As a technology person I’ve always wanted a wallet with a whole bunch of technology inside it to make life simpler. I was for quite some time running a Tile tracker inside my wallet in order to find it which worked pretty well but then I saw an ad for this “glorious” smart wallet called Volterman:
Now, while this is cringe it is sort of entertaining. It seemed like the wallet I wanted so I backed it as it did seem like a pretty good deal for a wallet with such tech. It crossed off everything I wanted – thin, a whole bunch of things I would never use, wireless charging built in etc.
But here’s where things start – you’ll note the estimated delivery date of February 2018. I get it, things can be delayed and this isn’t my first campaign I’ve backed but fast forward to today and I still have not gotten my perk – in-fact, the majority of backers have not. Back in 2019 I decided to email them and got the following statement back:
I didn’t hold my breath. They’ve said this to multiple other people so I left it there with a follow-up to email them back “a few years later” – I emailed on the same thread which also would have shown this above email:
This is the other problem – I pretty much had them at this point. I knew they would have come back to me with a statement telling me that their Indiegogo funds have been allocated however I find it very hard to believe that all $4,085,083NZD (at the time of posting) would have been fully spent with production when they’ve hardly got wallets out the door. And so they did:
The other problem I have with the email “Bella” sent to me is the fact they’re actively selling their wallet on their website stating 45 business days for processing and shipped within 7-14 business days:
And note – nowhere on their website are they mentioning this is a “preorder”. Lastly – they’re running Google Ad-sense ads to direct people looking for smart wallets over to their website. So they’ve got money to burn on promoting themselves but have not shipped wallets out to the majority of their backers. I questioned them on this:
Hmm, Costumer. But anyway – this went back and forward for literally 5 days pointing out to them that they’re scamming backers out of their hard-earned cash to basically startup a company specializing in what is a scam product. Lets divert away for a bit to what I would have been provided if I actually got this wallet:
That’s right – Thicc boi! Not the promised “thin” smart wallet at the very start. This Reddit post shows the insides of the wallet. It has also been pointed out the MicroSD card they use is in-fact not 64gb but instead a fake MicroSD card advertising itself as 64gb with a 32gb real capacity (a very common and well documented scam on eBay / Wish). There is further discussion on this Reddit post on the wallet unboxing video but it is truly terrible – the wallet doesn’t last a full day by itself battery-wise, the battery is smaller than what was on the campaign (2100mAh instead of 2600mAh) – not enough to sustain the wallet itself yet alone charging a phone… I pointed all this out to their customer support people but as expected, they ignored these facts and just kept sending me copy-pasted emails. This was the one of the final emails I got from them:
I was not being rude – I was simply posting facts. I’ve done my time in the customer service space but “Bella” was looking for any excuse she could in order to stop talking to me and she got it. She’s avoiding the question of where my wallet is when they stated to me it was shipping in 2019 also. I do have several domains so could always email them from another domain but I’ve already accepted I’m not getting a refund, I’m not getting my perk and am joining many other people who have been scammed out of their hard earned cash by a company giving false promises.
It gets worse: I got this email back in 2018 from a company called Lumzag:
I thought to myself – this sounds familiar and did some research. The app looked the same, the tech was the same and even the Smartphone app at the time was the same – other people noticed this too and tied it together with the creators of Volterman (see old original Reddit post here). I actually hit them up on this:
Surprise – as I check this today the product has indeed not been sent and there are thousands of comments complaining about this fact. It is a shame as this otherwise may have been a neat product. There is also a further Reddit post showing the links in further details of the two here.
I may have lost money here, and have nothing to show for it. I get it, crowdfunding is a gamble but it is “scampaigns” like the ones done by Volterman / Lumzag harm individuals who are new to such platforms and harm the platforms themselves. It has personally caused me to put less money into campaigns as a whole even if the product appears to be interesting.
Part 2 is up now – I actually got the scam wallet (Clicky!)
Further Reading:
Trustpilot page of Volterman: https://nz.trustpilot.com/review/volterman.com
Another post showing Volterman is indeed a scam: https://www.allthewallets.com/volterman-wallet-scam/