| PROVANTAGE Corporation Customer Reviews - Page 46 |
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4/15/03 5:07 PM
On March 3rd, Ordered 2 ViewSonic P95fb 19" monitors, and selected UPS ground shipping. Provantage had, hands down, the best price by far on these monitors. Received a tracking number. A few days went by, the tracking number was still invalid. Called Provantage on March 7th, found out they were shipped by a company called SAIA. After calling SAIA, I found out the monitors were in town, and I needed to schedule a delivery. So I just drove down and picked them up. I only wish Provantage had alerted me to the change in shipping companies, it could have avoided a bit of confusion. On the good side, Bruce from Provantage returned my call promptly after determining what happened (and e-mailed me also because I was driving and didn't have a pen), and the folks at SAIA were very friendly as well. In addition, I received the monitors a good day or so sooner than UPS would have delivered them, and I saved about $90 total over NewEgg. Not too bad, and the monitors are fantastic! Asside from the tracking number mix-up, everything went well.
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4/8/03 7:28 PM
First time ordering from these folks and their customer service and ship speed was absolutely outstanding!
Their website could use a revamp of the navigation; it's very difficult to find what you want...they have kind of a cross-reference thing going on, but it would be easier to put "all cables" under "all cables" period, for example. B
I couldn't find one item that I wanted, so I placed my order. Of course, about an hour later, I found what I wanted :rolleyes; . Go figure.
The next morning, I called customer service. They cancelled my order, reordered all the parts I still wanted and ordered the item I'd found. They did this on their own, after a brief conversation w/a phone rep. They emailed me after each transaction as well. They were fast and polite...no runaround or attitude at all. That impressed me.
They shipped all the items a few hours later, emailing me my tracking numbers. OUTSTANDING and very impressive.
Their selection is very good and their prices are decent as well. Not the cheapest, but you pay for customer service. When I get my goods, I'll edit this review.
So far, I'd buy from them again in a heartbeat. This review was modified by its author, michaeldd, on
4/8/03 9:21 PM.
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4/8/03 11:37 AM
Bought a Radeon 9500 Pro card OEM from this company. They sent me the card, it was in fact a Radeon 9500 non-pro version. I thought it was a great deal at $156. When I realized that it was the wrong item that afternoon, I attempted to contact the returns department. It took almost a week and a half to get a response... during that time, the website took down the card I bought (which was in fact listed as a "pro" model at $156). I was extremely worried they were going to tell me that I was the one mistaken, just look at the website. Luckily I still had the invoice which backed up my claim. Anyway, a week and a half later they finally decided to email me, saying it was thier fault and they would issue a return. I sent the card back 3 days later, and it took until today, April 8th 2003 for them to refund my money. So, faulty advertising, terrible communication, and about 2 months worth of them having my money and me wondering if i'm going to get it back. I guess the moral is if something sounds too good to be true... it is. Don't buy from this company.
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4/3/03 10:37 AM
Placed an order on 4/1/03 and received it 4/3/03. Great service, fantastic price and fast delivery. What more could you ask for?
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3/26/03 9:15 PM
Great prices and fast shipping. Their web site is increadibly difficulty to use however. Hard to navigate and to find out prices you need to request e-mails with links that you can then use to look at a price. Very time consuming especially when looking at a couple of different items or not using a web enabled mail reader. Probably stops me from shopping their site as much as I would otherwise.
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3/26/03 2:16 PM
Purchased cable signal booster. Imediate feedback,
shipped next day, received in 2 days. Product as described.
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3/6/03 5:30 PM
I purchased on OEM Radeon 9700 Pro from Provantage. It was not as I expected, and I tried to return it for a refund. It is not defective, and is in original sealed packaging and completely salable. I requested an RMA from Provantage using their online RMA form. I was denied an RMA via email, saying that OEM products cannot be returned for refund. The web site says DOA OEM products must be handled directly with the manufacturer, but no mention of refunds for non-defective OEM products appears on their web page. The return policy states that certain items may not be returned. It then goes on to say that non-returnable items have annotations on them either on the product specification and inventory page, the Shopping Cart page, or the Order Status page. My product had no such annotation on the specification page, my shopping cart page, or invoice. I pointed this out in my return email to the RMA rep at Provantage, and was again denied a refund. I am stuck with a $322 video card I do not want.
Update (3/17/03): After a lively email correspondence with Provantage about their business policies and lack of customer service, I was finally able to convince Provantage to exchange my OEM Radeon 9700 Pro for a new retail GeForce4 Ti4200 video card. I lost some money in the transaction, but not nearly as much as I would have if Provantage had held to their tough stance on OEM product refunds. While I am still not entirely satisfied with my transaction, I would change my rating of their return policy from Very Dissatisfied to Somewhat Dissatisfied. This review was modified by its author, jmorrell, on
3/17/03 2:01 PM.
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2/23/03 10:01 PM
I was shopping for Hitachi CM721FB 19" monitors. Since my primary source of components newegg.com was out of stock, i looked around and found it at provantage at $264 + $34 UPS ground shipping, $15 cheaper than monitorsdirect.com. Checked the rating at resellerratings.com decided to order 3 monitors.
They finished processing my order 3 hours later and got a second email stating that shipping will be done via UPS and a link to trace the shippment.
First red flag: tracking number was invalid! Called provantage just to find after 30 minutes on hold that they will ship the monitors from a warehouse in CA (later found out from the shipping labels that it was Ingram Micro) via Eagle Global Logistics and got a different tracking number.
Second red flag: second tracking number was invalid. Called Eagle customer support to find out that the tracking number was used in 2001 and cannot be used again. Plus, provantage doesn't have an account with them and that they didn't pick up any package sent to my address. Called provantage again and was told that the tracking number listed on the website is the good one, not the one that they gave me on the phone, that Eagle has 2 days to deliver and if they don't deliver in 2 days i should call and claim lost shippment. At this point i thought my $900 are gone and will have to contact my credit card company to dispute the charge.
Since it was a Friday, I decided to wait till Monday and check with Eagle again before calling the credit card company.
To my surprise, Eagle had a shippment for me on Monday morning!
I received the monitors on Wednesday in good condition.
Needless to say, I won't order again from them!
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2/21/03 4:00 PM
Order was sent out right away, but they did split it into two seperate shipments out of two different warehouses. Everything arrived in a timely manner with no problems.
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2/19/03 8:42 PM
I was shopping around for a very specific LCD monitor (Samsung 172T), and buying mainly on price. I found Provantage after several websearches, and despite extremely volatile pricing (the price literally varied around $100 on a $600 item over the course of a week), they were consistantly one of the lowest prices.
First, the bad news. Their online tracking frankly sucks in comparison to other resellers (I use NewEgg as my yardstick, so I do possibly have unreasonably high expectations). This is mainly due to their method of shipping from regional centers; they had the package listed as shipped for 3 days before it was actually shipped though.
That's it, that's the bad news. Their pricing was superb, the order process pain-free (they even call to verify orders), the screen arrived undamaged and in perfect working order, and exactly when they eventually said.
They're not in danger of knocking NewEgg off my first-check place, but they're definitely on the list.
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2/13/03 12:14 PM
We purchased a Vantage Pro Davis Weather station and after doing lots of shopping around, we found Provantage by far had the best prices. We were very impressed with the service from Provantage, they were prompt in answering our questions. They shipped when they said they would and didn't gouge us with outragous S/H charges. We will do business with this company again. Thank you Provantage
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2/12/03 1:07 PM
I ordered an NEC FE791SB monitor from Provantage, on November 23, 2002. It arrived in good shape, but I noticed that some of the packing was held together with masking tape. Although the box apparently was factory sealed, I became supicious that it was a returned or refurbed item. I called Provantage to report it, and was told that Provantage does not deal in refurbs. While on the phone with the customer service rep, I examined the box further, and found that it had indeed been opened, not from the top, but from the bottom. I told the customer service rep about it, and she said that if I wanted to return it, they would send a replacement.
From all appearances it was a new monitor, so I decided to try it out first, before returning it. That's when I became a believer. This has to be the best monitor I have ever used. It is flat fantastic! I'll never buy a cheap monitor again. I decided that I had a winner, so why bother to to return it. It's now 2 1/2 months later, and I'm still a believer. Buy the best monitor you can afford, you won't be sorry.
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2/8/03 6:34 PM
Bought a couple of IBM Ultrabay HDD adapters.
Quick delivery, good price, no problems. Great eBay'er ... oops, not eBay, just a good merchant.
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2/7/03 4:31 PM
I ordered a set of speakers from them yesterday, the 6th. I received them the 7th. I paid for regular shipping, and I didn't evne get a chance to try and track it. It just came the next day. I was really surprised. I have ordered from them before and they have given similar quality services. Everytime I check prie comparisons, they have some of the cheapest prices out there. I would DEFINITELY order from them again.
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1/31/03 11:10 AM
Great on the sale, LOUSY on the return! I would not do business with these people again due to difficulty of returning defective product, lack of response to e-mails, etc.
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