Viabox past criminal records and investigations

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 28 Aug 2015 Posts: 1

Be very careful of viabox. I have listed links to viabox's criminal record and police investigation, bad experiences. Also potential deceptive strategies that companies may use. Lost alot of money with them. Be prepared to spend months dealing with a "missing" item, then after their "investigation" dont expect any refund back either.

https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=18175
"$70,020 civil penalty against Viabox of Elkhart, Ind. The FAA alleges that on July 19, 2014, Viabox offered two containers containing flammable aerosol automotive products to FedEx for shipment by air to Montreal, Canada. FedEx employees discovered the aerosol cans and notified the FAA."
"Viabox did not respond to the FAA’s notice of proposed civil penalty within the required 30 days. The FAA has issued a final notice to Viabox. In response to the final notice, Viabox may pay the amount proposed, pay an agreed-upon amount, or request a hearing."

http://articles.wsbt.com/2011-04-05/elkhart-county_29386799
"Elkhart company under investigation after complaints filed from around the world"
"According to the attorney general's office, they have received complaints from all over the world, including Canada, Russia, Australia, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. The Better Business Bureau has 45 complaints on file and in just four months the Elkhart County Sheriff's office has received 180 complaints."

http://www.bbb.org/northernindiana/business-reviews/mailing-services/viaddress-in-elkhart-in-90055684
If you check BBB's website, which is an established consumer protection agency, viabox or Viaddress has a F rating. F being the lowest from A to F.
"BBB file experience shows a pattern of complaints alleging that the firm did not deliver the packages as agreed."
In the "industry comparison" link at the bottom of the page, you will find 53 companies within the same business category (mailing services). Viabox has the most complaints over a 36 month period. There is only 1 other company close to viabox and its not even in the same range as viabox (5-25 complaints vs 25-99 complaints). A whooping 50 out of 53 have 0 complaints over a 36 month period. There is only 1 other company in the 1-4 complaints range.
Next, notice that viabox is classified under the smallest size category. For a company that claims to be the "leader in package forwarding", that's an incredible low size to be a "leader" of an international business category with so much exposure.
If you make a complaint with BBB, indiana police department, etc, they might recommend that you make a complaint to the attorney general (who did receive viaddress's complaints in 2011), as they did recomment to me.

www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.viaddress.com
Compare this review on sitejabber, and another with
www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.viabox.com
Viaddress is viabox's old adddress. Notice the amount of 5 star reviews in the latter, as compared with the former. Also try messaging the 1 star reviewers, as compared to the 5 star reviewers for more info. It may be that they changed their name to avoid people finding out about their previous criminal record and investigations.

Just look at how fast 5 star reviews tend to pop up after 1 stars reviews. Always 5 stars too.

Look at their facebook and twitter page. Its only filled with reviews of items, and im not even sure if its automated or human. I have yet to find a human comment made on their facebook / twitter page, in response to the flood of reviews made by viabox everyday. It may be that if you flood a page like that with only reviews, people would think its just for reviews. But the facebook / twitter suggest to the customer it is open to customer feedback and responses. Be wary of this type of contradictory information.

Also be wary of writing reviews containing the previously mentioned links, they may try and take it down, even though it contains only factual sources. They may respond by making condescending messages which ignore the factual details, and use name-calling or insults against you, then delete their account soon after to avoid detection and trace.

Useful google search terms:
Viabox scam
Viaddress scam
Viabox complaints

Bad customer experiences
http://robinmonks.com/2010/11/viaddress-com-quarantined-possibly-shut-down-entirely/
Many people warning of making police complaints. Ray caples of elkhart county did an investigation. If the bad reviews were so blatantly illegitimate, would the police even bother to take it seriously? Also this quote proves that viabox gets their employees to make good reviews on websites.
Quote: "Admin’s note, this message was posted from the same IP addresses as Gerard/Steve before, and would appear to be someone working for VIAddress. The comment by John above is totally correct and legitimate, and I simply allow this comment to be posted to show the overall pettiness and stupidity of this person, and probably of VIAddress as a whole. /Robin"
Quote: ".. they employed spammers to post positive reviews of their service on blogs, forums and review sites. This led to excellent ratings, like on Trustpilot, where they managed to engineer a 5 star rating. However, in reality they are more like a budget, 2 star operation."

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/specific_search/Viaddress
Quote: "Searching the internet shows I'm not the only person with this problem, there seems to be hundreds of us out there."

http://mudali.blogspot.com/2010/06/unbiased-review-of-viaddresscom.html
Again, ray caples of elkhart police choosing to use these reviews to investigate viaddress AKA viabox.

http://www.fitfreak.net/forums/off-topic-discussion/58419-scammed-viaddress-located-indiana-2.html
Quote: "And by the way this guy put it, my guess is they won't ship the item and when I opened a dispute again, they gonna come out with loads of crap stating that they have recall the shipping and get me to wire-transfer money over."

http://viabox.pissedconsumer.com/category/shipping.html
Qoute: "The only fraudulent activity going on here is the lack of transparency and deceptive conduct by Viabox."
Only 1 out 18 issues resolved
Claimed losses: $12.3K

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/viabox-scam-c699904.html
Quote: "What I mean by lost, is that they never send me the package, and they always response with "We are sorry, We apologize". and all that ****"

Deceptive strategies to be aware of
First of all, I want to make clear that I am not charging or accusing viabox.com of currently doing any of these strategies, they could be or not. They are mentioned so that the customer is aware that companies (viabox or not) may be engaging in these strategies.

Its also likely for small amount of items, say 1-3, with a small weight, has less chance of being "lost", than bigger quantities and bigger weights. An item may go "missing" then company processes / "investigation" to find item or refund customer's money takes months. So its likely a customer becomes tired of this "refund" process, and never gets his "refund" back.

There is no oversight over the employees that transport your items. IF one of the employees steal your item, and they do not admit to their stealing the item, you will be hard pressed to prove that any such employee did steal your item. Very little oversight by 3rd parties, or data recording for which employee handles what items. So they will record your item is in a warehouse, but it MAY get "moved" or "transported", and you will have little data of who specifically is involved in the transition.
They will not always provide you with receipts showing your purchase, only in their webpage can you see your item's details.
You MAY have to spend months settling an issue with them with vague responses and blame shifting. Be suspect of those 5 star reviews and look at the FACTS.

HYPOTHETICAL situation. You find that there are missing items in your delivery that arrived at your house. You make an email to viabox. You received a reason, saying that they dont find the item in the warehouse, but they write that it is with the courier service and not with them. So you ask the courier service for such an item, but they provide real receipts showing no such item was received by them. You confront viabox about this lack of evidence, they do not respond to this. But after a few days, they give you an email, with many blackened out regions claiming this was a bona fide email from the courier service. You might ask yourself, what are you hiding, why blackened out names, email addresses, after all, what is there to hide. Just a simple request after all. Viabox claims in 1 email that it is due to security. But another employee does give you the full email address and name of those involved, therefore proving they are lying. So you ask the courier where this package is and they give you a package or shipping number that viabox claims is yours. But it clearly isnt your name, or item in the package. Before this however, viabox made an argeement with you by email saying that they will refund the full amount if the courier cannot find the item at a certain argeed date. But after the argeed date passes, they still claim that the package was the right one, against all evidence showing otherwise. Therefore they have not only told you lies, but their excuses are not even backed up by evidence. Now they say BEFORE you get your refund, they have to wait until the other courier service has your package, even though there is no evidence such a package for YOU even exists. Since you are in an overseas country, it's hard for you to get something to happen, so you might give up. Thus, you give viabox that missing item's worth for 0 COST.

Saved websites at archive.org just in case the other sites go down
http://txs.io/30Gb

Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 10:00 am

Hi Dremmol,

Welcome to Eater. In reviewing your post, it does not seem that this company is involved in advanced fee fraud, which is the focus of this site. Moreover, Law Enforcement seems to be addressing the issue.

Quote:

First of all, I want to make clear that I am not charging or accusing viabox.com of currently doing any of these strategies, they could be or not. They are mentioned so that the customer is aware that companies (viabox or not) may be engaging in these strategies.

If this is the case, why post?

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