- Report: #1273565
Complaint Review: Zaptip - Internet
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Author Confirmed
Why?
Zaptip
Internet, USA
Web:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/zaptip-the-world-s-first-magnetic-super-charger#/story
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Zaptip, Charge Labs, The Charge Factory, Joostcube, Indiegogo Conducted a scam, raising funds with no intention of building or delivering a product Internet
These scammers have taken at least $300,000 and counting from the public, with the aid of Indiegogo, in the last three months. The Campaign Owner. The company is supposedly based in LA, but Charge Labs, is not a corporation, LLC, or DBA name and has no address or phone anywhere let alone California. Varun Panjwani, the supposed director, is a fake profile on LinkedIn with zero connections. No Facebook profile with that name or any other name associates themselves with Charge Labs. The campaign doesn’t have an email. The campaign owner is fake. The Images. Photos on the campaign are of Wsken’s magnetic charge cable (see Amazon.com). Artwork on the campaign appears to be lifted from ZNAPS campaign on Kickstarter and the USAMS magnetic cable on Alibaba/Aliexpress. There are no images that show anything we can say is from Zaptips. The images are fake. The Pitch, A New Product? Most of us haven’t heard of this product category, or maybe we purchased the Wsken magnetic cable and found it didn’t deliver enough power. On the other hand, Chinese manufacturers have been selling these for over a year. A quick search on Alibaba or Aliexpress and you’ll find hundreds of listings from a variety of manufacturers. The pitch is a deception. String Along. At the outset the campaign said they would be shipping “almost immediately.” Then they were doing product improvements and would be shipping in November. On Nov 29, almost finished sorting and packing and would ship within the week. 10 days later they claimed they needed stronger magnets - indefinite delay. Now it’s powder coat and into 2016. Updates are not credible and string along backers to suck in more money. Responding to Scam Alerts. The campaign hides scam alert comments rather than responding. It would be trivially easy to prove this campaign is real if it was. A 10 minute cell phone video showing the operation, introducing the staff, showing and demoing preproduction product and the issues. Instead they just hide the comments and suck in more money. Indiegogo facilitates and profits from scam campaigns. They do nothing to verify the operation and do nothing when alerted to scams. They've become little more than a money laundering operation and should be subject to RICO prosecution.
