I am shocked at powernotebooks!

[jacob_dienelt]

I must have purchased 5 or so laptops from powernotebooks, all for other people who have come to me for advice, as I am a bit of a geek. I have always boasted their excellent customer service ect... but this latest rig I bought is a real lemon. It took literally 3 hours on the phone for them to agree to service the computer, even though a cdisk was showing bad sectors... and they didn't fix it! They just reformatted the drive! Whats worse, it took a week for them to send it back. Not its dead and won't even post. I don't know what I am going to do, because I no longer have faith in them. Whats more, at the same time this computer was having problems, a different one I ordered for someone else didn't work out for them, and despite being only a week or so after the order, they wouldn't give a refund! I just don't get how this company has maintained their sterling reputation with all this... I mean, I never had problems with the other notebooks I ordered from them, so I just trusted their claims to great service.

Its sad, but I just don't feel I can trust them anymore.

[paladin44]

Here are the details: You can decide whether you think our service was flawed or unreasonable.

This computer and “doc” (ASUS PortBarIII) were shipped 2nd Day Air on 10/4/06 under FedEx tracking number 717704485363.

It wasn’t until over 2 months later on 12/11/06 that the customer called to complain that the ASUS PortBarIII was physically broken as they first took it out of the box. We informed them that we could not honor the damage claim over 2 months after its arrival. To accommodate them we sold them a replacement at 50% off.

Then, about 6 months later on 4/3/07 customer called for the first time saying that when she tries to boot up her computer she gets pci.sys missing or corrupt. We did telephone troubleshooting with her over the next two days because she said she would prefer that rather than have to send it in for repair if that could be avoided. This included, among other things, attempting a BIOS update that she was unable to complete. We attempted an operating system reinstall but she could not get the CD to work, although she could get a bootable memtest86 CD to boot just fine. We issued an RMA for its return on 4/5/07 that included our FedEx account number for Next Day Air shipping, and requested that she send in her Windows CD for testing since it appeared to be either damaged or corrupt. There were no reports of hard drive bad sectors given to us at that time, nor was this fact disclosed on the requested note describing the issues in the RMA instructions. (it is curious though how they could have run chkdsk /r when the laptop would not boot into either Safe Mode or a regular Windows boot, either from the hard drive or off of the Windows CD) Had they reported this to us we would have sent them a new hard drive with Windows pre-installed and saved the time and expense of sending the laptop back to us.

On 4/12/07 we received her laptop under FedEx tracking number 8604 2654 9920, but she did not send in her Windows CD as requested. After diagnosing that there were no apparent hardware failures we reinstalled her operating system using our CD and because of the type of failure she was describing we continued testing it for 2 additional days. We returned it to her son (the poster here) on 4/18/07, 4 business days after its receipt, via Next Business Day under FedEx tracking number 798655360450.

We heard nothing more from them for over 2.5 months until this rating was posted. After seeing it we called them to see what we could do to help, and after hearing that it would not boot again we issued a Next Day Air RMA with shipping instructions. We will repair whatever is necessary, even if it is a software issue as it was under the RMA in April.

As for the laptop that did not work out for his other relative, it was shipped on Monday 10/23/06 under FedEx tracking number 717704493740. On Friday 10/27/06 customer called and said he could not connect to his external monitor or his network through the ASUS PortBarIII, and he did not want to trouble shoot the issue. He just wanted to return the entire package. On Tuesday 10/31/06 we issued the RMA for return for refund. He was fully refunded but for his operating system which he had already activated, less $100 for damage caused by him not packaging it properly using the original packing materials, less his original Ground shipping charge (we upgraded his shipping to 2nd Day Air).

[nomaxim]

I would point out that Powernotebooks.com , as of this time, has a average rating here at RR of 9/10 with 1188 reviews dating back to 10APR2000. They have two BBB reports, both of which show they are a member of the BBBOnLine program and that they have a satisfactory record with the Bureau.