eBizNex - Mike Cox ruined my laptop rather than repaired it. Hemet, California

On July 25, I purchased laptop repair service via eBay from a company calling itself eBizNext. I shipped my HP Pavilion laptop via UPS using UPS's recommended packing method for laptops, to ensure it wasn't damaged en route.

The laptop was functioning, but it had a known defect I wanted fixed. Their offer looked pretty good. "We specialize in Motherboard repair for ALL HP Pavilion DV Series Laptops.... The process takes about one week... We give you a 90 day repair warranty on this problem. If we cannot fix it No Charge! Money Immediately Refunded! We back our work!... We know good customer service is GOLD! So we give you our repair shop direct number."

On July 27, I made a payment of $79.95 to someone named Mike Cox, at eBixNex. On August 10, after waiting two weeks for return of the laptop, I tried to contact their "golden" customer service to get a repair status. I got an answering machine; never a reply to my message. Never a reply to an email inquiry, either.

I finally received the laptop on August 17 (a three-week wait). It failed to boot up. It kept shutting off. I had seen this behavior before on a PC when the motherboard went bad. Further, by looking at the BIOS, the IT guy at my work informed me that the laptop was now carrying a non-Intel chip. Very odd, since Intel had been the factory-installed chip.

Not surprisingly, I received no response to a call and an email that I sent to eBizNex about my broken laptop. When I called again on August 23, their telephone was disconnected. As I write this, the telephone number and email address are now gone from their WebSite. So, obviously, a big, fly-by night scam. Apparently, they swapped my working motherboard for a bad one. I have to hope they didn't also take my hard drive.  

Don't do business with any entity calling itself eBizNex or any person named Mike Cox (unless you know for sure the person isn't this shyster).