iMatrix Refunds Begun

[iMatrix]

Hello Matrix Watch community,

I am pleased to announce that I have begun the process of publically refunding my customers according to the terms listed on my website (http://www.theimatrix.com). I have also closed my matrix site as promised. I have personally contacted through email all of the customers that I have left to refund and directed them towards my site. I hope that I can put this illegal business scheme behind me as soon as possible and satisfy my customers' requests.

I would appreciate everyone's patience in this matter, since this will take some time. I have given my customers until midnight CST on February 1, 2005 to submit their refunds requests to me. This should allow for enough time for all willing customers to contact me for their refund. If you come across any iMatrix customers who wish to get a refund, please direct them to the iMatrix website (http://www.theimatrix.com).

I have attempted to make this process go as smoothly and efficiently as possible. If you have any comments or suggestions please PM/email me privately. Once again, I would like to thank the Matrix Watch administrators and community for making this refund process possible for my customers.

Best Regards,

-Ashu, iMatrix Administrator

[MatrixWatch]

The notice on the website looks good. Also, you are welcome to forward the customers to our forums here for discussion. This way, you can spend the bulk of your energy on setting up refunds instead of moderating forums. If the traffic becomes heavy enough, we can even open up a sub-forum for your here on our site.

The PDF agreement looks good as well, but I didn't see an address to which your customers can mail it (postal mail). Perhaps I missed it though.

As of today, your progress shows that 127 out of 211 have been refunded. That is a rather significant number of people so far! :)

[Dreamer]

We are now closed for business, but refunding our customers!
December 13, 2004 - 17:17 CST
We have closed our business; however, we are offering 50% refunds to qualified customers. To see if you qualify for a refund you must read below carefully and follow all the directions. We have contacted all of our customers through email with this information. Thank you in advance for your patience in this matter!


Refund Qualifications

1. You MUST NOT have been refunded before by us or by a pay processor we've used.
2. You MUST NOT have been paid out more (when you've cycled) than you've paid in.
3. You MUST NOT submit the Refund Form below more than once, because this may delay
your refund check.
4. You WILL BE refunded 50% (no less, no more) of the remaining money you have left
invested in this site.
5. You MUST submit the signed and dated Refund Agreement to us via email (edited pdf) or
regular US mail before we can process your refund request.
6. You MUST have directly purchased from our site and not some random vendor or friend. If
you have purchased from someone else, ask them for a refund and we can refund them. We
can supply you with the contact information that we have for them.
7. You WILL be charged a processing fee of $10 for the Money Order and secure delivery to
you, which will be deducted from your refund check. This will include insurance and
delivery confirmation and tracking on your check, and we will use a fast shipping method.
8. You HAVE until midnight of February 1, 2005 to submit your refund request. Any requests
made after that time will not be honored.
9. It WILL take 2-3 weeks to process your refund request once we've received it, and 2-3 days for
the refund check to arrive to you. You can check your current status on the side when you've
received your PIN.
10. We RESERVE the right to refuse any refund if we determine that the request is invalid
for reasons of fraud or attempted fraud.


Refund Request Form

Not sure if anybody posted it yet

[Dreamer]

So, the big questions:

1. How many people are qualified for the refunds?
2. If 100% of the qualified people request a full refund due to them, at 50% refund rate, how much money is coming out of your pocket or staying in your pocket from the profits of the site?

Not that these questions are important, but curious minds probably want to know, but its none of my business so I wont hold it against you if you don't share. Im just happy your doing the right thing

[iMatrix]

So, the big questions:

1. How many people are qualified for the refunds?
2. If 100% of the qualified people request a full refund due to them, at 50% refund rate, how much money is coming out of your pocket or staying in your pocket from the profits of the site?

Not that these questions are important, but curious minds probably want to know, but its none of my business so I wont hold it against you if you don't share. Im just happy your doing the right thing

Hello Dreamer,

Thank you for your support. You have very valid questions to ask. I will try to answer them to the best of my ability:

1. As listed on my site, there are still 85 customers who have not yet been refunded. As of right now, 8 customers have already requested a refund, and I'm waiting for them to submit my Refund Agreement Form before I can process their refund check. Out of those 85 customers, there are 17 customers who have invested $20 or less in my site. According to my refund terms they will receive no refund, since: (50% of $20) - $10 = $0. Also, out of those 85 customers there are 13 customers who did not invest directly through us, rather through some 3rd party. At this time, I plan on refunding those 3rd party customers as I promised, and they can refund their customers. I have promised those 13 customers any contact information I have for those 3rd party so they can ask them for their refunds. I have personally emailed all qualified customers yesterday about this public refund process.

2. Although I do have the exact monetary figures in my refund spreadsheet, it is probably a not a good idea to post that information publically. I have shared individual monetary figures privately to each customer once they've requested a refund from me. All I can say is that if 100% of all remaining customers receive their 50% refund, I will have to payout using all remaining iMatrix funds, all my personal funds that I've saved up, and take out a small loan.

Best Regards,

-Ashu, iMatrix Administrator

[concerned]

2. Although I do have the exact monetary figures in my refund spreadsheet, it is probably a not a good idea to post that information publically. I have shared individual monetary figures privately to each customer once they've requested a refund from me. All I can say is that if 100% of all remaining customers receive their 50% refund, I will have to payout using all remaining iMatrix funds, all my personal funds that I've saved up, and take out a small loan.


Why is it not a good idea? All REAL and LEGAL investment companies are required by law to show all their financial statements for the entire company. If LEGAL companies are required to do so, why are you affraid to do it? I think you owe it to the people that you scammed to produce that information. How do we know that you still didn't make a profit unless all the financial records are public? The people have a right to know, especially after they trusted you.

[MatrixWatch]

Dreamer and Concerned actually have a good point about transparency. From what I know, however, only publically-traded companies are required to have the kind of exposure that Concerned mentioned.

Matrix owners have been notorious for pulling all kinds of stunts to get out of hot water, so Ashu, I hope that you don't take any offence to your intentions with all of these poignant questions. I suppose that it goes with the territory.

So far, you've done a pretty decent job at keeping things out in the open for your customers. If you have any additional information, then feel free to post it both here at MatrixWatch.org and on your own website. The more information that you are willing to release in a situation like this the better, because it builds trust (as Concerned mentioned).

:)

[iMatrix]

Why is it not a good idea? All REAL and LEGAL investment companies are required by law to show all their financial statements for the entire company. If LEGAL companies are required to do so, why are you affraid to do it? I think you owe it to the people that you scammed to produce that information. How do we know that you still didn't make a profit unless all the financial records are public? The people have a right to know, especially after they trusted you.

Hello Concerned,

My refunds spreadsheet includes all 85 customers who are left to receive a refund. If I were to refund 50% to all those qualified customers then it would be a total of $7612.50. I currently have $3023.78 left in my iMatrix bank account since I've previously refunded customers and paid out every cycled matrix slot. I have also saved up $2000 of my own personal money (which would leave me broke at this time) to help in this refund process. Assuming that 100% of all those qualified customers request a refund at this time, I will need to take out a bank loan of $2588.72 which I'm willing to do in order to put this illegal matrix scheme behind me.

Best Regards,

-Ashu, iMatrix Administrator

[Dreamer]

I hope potential future site owners read this posting. I believe Ashu when he says that he thought it was a legal business, and I know alot of people still think its a legal venture. However, can site owners even think about taking out such a big loan just to make things right?

I hope those customers of yours see these threads and see how up front and honest you are being right now, so instead of taking out that loan they would be willing to wait a little longer.

[concerned]

Thanks for the info. That was what I was refering to. It shows your customers the overall financial impact, and also shows all others what a loss you can have by trying to run such a scam site.

[Dreamer]

Customers: 211
Refunded: 134
Left to Refund: 77

I don['t know how updated this is, but even so, its been a month since imatrix posted here and said there were 85 people left to be refunded. Now its down to 77. While its only 8 people that got refunded, I'm impressed. I admire you for sticking by your promises and going thru with them.

But, since its been a month, do you have a plan B for informing old members your refund policy? The only reason I ask because its probably been over a year since some people posted, and between than and now their contact information probably have changed.

Either way, its great to see that your doing a refund policy and sticking to it. Good for you.

[ycchen]

It's good to pull this info out again. Even though we bashed Ashu like crazy in the past (or just me? :p), but we admire his courage in trying to straighten things out with his customers. Keep up the good job, Ashu and other annoymous owners out there who are doing the same thing!

While we sincerely hope all matrix-site owners to do the right thing --> close and refund, we believe the pressure still need to come from the bottom-up -- i.e. customers. Without customers' pressure, the owners will just choose to walk away with the money.

[Dreamer]

in my eyes, there was nobody worse than sigx, not even the ulmighty lord emporer of the matrix sites himself. I think it took character and class of sigx to step down when things weren't being done that they should have done, and I think its equally as great for ashu to come out of the woodworks (remember nobody heard from him in a year and people weren't crying) and do the right thing even though there was no pressure on him to do it. Yeah, we bashed him, but i know people who dont like me bash me and thats not going to make me change who I am.

I was impressed that he offered the refunds, and was willing to answer some difficult questions.

I think there is only one person out there that if he switched over and started posting on matrixwatch (even if he is still pro-matrix, or even if he switches over to anti-matrix) i would never even want to post on the same threads as him. I think we all know who this scumbag is.

I don't know how high up theimatrix was ever on the matrix lists, but its been around for awhile and he ended up doing the right thing. Even a month after ashu posted here, his site is still up with the instructions on how to receive a refund.

[iMatrix]

I don['t know how updated this is, but even so, its been a month since imatrix posted here and said there were 85 people left to be refunded. Now its down to 77. While its only 8 people that got refunded, I'm impressed. I admire you for sticking by your promises and going thru with them.

But, since its been a month, do you have a plan B for informing old members your refund policy? The only reason I ask because its probably been over a year since some people posted, and between than and now their contact information probably have changed.

Either way, its great to see that your doing a refund policy and sticking to it. Good for you.

Hello Dreamer,

Firstly, I would like to thank you for your support and your kind words. However, unless you are a previous matrix owner, you cannot imagine how big of an undertaking it is to take down your own site and offer refunds to all possible customers. I believe it is important to do, and it should be what every matrix owner should consider.

Secondly, I think it is important to note that I have a total of 211 customers, and I’ve refunded 134 of them so far. There are also currently 7 more pending. My website is updated daily, so anything you see there is the most recent news or statistics. You do pose a very valid question regarding your plan B suggestion. What I’ve done so far is that I’ve contacted every customer via email, to all of the email addresses that they’ve contacted us by. I have also posted here on your Matrix Watch forums explaining the refunds my customers can receive. Finally, I will have given them ample time (slightly over 6 weeks) to load my website even once to see that they can request a refund.

I believe that I’ve done as much as I can do to reach all my customers who are able to receive a refund. At midnight of February 1, I plan on closing the online refund request form. However, I plan on refunding all those customers who are pending (have requested their refund but not sent in their necessary paperwork) at that time.

To reiterate, I have notified all possible customers, given them ample time to request their refund, and unfortunately that’s all I can do at the moment. I hope to get this matrix site behind me as soon as possible, but I will not abandon any of my customers’ requests while doing so, and I plan on following through with that.

Best Regards,

-Ashu, iMatrix Administrator

[mercinary]

Ashu,

If I were to get nit-picky, I would argue the fact that there shouldn't be a deadline for the refunds. Then again, we all agree that you are doing the right thing by professionally shutting down your site and refunding members. So, with that in mind, I really won't go down the nit-picky route.

One thing I might suggest though (if it isn't already in the plans) would be to send a final email to all the members who have not requested a refund stating that they have X weeks left. I would send it out ASAP since the dealine is quickly approaching.

If you do that, then when Feb 1st comes, you can say that you did just about everything possible to make sure everyone got a refund who wanted one.

Once again, thanks for being so open with us and your customers! :applause:

-Merc

[iMatrix]

It's good to pull this info out again. Even though we bashed Ashu like crazy in the past (or just me? :p), but we admire his courage in trying to straighten things out with his customers. Keep up the good job, Ashu and other annoymous owners out there who are doing the same thing!

While we sincerely hope all matrix-site owners to do the right thing --> close and refund, we believe the pressure still need to come from the bottom-up -- i.e. customers. Without customers' pressure, the owners will just choose to walk away with the money.

Hello ycchen,

I appreciate your support as well. To reiterate what I stated in my previous post, I believe it is important for every current matrix site owner to seriously consider closing down their site(s) and refunding their customers (even partially). Not only is it the right thing to do for their customers, but it is the right thing to do morally and legally for themselves, rather than running away with the money. Any matrix owner who conducted "good" business practices should have a bit of their customers' money left over. What I mean by "good" business practices, is that even though the matrix scheme is not a good business practice, the fact he or she did not use their customers' funds to purchase personal items would be a good thing. This way they can refund the maximum possible percentage back to their customers. I personally have learned a great deal from my past mistakes, and I only hope that others in my situation can learn from them as well.

Best Regards,

-Ashu, iMatrix Administrator

[iMatrix]

Ashu,

If I were to get nit-picky, I would argue the fact that there shouldn't be a deadline for the refunds. Then again, we all agree that you are doing the right thing by professionally shutting down your site and refunding members. So, with that in mind, I really won't go down the nit-picky route.

One thing I might suggest though (if it isn't already in the plans) would be to send a final email to all the members who have not requested a refund stating that they have X weeks left. I would send it out ASAP since the dealine is quickly approaching.

If you do that, then when Feb 1st comes, you can say that you did just about everything possible to make sure everyone got a refund who wanted one.

Once again, thanks for being so open with us and your customers! :applause:

-Merc

Hello mercinary,

Thank you for your suggestion. I will email all remaining customers again today to inform them the deadline to request their refund is February 1. It would be ideal for the customers not to have a deadline as you stated, however, I do wish to put this matrix site behind me as soon as possible, and I'm sure you understand. I believe that giving my customers 6 weeks to submit a refund request is ample time, considering I have proactively attempted to contact all of them.

-Ashu, iMatrix Administrator

[Dreamer]

I think the only argument left would be (and I dont think anybody here is arguing with you, cause I think most of us think your doing a great job). But, do you believe you have exhausted all of your possible venues to contacting your former clientbase to inform them of your refund policy? And, do you think the duration of your refund policy is long enough that everybody who is interesed is able to do it?

The only reason I ask is if a disgruntled former customer finds out later that you offered refunds but, because they werent contacted (new contact info or something) they lost out on a potential refund. They might decide to take it to court and thats something I'm sure we woudl all like you to avoid. They may have less and less of a case, however, aren't we trying to avoid that all together?

If its me personally, I would not take down the site on february 1st, if that was your plan. I would just put an announcement up there than (if thats still your deadline) stating that the site is, for all purposes, closed and will not reopen. That none of the imatrax email addresses will work anymore, and offer a dummy email address you'll check maybe once every couple of weeks. Say that the refund policy was in effect from dec 16 to feb 1. I would keep that message up on the site for at least the duriation of the time that you haven't been active on your site. Than, if anybody asks for a refund than, maybe you'll consider it if it sounds sincere.

I hope potential site owners read your sincerity in this matter. Good for you. Its awsome that you are wanting to just get past this site, however, if go away too quickly, you dont want to risk something hapening that we are trying to avoid.

[iMatrix]

Hello,

I just wanted to inform everyone at Matrix Watch, as well as to all my customers who visit this site that iMatrix's website is temporarily down. I have just submitted a trouble ticket with my host and hopefully the problem will be resolved ASAP. All my services are up, except apache (1.3.33 (Unix)) which is the webserver. Also, my server load is up to 14.61 (4 cpus) and I'm not sure why. I will post an update as soon as I have more information. Thank you for your patience.

Update: 12:50 PM EST

My host administrator wrote the following response to me:

cpanel04 is currently experiencing a combination of different problems with diskio, the system kernel, and the RAID card. I'm in the process of compiling a new kernel to correct this, some services may be done meanwhile.

Hopefully iMatrix's website will be up soon, and I will post any further updates here.

Update: 1:30 PM EST

I was just notified by my host administrator that the kernel update has been completed and everything should be working fine now. Please post here if you have any troubles loading the website. Thanks for your patience.

-Ashu, iMatrix Administrator

[Dreamer]

We are now closed
February 1, 2005 - 00:01 CST
As all of you should know, we have closed our business as of December 13, 2004 and will not reopen. We have offered our customers the possibility to get a 50% refund from us between December 13 and February 1. We contacted all remaining customers when our refund process began and given over six weeks for anyone to request their refunds. At this time we have closed our refund process; however, we plan on refunding those who have already requested one and are pending. All of our previous email addresses have been discontinued except for refunds@theimatrix.com. We appreciate everyone's support, cooperation, and patience over the past year and a half.

I'd imagine this is probably the last site update for you? I still think you did the right thing and I hope potential site owners read this thread.

I think my final objection goes something like this:

"Oh, another email from theimatrix? They already stole my money, are they going to try to steal some more? Garbage can you go".

"I'm sick of these matrix sites screwing me over. I dont want to hear from them again. I'm just going to filter my email so that any mention of matrix in the body of the letter will be deleted automatically".

I'm just glad you didn't take the site off the air on Feb 1st like I thought you wanted to. if a previous customer comes in a later date to check out the site and asks for a refund, i wouldn't be so quick to show them your terms of refunding. It can simply be argued that you were off your site for 9 months, so giving a week window to request a partial refund is simply not enough time, especially if contact information has changed.

[jophish17]

Well, it sure seems like you did a very noble thing iMatrix. Now that I am learning more and more about this stuff, this is quite noteworthy.

[mercinary]

Earlier tonight I was thinking about matrix site closures and iMatrix. As I thought about how some sites close and compared it to Ashu's method of closing, I realized that Ashu might be one of the only matrix owners who legitimately closed down and made an effort to refund all customers.

Think about it for a minute. When most sites close in the "good" way, we see some kind of message along the lines of "Site XYZ is now closed. All customers have been refunded. If you didn't get your refund email blah@blah.com". Rarely have we seen an owner actually show that he could not get ahold of some customers (as Ashu has admitted).

As I sit here and think, I'd just like to commend Ashu once again for his honesty in this matter. Some of us may not 100% agree with the method of refunding that happened for iMatrix, but in the end we all have to admit that the iMatrix closure is one of the best (if not the best) owner-initiated matrix site closures of all time.

I wish Ashu the best in his future (legitimate, legal) endevours!

-Merc

[iMatrix]

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for helping in the closure of my matrix scam site. I apologize for not responding sooner after February 1, but I have been quite busy relocating to my new job and acclimating to my new work environment. I did take into account of all the comments that were made here and decided not to take the site down until March 31st, and also show a message where customers can see that I have indeed refunded them according to my policy. Going back to what Dreamer stated a few posts back, there have been two individuals who have contacted me since the closure of the refund process on February 1. I'm working out the details to refund them as well by the end of next week.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, and I wish I had some foresight into the problems of such a business scheme when I first started it. If I could do it all over again I wouldn't associate myself as a matrix customer, let alone become a matrix site owner. I have regretted my initial decision to start this site for the past year and have been slowly refunding all my customers ever since.

I am glad that I can now put this behind me at the end of the month. I wish I could say I had some money left over in my iMatrix account, but sadly I've had to dig into my savings account for some refunds. I will probably need to take out a $1000 loan to refund these last two customers of mine, and hopefully any others that try to contact me before March 31st.

I appreciate everyone's kind words of encouragement, suggestions, and most of all, your patience as I have slowly brought my matrix site to a close.

Best Regards,

-Ashu

[MatrixWatch]

Ashu,
Would you please place a link to this discussion thread on your home page?

[iMatrix]

Ashu,
Would you please place a link to this discussion thread on your home page?

Watchdog,

It would be my pleasure. I have added a link to MatrixWatch as well as a direct link to this thread on the main page of my website.

Best Regards,

-Ashu

[iMatrix]

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to thank all of you for helping me in bringing my site to a prompt closure. I have closed the site permanently and have paid out all pending customers a refund to their satisfaction. Feel free to contact me by PMing/emailing me here on your forums if you need to get in touch with me for whatever reason. I hope to help all of you in your future endeavors of bringing other matrix scam sites down smoothly. If you need my assistance, please don't hesitate to ask and I'll help to the best of my ability. I have learned my lesson and will not associate myself with such pyramid schemes and matrix scams in the future. I am just relieved that I can put all of this behind me and finally move on.

Thanks again from the bottom of my heart for everyone's help during the past several months.

-Ashu