Ectaco (East-Coast Trading American Company Incorporated) Misleading advertising and no after sales service or support Internet

In June 2015 I bought a Partner lux Language translator from this company on-line and paid over 900USD with Paypal.(They are incidentally now trying to dump these things at a huge discount)

Time of delivery was of the essence as I was on holiday in Portugal and expecting a guest who could speak no English. My decision to buy this product, despite staff being very rude to me over the phone prior to placing the order, was based purely on the content on the website http://www.ectaco.com/ECTACO-Partner-LUX2-GLX31 especially the claims that the device is the world's first free speech translator and I quote:

"Meet the first-ever Free Speech Translator - ECTACO Partner LUX 2 which has been specifically designed to translate any spoken words and phrases." as well as the 4 hyperlinks at the top of the web page which create the impression that they are contracted to several USA government departments.

Firstly there was an undue delay in the delivery and the device arrived long after the due date, 3 days before my guest left.

Secondly when we tried to use the device, we found that we had to be connected to the internet, and that the speech recognition capability was extremely bad, resulting in extremely bad translations.

Thirdly, the device itself was extremely unstable, often freezing up, or failing to launch applications. The only way to recover from this, was to open up the back cover and do a manual reset. (Time consuming and extremely frustrating)

Needless to say, we found the device impossible to use. Upon my return to South Africa, where I had proper communication capabilities I tried to contact Ectaco by e-mail, with the view to return this useless device for a refund. Although I received read receipts for my e-mail, I never received a reply to my complaints.

I then contacted Paypal, filed a complaint and hoped to achieve some assistance or a chargeback from them. Paypal informed me that Ectaco forwarded the the contact details of their support department. Once again, despite having read receipts my messages got ignored. Paypal also declined further assistance.

Bottom line, I sit with >900USD worth of absolutely useless equipment, Paypal that decline to help me, and a supplier that do not reply to my e-mail.

My advice to readers of this collumn, do not touch this company or their products. Secondly, do not attach any value to the so called buyer protection offerred by Paypal.

Further research done after my experience indicated that there are many more people that feel defrauded by this company. I even found a report by an electronics manufacturer who opened one of these devices and stated that the actual assembly was of the worst standard he has ever seen - no wonder these devices are unstable.