Are Kobalt legitimate?

Folks,

Am starting to get very worried about an order I placed with Kobalt on the 17th August. They promised a three week delivery, then when three weeks was about up, they said they were very busy (fair enough) and said it would go in the build queue ASAP. They finally said on the 16th Sept that it would start to be built. Then I a got a message on the 21st saying they couldn't get the screen resolution I wanted after all.

We then sorted out me having the more expensive machine and they promised me delivery today. No sign of it, nothing on the web site updates and when I queried it on their forum they just deleted my message and closed the thread!

I am really worried now that I've been ripped off and will never actually see a computer! Has anyone had any success with this people? They don't seem to answer emails and their phone lines seem to be out of order inordinately often!

Crossing my fingers this isn't all a scam, would welcome some reassurance! Even if it's not a scam, they seem to be a bit disorganised and I really don't like how they take a grand from your account and show no sign of delivering six weeks later.

 

trust me they are a great company and 100% legit.
just to clarify on the 21st you changed your order due to the screen being unavailable and decided on another machine.so a brand new build. that was 8 days ago. the average turnaround they give with an eta of 10-12 days. this is only an estimated date and cannot be gauranteed.
posted on their forum was this message:
Please note that Kobalt will be fully closed for business from Thursday 23rd September at 3PM until 10am on Monday 27th September.
We have a full office electrical / network / server install and will have no power and internet access during this time. It was originally scheduled to have been done prior to our office move but due to the extreme short notice of the move it was not done before hand.
thanks to a cockup by BT they lost total use of phones and internet on monday until yesterday evening. they are sorting the backlog out now and are trying to reply to everyone but they do get hundreds of emails a day.
phone lines should be manned from tomorrow morning.

hope that puts your mind at ease.

 

Thanks for the reply, MrDJ.

Yeah, I had no alternative but to change the order because they suddenly turned round and said you can't have the 1920 x 1080 screens (a month or so down the road).

I did see that message about the outage, but, man, that's a long time to be without, and all these things just start making me very nervous. Especially a query about a long overdue order being deleted jut like that. I ditched BT broadband ages ago because it was rubbish, but it was never *that* bad!

They promised me Wednesday delivery as they seemed to have the parts in and as a good will gesture for having messed me about.

Anyway, thanks again, I feel slightly easier about it now. I would question them being a "great company" though; they've severely underwhelmed me so far.

 

no worrys mate. i can appreciate your worry.
what machine and spec did you go for in the end.
im with BT and i lost signal twice last night but its such a nightmare when its a company affected as there buggered without phone and internet.
Neil the technical director posts on nbr when he gets a chance.
did you make a post on the order queries thread as i cant view any of them.

 

Originally went for a GS510 with the 1920 x 1080 screen. (The resolution is crucial to me as I do a lot of coding and it makes *such* a difference to how easy it is to write and debug software over the lower resolutions. It was ideal as it had the nvidia graphics card that is crucial for Linux, it was well under 3kg and had a well decent battery life. So had to settle for the G860 in the end which is a much more powerful computer, but weighs a fair deal more and the battery life will be bobbins! As the most graphically intensive thing I ever do is occasionally play Second Life I don't need a super fast GPU.

I have queried now on the order queries thread.

In the meanwhile, when I'm away on business and can't use my two 22" 1680 x 1050 monitors on my desktop, I'm stuck with a borrowed Viao with 1280 x 800 resolution since my lovely old Zepto died! It's fair to say I'm desperate to get the new machine.

 

the 860 is a beast of a 15"

 

Can't wait to get my hands on the damn thing!

 

Hi Rob

I had exchanged a couple of pm's with you on our company forum before you started this thread on nbr explaining why I deleted your post and MrDJ has also posted replies on nbr covering most of your queries.

The thread you posted on was an announcement thread explaining that we were having the whole of our office completely re-fitted with power and networking on Thursday and Friday last week and that we therefore wouldn't have any power or broadband connections from Thursday 23rd to the morning of Monday 27th September.

There were also two posts yesterday, one from our sales manager stating that we didn't have any broadband connection and that we had limited access to emails and the order tracking system.

In addition to this thread on our forum there was also a notice on our contact us page and also on the phone system so anyone who rang us during this time was aware that it was temporary.

I closed the thread after updating it to say that our phones will be back up on Thursday (tomorrow) and also that we were working through emails and order tracking comments because we have had extremely limited access to both of these from work. I deleted your post because we can not give individual updates on our forum - this is primarily because we have no way of knowing which customer is which username. This is why we created the private Order Queries section of our forum. I explained this in my pm to you at 14:29 this afternoon, before you started this thread on nbr.

I understand that this outage of power and networking hasn't been ideal and the issues yesterday and today have exacerbated the situation, however we have made every attempt to let our customers know about this with the limited rescources available to us. Hopefuly the work that has been carried out will mean that the intemittent problems we have experienced over the last 4-6 weeks with communication now have a pernament fix. It's been a bit of a nightmare for us as well but hopefully it's all sorted out now.

 

Aye, I got your reply though just after I posted this. I'm sure you can understand why deleting my post freaked me, especially when it's taken so long after me handing over a lot of money such a long time ago.

It really isn't just about the recent outages, it's about a whole string of things. A more reliable ISP would be a good idea methinks. Since I switched from BT I've only had one afternoon's outage in about six years.

Anyway, as you say, hopefully this is sorted now.

 

If it helps I have met the guys at Kobalt on a number of occasions and received emails from them as late as 11pm on a Sunday night regarding machines

i am currently on my 3rd Kobalt system and wouldnt go anywhere else