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Friday, January 31, 2014

Dejavutrends - Fraud Avoid, the story

I had deleted the following post after insistence on the part of the company representatives who said they are actually honest and are trying very hard to meet demands. I put this post back up sighting the following:
  1. They deleted me from their facebook page
  2. They deleted their facebook page!
People who are looking to file cases against this company might find some handy information contained in this post. Read on.


Hello folks, this is regarding one of the amazing scams that runs in the city of Mumbai. Some of you must have heard of, or have got e-mails from Deja Vu Trends (https://dejavutrends.com) regarding their e-shopping website. They are selling products at very cheap prices and they even have a HTTPS SSL Certificate!

Well, let me tell you about this company in depth. If I had not bought something from this website I would not have known about this scam but since I have (been duped) I gleefully blog about it! What I bought was a WD External Hard-disk which they have no intention of shipping to me. It has been over 2 weeks and all I hear is that the product is being shipped. They have provided any tracking code nor do they have an option to cancel the order (and opt for a refund). Repeated calls to their customer care center did not prove to be fruitful for 2 reasons.

One, they would not pickup the call! (Try it now, you might be on a lucky streak if they do -- 1800 3000 1177;)

And two, they would repeat the same thing over and over again! Your product is processing (which can be seen from the website itself!) and we need some more time. On asking to cancel the order, they would say that they need permission to do that, and they never do!

Now, all this really could be attributed to the fact that the company is reeling under the pressure of too many orders and they are sincerely telling the truth. Being the extremely gullible person I am, I decided to search. A simple web-search gave me details about the fact how many others have ordered products and have resorted to complaints to Online Consumer Forums.

Being curious I called up one Anandhakumar R. who was duped Rs. 21,979 rupees for a laptop. He told me the same experience I am going through. The customer care would not respond and they would say the same thing over and over again. "Order is processing"

I delved further, the HTTPS Certificate belongs to a company, IBS Bespoke Pvt. Ltd. The owner of this company is one Dr. KAUSTUBH UPENDRA CHOKSHI who was associated with a major fraud in 2010 and he was arrested in that connection as well, for duping 1000 investors 3.14 crore rupees.

I found out that his company is on the defaulters list as prepared by Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Govt. of India.

All of this left me rattled, and I shot a mail to the owner of the domain, Dr. Kaustubh Chokshi. I posted on Google+ hoping to draw his attention. Nothing.

What now? Desperately I searched for the premises of the company and strangely the customer care number was answered as I was on the way. They said, they will ship the product within 24 hours! Well, 24 hours passed and another new customer care officer gave the same dreaded response, "Processing"! I told them I will threaten legal action against them but they kept singing the same tune, of a really bad song.

I visited the listed address. Which happened to be very close to where I live.

The office was open. The guard told me DejaVu have packed their bags and left 6 months ago. Police had come. The place was empty. Shit just got real. This was when I realised, this is beyond me. I need help.

I am going to lodge a police complaint against a few leads that there are.

1. The customer care centre is being operated from somewhere.
2. The online payments are being made to some account.
3. I have another address.

This is an appeal to anybody living in Mumbai to offer your help. You can give me a call at ********** for any thing that you may know about the following people: (they are all co-owners of the company)

KAUSTUBH UPENDRA CHOKSHI
ANJANA UPENDRA CHOKSHI
KETKI CHOKSHI
FREDY SOLI BHESANIA

References:
1. http://www.mca.gov.in/
2. http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/ipo-scam-owner-of-firm-now-shifts-blame-on-his-associate/527901/

1 comment:

  1. Online fraud is an offence that can affect anyone and its amazing post. I would way prevention is easy, if we sharing the ways these criminals are adopting.

    ReplyDelete