First time ordering experience

[durd]

Recently (16th september) I helped my grandmother place an order for my cousin's 21st birthday, she's not very computer literate. (account holder Mrs Jane Newby)

Within a few days we got an email saying the system wouldn't be ready until the 6th October, which is fine, I knew you'd be busy otherwise all my peers would not have recommended you. A week or so after that we got another email saying it will be delayed by 2 days to the 8th. Well my grandmother went on holiday on the 8th so I'd have to housesit to take the delivery, which is fine.

The 8th came and passed with no word on when the delivery was arranged for, I emailed a support query that went unanswered, I received nothing until the 13th when I got an email saying the system was going through software checks and would be ready to dispatch by thursday (14th).

At 10:30am on the 14th, we received an email saying this:

The real time status of your invoice is: Stage 3 of 4

1. Invoice printed / Awaiting authorisation - 15 Sep 2010 17:53:00
2. Payment authorised - 16 Sep 2010 12:48:00
3. Order picked / Awaiting despatch - 14 Oct 2010 10:25:00
4. Order despatched

So I thought, 'great, they've got an entire day to send it out, should be with me by tomorrow perhaps'

I logged on scan's website on friday (15th) morning to see if it had been marked as dispatched and to find my courier reference, nothing there. I rang scan about 11am on friday (15th) wondering if I could get some information on when this system was due to arrive, he said I'd need to speak to phillip, who wasn't available at that time so he'd get phillip to ring me back.

I rang back again at 16:30pm and spoke to who I believe was Neesha who then put me through to a man (I'm sorry I can't remember his name!) who told me the system was actually dispatched on the 14th with Netsolve. He told me netsolve should have rang me to arrange a delivery date, they hadn't. I'm always available to answer my phone during office hours and I check for missed calls after I go out.

At 17:07 we got an email from Ben telling me how to contact Netsolve to arrange a time for delivery,
I rang the number at 17:30 and got no answer.

Which brings me to now, 6:20am on the 16th October, the day before my cousin's birthday and me still needing to book time off work and drive across Leicestershire to wait for a delivery I can't even be sure that will arrive within the time that I do actually manage to arrange (I'm sure you can understand my skepticism).

I'm not a person who complains, afaik I've never complained to a company about anything in my life, but this system will probably not make it time as the birthday gift it was supposed to be and that combined with the amount of non-communication has kind of made me regret listening to my friend's recommendations. I'd also like to apologise in advance if this post makes me seem like an impatient person, I've never ordered a custom built system from anywhere before so I have no idea if 1 month is a long, average or short time to wait for one to be built.

-Austin

[sotonswan]

Commiserations. You are not alone. Not very good is it? I ordered on 18th Sept and am still waiting.

Timescales appear to have been:-

2 1/2 weeks - stock order (lol) - nothing happens - this represents the excess of orders over capacity and is presumably getting larger
1 day - physical build
6 days - memory test i.e. the hunt for a fix to the memory problem (unfortunate but these things happen)
3 days (so far) - doing the grand tour of Britain in Netsolve's van

I have been within a hair's breadth of cancelling this system (I did cancel a laptop off dabs.com earlier in the year for being useless) but hung in there because the build guys really do seem to know what they are doing and even with the regretable memory batch problem have not been the major delay here.

SCAN sales really do need to manange peoples expectations better about how long these builds will take. 2 1/2 weeks spent doing nothing is shocking (I'm pretty sure all the parts would have been in stock on day 1).

I still have expectations of being wowed by build quality and performance. Hopefully your cousin will eventually as well.

ATB.

Phil P
Southamptom

[Oobie-]

This seems unreal; from my experience with scan they have been top notch. Granted I always order separate parts and ones that are in stock (it seems that the initial delay was from out of stock parts?)
They have changed their courier which may be part of the issue?

If this is a one off they can only apologise but I would be fuming right about now. sotonswan seems to be treated the same way and I hope a scan representative can reply to you both and offer some sort of compensation.

My question of curiosity is - How much did you both spend on your builds?

Good luck guys.

[durd]

Hi Oobie,

we paid about £1230 for this system off the bat and from I gather there have been people who've ordered a system after the 16th September on finance and still received theirs before we have.

[sotonswan]

Hi both,

£1750 taken up front. No finance used. No previous Scan order history. Is any of this relevant though?

I have from the beginning made it clear when I expected the system to be delivered (last week - I was off work), and asked for updates if I thought they would miss this. Estimates have either been optimistic or absent altogether (no news is bad news).

One email query about the QC results has also gone unanswered which I will have to pursue.

[sotonswan]

For Scan's purposes invoice number is E****** and email conversations have been done under query *******.

durd,
Hope your cousin's having a great 21st birthday anyhow.

[Philipp]

durd

I am sorry to hear of the problems that you are having with your order for a 3XS machine, As I understand you received the machine yesterday, I trust all is well and if you do have any problems please do not hesitate to get in touch.

We are currently trialling this new delivery method using netsolve, and in the majority of cases it is working perfectly without fault however as with any new service there are a few issues that need ironing out, We are working closely with netsolve to resolve these problems.

Best Regards