It could’ve been worse. Not much worse, but worse.
Look, it’s not terribly hard to get ripped off online. It’s something that’s been happening since the dawn of the internet. But it’s rare for someone to get scammed for an amount in the thousands and for it to not be big news. And also for the victim to get a copy of the crappiest Oscar nominee in place of the Bitcoin mining rig they thought they were getting.
But that’s exactly what happened to Ichim Bogdan Cezar; instead of the mining rig he paid a pretty penny for, he instead got The Boss Baby. It wasn’t even the BluRay, to add insult to injury; just the DVD version (I’m still not sure how it won an Oscar Nom, either). He and a few friends had all chipped in to buy the £3000 (roughly equivalent to $4,400) Tanli ASIC Processing Bitmain AntMiner S9 so that they could cash in on the bitcoin boom happening late November/early December. Come December 5th, and they get The Boss Baby delivered.
When Cezar contacted the sellers, Minifigures Direct LTD, they implied that a mistake had been made, and that the rig would be delivered on the 16th. Nothing came on the 16th. On the 18th, he contacted Amazon, which stated that they were trying to get him the correct package. But on the 20th, the seller closed the request saying it was “resolved”. After which point, Minifigures Direct LTD disappeared, with their page filled with complaints about bogus AntMiner sales.
On the 23rd and 24th, Cezar filed refund requests, which Amazon rejected on the basis that he’d signed for his order. He was told to take the issue up with the Royal Mail, but he wasn’t going to take that. Finally, by the 20th of January, he got his refund from Amazon. The Bitcoin market had its annual crater, so at least he didn’t have to suffer that. Why they made the process so difficult for him is anyone’s guess. But at least he knows that The Boss Baby doesn’t deserve an academy award. Especially if scammers send that instead of rocks or phone books (lol when was the last time you saw a phone book?).
Source: Gizmodo
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