Those of you who have booked the BeeLabz tablet and still hoping that they will receive the tablet, here is some bad news. The Beelabz.in is a fraud company and run by a person called Anand Sankaran – photo attached.
Update (27th July 2012) : Anand Sankaran is absconding, he has not paid salary to his employees which is amounting to over 1 Lacs, he has fooled many people, the manufactures in China from where he ordered the tablet though have not disclosed much of the information but have said that he ordered just few tablets ( 10 to 15 units) not a big order.
Some of the users have filed an FIR in the police station. I would request all of you who are victim of this fraud to file an FIR at your local police station so the case becomes stronger and with multiple FIR’s Police will work faster. Probably the local police will transfer the case to cyber crime department. So guys if you want your money back please make a visit at your nearest police station and file and FIR ASAP.
Before I continue further, If you are a new users looking for the BeeLabz reviews or wanting to buy their tablet, well forget it and thank your stars if you have not already booked one. It is now confirmed that the company is a total fraud and new consumers should refrain from booking tablets or doing business with Anand Sankaran.
Some consumers had also visited the Bangalore office – MyAshni Services, World Trade Center, 22nd Floor, Unit 2201A, 26/1 Dr.Rajkumar Road, Malleswaram(W), Bangalore – 55 and found it deserted (locked). It seems Anand has not paid the rent and had vacated the office in May or June. At that time the site (beelabz.in) was accepting the bookings even without an office.
He was giving false assurances for a long time and now when the situation has gone beyond his control he is missing. The phones / mobile phones / customer support telephone are switched off or inactive. And recently he has closed the Facebook Beelabz page for customers. It is accessible to only a few, I guess for new customers who recently booked and keeping out older customers who would create trouble for him.
Moreover the people who worked with Anand (for a brief period) have left him as he did not pay their salaries plus he wanted them to market a product they never (physically) had in their office, as a matter of fact they never had an office.
One of the users has created a Facebook page called Beelabz fraud you can visit the page at http://www.facebook.com/Beelabzfraud this page will keep you updated and also guide you on how you can make a complaint. It is important that everyone who have fallen prey to this scam come forward and take the necessary steps.
Other options you can try for to recover your money
- If you are staying nearby file an FIR with the local police station.
- If you have made payment via credit card and it has been less than 1 month, call the company and report the transaction as a fraud. In fact from now on whatever products you buy using the credit card, see to it that you get the delivery within 15 days, if not call the cc company and report the transaction that way the chances of getting the money back is higher.
- In case the credit card transaction was made by over a month file the credit card dispute form and submit it with proof. Here is the link to the Credit card dispute form, this will be different of different credit card companies – but you will get an idea. There is no guarantee that you will get the money back but at least the CC company will do an investigation. And if you have good relations with the credit card company they may reverse the transaction. But worth a try.
Complaint made to EBS.in
Beelabz.in was using the payment gateway powered by ebs.in. It is not easy for any company to get the payment gateway as you need to provide proof and submit the necessary documents. The whole process takes about a month and after verification the same is enabled.
It seems that Anand got the office on rent at a posh location of the sole purpose of getting the gateway. And immediately after getting it, he abandoned the office (not even paid the rent).
I was surprised to find that the ebs.in gateway was still enabled even after so many complaints. I too make a complaint to ebs.in via email and on phone but they were never entertained as the customer support agents were there for the merchants and not for the customers, they may have ignored the complaints.
The next thing I did was get in touch with a higher authority at ebs.in, I got through and as expected they had no idea about the issues with Beelabz.in. They are investigating the matter and have found that the office as mentioned is closed and they are now trying to get hold of Anand. Furthermore the ebs.in gateway is now disabled so no new users will fall prey to this fraudster. The ebs.in legal department is working on this.
How did Anand Sankaran owner of Beelabz.in managed to fool the consumers for so long
The first step was to get the gateway from ebs.in. Once you have the gateway it adds more trust to your site. The next step was to get the money from the gateway. Now these gateways will allow the merchant (beelabz.in) to withdraw the money only after the merchant makes the delivery or after specific number of days.
So the next step was to fool the customers who already made the payment into believing they will get the tablet, this week, next week and so on. He also delivered 2 or 3 tab to nearby customers and asked them to do a review just to make other believe they too will get the tablets. This gave Anand ample of time and he withdrew the money from esb.in when the minimum period was over without even delivering the tablet.
Furthermore most credit card come with added protection for example you can call the company and complain about any transaction that happened with a month. Anand made sure that the customers believed they will get the tab and came with delay tactics like fake courier receipts, DHL no. for checking the shipment click here and custom delays etc. He succeeded and most of customers never made a complaint with their credit card company and hence he was always in good books when it came to the gateway ebs.in.
But there is still hope credit card customers can fill a dispute form even when the transaction happened in the last few months. If you have made payments via online banking your bank will not be of much help to you.
Please follow the Beelabz fraud page on Facebook for more updates.