How long is too long?

I would say anything longer than 8 in-- what? oh.


Bad jokes aside, I would say that it does seem a bit too long, especially for the reason given. Have you gotten in touch with them and gotten an up-to-date status on your build? It may be that they don't have a part, or they're having trouble with a given component. From what I've seen they sometimes tend to not inform people of these setbacks, which does occasionally result in an angry post or two.

But as far as going with the wrong company, I'd say that's most likely not the case. From what I've seen here many customers are happy with their purchases (moreso than many other places) and those that aren't are taken care of quickly. So no, you did not spend your money in the wrong place, but it probably won't hurt to give them a talking-to, so to speak.


Edited by sdelu - 18 Feb 2010 at 12:43am

@Mallikii,

I do want to add, that you've have made a few changes on your order. The latests change was on 2/4/2010, tomorrow will be the 10th business day as well from 2/4/2010.

Edited by Alex - 18 Feb 2010 at 12:59am

@Dragoonseal,

It's not the normal here.

I'm sorry.

Edited by Alex - 18 Feb 2010 at 2:01am

Sadly sometimes it does take longer than the usual estimated time.  As for me, I ordered my computer on January 14th, 2009 and recevied it on February 26th, 2009.  Which is around 31 business days.

Originally posted by Mallikii Hi all,    My system is on the Fedex truck out for delivery. Wisconsin is a long way to go for a computer. I sprung for a wood crate so let’s hope all is good. I will post pictures of the computer tonight if I get a chance. Any advice when posting pictures

Give size references next to some of the pictures of the crate and computer, I want to see how massive they are!

I just recieved my system this afternoon. I will post pictures when I get a chance. Just to let everyone know that my frustrations with this company continue. As you can see above I chose to have the raptor hard drives in Raid 0. And I am looking at the system with three seperate hard drives and no raid. My system was in QA mode for a week and they never caught this. I paid good money to have the system setup and now I have to erase it all and start over. Any thoughts? I didn't expect this but I guess I should have given my past experiences.

Actually,

Edited by Alex - 25 Feb 2010 at 8:38pm

@Mallikii

I agree with you on a lot of your issues, if a company puts a high premium of 500-1k$ onto what parts cost to build a computer their customer service should never include a copy / paste email.  Outside of shipping damage I would also expect nothing less than than a flawlessly built machine in relation to both hardware and software.

Though, let me share with you the experience I had with another premium PC vendor (Alienware) that I had built 4 years ago before the merger with Dell. 

Sometime around 2006(I think) I ordered a computer through Alienware. I placed this order as a birthday gift to myself early in July.  At this time I ordered the PC with an AMD 5000 series processor.  Yet my computer continued to be delayed for one reason or another, each time I would call I would get the run around and no real answer to what the delay was. 

Jump forward to August I believe one day before Conroe(C2D) was going to be announced and I canceled my order in anticipation of the new CPU.  The next day I reorder my PC through Alienware, yet again with the delays and no given reason.  I would assume that the delay was caused by the high demand for the new Conroe chips at the time but I never got anything more than a return email with an estimated date(again no reason given) I also received the same answer whenever I would try to call them.

Sometime around mid November I finally received my PC.  I start hooking up all my new toys to the PC first gen g15 keyboard, 700$ 24" Monitor, Logitech G7, and start the computer up.  I'm anxious to see what it can do and so I run PC Mark, about 30 seconds into it the computer freezes.  I fault the software and decide to jump on WoW instead no less than 30 minutes later the computer hard freezes again and reboots itself into the blue screen of death.  Sigh.

I call up Alienware go through the machine prompts and get connected to a tech after sitting in the queue for 1/2 an hour.  I'm fairly irate at this point after having waited 3 or 4 months on my rig and I'm about to hang up when someone finally answers in a THICK Indian accent "hello my name is Bob may I please have your name along with the computers model and serial number".  I set the phone down and crawl under my desk to find the said information that he wanted and read him off the info.  Bob then goes forward to ask me what my problem is, I explain to him in the best detail that I can and then tell him that I forgot to write down the exact error in the blue screen and that I'm trying to recreate the problem so I can read him the error.  Following is the delightful conversation I had with him.

Bob - Ok sir I need to to please check all connectors to the computer and make sure they're snugly fit and then try to turn on the computer or something to that effect.

Me - I tell him that computer is on and I'm playing a game in a very sarcastic tone.

Bob - One moment sir.  He then puts me on hold for 15 minutes, checks back in to let me know hes talking with his supervisor, and then puts me back on hold for another 15 minutes.  He then tells me that my problem is to complex for his support level and sends me to "tier 2 support".

Some 10 minutes later I get someone on the phone from either America or someone with greatly improved English and tech knowledge. 

The new tech gives me a direct line to him, tells me to download a memory test program and tells me to call him back with the results after running it.  I run it and get a fair amount of errors.  So I call back, great tech support is closed for the night.

I call back the next day and he has me individually test each stick of memory, turns out two of them are bad.  I continue to run the computer with the 2 good sticks of RAM yet the problem with crashing replicates itself.  I first try to call my "case manager" and apparently he doesn't work for Alienware any more.  Sigh.. I call back on the generic line once again passing by India's tech support and get a new case manager.  He asks me to wait until the new RAM arrives before continuing to troubleshoot.  They ship me 2 new memory sticks but not before holding some 300$ on my debit card.  I was 18 at the time and didn't own any credit cards, so it effectively locked down my already tight cash flow.  Anyhow I receive the RAM about 4 days later.

I put the ram in and run once again run the memory test software, good news only one of the 2 sticks is bad this time around...  So, back to harassing my new case manager.   I go through and reseat all of the ram + video card.  However the problem still persists.  I take the bad stick out and start up a game, same problem.  A blind person could have saw this coming from my results earlier with only 2GB of ram.  They decide that the video card is to blame.

They offer to ship me one before I send the bad one back but they'll need to hold 700$ on my "credit card".  I still don't have or want a credit card at this time and don't have the 700$ so I'm forced to ship them back their card via Fed Ex.  They do at least send me an online shipping label and pick up from my apartment to save me a trip though. 

Not wanting to wait for a new video card I go out and buy a cheepo 60$ Nvidia card.   I go home and install the new card, everything seems to be working just fine, I'm 5 hours into my gaming session and the computer freezes.  Hey at least its not freezing every 10-30 minutes I think to myself.  I call tech support to let them know I bought a new video card and the computer is still freezing, they then proceed to tell me they don't support my "upgrade."  They agree to note my problem but tell me I can't get tech support until my replacement arrives. 

Jump forward a week and my replacement card arrives.  Finally, I can get back to gaming at with decent graphics I think to myself.  I open the box and pull out the video card, the card looks about like the one I sent in but something seems to be wrong.  I inspect the S/N and P/N of the card.  It seems that they sent me a refurbished 7900gx2 long(A largely inferior longer version of the 7950gx2).  After digging around on the interweb to see if it was the same card I came upon a forum with a bunch of people that experienced the same thing on their replacement cards.  Borderline fraud IMO.

I call up Alienware talk to my case manager who is very apologetic and offers to transfer me to customer relations.  At this point I ask them if they will just take the computer back, they say they will but it's going to cost me a 600$ restocking fee since I've owned the computer for a month.  I explain that the computer hasn't worked the entire time that I've had it but they refuse to wave the restocking fee telling me that their warranty only covers free returns for the first month of ownership.  I don't really have the patience to reorder through another company with a 600$ lower budget so I let it slide.  After a 30 minute "discussion" with Alienware we find a middle ground, they'll send me the correct 7950gx2 card and they're going to overnight the new card both ways, they also upgrade me to a two year warranty. 

The new card arrives two days later and while the blue screen and frequent crashes have gone away it still crashes at least once or twice in a 12 hour gaming session.  Over the next year they replace the:

PSU
Motherboard
Another GB of RAM

I had to ship the computer back to them(they paid) for the motherboard swap as their in home techs aren't allowed to touch systems with liquid cooling.

The following year their liquid cooling system fails.  Please note the liquid cooling tubes they use are no bigger than my pinky around and are inferior to a good air cooler. 

I get the system back after a few weeks with the new cooling system which seems to be of a higher quality but the cooling tubes still seem a bit small.  I get a free 3 year warranty upgrade at this point. I suppose that is a + for Alienware(which had been bought by Dell at this point). 

Recently I have replaced the 7950gx2 with a 260 gtx and the system runs flawlessly. 

TLDR: It could be worse, India tech support, 4 months to ship, DOA system when it does arrive, mass hardware failure throughout 2 years of ownership.  Multiple parts delayed for weeks. 

I hope when I order through DS here in 3 or so months that I get the great system that everyone talks about, they do have an amazing reputation(The best off any current manfacturer with both the BBB and on their forums(compared to Ibuypower, Alienware, VenomPC, Cyberpower, and so on).  No company is perfect and there's bound to be a few mistakes when you build thousands of computers.

I truly hope your issue is resolved and hope you're soon satisfied with your new rig.  Pics plx :)




Edited by Herniter - 26 Feb 2010 at 2:42am

Edited by Mallikii - 25 Feb 2010 at 11:49pm

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Edited by Mallikii - 26 Feb 2010 at 12:20am

Deleted - Need Space 

Edited by Mallikii - 26 Feb 2010 at 12:20am

Deleted - Need Space  

Edited by Mallikii - 26 Feb 2010 at 12:21am