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Porsche997RS
n00b
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2009
- Messages
- 20
I have been a long time reader of this forum and I find the information provided on this website to be highly beneficial and informative. This is my first post and I feel that is now my obligation to provide my experience with AVADirect to help others.
I purchased my computer from AVADirect in August and received the computer in late August. The computer was speced as follows.
INTEL, Core 2 Quad Q9450, XIGMATEK HDT-S1283, ARCTIC COOLING MX-2 for heatsink, ASUS P5Q Deluxe, G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz CL4 (4-4-4-12), VISIONTEK, Radeon® HD 4870, CREATIVE, Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeGamer, WD6400AAKS x2, THERMALTAKE Toughpower 80 PLUS® 750W, Vista 64.
The ordering process was pretty smooth and took about 1 month to receive the system. I was in contact with Misha several times during the build and he was prompt to respond to emails. The one hiccup during the ordering process was the incompatiblity of the wireless card I had ordered with Vista 64. To reduce the wait for my system I decided to delete the card from my build.
When I received the computer it was well packed in a double box and the internals were held in place by pieces of styrofoam during shipping. The wiring and internals were very well done and I was honestly pretty impressed by the system.
I started having problems with the system in the middle of November when the computer started to crash in games, then crashed during normal use such as internet then wouldn't boot to windows at all. The problem seemed to remedy itself when I reinstalled the OS but the problem continued to occur several times, only working for several days at a time. I thought the problem was the harddrive so I installed the OS on the other drive with similar results. To make a long story short I ended up RMAing one of the drives to see if I had 2 defective ones and continued to have problems. With after semester break I finally decided I needed to contact technical support. I first contacted technical support around January 25. I eventually talked with Chris Mundy over the phone who suggested I try each stick of ram in the first DIMM slot by themselves and call him back. I never received a call back and continued to try to get a hold of him over the phone but never did talk to him. Eventually over e-mail he suggested I send the videocard in for RMA. I sent the video card back to AVADirect on February 6th. I continually asked when my card could be expected to be shipped back to me. On February 26th I received this message from Chris Mundy
"David, We are not the manufacture of the card we are only the system builder and we do not stock parts unfortunately. We also do not have any control over how long it takes the manufacture to replace a defective item. We are waiting for the replacement item to return. I apologize for the delay and thank you for your cooperation and patience."
After still not receiving any notification that they had shipped my card out, I sent this e-mail to the company on March 6.
Am writing to inform you of the course of action I will be taking based on the unsatisfactory level of technical support I have received to fix my computer. Starting this weekend I will be starting a detailed thread on [H]ardforum documenting my experiences and opinions of the purchase, ownership, and level of support I have received with my purchase from AVADirect. I will keep this thread updated regularly until the problems with my system are fully resolved and to my liking. I will make this thread as balanced as possible and it will not be a rant against AVADirect on my part and I will try to avoid it becoming that by other forum members. I am however very disappointed in my purchase from your company and this will be reflected in this thread. Once my problems have been completely solved I will also be drafting a detailed review on Resellerrating.com to elaborate on my experiences.
I find myself left with few other options then to share my frustrations and experiences with other members of the online community because I have not received satisfactory support from your company. I have had a $2300 computer system that has been non-functional since the middle of November. I tried to resolve these issues myself previously and will not fault your company for the time period the computer was not functioning before I contacted you for service. I did however contact your company for support starting January 27th and it is now more then 1 month later and I am still left with a non-functioning computer. During this time period I was only able to talk on the phone with tech support (Chris Mundy) very briefly one time despite several attempts to get someone to talk to. Very minimal and vague directions were given on how to solve the problem and if I didnt know something about the internals of a computer I would have been completely lost with the guidance provided. A large reason I went with your company is because of the positive reviews you have received for the accessibility of your technical support after having issues with Dell in the past. But I will say that when a problem with a Dell occurred in the past, it was always resolved within 1 week or less and I never had to wait over a month to receive a simple replacement part.
This very expensive computer I purchased from you should have been impeccable but I understand when hardware failures occur. As the system builder and the people from who I purchased the computer from however, the functioning of my computer ultimately resides with you and blame can not simply be shifted to other parties, ie the manufacturer. It is your responsibility to make your customers happy and provide the service that they paid for. The computer you built for me has been so unreliable and has now been without a video card for 1 month, I was forced to buy a laptop because I can not go without a computer for my work at college for so long. This is money I should never have had to spend.
I have been as patient as possible with your support towards the resolution of this problem, but at this point I have felt like I have been done a disservice by your company. I wish this letter to be seen by a manager at your company and I expect an equal or better video card to the one that was sent out for RMA to be at my residence in one week. I will be posting updates for this problem on [H]ardforum under Porsche997RS as stated earlier.
This email elicited a prompt response and they eventually sent me an EVGA GTX260 216 SC as a replacement card as I had requested. I received this card on March 10 and installed it the same day. The computer had been running fine for several days but again today crashed and will not boot to windows. This is the e-mail I sent to AVADirect tonight.
"I am writing regretfully to inform you that my computer has again stopped working after working properly for about 4 days. While playing a game the computer again froze and then would not post or boot to windows on restart after multiple attempts. The BIOS is set to default except for the manufacturer's rated timings and voltages for the ram (4-4-4-12 at 2.1V). At this point I am left with no choice but to ask for a refund on this computer. I have had a non-functioning computer for 4 and 1/2 months, a month and 1/2 which has been under your technical support. I have invested countless time and additional personal money on this system that continues to disappoint me and I can not see a resolution for the problem in any reasonable time frame. I had hoped to not have to post on [H]ardforum but at this point I feel I need to inform other consumers about my experience with AVADirect. Please bring this to the attention of Misha and I hope for a prompt resolution and refund on this system so I can spend my money on a system that will actually function. The resolution you choose to pursue will be noted in my thread on [H]ardforum. Thank you."
I currently don't know what else to do but I felt I needed to share my experiences with others who are debating the difficult decision about where to buy their computer from. I understand when problems go wrong with a computer but it's how a company responds to these problems is that shows their real dedication to the customer. I took a lot of time with this post so I hope it was informative and I will post and update with the companies response tomorrow.
I purchased my computer from AVADirect in August and received the computer in late August. The computer was speced as follows.
INTEL, Core 2 Quad Q9450, XIGMATEK HDT-S1283, ARCTIC COOLING MX-2 for heatsink, ASUS P5Q Deluxe, G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz CL4 (4-4-4-12), VISIONTEK, Radeon® HD 4870, CREATIVE, Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeGamer, WD6400AAKS x2, THERMALTAKE Toughpower 80 PLUS® 750W, Vista 64.
The ordering process was pretty smooth and took about 1 month to receive the system. I was in contact with Misha several times during the build and he was prompt to respond to emails. The one hiccup during the ordering process was the incompatiblity of the wireless card I had ordered with Vista 64. To reduce the wait for my system I decided to delete the card from my build.
When I received the computer it was well packed in a double box and the internals were held in place by pieces of styrofoam during shipping. The wiring and internals were very well done and I was honestly pretty impressed by the system.
I started having problems with the system in the middle of November when the computer started to crash in games, then crashed during normal use such as internet then wouldn't boot to windows at all. The problem seemed to remedy itself when I reinstalled the OS but the problem continued to occur several times, only working for several days at a time. I thought the problem was the harddrive so I installed the OS on the other drive with similar results. To make a long story short I ended up RMAing one of the drives to see if I had 2 defective ones and continued to have problems. With after semester break I finally decided I needed to contact technical support. I first contacted technical support around January 25. I eventually talked with Chris Mundy over the phone who suggested I try each stick of ram in the first DIMM slot by themselves and call him back. I never received a call back and continued to try to get a hold of him over the phone but never did talk to him. Eventually over e-mail he suggested I send the videocard in for RMA. I sent the video card back to AVADirect on February 6th. I continually asked when my card could be expected to be shipped back to me. On February 26th I received this message from Chris Mundy
"David, We are not the manufacture of the card we are only the system builder and we do not stock parts unfortunately. We also do not have any control over how long it takes the manufacture to replace a defective item. We are waiting for the replacement item to return. I apologize for the delay and thank you for your cooperation and patience."
After still not receiving any notification that they had shipped my card out, I sent this e-mail to the company on March 6.
Am writing to inform you of the course of action I will be taking based on the unsatisfactory level of technical support I have received to fix my computer. Starting this weekend I will be starting a detailed thread on [H]ardforum documenting my experiences and opinions of the purchase, ownership, and level of support I have received with my purchase from AVADirect. I will keep this thread updated regularly until the problems with my system are fully resolved and to my liking. I will make this thread as balanced as possible and it will not be a rant against AVADirect on my part and I will try to avoid it becoming that by other forum members. I am however very disappointed in my purchase from your company and this will be reflected in this thread. Once my problems have been completely solved I will also be drafting a detailed review on Resellerrating.com to elaborate on my experiences.
I find myself left with few other options then to share my frustrations and experiences with other members of the online community because I have not received satisfactory support from your company. I have had a $2300 computer system that has been non-functional since the middle of November. I tried to resolve these issues myself previously and will not fault your company for the time period the computer was not functioning before I contacted you for service. I did however contact your company for support starting January 27th and it is now more then 1 month later and I am still left with a non-functioning computer. During this time period I was only able to talk on the phone with tech support (Chris Mundy) very briefly one time despite several attempts to get someone to talk to. Very minimal and vague directions were given on how to solve the problem and if I didnt know something about the internals of a computer I would have been completely lost with the guidance provided. A large reason I went with your company is because of the positive reviews you have received for the accessibility of your technical support after having issues with Dell in the past. But I will say that when a problem with a Dell occurred in the past, it was always resolved within 1 week or less and I never had to wait over a month to receive a simple replacement part.
This very expensive computer I purchased from you should have been impeccable but I understand when hardware failures occur. As the system builder and the people from who I purchased the computer from however, the functioning of my computer ultimately resides with you and blame can not simply be shifted to other parties, ie the manufacturer. It is your responsibility to make your customers happy and provide the service that they paid for. The computer you built for me has been so unreliable and has now been without a video card for 1 month, I was forced to buy a laptop because I can not go without a computer for my work at college for so long. This is money I should never have had to spend.
I have been as patient as possible with your support towards the resolution of this problem, but at this point I have felt like I have been done a disservice by your company. I wish this letter to be seen by a manager at your company and I expect an equal or better video card to the one that was sent out for RMA to be at my residence in one week. I will be posting updates for this problem on [H]ardforum under Porsche997RS as stated earlier.
This email elicited a prompt response and they eventually sent me an EVGA GTX260 216 SC as a replacement card as I had requested. I received this card on March 10 and installed it the same day. The computer had been running fine for several days but again today crashed and will not boot to windows. This is the e-mail I sent to AVADirect tonight.
"I am writing regretfully to inform you that my computer has again stopped working after working properly for about 4 days. While playing a game the computer again froze and then would not post or boot to windows on restart after multiple attempts. The BIOS is set to default except for the manufacturer's rated timings and voltages for the ram (4-4-4-12 at 2.1V). At this point I am left with no choice but to ask for a refund on this computer. I have had a non-functioning computer for 4 and 1/2 months, a month and 1/2 which has been under your technical support. I have invested countless time and additional personal money on this system that continues to disappoint me and I can not see a resolution for the problem in any reasonable time frame. I had hoped to not have to post on [H]ardforum but at this point I feel I need to inform other consumers about my experience with AVADirect. Please bring this to the attention of Misha and I hope for a prompt resolution and refund on this system so I can spend my money on a system that will actually function. The resolution you choose to pursue will be noted in my thread on [H]ardforum. Thank you."
I currently don't know what else to do but I felt I needed to share my experiences with others who are debating the difficult decision about where to buy their computer from. I understand when problems go wrong with a computer but it's how a company responds to these problems is that shows their real dedication to the customer. I took a lot of time with this post so I hope it was informative and I will post and update with the companies response tomorrow.
