Saturday, September 8, 2007

Medison's sites closed & more

Sorry for not posting earlier but I have been extremely busy the last few days with stuff going on in my "real life" so I had to prioritize that. Thanks for staying put though ;)

First of all, Medison's both sites seems to have been pulled from their host surftown. The following message has been floating around:

"Medison is changing webhotel for the websites www.medison.se andwww.medisoncelebrity.com.

We are told that the redelegation will take up to 48 hours before our websites will work again. We are doing our best to speed up the process.

During this time it will not be able to buy Medison Celebrity laptops and it will not be able to reach us on e-mails.

Temporarily e-mail addresses are being set up and will be posted in public asap.

Everyone who has ordered a Medison Celebrity laptop will receive a laptop. For checking your orders or cancel the order, please contact2CO on www.2checkout.com during these days.

Sincerely,
Valdi Ivancic
CEO & President
Medison Europe Limited"

I have not however been able to verify if this message really is from Valdi or not, but it seems like surftown has suspended the sites from their side. It also seems very strange to fix temporary e-mail addresses AFTER the site was taken down, if it was by them self.

In other news 2co first claimed in Swedish news that the first laptops actually had been received by customers, but they withdrew this statement later saying that it only was a story pulled by bloggers and customers trying to get more information regarding the matter.
Now 2co instead writes on their forum that they have given Medison a deadline before they cancel all orders & refund all customers. They have not however said when this deadline will be. They also write that they actually has seen one of the laptops, but most likely it's the same Clevo that was shown to Swedish press with scratched off serial number and Czech keyboard.

Sorry for the lack of links, I'm posting from a laptop with 3G modem and are a bit short of time, but links to all the news & posts can be found in the comments of my last post.

61 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suspect that Valdi and his comrades are just a bunch of bunglers, the are to stupid to fool anyone, Maybe Valdi have asperger's or some similiar slight disorder that gives vivid imaginations and delusions of grandeurs.

Anyone know Sigvard Marjasin? Forget him, this person will become a much more prominent figure for all scammers and fiddlers.

Anonymous said...

The site is probably closed due to the fact that they exceeded some traffic limit. That should explain why it happened in the beginning of the month.

Even Valdi would not be so stuped as believeing he would be able to just vanish. But then again, maybe he is.

They have received some 7.000 orders. That would roughly mean they have 1.000.000 USD that they can grab from 2CO if they can trick 2CO into trusting them.

One way would be to place a few hundred orders themselves, mark them as shipped, respond to the call from 2CO and state that the computer was received in a timely fashion.

2CO would probably stop calling after some 50 "happy customers" or so and release the money for the first batch.

Then, a few days later, Valdi will just chekc the remaining 7.000 orders and get the million dollars.

That is - if 2CO does no further verification.

angrypirate said...

Don't let them see that idea!

I really hope this site isn't a scam, as this would be a nice laptop, but still...

Anonymous said...

What I realy like is that Valdi has registred the domain using a hotmail account: valdi_ivancic@hotmail.com

Spam away :)

Anonymous said...

All of this smacks of the "over unity" or "free energy" crowd. Wild claims of demonstrations by people like Dennis Lee or Joe Newman that go on for years, put a fortune in the claimer's pockets, but never quite seem to make that final delivery.
A scam is a scam. This Valdi guy will probably be back with something else and a lot of suckers to follow him.
It's a good thing to have skeptic sites like this one to expose the fraud

Anonymous said...

2CO MUST verify every laptop delivery. After all that buzz for sure. Valdi cant get that $mln anyway. No way. He's failed

DaFeBa said...

I want to believe it's possible to build a laptop with $150, but, only the processor cost at least 80 dollars. and thátś something you have to buy from Intel or AMD, enssambling the PC in Brazil does not make much difference.

Anonymous said...

WOW,,,I'm placing more orders,,,,I love Valdi!!!! Orders!!! Orders!!!

Link: https://www.2checkout.com/2co/buyer/orderpage/1257876?TCOID=d7004b47831b5eb2e4dbc261f1a00e4c

Anonymous said...

I really am wondering what's gonna happen. This is interesting! I hope it's true.

Anonymous said...

What will 2CO do?

1. 2CO puts a lot of crappy excuses on the table. In such case they deserve a truly bad reputation for participating in this fraud and ignoring any level of common sense.

OR

2. 2CO completes the order by finding a REAL vendor and delivers the laptops they've already sold. 7000 orders and a loss of perhaps US$200 per laptop is US$1.4 Million in loses for 2CO. Completely reasonable in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

Tommy,

Do you know anything of the validity of the "message from Valdi" regarding that they are moving to a different webhotell? Or did u get that from the post in the formar post?

Or do you think Valdi is using your blog to get his message across? By the way, how many visitors have u got to this blog since the Medison Comedy started?

Regards,

marketer

Anonymous said...

Sounds like 2CO might handle this responsibly and my money is pretty safe... If this is a scam I don't get how it works. If it's not a scam I still don't get how it works. Whatever, I'm looking forward to getting a laptop or my money back sometime in the future...

Anonymous said...

it's likely that when he was planning it, he didnt really expect this to blow out of proportion like this. What he probably did not realize is the US economy is in such shambles that $150 is about all anyone can afford for a internet capable laptop with a decent screen.

It really is possible to make a laptop for around 150, but you need to go back about 5 years or so as far as technology. Or use a new OLED technology which is supposed to be VERY cheap in making screens.

You use a desktop processor solder it on the board, and under clock it, thus greatly reducing the heat and power needs.

Basically you use off the shelf 2nds and old stuff that factories have laying around. THAT is the easiest way to do it... and you build it in Russia or some other low-wage country, because China will get spendy quickly, and in Russia there are even fewer laws than in China.

Anonymous said...

The medison.se domain expires 2007-10-06, i.e. in less then a month. Although that wouldn't explain why the .com domain is also closed.

Anonymous said...

That's a great pile of nonsense...Russia, OLED, under clocking and using obsolete parts.

And this done by Valdi who has no experience :-)

Just a few facts:

1. Chinese assembly costs on a laptop is still under US$ 1 in raw labor costs + overhead. Brazil or Russia are less productive areas.

2. OLED at a screen size of 14" at lower than LCD cost. OLED is a new technology and more expensive than LCD for large screens.

3. Underclocking a desk top processor. The desk top processors generally use significant more power even at lower clock speeds than the latest optimized mobile ones. In particular VIA's CPUs could be an interesting option and minimizing the cost of cooling and avoiding the CPU socket of course are important steps in keeping the cost low.

4. Using obsolete parts. I agree on this but then will the motherboard and plastic parts have to be reengineered for those parts? That's not something "the great Valdi" could do in his apartment factory in Sao Paolo. Developing a motherboard is a fairly complex and costly task that wont make sense for low quantities like what appears to be the case for Medison. And new tooling for plastic parts is very expensive as well.

Many general consumers and 2CO apparently don't get it, but making and selling a laptop with these specs for US$150 with today's component costs is PLAIN IMPOSSIBLE.

Acer can sell at low cost (like twice what Medison Celebrity cost) because they do high volume in a place with lower production costs than Brazil or Russia called China.

If Valdi was Bill Gates and the target marget was poor Africans who he wanted to help by funding a program of cheap laptops, this would have made sense.

Anonymous said...

You guys forget that Medisons plan (probably) was/is to sell the computers for less then they buy it and then make up for it by getting money from advertisers on their website.

Punkonjunk said...

and that could work, too. Offering External CD rom drives, ram upgrades, ect, especially at reasonable prices would be excellent, and would probobly help rake in cash. I dunno, though.

Anonymous said...

That's another bogus idea...making advertisement revenue and selling accessories.
Valdi will be losing >US$100 per laptop customer and that's relative to that an impossible amount of advertisement revenue he needs to make just to make a zero balance!

The interesting thing about Medison and Valdi is that nothing really makes much sense. But I guess Valdi is in a different world than other people.

Anonymous said...

quote: "That's another bogus idea"

Sure. But it shows that there was a plan and that plan was not to sell computers for a profit. The computers were just a way to get people to see the adverts and to buy stuff from the advertisers.

There's really no need to discuss if it is possible to make and sell a computer for $150. It's not and it never was Medisons intention.

Ofcourse Medison is doomed. They have a CEO that has no business skills (ie. all his previous companies went bankrupt or did.. uhm.. noting). And they have totally forgotten that their website is the single most important asset. Having a website that screams "I made this in Netscape Composer back in 1994" won't get them a single advertiser. It just doesn't make them look like a professional and serious company.

I wounder if this business model would be applicable on another product segment. Ie. mp3-players. You almost give away the player (no profit). But without batteries, charger and headphones. You sell these items at a relative low price (but still enough to make a small profit) and have lots of other products. Ie. headphones with displays and volume controll on the cords, better batteries, quick chargers and so on. These products should generate most of the profit.

When I think of it... This has already been made. Printers for instance. They are cheep but the toners and ink cartridges cost a lot. The printer is often shipped with an ink cartridge containing very little ink.

Unknown said...

I spoke with a representative of 2CO on Friday, September 7th, 2007 who said that some people had received their computers. I can't comment on the accuracy of this statement. Just passing it on.

Anonymous said...

David, I hope you have read this

Anonymous said...

"...some people had received their computers".
Yeah, of course let's all believe in that. Isn't this just the same Ken Gallo (id: kag12345) living near 2CO who claimed to have received one a few days ago?

2CO is as good in checking deliveries as Valdi is good in designing web sites.

What's wrong with those guys at 2CO???

Anonymous said...

Anybody who have ordered a laptop from 2CO/Medison, please complain using this web site:

http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/consumer-investigative-request.cfm

Please mention both 2CO and Medison in your complaint.

Unknown said...

Presumably Valdi's reference to "up to 48 hours" is to DNS propagation delays. As of right now, Sep 9 5:25 CET, no changes have been made to the DNS servers of either domain. Makes me think there's something else going on. Site closed for non-payment, maybe?

Any normal person would realize that closing your website just when you claim that your computers are about to be delivered does not instil a lot of confidence.

Anonymous said...

it seems like Valdi is spending some tome on this forum writing optimistic comments.

Is it possible to see thi ip-adress for the comments and thus see if the positive ones belong together?

Anonymous said...

medisoncelebrity.com is available again.

medison.se still doesn't open for me.

The former appears to be hosted at Yahoo now.

Anonymous said...

I want to add this adds some credibility to the message reportedly from Valdi in the previous article's comments.

This means Valdi follows this blog, which is good, but I can't explain to myself why would he pick this place to post messages about developments at his company.

Maybe time to reopen that Yahoo forum. Can't he simply delete offending messages (if they contain inappropriate content and words).

Anonymous said...

Some documents are missing from the new medisoncelebrity.com, such as:

The Terms of Service;
Taxes/fees/shipping pop-up;
The banner images from the accessories page;
Some header/footer and supporting images;

.. and possibly others.

Anonymous said...

nån som kollat upp Valdi Ivancic på facebook? finns en snubbe vid det användarnamnet, nätverk cilicon valley, ca. Kan ju vara ett skämt oxå iof. Annars kan ju en "poke" sitta fint

Anonymous said...

Medison.se seems to be relocated to bravenet.com according to nic.se:

state: active
domain: medison.se
holder: mediso0702-00002
admin-c: -
tech-c: -
billing-c: -
created: 2003-10-06
modified: 2007-09-09
expires: 2007-10-06
nserver: ns11.bravehost.com
nserver: ns12.bravehost.com
status: ok

Anonymous said...

Ha! He went from $2 per month to free hosting!

Cutting down the cost on operating expenses in an effort to keep the laptop at $150 no doubt.

Anonymous said...

And, I guess that means Medison can add Canada to it's list of corporate locations.

Karel Jansens said...

What are you people talking about? Neither www.medisoncelebrity.com nor www.medisoncelebrity.se are valid domains AFAICS. The former still gives the Surftown placeholder and the latter doesn't even connect.

Not that I care much, mind you; I have a Nokia N800, which exists, was delivered and actually works.

I'm just curious how many advertisers did plunk down money. It seems they, rather than the fanboi saps who went out money, are the true losers in this sitcom.

Anonymous said...

"What are you people talking about? Neither www.medisoncelebrity.com nor www.medisoncelebrity.se are valid domains AFAICS. The former still gives the Surftown placeholder and the latter doesn't even connect."

Like Valdi (?) said, DNS propagation takes up to 48 hours. I'm not delusional, I see the celebrity site, for you it may take few more hours.

It may help to flush your DNS cache (run ipconfig /flushdns at the command line) and restart your browser.

Anonymous said...

I can confirm, celebrity is indeed back up. It's being hosted by a free isp, http://www.bravenet.com/webhosting/

Anonymous said...

medison.europe@gmail.com

is where you can reach us temporarily until we have our domains up and
running.

Valdi Ivancic
CEO & President
Medison Europe Limited

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see if Bravenet's TOS allows a site which sells laptops but never delivers the. The Bravenet TOS does not allow mail fraud or pyramid schemes.

Note also that Bravenet is ad supported. The revenue for the ads will go to Bravenet to pay for the web hosting, not to Medison.

What's in this for Valdi? If he can't make enough money of the advertising on his Medison web site to pay for cheap web hosting, it is very clear that it can not ever subsidize laptops.

Anonymous said...

The 1.5 GB free traffic limit on Bravenet should not last long with the 10-15 million daily viewers Valdi has claimed his site has.
LOL.

Anonymous said...

He must have one of their pay plans, because there are no adds on the celebrity site.

Anonymous said...

You're not running adblock software?

Anonymous said...

This entire story reminds me of the good ol' science of Cremlinology, where teams of "experts" carried out lengthy analyses, and issued guesses about the future, based on such weighty clues as who was absent from where and when :-)

Anonymous said...

Valdi, if you read this and you want to appear a bit more professional, please help with this information.
Where is the Medison Celebrity project at this stage:

a. No vendor identified yet.

b. Vendor identified but product still in development.

c. Vendor identified and ramping up production for first lot shipment.

d. First lot produced but shipment pending due to logistic or approval reasons (e.g. FCC, CE etc.).

When do you expect shipping release to happen and what is the first quantity you will release?

Please help people to believe you are not just some lunatic.

Anonymous said...

So, if surftown shut down valdi, and he's paying bravenet for premium, it's kinda obvious they shut him down for a reason other than money ($2 per month). Either they did what 2co should do, or they were forced to shut him down be Swedish authorities.

Anonymous said...

Tommy, and everyone else -
This article really sums up alot of info about what's going on. Helps me and all of us feel alot safer, too. At least we won't LOSE anything.
http://medison.pbwiki.com/IDG-Computer+Sweden:+%222CO+backs+off:+No+computers+have+been+delivered%22

Also, if this doesn't come through, there's always the Eee PC.
I'm very excited for that guy, too.

Anonymous said...

"So, if surftown shut down valdi, and he's paying bravenet for premium, it's kinda obvious they shut him down for a reason other than money ($2 per month). Either they did what 2co should do, or they were forced to shut him down be Swedish authorities."

Well.. It could be that they support some other technologies needed for medisons new uppcomming website. Ei. ASP.net/MySQL/PHP etc.
Just a thought...

Tommy TruthSeeker said...

"This article really sums up alot of info about what's going on. Helps me and all of us feel alot safer, too. At least we won't LOSE anything."

I don't agree at all. That just shows that 2co is really easy to manipulate and that 2co is full of BS that they have shown recently.

Anonymous said...

"Well.. It could be that they support some other technologies needed for medisons new uppcomming website. Ei. ASP.net/MySQL/PHP etc.
Just a thought..."


Hm, then he also must hire a different web designer. The current medisoncelebrity.com website is an example of how web pages were coded 10 years ago. The pages look as if they have been edited from a different site.

Anonymous said...

Re: the comment 09 September, 2007 23:38

"...Please help people to believe you are not just some lunatic..."

I think the poster mentioned the crucial word: "BELIEF".

Medison has acted contrary to any normal business practice throughout this debacle. There is no law against that, of course, but even snakeoil salesmen used to have at least 2(two) bottles or so of a product to brandish, whereas in this case we have sightings of 1 (one!) piece of hardware.

Since there apparently exist so many people who want to BELIEVE, it all sounds like recepy to start a cult, headed by Guru Valdi :-)

Anonymous said...

"Hm, then he also must hire a different web designer."

You know, I'd do it. I'm a web dev (and I could do this site better definitely).

For just a Medison Celebrity shipped to my place, if they exist.

If they don't, I don't care, I'd like the challenge anyway.

But I guess what's stopping me from mailing him is I could possibly aid in misleading more people into ordering, and getting nothing.

If it wasn't for the moral problem, I'd do it for the hell of it, and make them a site even Apple would be proud of.

Anonymous said...

Hey dude, where's my comp? I've soon waited for a month and I got notthing, not even a shipping notice... It seems fishy...

Karel Jansens said...

I think I've got it: Tomorrow, on 9/11, Valdi announces he has been a Taliban operative from the beginning and that this whole scheme was a shrude (heh heh heh) setup to destabilize the western economy.

What? It makes as much sense as a con artist who sets up an elaborate sting, not to get even a penny from it.

Anonymous said...

Jesus turned a few fish and some bread into enough food for thousands, can valdi turn his 1 laptop into thousands?

Anonymous said...

I think this blog is true entertainment. If we get no laptops we at least get lots of laughs... Hah hah hah :D

Anonymous said...

Valdi - where are you ? I have this great business idea that would make a killing.

Let's make surfboards and windsurfers, and give them away for free. We will make money on all the ads from fish-food manufacturers, that we will place on the bottom side of the boards.

Anonymous said...

the site seems to be online again.. though buggy as hell ?

Anonymous said...

Heck, I have an even BETTER idea for making money:

Let's give away CLOTHES for free. Everyone wears clothes. Then we get companies to pay us to print their logo on the clothes, and to advertise on our clothes web site. This is how we make money.

Imagine having thousands of people walking around with your company logo displayed on their chest. That advertising must be worth MILIONS!

Karel Jansens said...

Anonymous: "the site seems to be online again.. though buggy as hell ?"

What's particularly entertaining is that, if you click on the "Product" tab, you get an "404 Not Found" message.

Sign o'the times?

Anonymous said...

My idea is the best. Give away free food! There are hundreds of millions of people starving in the world that would love to get free food even with lots of advertising on it. I guess my idea will make us a gazillion dollars in advertising revenue.

Anonymous said...

The product site still down...
http://www.medisoncelebrity.com/product.html

Anonymous said...

"What's particularly entertaining is that, if you click on the "Product" tab, you get an "404 Not Found" message."

Hehe, i believe Medison finally have removed their product... ;)

Anonymous said...

not working either

http://www.medisoncelebrity.com/legal/privacy/