narcissist. He is focused only on himself and blames everyone else for his problems (and tries to draw everyone from the real issues, instead of him to taking responsibility for his and others (half.com or anyone else) who are preventing him from fulfilling the obligation to his customers.

The fact that he still lives with his Mom should tell you that he doesn't have to stand on his own two feet. His first priority should be getting a job that pays the bills (rent for instance), then try to make his dreams come true (band or internet business).

Several have mentioned that they are not going to risk their future DVD purchases to save a few bucks....I think that is sound advice.

Good Luck
Ron

Funny thing here is that I placed an order with OrderBox (seemingly back from the ashes) well after an order with BigCD. Well, here I sit with the disc from OrderBox in my hot little hands but I still await (ha ha) a disc from BigCD.

BTW, in an ironic twist you can file a complaint online with the Attorney General's office in BigCD's home state here:
https://www.ag.state.mi.us/forms/w3htc_c01_new.asp

So, online misdeeds can be dealt with online :)

I'm sorry for anybody who got scammed here. But other than that I've found it very educational.

In reading through this thread I've been able to watch the entire arc of a scam: announcement, happy initial customers, unavoidable delays and requests for more time, acceptance then growing into angry retorts, and the dramatic poof as the perpetrator vanishes.

Last week I learned that merchant accounts keep a large reserve of your money. This week I learned why. They need to protect themselves in case you want to buy tacos.

I hope people get their money back, and I hope that no one placed any large orders. Getting ten cents back on the dollar from $20 would be sad, but nothing major. Getting that much back on $500 would really bite.

Hey, he can get a headstart on his new career here:

http://www.acme.com/licensemaker/

:)

CW

I'm just disappointed he was banned. :( I'm not suggesting he shouldn't have been, but it was fascinating to see what he would say next.

Seems you can make a lot of money by sending him (MikeCTW) a dollar...

http://www.sushifaq.com/wwwboard/messages/32.shtml
http://users2.cgiforme.com/AmericanS...sages/117.html
http://eval1.crc.uiuc.edu/edpsy392/3...ssages/90.html
http://www.goskinewengland.com/wwwbo...sages/180.html

The list goes on and on and on and...

That's awesome. Good work :)

Extra taco money! ;)

Oh well Bigcd,

A Capital One investigator will be contacting you shortly.

Hi everybody,
I have been keeping up with this thread and feel sorry for everybody who got scammed. I reread the owners stories several times and they do not add up at all. Just like another member suggested, the owner could not have been away from his computer for three days since the front page changed.

Here is my suggestion and I hope that I am not out of my league for suggesting it. First, he still has his Web site up meaning more people may buy dvds without knowing that they may not get them. I did a simple nslookup on his Web site, and it showed that his hosting is done by radius03.lai-ca.icg.net. Using the last part of the URL means that the company icg.net is hosting his Web site. I would think that if enough people write the company and tell them of the situation that they would stop hosting his site.

Again, I hope that I don't get flamed for suggesting this. I just don't want to see anybody get ripped off.

I've also disputed the charge with Capital One.

actually his hosting company is www.cybrmall.net

[email protected] is who I would contact.

Thanks Pilot! Sorry about giving incorrect information.

Not to worry. He responded to my above post by private email within hours.

...and? Don't keep me waiting with baited breath!

updates...
 

Why you people are acting like 5 year olds really amazes me. If anyone is getting ripped off it's me here. I don't have the money for these orders the distributor has it now. The card processor also has $10,000 of it and they will not release it to me. I have already attempted that. The more people contact the credit card companies as well the worse getting any of that money back will be. You people are causing this delay as well because the more complaints to the card companies the less likely they will be to release any money.

READ HERE IN BIG LETTERS: I DO NOT PERSONALLY HAVE YOUR MONEY, or MONEY FOR THESE ORDERS. INGRAM and CARDSERVICE INTERNATIONAL has it. So go threaten them if you want I really don't care. Neither one of them care about your orders and the way I have been personally attacked and degraded and mistreated here I'm gonna start to not to care about them either.

These orders will not be released until the entire batch is reconciled and calculated. At that time Ingram will only release orders for what money is available. Since money has been held from me and since I was behind on payments there won't be enough there. Originally they assured me that we would be willing to work something out however as time continues the only thing to work out is who is going to fund bigcd to get it on it's feet again. If no one is going to then it will close upon itself and there isn't anything I personally can do about it.

I haven't emailed anyone back because up until just today I thought I had been screwed again by half.com by stealing money back from me when in reality my bank froze my account. So now I have some more frozen assets that I cannot send out to process orders because of big business and banks and what not. So just more problems and not solutions.

No complaints to any BBB' FTC, lawyer etc is going to do anything because I have not done anything wrong. In fact I am the only one in this entire chain that really gives a flying **** about your pending orders and that is the god damn truth. Bank doesn't care, Ingram doesn't care unless they are getting paid upfront, Card processor sure doesn't care whatsoever about the 10,000 they extracted from your orders to put up a security shield.

I don't answer the phone anymore because I have nothing new to say. No investors have come to help bail me out and nobody has provided any additional funding. There is nothing I can personally do. absolutely not a single thing I can do.

The store is open again because if I close it I can't update the order status system and when the orders ship again IF they decide to ship them finally people could not see the updates.
Hopefully I find the funding somewhere to keep it going.

I would appreciate if the personal attacks would stop because it will get you no where and do nothing to faciliate the business getting back on it's feet.

Mike

Re: updates...
 

Still shifting the blame? YOU TOOK THE MONEY, YOU GAVE IT TO THEM. It is your fault. Did you not read your contacts well enough?

Neither do you. You ignore people for days straight, don't respond to emails, and most importantly, don't ship out the promised product. You can't start not to care, you already don't, unless it's you.

Haha. Are you serious? Because if you are, you are VERY diluded.

But it's okay that you're still taking other people's money for products you know can't ship... right... we feel so bad for you.

I know a hell of a lot of people that would have liked to never delt with a sorry, pathetic person like you... but nobody always gets what they want.

It's your fault, Mikey, accept it, appologize, and move on.

PS - Can I still send you $1 for that informative money making report? Nice to know you'd screw people over however you can... guess this is nothing new for you!

Re: updates...
 

ROTFLMAO! rotfl


This is the funniest thing I've ever read on this board. I used to think the "5.1 surround sound in the bathroom" was the best, but we have a new winner!

-Videophile

OK OK OK OK Guy guys guys!

It's EXTREMELY important that we keep this thread focused on the issues here and stop the personal attacks.

I know many of you are pissed as hell at this situation and your frustration is understandable.

What I see is two tracks for people:

1) E-mail mike and Cancel Your Order, call your credit card company and tell them you've been charged for something that didn't ship and then shop at one of the many stores linked above the forum.

or

2) Wait to see if Mike will be able to resolve the issue.

It's pretty obvious this is a lose - lose situation for everyone here, and I think the etailer (mike/BigCD) has gotten the message loud and clear that most of you are pissed. So let's keep this thread to the issues, questions and problems that can be communicated and addressed.

Mike, unfortunately you've become the poster child for why a running a small dotcom store can be a nightmare. I'm sure there are people out there who will seriously reconsider getting into this business after they've seen all you've gone through. But the most important thing is:

a commitment to do all you can to fix this mess.

I think at this point that's all anyone can ask.

- G

Re: updates...
 

As gkleinman suggested here are the fact's and no personal attacks:

BigCD accepted my order 1/28/2002
I was charged 1/31/2002
3 emails ZERO response since then
Zero dvd's recieved / no email from your company(NOT ONE)...nothing but a charge on my card after almost 3 weeks

Please explain what option you left me & others?

Mike,

You posted on your own website that you took money from bigcd to fund your band and their cd and you were $10,000 in the hole. Can you honestly expect anyone to believe that this is anyone's fault but your own?

I told him that if he used money from new orders to pay for merchandise sent to older customers, he was engaging in a pyramid scheme. And that if he did that the State of California would come down on him, as well as the banks and credit card companies.

I'm not sure how well my well-meant but unsolicited advice was taken.