Should I Buy From Etech4Sale?

I wanted to post in this section to get the most amount of views and traffic and if the mods want to move it to the Asus section, then by all means do so and I apologize for posting in the wrong section.

I'm looking to buy an Asus S6F laptop and was searching Froogle for the best prices on one when I came across an exceptionally low price.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=Asus+S6F&hl=en&btnG=Search

On the link above, at the 2nd to bottom listing, you'll see Etech4Sale selling it for only $1275 when almost everyone else is selling it for over $2000. Plus, they accept credit card and paypal and list the computer in new condition and have a decent rating.

Doesn't it sound way too good to be true? Does anyone have any experience with this retailer? Should I buy from this seller? Thanks!

And if any of you buy from them and it sells out, I'll hunt you down and rip your heart out.

 

Heres the reseller ratings for them:
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/etech4sale

it speaks for itself.

They are above par in BBB record as well.

 

Let me give you a piece of advice and you can choose to take it or not.....

1. Asus makes the most money on the systems we sell.... It's well known that the hardware market has about a 4-5% margin, so anything over there should automatically be questioned.

2. They're not listed an Asus dealer and joe blow that decides he wants to make a website to sell Asus' stuff can get listed in a day or two... Asus' stuff isn't exactly easy to get "grey market" when Asus distributes their products themselves... and the quantities are low enough that they can keep an eye on things that look fishy.

3. No one is in business to lose money. If that price is real and they're actually sell it to you, there are only a handful of explainations:

a: they have no stock
b: it's stolen
c: it's a return (but even for a return, that would be too low even if the screen was broken)
d: it's bs, they take your money and you get nothing
e: bait and switch

If you have the guts to try to order something that expensive from someone with a very questionable reseller rating and someone who has never been heard of by the Asus community.... more power to you. I don't want to jinx you, but the saying goes: "If it seems like too good to be true, it probably is... If it seems way too good to be true, only a fool would fall for it."

Good luck and safe shopping.

 

That what like 600$ below disti pricing? Thats below asus cost to manufacture too. I bet anything you dont get what is advertised unless its stolen or returned.

 

Thanks ProPortable, what precautions can I take to make sure this company is legit? Maybe they listed it under the wrong price and haven't found out their mistake? From feedback I've heard about them, I have heard both good and bad.
If I pay with Paypal for instance and I do not get my order or it is damaged or whatever, what steps can I take to get my money back and what chances would I have to get it back and how much would the hassle be? Thanks again to anyone that replies here, please give me as many replies as you can.


Here is the link to the notebook by the way.

http://www.etech4sale.com/Asus_S6F_...F_NON-LEATHER_VERSION/partinfo-id-278436.html

 

You're just gonna waste time, there is no way you're ever gonna get it at that price, dream all you want, it's not possible unless its either stolen, or its......well thats about it.

It doesn't matter if you pay by PayPal, your timeline will be over 2-3 months and its not guaranteed you'll even get your money back.

Use your judgement

 

If you are set on trying it, don't use paypal, their protection maxes out at $1,000. Use a credit card you know will back you, like AmEx if somthing goes bad they will give you your money back.

 

Why even risk it? If there is a screw up you'll be wasting days or weeks trying to get things sorted out. You have several very reliable resellers right here that help people even when they don't buy from them. If you want to take a risk go sky diving.

 

We've been around longer than anyone else importing Asus' notebooks and our volume gives us the best pricing possible....... The screen, motherboard, and dvd burner on the S6 cost more than $1,200.

 

Rahul, I can't believe you have 2,820 posts, yet still don't realize you're being taken for a ride! How is it that you still act like a noob?

 

If it looks like it is too good to be true, it probably is.

There isn't anything you can do to 'protect yourself'. Surely not PayPal - they are borderline crooks themselves - and even a credit card purchase would required a lot of arguing with the company to get a chargeback done...

 

Hey comon now thats a little unfair. I ve been using paypal to buy and using them for our checkout. granted they have alot of bad feedback like any other major corporation (amex, visa, authorize) but they ve been extremely good to us on the buyer side when i get screwed on ebay (a few times) and on the seller side. They can side with the seller alot better then your amex or mastercard can. With amex or mc it is very easy to screw a seller if your record was clean. With paypal its a bit harder becuase they do side with the seller if the seller follow 7 steps for seller protection. I am sure there are alot of cooks out there that would use this to their advantage but its not paypals fault. You should always do your research before you buy something. Sure i would like to avoid them placing 1 of 100 transactions on administrative hold for a week due to "random selection" and i would like for them to give a reason to the customer why the transaction was declined at checkout but other then that they are far from croooks.

 

Years ago, in our first years as a company, there was that whole thing with employee's at PayPal stealing people's money.... that's 100% true (It was going on in 2001 I think), but it was a 20/20 special and there was a big uproar about it because at the time they weren't as connected to Ebay as they are today...... Ebay (ironically), cleaned them up a lot and pumped a lot of money into them. We use Verisign as our payment processor, SSL provider, and for our Fraud Proection Services... They're obviously world renowned for those things... well PayPal bought them out (as payment processor anyway), so they're buying their legitimacy one company at a time.

... With that said - We still won't use "paypal" as a payment method because the service people know as "paypal" is still very unsecure for merchants and it's not that much better for the consumers, but of course all companies work to sway the consumer - so they can try to pressure the merchant to accept it..... but they're still the renegade form of payment processing. I hear they're going to merge a lot more stuff with Verisign in this coming year and try to add more legitimacy to their form of "paypal" payments, by basically getting everyone using their newly aquired Verisign processer to use that method. I know a lot has been going on regarding it and apparently there are a lot of people who agree with me, when saying that it's a good thing to have more ways to accept funds, but they need to get the security and guarentees up PAST that of the normal Visa/MC; AMEX.


But in 2001, yeah, they certainly weren't alter boys.

 

Justin
You should look into them more closely. Alot of that is aged mis-information. They are 100% secure (not counting the fact that phishers and scammers love to steal newbies info but that is not their fault abd there is no way they can make that fool proof). they offer 1.9% fees for larger vendors. Look around you will find none that even come close. the best around is 2.2% now a days. I would pay anything if they charged it only because no other proccessor can guarantee seller protection they can only guarantee arbitration. last year we had almost a dozen chargebacks files against us. 10 of which were filed by customers who already received their product and just wanted to cheat the system and the rest by customers who didnt agree with the restocking fee. We lost the cases for the restocking fee but we won all the cases for fraudulent chargebacks. I have no doubt in my mind that that would not be the case if we used any other provider. You will see paypal grow over the years beyond where they are now. In addition to the above their limited production debit card offer 1.5% instant cash back was and is very desirable. I snagged one years back when they offered it. Paypal is the $hit and you all should give them a try. Whether you buy on ebay or online. everyone accepts paypal now a days outside of ebay, well everyone should. You would be surprised to know that a third or our payers are paypal account holders.

 

Eddie,

I know what you're talking about and yes, I do know there is more to it than I mentioned...... but there are still issues with the paypal service everyone knows about.. You mentioned one, and honestly that's a big one. We all know 90% of the risk is on the merchant and as of the next six months, Visa and MC at least are going to turn that around to 0% risk because of a lot of fraudster on the consumer side, yada, yada, yada... But if someone returns something to you and your policy is for a certain restocking fee, that needs to be honored..... You honored to allow them to return it, which apparently going by PayPal's rules would mean you didn't have to do that.

In the near future, a lot of those will simply be moot because on a whole, merchants are sick of the fraud they have to deal with and it's putting plenty of good people out of business. Credit card companies already make close to half of every sale that everyone one of us makes and they don't do anything important - and certainly don't take on any of the real risk themselves. So this next year when they all force things like "Verified by Visa", where customers create a pin number for purchasing online - 100% of the risk goes to the customer. If they give their pin to someone, that person could max out their card and tell the merchant to ship it half way around the world and the merchant has 0% risk and can ship anywhere........ If the customer gave someone their pin number, they'll pay for their stupidity by fronting the money to get themselves out of debt because the credit card won't help them either.

Consumers may look at that as BS, but in reality, fraud causes fees from the credit card companies to rise, which in turn makes our prices rise, which make you pay more. When we have a majority of the risk, if a customer wants an expensive item sent to his or her work, without consent of the credit card company - it's insane to tell them anything but - sorry, we won't do that without you listing the address with the CC..... So in the end, it's fraud and the current operation procedures that are hurting all of us. PayPal is far from perfect, but their initial ideas were good and we'll soon see a great merger of those ideas in the upcoming year, which in theory, should make life and business better for all of us.

But this is way off topic now, so I apoligize...... The purpose of this thread was to tell someone who apparently is a seasoned member that they're nuts for even having an inkling of faith in this company selling an S6f for under the cost of the sum of it's parts... especially since Asus so closely regulates everything, there isn't a chance in hell this is even remotely on the up and up... it's just a matter of how shady, can shady be...

 

I have head that PayPal will freeze accounts with no due process, confiscate the funds, and you'll never see them again. Even today. And the payment protection for buyers is very hard to get them to honor.

So in terms of the OPs question of if they should use it for a questionable transaction... No.

 

Is PayPal a FDIC member? I don't think they're regulated by anyone, which means they can do whatever they want with your money. Also, they're an overseas corp. too from what I hear, so it's hard to use the US legal system in case you have a problem with them randomly freezing your account. Ebay has lent them some credibility, but I think they're more business partners than branches of the same company.

If you use PayPal, make sure to use a credit card to deposit funds---if you link your bank account to them, they can actually withdraw funds from it at anytime without your prior knowledge. Even if you want this, it's best to have a CC as a buffer in case something goes wrong.

 

No, PayPal is not an FDIC member. They are not a bank. They are not subject to the regulations that banks/credit unions/credit card companies are subject to.

 

Never mind, they just upped the price from $1275 to $1875, must have been a pricing error on their part.