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Monarch Computer Bites the Dust?

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i think it's true as well, noticed EVGA removed them as an authorized e-tailer on the EVGA site.....wonder if any EVGA card sold by them now will have any warranty through EVGA, because according to EVGA's T&C, items bought from any retailer/e-tailer not on the authorized vendor list are not covered by EVGA's warranty....
 
wow - crazy! the few times I ordered from Monarch they took sooooooo long to get my orders out the door.. I just stopped ordering there.. the no tax factor was not worth it to me when I get stuff like in two days from the egg with standard shipping. At any rate, it's a shame because Monarch was one of the places I used to price out hardware and it's a place I visit often, regardless of my no ordering policy with them.. bad time of the year to be shutting the doors also.. I feel sorry for their employees probably out of jobs at xmas time. not fun!
 
it really is a bit saddening to me, i lived about 20 miles away from them, used to visit frequently, I actually had reviews published on their amdreview.com website and got paid for them, and was on a first name basis with a few of the guys up there, walked in and got to hand pick my Opty 165 stepping of choice CCB1E, they really are good people, at least the ones i knew, but i think they were understaffed to be honest, there were not very many people there to answer phones and such, i have been all through their offices and warehouse, as i recall, they may have had 10 people to answer phones, if that, alot of their employees were doing more than one job it seemed

it was neat because it was like having Newegg nearby and being able to walk into the store
 
ouch, wow... and i had almost ordered my computer stuff from monarch due to such good pricing. Only reason I didnt was because I saw so many CC stories in the forums here about getting charged and not getting items for weeks due to stock problems and etc. Thanks to [H] for saving me my hard-earned cash!
 
Monarch sounds like a computer company i used to work for.

doing quite well for themselves and then the quality of customer service went down the drain. more and more customers look for alternatives, which leads to employess leaving for greener pastures. which then in turn lowers the customer service because the remaining tasks are delegated to whoevers left.

the company i worked for went from having close to 40 employees in 2003 to about 7 when i left this past summer. the steady stream of cutting costs to pinch every available penny out of the company until you are left with garbage.

the smart employees bail early and get out before then get laid off.
 
Well I can assure you I wasn't full of shit to get an engineering sample motherboard almost two years ago. A lot of people love to jump in saying "nope, no problems over here what so ever" but eventually the stories pile up. They were doing great, I have no idea how they can start to downgrade on service. Thats like Newegg doing the same thing. Highly unlikely.
 
I used to be a big fan of Monarch then after a couple of times, especially where I had to wait nearly two weeks for my case to ship 2 day shipping and the case was in stock, or so the website said and I was told by customer service I backed off buting from them.
 
I remember OCZ going down a similar road years ago, and eventually being bought out, to this day, I say no to OCZ.
 
sc0tty8 said:
I remember OCZ going down a similar road years ago, and eventually being bought out, to this day, I say no to OCZ.
Click to expand...

Same here.

Yea the thing is even if Monarch was to pull a 180 and start being good would anyone go back to them? I went to buy something from them a while ago and the 30 days to get money back turned me away. Seeing how much bad luck people have had with them I'm glad I did.
 
Hmmm, I never even used manarch, although I was thinking about ordering from them earlier in the year, I decided agains't it and went with newegg, I usually get my stuff off of newegg or go to amazon if new egg doesn't have it.
 
never purchased from them, but I definately feel for you guys that are missing out on money or hardware from them..
 
QUOTE FROM OCFORUMS

"spread the word..i went to monarch computer and talked with the guys there. their front doors are locked and there is a sign on it saying that they are closed and out of business . !!! they have been in financial trouble for awhile. they will be out of their building in two or three weeks. they were bought by another company. THEY ARE STILL SELLING PRODUCTS !!!!!! DO NOT BUY !!!!! they are more than likely bankrupt and in trouble with corporate law and IRS..(that is my feeling last sentence not a fact but more than likely)"
 
jcll2002 said:
QUOTE FROM OCFORUMS

"spread the word..i went to monarch computer and talked with the guys there. their front doors are locked and there is a sign on it saying that they are closed and out of business . !!! they have been in financial trouble for awhile. they will be out of their building in two or three weeks. they were bought by another company. THEY ARE STILL SELLING PRODUCTS !!!!!! DO NOT BUY !!!!! they are more than likely bankrupt and in trouble with corporate law and IRS..(that is my feeling last sentence not a fact but more than likely)"
Click to expand...

If the door is locked and they have a closed sign on the door who did he talk to?
 
swatbat said:
If the door is locked and they have a closed sign on the door who did he talk to?
Click to expand...

The IRS agent chaining it closed?

I've got a friend of mine that does business with most of the big Atlanta area distributors. I've asked him to sniff around with his contacts there to see whats been going on at Monarch. I'll report back when I hear something from him.
 
sc0tty8 said:
I remember OCZ going down a similar road years ago, and eventually being bought out, to this day, I say no to OCZ.
Click to expand...

Same here. I can remember the day the OCZ rep got banned here in a thread trying to defend OCZ.
 
Met-AL said:
Same here. I can remember the day the OCZ rep got banned here in a thread trying to defend OCZ.
Click to expand...

They got themselves back together, but I'm with you, I hesitate to touch them.
 
I too was going to place an order with them when I was building my rig but I passed since I was reading so many stories about items taking forever not arriving etc etc. It just goes to show that if you miss manage a company what will happen. I have seen this many times in the past and it will always end up the same they end up with no money and the customer gets hammered.
:( :( :( :(

KM
 
I've never bought from Monarch, But I refused to anyways. Their website looks like shit, probly some 10 year old made it.




If a company can't even afford to design a professional website why should i waste my money buying stuff from them? Hell If I'm gonna fall for a scam I would atleast find one with a decent website first :p



TigerDirect with me has a 1-1 record

and Egg has a nicer record of over 300-0



My money goes to Newegg, if it cost more, then so be it, atleast I'm paying a company that will give me what i bought and has great customer support.
 
The ratings history is particularly fascinating. Lifetime rating of 8.45, Six month of 3.55, December rating to date of 0.34. For the month, customer service and likelihood of future purchases are both 0.09. I'd actually be interested in seeing if RR had any ratings lower than that, because it's not possible to get much lower.
 
silentcoercion said:
The ratings history is particularly fascinating. Lifetime rating of 8.45, Six month of 3.55, December rating to date of 0.34. For the month, customer service and likelihood of future purchases are both 0.09. I'd actually be interested in seeing if RR had any ratings lower than that, because it's not possible to get much lower.
Click to expand...

You can. I've seen worse, actually... When a crappy company goes under ;) Monarch at least had a decent history for a long time. I wish I knew what happened... what deal they blew to make them get in so much trouble.
 
ive spent about $1000 in computer parts from them over the years. In terms of getting the products to you at a good price and in proper time, they are great. Another plus is in CA, they dont charge tax, which makes them very attractive. I remember when they gave out Age of Empires 3 to all their loyal customers that have placed 3 orders with them; i thought that was cool of them.

I can't say how their computer support was, as i was only interested in buying the parts, but I for one will miss shopping there.
 
lopoetve said:
You can. I've seen worse, actually... When a crappy company goes under ;) Monarch at least had a decent history for a long time. I wish I knew what happened... what deal they blew to make them get in so much trouble.
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SNT Systems? :D
 
Just my 2 cents on Monarch Computers. I tried to order a x1800xt as a chrismas gift last year from Monarch using ther web site. Well.... I got message that the transaction did not go through. No problem.... try again same thing. I decide toorder from another site, Monarch had taken my money & would not refund it. They made me wait 30 days to get my money back. On top of that they refused to cooperate with the credit card company when I called to get the issue resolved ASAP!

I was stuck wating for January to purchase the x-mas gift.

Maybe Monarch had good prices, maybe they had real good people working their that deserve to stay employed but the service I received was beyond bad !

Bottom line, I hate seeing people out of a job but I hate Monrach even more :mad:
 
Just my 2 cents on Monarch Computers. I tried to order a x1800xt as a chrismas gift last year from Monarch using ther web site. Well.... I got message that the transaction did not go through. No problem.... try again same thing. I decide to order from another site, Monarch had taken my money & would not refund it. They made me wait 30 days to get my money back. On top of that they refused to cooperate with the credit card company when I called to get the issue resolved ASAP!
If you are going to take my money send the goods dont just take the money & hold it it for a Month & leave me with nothing!

I was stuck wating for January to purchase the x-mas gift.

Maybe Monarch had good prices, maybe they had real good people working their that deserve to stay employed but the service I received was beyond bad !

Bottom line, I hate seeing people out of a job but I hate Monrach even more. :mad:
 
RadCliffeX said:
I've never bought from Monarch, But I refused to anyways. Their website looks like shit, probly some 10 year old made it.

If a company can't even afford to design a professional website why should i waste my money buying stuff from them? Hell If I'm gonna fall for a scam I would atleast find one with a decent website first :p
Click to expand...

Sadly enough, they did have "professionals" working on the site. Their site runs on an ecommerce package known as Miva Merchant. It came free with the that I worked at's web hosting, and I attempted to get it up and running, as my boss was all happy go lucky about "Monarch uses it, therefore it must be good". I spent a few days trying to make sense out of the package and get it running in a way that it was usable, but it was simply not possible. I'd actually like to offer kudos to them for figuring out how to use such a turd of a package and conduct business for as many years as they did while maintaining it. I do agree that it didn't appear like a very professional site, it was difficult to navigate, poorly organized, etc, but given what they started with, it couldn't have been much better.
 
So it looks like the rumors are true. My company evidently did some business with Monarch and they have been refusing to pay for at least 4 weeks now and looks like they are officially listed as kaput in our accounting system. I cannot say how much they stiffed us for, but lets just say that most of us could put a down payment on a house with that.
 
Having not even heard of the problems they were having, I sent a random email to them asking them about their lack of components on the site and if they were going to a purely systems and barebones business as I was in the market to but an AM2 mobo and processor and had no problems in the past with them (admittedly the last purchase I made was well over a year ago). I received a fairly speedy reply. They told me that they in fact were moving to pretty much systems only. I sent another reply email and again received a fairly quick response. I asked it they would still be an AMD launch partner as I was interested in getting on the Quad FX bandwagon. They stated that they would still be a launch partner as they had been in the past. It is unfortunate that a company that used to be as good as they were has come on hard times (whether self-induced or not). I try to support the smaller retailers (like Hank Baron at performance-pcs.com and the guys over at Overcool) but sometimes the newegg and zipzoomfly prices are just too hard to beat. That still doesn't address customer service as that is just as important to me as price. There are retailers that are a little more expensive but the customer service makes me a return customer and a good source of referral. Just my two cents.
 
as a note for all you who had problems getting refunds: If they're giving you the runaround, after a day or two (it takes 5 MINUTES to do a refund), call your CC company. contest the charge. They'll get your money back
 
Over the years I've thrown them about a grand or so in business. It's too bad, Monarch is one of the few companies that ship to military serving overseas. With them gone, that's one less option. The Egg ships to APO, but they hose you hard on shipping.

Just remember every time you see that "free super saver shipping" the military member is getting hosed for $50. Buying in Europe isn't an option isn't an option either cuz the euro is about 1/3 more.

... now if only they'd pay us in euro....
 
When monarch was first popular I experienced some problems with them, just shady type of activities in terms of shipping out your things/refund/rma, etc... I was worried about their business intent and abandoned them early last year. I remembered when I warned people about them that somethings up and I got the other cheek attitude, but I guess I was right.
 
lopoetve said:
You can. I've seen worse, actually... When a crappy company goes under ;) Monarch at least had a decent history for a long time. I wish I knew what happened... what deal they blew to make them get in so much trouble.
Click to expand...

I don't know exactly, but I "worked" with them for a while and they always seemed a bit shady. When they began their AthlonXP.com website, myself and a group of people from the old AMDMB.com forums started working on their forums and doing reviews for them. It was a great experience for a little while, but things gradually started getting worse and worse. We were supposed to have full control over the staff of the site, posting of the reviews and articles, etc. but suddenly Monarch was adding reviewers who didn't know much about hardware, tossing up barely edited content and more. Most of us saw the writing on the wall and left the site before it could become a complete joke. It's sad, as I used to talk to Sterling, one of the owners, all the time and he was very passionate about the business. Not sure what did actually happen, but I notice things have gotten worse and worse for them in just a few short years... :(
 
@ The comment re: eVGA on the previous page - Maybe I should post over on their forums to get an official answer, but this would be my thought.. They can't retroactively say anyone who bought from Monarch is no longer covered - at the time of purchase Monarch WAS a certified retailer. As we all know the PC business is cut-throat, companies come and go all the time.

Of course if Monarch had an eVGA product listed now (and were actually open for business), any current purchases would NOT be covered; now != then. It doesn't preclude them from filing for bankruptcy (and recovering from it), nor selling the business, then becoming a partner once again, but for now it's over.
 
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