'Free' iMacs, Too
Wired News Report
7:50 a.m. 11.Feb.99.PST
There's a computer giveaway for Macophiles now, too. And yes, there's a catch.
Two days after Free-PC said it would hand out 10,000 Compaqs, a company on Wednesday offered 25,000 free iMacs -- in exchange for one little thing.
Money.
While Free-PC is giving personal computers to Internet users willing to spill personal info and endure ads, One Stop Communication will give an iMac to anyone promising to spend US$100 a month at its online mall for the next three years.
Users must also use One Stop Communication as their Internet service provider, at $19.95 a month, company CEO Israel Rosenfeld said. That charge is waived in any month that a user spends more than $200 at the decidedly patchwork shopping mall run by the company.
Two hours after the deal was announced 2,500 people had signed up for the free iMacs, Rosenfeld said. The company promised delivery of the iMacs within 30 days.
Customers must provide One Stop with their credit card number or enough personal information to prove their credit-worthiness. Each month, a shopper must spend at least $25 each in four different shops in the mall, which will eventually feature a few hundred shops, Rosenfeld said. If a shopper does not shop, his or her account is charged $100.
The commitment represents a $3,600 outlay for a computer Rosenfeld said was valued at $999.
However, Trudy Self, of One Stop's investor relations company, said the extra charges do not equate to a charge for the iMac. By signing up, customers gain access to discount shopping at the company's site, she said.
Customers can sign up for the offer by e-mailing the company or by going to the Compubag section of its site. The shopping mall now offers goods ranging from books and flowers to antiques and computers.
One Stop Communication, which is based in New York and Tel Aviv, is a subsidiary of One Stop Car of Florida.
About Those Free iMacs ...
by Craig Bicknell
11:40 a.m. 17.Feb.99.PST
Last week, a tiny outfit called One Stop Communications grabbed headlines around the world with its offer to give free iMacs to anyone willing to spend US$100 a month on the company's collection of shopping sites.
Orders have poured in.
"We're now approaching 3,000 people who've signed up online, and more than that have sent letters," One Stop CEO Israel Rosenfeld said Tuesday.
Those iMac supplicants may be in for a big disappointment. If this all sounds too good to be true, it might be.
Last summer, Rosenfeld pitched a similar offer through a different company, AcTVnet of Tel Aviv, Israel. According to the deal, anyone willing to spend $100 on AcTVnet's online mall would get free ISDN access. As with the iMac offer, orders and upfront payments poured in. But AcTVnet filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter, leaving lots of customers at least $100 poorer.
"I was one of those who was lured into the trap," said Jordan Lewinski, a fourth-year medical student at Tel Aviv University. "After I paid the sum in advance, the company failed to deliver the ISDN line and then filed for bankruptcy with all the money paid by the customers missing from its accounts."
Rosenfeld acknowledged that AcTVnet closed down suddenly last summer, citing a scrape with Israel's monopoly phone provider, Bezeq. He doesn't dispute Lewinski's contention that AcTVnet and its partner company, Shani Technologies, failed to refund customers' money.
"There are some customers that are really upset," he admitted.
Still, some customers probably received a rebate from their credit-card companies, he said, because Israeli law prevents credit cards from charging customers for services they never received.
Moreover, Rosenfeld said, some AcTVnet customers have "helped" him launch One Stop Communications. "That means it can't be that bad." He wouldn't name the former customers or say exactly how they were backing his new venture.
With the AcTVnet disappointment behind him, Rosenfeld has big plans for One Stop Communications, currently trading on the OTC Bulletin Board through an American shell company, One Stop Car of Florida (OSCR).
The first step is to draw customers to its shopss.com site through the iMac offer. As part of the deal, surfers are supposed to spend $25 on at least four shopss.com stores each month. A precondition for receiving the "free" iMac is that customers prepay for the first month's shopping.
Problem is, there aren't any shopss.com stores -- at least not yet. The site simply lists a set of links to seven other shopping sites on the Web, including eBay's antiques page and an FTD florist's online flower shop.
"The shops that are listed right now are just demo," said Rosenfeld. "We're going to put out shops next week, around 30 or 40." One Stop's webmaster, he explained, has been holed up in Chicago and unable to flesh out the e-mall. "She somehow got caught up in some storms."
She'll have to scramble to keep up with Rosenfeld's real ambition for One Stop, a sweeping vision called Studio 2000.
"It's the ultimate project for One Stop," he said.
Here's a direct cut-and-pasted description from One Stop's site:
Studio 2000, the network of tomorrow: a global communications network operating and broadcasting on a one Giga bandwidth. Over 500,000,000 households worldwide are destined to subscribe to "Studio 2000" over the next two years and receive a package that includes a Video-Phone, an Interactive TV and Fast Internet.
Rosenfeld first unveiled the Studio 2000 plan last fall in a dramatic press release that solicited investments from private financiers. Their investment, the release claimed, would be secured against loss by a $600 million guarantee from the Motion Picture Bonding Company, a subsidiary of the London Guarantee Insurance Company.
That came as a big surprise to Mike Kaptein, vice president of corporate development at Toronto-based London Guarantee.
"I don't know how we could've underwritten a $600 million deal without ever seeing a scrap of paperwork," he said. Kaptein's firm insures financiers of movies against losses in production cost. "[Studio 2000] is not our business, it's got nothing to do with us."
Kaptein fired off a letter demanding that Rosenfeld publish a retraction of the release. Rosenfeld complied, but still contends that London Guarantee signed off on the deal through an agent at a subsidiary called Israfilm. "It's unbelievable what they're doing," he fumed.
Kaptein acknowledged that someone at Israfilm met with Rosenfeld but said that the agent only tentatively discussed providing a $20 million guarantee against a film Rosenfeld had proposed.
Before the agent agreed to further discussions, he asked to see a budget, script, name of director, and so forth. The answer never came, Kaptein said. He added that Israfilm is simply an agent that refers potential business to London Guarantee and is in no way authorized to sign off on a deal.
"I can't tell whether [Rosenfeld] is overly enthusiastic or a crook," said Kaptein. "But we've seen nothing from him. It's all a dream. You can't insure a dream."
Late Tuesday, Rosenfeld sent Wired News a draft of a press release redefining the terms of the iMac offer. The revised release, which will hit the wires Wednesday, contains the line "NO ADVANCEMENT PAYMENT." Moreover, One Stop will now refuse credit-card numbers.
"We will simply bill by checks," said Rosenfeld. At AcTVnet, he apparently learned the hard way that credit-card companies won't pay up when your company's in trouble. |
