Ah, once again I'm up before God and enjoying the soft chill of the morning as I wait, sans coffee, the arrival of the FedEx man and the delivery of my new computer.
Last Monday, a full week ago, I received the first one, which arrived with a broken keyboard. Then I sent it back to them, and while I was expecting my replacement to arrive Friday, they took an extra day to "check-in" my return, so they called me on Friday to tell me it was scheduled for Saturday delivery. They usually don't deliver on Saturdays but they made a special case for me since they messed up.
Great. I was happy with PC Mall at this point.
I even ordered a few other things from them on Friday afternoon because I was so happy with their customer service.
Later in the day I checked my e-mail for a tracking number. No dice. So I logged into their "Order Status" page to see if it was "Preparing to Ship" or whatever, and the message instead said "WAITING FOR CUSTOMER." Hmm...
I called them and FINALLY spoke with my rep, who said my credit card was declined. Hm. My CC is a check card, so I said that I hadn't spent anything from that account because I wanted to make sure the credit and re-debit of my computer order went through.
I checked with my bank. They had not received a credit to my account. I called PC Mall back. I wondered out loud why they even needed to credit my account and then re-charge me at all. Since they already had my money all they'd have to do is send me a replacement.
My rep said that that sounded reasonable to her and that she thinks they can do that by making the original order cost $0.00 and making the replacement carry the original charge (as far as their computer is concerned).
Great! She said she'd get back to me.
She didn't. And no one else in either Sales or Customer Service knew anything about me or my order, and each of them in turn seemed confused about the whole deal (is getting a replacement for a DOA item really that exceptional? I hope so because I'm expecting the replacement now).
Okay, great.
So I woke up early on Saturday and called my bank again, this time to make a purchase protection claim. Well, lo' and behold, I received a credit at around 8:30AM my time. Wunderbar.
Now I had my money back and could shop anywhere I wanted. Ah, but that deal. I couldn't find anything as good or as cheap for what you'd get.
Best Buy and Circuit City have a new model, presumably the successor of the laptop I'm buying, with all of the same features except a slightly faster chip. For $400 more than I would pay from PC Mall.
Tempting to get it right then and there on Saturday. And be able to check it out before I even left the store.
But I figured I could buy a bunch of Christmas presents with $400. And the difference in speed (1.87Ghz as opposed to 1.8Ghz) probably wouldn't even be noticeable.
I called them to have them replace the order, which again confused everyone since my rep wasn't working Saturday, nor, from what I could tell, was anyone else who was at all capable of doing just about anything.
I got passed around to 19, I'll repeat, NINETEEN different people. Finally they passed me to this snide little fuck named "Mitch" who was more interested in telling me why he couldn't or wouldn't help me than he was in actually trying to provide customer service.
Anyway, I found a semi-comparable deal elsewhere, but they had a 1-2 week shipping time. So they're my fall-back. But I do need the new computer ASAP. So, I let my need for fast shipping and a great deal sway me into re-placing the order with PC Mall, a company from whom I will never order from again, and will warn others to be wary of.
BEWARE of PC Mall! BEWARE!
And beware also of Mac Mall and eCost.com, which they also own.
I'll post again after I get my 'puter. Hopefully this one won't be DOA as well.
Author
Topic: Anticipation II: Electric Boogaloo (Read 1266 times)