In progress: P771ZM order placed on 26/01/15, and experience with mySN

After much investigation and talking to various resellers, I finally placed my order with mySN for a Clevo P771ZM with a custom LCD display on 26/01/15. I will update this post to reflect the current status of my order daily.

My experience with mySN so far:
I have had an extensive exchange of emails with mySN, I almost exclusively talked with Neil.
So far he has always been polite, patient, knowledgeable, and the replies were decently quick, especially in the early stage of emails exchange. I had some specific requests for my order and a lot of questions in general and he always answered all of them with great professionalism.

I can now only hope my positive experience with mySN continues on the same path with a smooth building process and a delivery to Hong Kong without unnecessary delays.

Timeline so far:

Mon 26/01/15 (day 0) - Order placed for a Clevo P771ZM with mySN. Order status: Pending.
Tue 27/01/15 (day 1) -
Wed 28/01/15 (day 2) - Email notification confirms bank transfer payment received on 28/01/15. Order status still on Pending, despite the email stating that it has now been updated to Processing.
Thu 29/01/15 (day 3) - Order status updated to Processing, and said to be expected to further update to "Accepted by production" on the same day.
ETA given for the laptop to ship to UK: "first thing next week" (Monday 02/02/15, day 7).
ETA given for the laptop to reach Hong Kong: end of next week.
Fri 30/01/15 (day 4) -
Sat 31/01/15 (day 5) -
Sun 01/02/15 (day 6) -
Mon 02/02/15 (day 7) -
Tue 03/02/15 (day 8) - Emailed mySN to ask for an update since the order status still shows "Processing" and not "Accepted by production" as supposed to since day 3.
Wed 04/02/15 (day 9) - mySN assured me that the laptop has been built and should ship to UK either on this day or the next.
Thu 05/02/15 (day 10) - mySN confirms the laptop has finally been shipped to UK.
Fri 06/02/15 (day 11) -
Sat 07/02/15 (day 12) -
Sun 08/02/15 (day 13) -
Mon 09/02/15 (day 14) - Laptop confirmed to have arrived to UK, where it will receive a custom LCD display swap. mySN hopes to be shipping it to HK on this same day.
Tue 10/02/15 (day 15) - Laptop finally shipping to HK!

continuing the timeline with the DHL tracking summary:


Friday, February 13, 2015 Location Time
16 Delivered - Signed for 10:46
15 With delivery courier HONG KONG - HONG KONG 08:45
14 Arrived at Delivery Facility in HONG KONG - HONG KONG HONG KONG - HONG KONG 03:43
13 Departed Facility in HONG KONG - HONG KONG HONG KONG - HONG KONG 01:11
12 Processed at HONG KONG - HONG KONG HONG KONG - HONG KONG 01:11
11 Clearance processing complete at HONG KONG - HONG KONG HONG KONG - HONG KONG 00:35
10 Arrived at Sort Facility HONG KONG - HONG KONG HONG KONG - HONG KONG 00:31

Thursday, February 12, 2015 Location Time
9 Customs status updated HONG KONG - HONG KONG 21:37
8 Departed Facility in LEIPZIG - GERMANY LEIPZIG - GERMANY 06:39
7 Transferred through LEIPZIG - GERMANY LEIPZIG - GERMANY 06:34
6 Departed Facility in EAST MIDLANDS - UK EAST MIDLANDS - UK 02:23

Wednesday, February 11, 2015 Location Time
5 Processed at EAST MIDLANDS - UK EAST MIDLANDS - UK 23:54
4 Arrived at Sort Facility EAST MIDLANDS - UK EAST MIDLANDS - UK 23:07
3 Departed Facility in GATWICK - UK GATWICK - UK 19:57
2 Processed at GATWICK - UK GATWICK - UK 18:17
1 Shipment picked up GATWICK - UK 15:22

 

Can a moderator change the topic title to "Updated daily: P771ZM order placed on 26/01/15, and experience with mySN"?

 

Hi
Just wanted to add a little more information to this thread so that our other customers can see how the build schedule works for different types of orders

On our UK website there are two KB articles which help to explain the order process and shipping times:
http://mysn.co.uk/support/index.php...ong-will-it-take-for-my-order-to-be-delivered
http://mysn.co.uk/support/index.php.../27/0/what-do-the-different-order-status-mean
The quoted (and estimated) 3-4 build time doesn't include weekends or public holidays where our production facility is sometimes closed. It starts for bank transfer orders once we have received the transfer which was in this case was two days after the order was placed - standard for an international bank transfer (domestic transfers can be received in a matter of minutes).
Earlier today Jack emailed to explain the error with the order status but that this had not caused a delay in the shipment.

On the 29th we advised that the order would hopefully ship "to our office early next week" - this actually meant that it may ship from production to the UK office early in the week, not that it would be received by the UK office early next week - sorry if this caused any confusion.

The order is actually still exactly on schedule, just towards the latter part of the current estimated build schedule of 4 business days rather than towards the quicker part!
As per the email discussions, we will continue to update you once your laptop has shipped from production and then for all subsequent parts of the process to the UK office, the bespoke LCD panel swap and then shipping to Hong Kong

 

Hi there, thanks for the extra info on the production process and shipping times.

However, with the estimate I was given of orders shipping out within 2-4 working days since receiving of payment, I was hoping the order would ship by this Monday (forth working day since receiving payment), rather than on Wednesday or Thursday. Especially since the email I received on the 29th really said "first thing next week", as I quoted on the timeline on my first post, and not a more generic "to our office early next week", as quoted in your post.

I'm particularly impatient to receive my order as soon as possible since my 4 years old Clevo x7200 has died a few days ago and I cannot do any work until I received the new Clevo.

I just hope things can go as smooth as possible.

 

It arrived this morning!! All seems great so far. I'll write a better/proper post after I verified everything

 

So, this post is a week late, but better late than never.

So yeah, the laptop finally arrived in Hong Kong last friday morning.
I was actually waiting for the delivery man in the street for 2 hours once the DHL tracking said the package was with the courier since my building doesn't have an intercom, so the only way for the delivery man was to call me but I was afraid he might speak only Cantonese or too poor English so I just wanted to be safe and waited for him.

Everything is fine with the laptop minus one thing that for me is quite important and has a huge impact.
The custom LCD panel that I requested, a AUO B173HW01 v4, came with a dead/stuck pixel (still unclear if it's dead or stuck since it seems to behave inconsistently).

What particularly disappointed me was the fact that I had specifically asked a representative of mySN, Neil, about the possible presence of such malfunctioning pixel, to which I was reassured that the panel will be tested to ensure this situation will not occur.
Here's an extract from the conversation I had with Neil:

"Regarding the AUO B173HW01 v4 in your possession, are you aware of any hot/stuck/dead pixels in it? I ask because other resellers have told me they have some of these screens but with some malfunctioning pixels."

"3/ We haven't tested the AUO panel yet, however if it does have any dead/lit/stuck pixels then we will simpy order another one! We test all panels, whether installed by us in the UK or before they leave production in Germany, so we would never knowlingly ship one with any pixel issues."

Part of this text above is actually taken from an email I sent to the guys at mySN since I reported to them about the dead pixel as soon as I could.

Neil replied to me personally and assured me that the tests to check for such pixel were indeed carried out:

"- installation and visual inspection by our engineer
- checked by our engineer with our internal testing suite which included a specific pixel test program. This runs on a bootable USB and outside of Windows, it sets multiple flat colours so we can test in pure white, black, the primary colours and secondary colours plus a couple more.
- I also carried out a visual inspection and the above mentioned program.
- in adition to this we also ran some stress tests to make sure that everything was definitely running smoothly as a double check, in addition to the tests run in production. This was with the specific intent of minimising as much as possible the chances of you encountering a problem which would require RMA in the future."

According to him, the dead pixel came to be in the two days that the laptop traveled from UK to HK. I don't know, I guess it's possible. Sounds a bit unlikely though. Not sure what to think.

Other than this black stain, which leaves me somewhat dubious, I must say that they guys at mySN were always very polite, professional, patient, knowledgeable and the replies to my many emails were decently fast. The building and shipping time was also decent, it overall took almost a week longer than originally predicted by them, but still decent enough.

And like I said, they also gave me the additional service (paid service, obviously) of mounting a custom LCD panel that I requested specifically since it wasn't available on the laptop's customization page. One last thing, they also agreed to a small discount when I asked for a price match with a cheaper, but admittedly shoddier, german reseller.

Overall I would give mySN a 4/5 rating. Would be 5/5 if it wasn't for the pixel issue.

(I'll be making a thread soon to give more info on the pixel situation and ask for suggestions)

(A mod can freely remove the "In Progress" part of the thread title)

 

Hi There

Unfortunately a day's delay in the production line can lead to shipments missing delivery before the weekend and so on, all in all it took a couple more business days from when we hoped to have it shipped out to HG than it actually did (can't do anything over the weekend unfortunately).

The emails from Neil are definitely accurate, we had several different engineers test and inspect the panel - it was 100% perfect when it left us and we would have swapped it out if there were any signs of a pixel issue. We used two pixel testing methods as well as a more general visual inspection in Windows.

This discussion is ongoing via email with our support team and it sounds like you might wish to swap the panel with your older X7200, but we're here to help you decide what to do and to provide additional support if you require it