4months "nice"experience with kobalt computers

hi all, i ordered and paid for a laptop to kobalt computers 4months ago, which i wanted for the christmas, but after 4 months of waiting, i never received the laptop and have just cancelled my order with them, so now, im writing the experience

26oct2010-----after some quick emails, got a call from andy from their sales department, who sounds like they do care for customers, and was very polite and all that, he assured me normally it would take them 2 to 3 weeks, or no more than a month before i can get the lap, and after some reading in their community forum i think i can expect quality out of them, so i made up my mind later that day and put through an order worth 3600 pound to them

27oct-----money tranferred to them after a phone call from my bank
and from this date, all communication is very slow to get, but i have to say neil from support did exchanged some friendly emails with me when i didnt tell him i ordered with them, and even that stoped 2months ago

2nov-----after a few emails to andy, he finally set up my order page in the afternoon and in the next day i logged in to find my eta is on 16th nov

16nov-----even though the order status is still "order received/payment taken", i thought with no emails or phone calls coming from kobalt to tell me about the delay, i can expect to receive it so i stayed home all day, of course, no laptop at the end of the day
few days after 16nov and still no contact from kobalt, i wait no more and emailed andy, he got back to me on the 24nov and updated my order page, new eta 7dec, and the updated order status "in the building queue", i was unhappy straight away, 3 weeks just to get in the queue?? but i didnt question him cos from what i saw in their forum, normally you wont get the lap after 3 weeks

6dec-----just when i was going to expect the lap, suddenly a comment appears on my order page at 19:11 (sorry, im looking at my order page to write this) due to snow, eta 16~17dec, from andy beard, again that made me unhappy but thats life, and i understand that cos with all the snowing and ice on the road in uk at that time, its reasonable.

17dec-----finally, its 17, at13:43, a new comment appears, its obviously a email saved and send to many, but "Our main courier, TNT has advised not to ship to Scotland due to a delay......."????? and the rest of it explaining how it affects kobalt and how they will do their best....??????? what i have done to deserve this? my delivery address is in liverpool, now after a month and a halfs wait, you just send this copied email and want me to be ok with it??? i lost a bit temper that day and got the phone call from kobalt which ive been asking for a week ( their phone service is never on so i have to ask them to phone me ) this time from a person called andrew, he's all polite and andy like, reassured me everything promised me i will get it in the first week after christmas, some sorry for the delay and again im off waiting, also i did ask him to change my specs in the order to get some refund for christmas, since im not getting it for christmas i will upgrade it later, which he agreed and changed it on my order page but the refund never came

13jan2011-----with no updates in my order page since 17dec, including the eta still at 16dec, i started a thread in order queries in their forum explaining i need a talk with them and its urgent, neil replied that thread trying to ease my concern and he knows what i want, but the phone call never came

15jan-----finally im moving to manchester, left a comment in my order page explaining i have moved, but didnt left the new address, they have to phone me when they finally done with the lap and ask about my address, i thought.

28jan-----friday, there were no internet in the new house, finally i had time to check my on everything, everything was the same when i left it on 15.... so i started a new thread stating that it has been 3 months since i ordered and paid, and im assuming my laptop is never built at all as you are not interested to ask my new address. Neil replied to that thread later, saying they will contact me first thing monday, will look into why i havent been contacted and sorry, i didnt see that as i have gone back home from my friends house where i have connection to internet

3feb-----which is the next thursday, when i went back to my friends house and saw what Neil said........... i never received any phone call from anybody from kobalt...i wrote in my thread and order page, explaining ive been asking for the one phone call for a month and questions mark on will they ever do my order

4feb-----andrew left a comment in the order page "I'm really sorry about this. Either myself or Neil will call you Monday to sort this out for you. Whatever spec you want to go for we will be able to deliver it to you late next week."

14feb-----finally internet sorted in the new house and i saw the comment andrew left,..... again, ive not heard anything from them, and from this day to when andrew left that comment, 2 mondays have passed.

15feb-----tuesday, after i left a comment explaining the 2 mondays on 14feb, andrew phoned me about 3pm, i told him about my spec wants as no refunds came and its long passed christmas, i want all that money on the lap, he agreed and again, reassured me everything, how he will start my order straightaway and i can expect to see the laptop next week, i asked for his word for the quality of the lap and got it, also the eta on my order page finally got a update from 16dec, the new eta 21feb, at this point im convinced and relaxed, in a way i forgot to tell him my new address which he didnt ask as well....this time i forgot to tell the address so i did that on the 18feb by leaving a comment with my address in the order page, which andy got to that on the same day

21feb-----having waited whole day at home confident of getting the lap, again, there was nothing in the end of it, and again, there were no updates or contact from kobalt explaining the situation.

22~24feb, left a comment each day on the order page, so frustrated dont know what to ask them, and there were no reply what so ever to my comments, so on 24feb, i started a thread demanding a phone call from andy and andrew to me before the end of friday

25feb-----friday, 15 44, a response from andrew, to my thread, "I've just updated your ETA. The machine is finally in final testing and will ship on Monday or Tuesday, depending which day it finishes testing. We will let you know as soon as it has been booked to ship with TNT."
later, around 8pm, still no phone call from andy or andrew, i lost my temper and started drinking, left some angry comment in my thread stating im cancelling it before off to my pub, and this is the first time i have been rude with them, i know its not the answer but im not a saint, i have my tempers, theres, of course no response from kobalt yet

sorry lads, its long and somewhere in it may not make sense but now im full of anger and i have to let it out...................................
i can swear to god, everything i wrote here is the truth, and to me right now, is the complete story, if anybody from kobalt see this and feel i didnt write anything in full or "lie", pls, state it, im looking forward to it!!

26feb----i posted this thread in kobalt forum but immediately it was moved to order queries which can only be seen by kobalt staff, it was neil who moved it and explains its weekend the staff are not in office and they cant reply to it, some explanations on the delay some sorry and he will look into it on monday, i agreed with him because i trusted this guy and i know he should be a reasonable man

28feb----neil at the very end of the day wrote to me how theres been a communication problem in their company and theres been a components delay for my order, and offered me a 100quid refund+laptop send to me on wednesday, also he said theres a staff called peter who will call me tommorow morning, i want to refuse it cos theres no way i can trust product coming from them, but i didnt cos i do want to hear what they have to say.

1 march----- close to 12 oclock and still no phone call from them, i wait no more and wrote that im still cancelling the order, but, if they can guarantee the quality of the laptop which they are going to send me, i can agree to receive the laptop and go along with the order, this man peter reply to my thread saying they will refund me fully and will take 3~10days,...........
later i tried to argue that my payment took less than a days time but they replied again its out of their hands when the refund will come back to me, also to note theres no apology after they said the refund is on its way....

this is it so far, im relieved in a way, will write again when i have received the refund and im looking to reuse that money to buy a laptop,a clevo 7200 or 8100 that can be send to uk, anyone with good experiences pls suggest, thks much, by the way kobalt read what i wrote for your excuses on my order, cos i dont feel i have to write them again in here!
in the end i feel like saying, its like been stolen for 4months and then have it returned to me, thank you kobalt!

 

Hi Iker/Yi

We have written several lengthy replies to you on the forum to explain things.

We informed you on Monday that your laptop would be shipping today (Tuesday) and yet you decided to cancell the order today (which btw was refunded today as we advised you imediately). It was ready for TNT to collect it and would have been with you tomorrow as promised.

We have explained the points that you have raised with us on our forum, including a lot of statements which are factually incorrect.

Your statement is a grossly inaccurate representation of events and communication with our company and this is specifically why we removed it from the public section of our forum and dealt with it in private. It is also specifcally why we will not be approving your several attempts to post it as a testimonial on our company forum.

We have been trying to explain things to you for several days and you refuse to accept our explinations, including the fact that we asked you to tell us if you still wanted the laptop (which I posted on our company forum after 11pm yesterday) and if so we would call to you confirm shipping, we specifically did not say we would call you first as you have suggested.

The order has been cancelled on the day the laptop was due to ship and the refund has been actioned imediately.

 

No offense, but I've never heard of you guys before...

That said, here's my two cents.

1) What laptop was ordered, exactly? Was it one affected by the recall?
2) That snow delay sounds plausible to me in terms of deliveries. My British friends were complaining for months about how bad it was over there, even the Royal Post was having issues (I know, because they lost packages sent and received on that side )
3) Was there ever an attempt to call after you paid? It looks like it was all written correspondence.

Looks to me like there were communication issues, especially without internet access for x amount of time. I'm willing to give the reseller the benefit of the doubt on this one due to the fact that I know how bad the weather was over there, and due to the hardware issues and recalls that have come up. No idea why there was an initial delay, but it can probably also be explained. After ordering from Dell, a 3-4 week initial build time and queuing delay doesn't seem that unusual to me though, which would put your order almost up to the time that bad weather hit.

However, 4-5 months of waiting still sounds ridiculous if you weren't affected by the recall. Care to clarify a bit on that Neil? Seems we're not getting the whole story here.

EDIT: Also, I can see moving being an issue in terms of not only shipping, but payment. You paid by bank transfer but I don't know if that makes a difference. It could be worse, you could have gone with Eurocom...

 

I haven't even heard of Kobalt before, and I've seen so many threads recently about Kobalt.

Regardless of what happened, this guy's given you a huge chunk of money and he hasn't gotten his laptop for 4-5 months?

No matter how hard you try to justify, it just doesn't seem to do justice to this man.

 

No offence taken, we are based in Europe so aren't part of the "Sager crowd".

1/ The order wasn't affected by Sandy Bridge recalls, it was delayed due to unfortunate co-incidences with availability problems with 460M and then 485M cards due to the vRAM availability issues which expecially on the 485M have been felt by every company world wide. The order specifications were changed numerous times. The weather also had a large part to play which we explained in detail.

3/ There were communication issues between us when he couldn't call us due to the problems we had with our phone system and also because he was uncontactable due to moving house and not having internet access. We have made many attemps at communication over the phone and have spoken to him on several occasions about his order and upgrade options. I have also given him advice on hardware options during a period when I wasn't made aware that he had actually already placed an order.

The order wasn't placed via bank transfer and the refund was actioned the same day that the order was cancelled (today).

A public forum is not a sensible place to continue this discussion - we have spent a lot of time over the last two days in communication with our customer and have replied and explained everything thoroughly. I am extremely wary of what I can post in public in reply to a customer because it severely limits what I can say and how I can explain issues that are wrongly reported or missunderstood. I am also extremely weary of what has happened on other threads where people who have no specific interest in the case continue to call on me to defend our company whilst not having even half the facts in hand and after a case has been closed and refunded. I am not blaming people for not having this information but without it the discussions quickly devolve. We have already discussed a lot of the points in the OP in private, if necessary I will reply to every single point in the original post but to do this in public would be grossly unfair on the OP.
There are reasonable and perfectly accurate explinations for some of the problems, there are also explinations and corrections that it would be completely wrong for me to post in public. I know from experience that when I post factual statements in public they are often ignored or belittled and especially so when the issues have already dealt with through the normal communication channels between us and our customer.

 

Understood. If the laptop required a 460m or 485m, I can see how this could be backordered. Those parts were causing backorders for most laptops well up until January. Most US based Sager resellers only ended up shipping out in mid January before the recall hit only a week or two later. Couple that with poor communication and bad weather and it's pretty easy to see how these delays can total up to 2 months or more.

Thanks for the response. Sounds to me like it's just bad timing.

meraki: Yeah, he's been waiting a while but the same is true for most of us. A lot of people have paid up to and during the recall and will be out that money for months before they even see the machines, so that part isn't totally unreasonable. Especially since as Xotic and others were facing a VRAM shortage that cut down drastically on available 460m and 485m parts through the new year.

 

Epsilon748
x7200, clevo was the lap i ordered
snow delay is just part of that, as i said, that i dont mind, cant you see from what i wrote they have only just started the order late last week or worst, this week?
andy who called me, as i wrote, gave me a call in the day but before i ordered, and also called me in the next day to confirm my order with them
andrew called me 3times, each time i have wrote
the number i left with them is obviously a mobile number, so.....
i can swear to god these are all the phone call from kobalt to me, if theres a call from them i did not pick up, there should be a voicemail, and i always call back unless its a unkown number.
meraki1990 tks man,i believe justice, honor is what a man should be all about.

neil i have nothing to say to you, if you still dont trust me after all this time we've communicated and my promise to god, you can say whatever you like

 

Epsilon748
clevo x7200 was the lap i ordered
snow delay is just part of that, as i said, that i dont mind, cant you see from what i wrote they have only just started the order late last week or worst, this week when they promised again that i can receive the lap last week? to clariy as i didnt see your last post, its not the time im on about, kobalt staff has never given me not even a hint about how they cant make the laptop in the time when they said they will, several times, all they told me is when to expect to receive the laptop, and thats it in the few responses theyve given me,to a point the eta was 16dec, and i only got informed its delayed again in mid feb
andy who called me, as i wrote, gave me a call in the day i made the order to reply with my request about their service, and also called me in the next day to confirm my order with them
andrew called me 3times, each time i have wrote
the number i left with them is obviously a mobile number, so.....
i can swear to god these are all the phone call from kobalt to me, if theres a call from them i did not pick up, there should be a voicemail, i dont know about any voice mail they left, and i always call back unless its a unkown number.

meraki1990 tks man,i also believe justice, honor is what a man should be all about.

neil i have nothing to say to you, if you still dont trust me after all this time we've communicated and my promise to god, you can say whatever you like

 

Original poster -- this is an issue between you and Kobalt. Please keep it that way - posting here isn't going to help your cause (it might actually worsen it). Thanks.

Thread closed.