Delivery confirmations revealed as bluff. 2CO suspends Medison account.

On September 7 2Checkout business development executive Geno Arce said the Medison delivery confirmations were a bluff.

Finally on September 12 it seems 2Checkout had enough and they started refunding customers. On September 20 2Checkout confirmed they had suspended Medisons account until further notice and that 2CO no longer offers Medisons computers for sale.

A single laptop has been shown to the press in August had its serial number removed. It had a czech keyboard and has been identified from pictures to be visually identical to a Clevo computer, down to the last slot and notch in the plastic cover.  Ivancic is known to have received a Czech Clevo demo unit from a European Clevo vendor. He never paid for it.
          

Keyboard layout will be the most common one in the region of the country specified in the order.

Ivancic has said that customers are expected to email the company if they want a different keyboard from what would otherwise be provided. No email address was provided.

The laptop has no FCC approval and is thus not legal to use in the US

No FCC records are found when searching for Medison at the public FCC register at  https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm

Infocare, who has a verbal agreement with Medison to take care of their support, have said on Aug 9 that they are sceptical and have given Medison until the end of August to commit and the Infocare CEO Jim Norlander has said they look at Medison with a "sober scepticism".

Update: On September 2

Infocare's CEO Jim Norlander said they still have not signed a contract with Medison, and that the company is awaiting information from Medison how they will supply Infocare with spare parts and how large the service volume can be. Therefore Infocare will continue to take an awaiting position towards Medison, according to Norlander.

"The only costs that adds to the price are the low fee that comes with using your card online, the delivery and if you buy extra support"

According to messages from their support staff on their web site, 2Checkout have not been dealing with Medison Europe Ltd as a company but rather with CEO Ivancic in person. This can only be said to be unusual for a company that expects to ship thousands of laptops. It's not clear if 2Checkout's statement should be interpreted as money will be sent directly to Ivancic's personal bank account or to Medison's bank account.

 The company web site says nothing about the costs.

Ivancic has said in interviews that an additional 25 Euro ($30) will be have to be paid in cash upon delivery.

Company's position

Medison was founded in 1996

Company has an office in San Francisco

The Medisoncelebrity web site uses the Visa, MasterCard and American Express logotypes without permission to give the site an air of legitimacy. There are strict guidelines for the use of these logotypes and the Medisoncelebrity web site does not comply with these.

The web shop does not even accept American Express cards.

There is no way of contacting the company. The company does not respond to email, it has no offices and it has no phone numbers and no fax.

The company web site says "Due to the unexpectedly high traffic to our support line past 24 hours it broke down", but those who have followed this story from the beginning knowns that there never was a phone number to call and that the message about the 24 hours have been there for weeks.

Update 9/3: The website now says Medison are working on setting up a telephone support line. Medison have not been successful since 7/30 or before.

Medison is

"currently working hard on getting a phone line back on air"

(the web site has said so since July 30, or longer.)

Update 9/3:

The website now says: "We are working on setting up a 24/7 telephone support line."

Medison's CEO Ivancic has in interviews said the company has orders for 300,000 laptops, while the real number as estimated by journalists based on web usage traffic logs to be closer to a few hundred orders.

Update:  On Sep 7 business development responsible Geno Arce at 2Checkout.com stated in a Computer Sweden interview that Medison has about 7000 orders.

Medison's CEO Ivancic has in a Jnytt interview said the company's web site has 10-15 million visit per week, making it one of the world's top-20 most visited web sites.

The web traffic logs for the site were however public at the time, and according to computer magazine IDG/pcforalla, the site has about 10,000 visitors, several orders of magnitude less than Ivancics claims.

The Medison Press relations officer, Lauri Kuru, does not speak to the media and does not issue the company's press releases. He is silent. This can only be described as unusual.

Update 8/28: Lauri Kuru is no longer listed on the web page as Medison's press relations officer. It's not clear if he has been fired from the position or why else the title was removed from his name.

Contrary to Ivancic's claimed work experience, he has never been employed by Erik Dahlbergsgymnasiet, according to their administrators.

At the press conference in Stockholm, Valdi Ivancic lied on a direct question from a journalist about the laptop that was on show. The keyboard of the laptop is Czech (just like on the unpaid demo unit shipped by Clevo) and when a journalist asked about this, Valdi Ivancic said no, it's a Slovak keyboard.

This is not true.

Thanks to Tommy Truthseeker, you can easily verify this yourself:

Picture of the keyboard from the press conference unit   http://ftp.idg.se/pfa/medison/medison2.jpg
Picture of a Czech keyboard layout
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/keyboards/kbdcz1.htm

Picture of a Slovak keyboard layout : http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/keyboards/kbdsl1.htm

Compare the national keys close to the Enter key and you'll see quickly that the unit shown to the press had a Czech keyboard layout, even though Ivancic denied this when asked.