From: David Goldman (David_at_dgoldman.com)
Date: Tue Oct 10 2000 - 16:05:37 EDT
On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, David Ross wrote:
>
> Other places - especially if a warrantee is important to you - is IBM direct;
> they publish their stock daily at
> http://commerce-03.www.ibm.com/icc/retail.PDF (and don't show and 560s right
> now, but it is worth checking daily).
> They also sell through egghead.com; if you see a machine you want at egghead,
> look carefully at the description to make sure that its is being sold by IBM
> and not another reseller (look at the warrantee information on the product
> description).
Just a quick caution about buying from egghead.com:
I recently tried to PURCHASE (not bid) on an item listed on egghead.com
At first, the order was accepted and pending shipment from the warehouse.
Then they updated their web site to indicate that they were forced to
cancel the sale due to "inventory descrepancies". No e-mail was sent to
me directly, but they did update the order status screen on the web site.
They also indicated that they would refund my $105 that they had charged
to my credit card and promptly did credit me $2! (Note the shortage.)
I called to indicate that I'd rather wait for the item to be backordered.
The CSR indicated that they would not be getting any more of the item in
the future and therefore backorder was not possible. She indicated that
the item was probably being discontinued by the manufacturer and therefore
I should find another solution. (This information was bogus. Keep reading)
I inquired about the shortage on the credit and was told it must have been
a human error (HAH!) and that it would be taken care of shortly. Another
two days and they finally did post the credit for $103.
Later, they again updated the order status web page to indicate that the
item had been mispriced and therefore they were unable to honor any orders
at the original price. They also indicated that the order had been
cancelled at my "REQUEST" (again, bogus information).
In summary, they mispriced the item, charged my credit card, cancelled
the order, refunded only a small portion of what was charged (I had to
REQUEST the balance of the refund), changed their story, posted known
false information (ie, lied to me) and offered no appology for the entire
screw-up.
A friend who ordered the same item at the same time sat silently for
12 days, hoping that they'd make another error and actually ship the
product to him. After 12 days they finally cancelled his order and
refunded his money. Again, with no appology.
You can buy from egghead.com if you want, but I don't think I'll be
doing much business with them in the future.
-- David Goldman
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