SUBMITTED: Thursday, October 21, 2004
POSTED: Friday, October 22, 2004
My husband & I were one of the fortunate ones to actually receive a machine. But it was not without a tremendous amount of stress, demanding, threatening and acceptance of the Italian Riello machine. We were promised in our "purchase order" that our machine would be delivered in 45 days. They then "lost" our original "purchase order" and said we would have to sign another one. They Fed X'd it to us and I noticed on the back that it now stated "60 days". We refused and sent them a copy of the one they had returned signed with a route ID number assigned. We were given 5 or 6 different delivery dates. We were told that the American machine would take longer because of a shipping issue, improper packaging!We received our machine 4 months later. We had been purchasing DVD's for months based on the different dates we were given. We actually had an installer, not great, was here for two days, he showed up when he wanted to, took long lunches, took many phone calls from other techs and actually spent only about 5 hours with us. Fortunately for us, my husband is a computer tech by trade and actually set the machine up, installed and took care of IC Verify, the merchant account and everything. When we initially sent in our location "wish list" which was not even reviewed, they just pushed on and told us we found you an apartment complex that is excited about getting your machine and had contacted their marketing guy and sent them a contract with 10% of our earnings. We were told originally by our salesman, Eddie Gregorian, that we would be negotiating our own contract with whatever location "we" decided on. Our machine is up and running, but hardly paying for itself.
The gentleman that was our "locator" was supposedly fired because I think he told us things that he wasn't supposed to. Every time I called, which was at least twice a day for months, I was always given to someone different. After about a month of me hounding and calling, they started hanging up on me after a few rings, as if they had caller ID. When we did actually speak with someone, it was one lie after another. We would be told that someone else would get back with us and we were never contacted. My husband started calling from his office and we also used our cell phones, they had to talk to us or would put us on permanent hold. I would be very interested in an e-mail correspondence from David in Oklahoma City. I would be very interested in knowing who actually has machines, who doesn't, whose machines work and whose don't, we may be able to band together and figure something out with the one tech guy that seems to be interested in helping out. I agree with everyone but Ken, and I am terribly sorry for him and everyone who is still waiting, holding on to unfortunately....what? Nothing? I hope not! AED president McArthur and all salesmen of AED should be held responsible and be held liable and anyone else that can be proven to know what was going on. I truly believe if we had not threatened to bring our attorney into it and not taken the Riello machine, and become so obnoxious, that we would be in the same boat as many of you.