Kobalt Computers ETAs??? HELP PLS

hi guys,

after some advice as getting really concerned

i ordered a G970x laptop Kobalt computers on the 8th december 2010 forking out best part of £2500quid (which they promptly collected i might add)

the laptop was meant to be a xmas present so i emailed Kobalt Computers before hand, who assured my via email before i placed the order that it would be ready before xmas (ETA 23/12/10), that date came and went and heard nothing (email'd a couple of times to no avail)

anyway, thought after xmas and weather improving, them restoring their web site after being hacked, must surely be soon now, so after more emails and a response from Kobalt got another ETA of the 20/01/11, needless to say that date has also been and gone which brings me to my present quandry, i have email'd twice asking what is happening but nothing back so far..........

biggest concern i have is that on the customer tracker my order status hasn't even changed the whole time (not even moved to awaiting parts or anything!!!)

should i cut and run and cancel my order??? and if so where can i get a Sager and Clevo laptop in the UK from a reliable retailer???

please any help greatly appreciated

cheers,

mat

 

Oh boy, here we go again. Kobalt is really screwed up right now. Cancel and pray you don't have to wait months for the refund, like some others went through.

 

Hmm i was considering a purchase from them in the next few weeks but it the seemingly 'standard issue' long delays in orders is seriously offputting. Didnt they have a guarantee Xmas time delivery on their website before xmas (i may be wrong?).

I see a recent post on the forum show a guy who ordered his G970X in November and has yet to receive it.

Shame really, seem a sound bunch of guys and they seem to be one of only a few of Clevo resellers in the UK.

My advice would be to use all the available methods of communication in this order:

Telephone---- try all numbers on the website starting with the relevant order tracking number followed by support, sales etc.
Email----- send to a single adress but copy in all other emails (sales, tech suppor, order tracking etc.)
Post on the Forum---- i see they have a Private Order Tracking section on the forum

If you get hold of them be professional, diplomatic and reasonable at all times... stating you'd like an immediate update on your order and voice your understandable displeasure at the delay. If they give you an updated delivery estimate choose whether you want to wait it out or not. If not ask for an immediate refund.

They seem fairly responsive on the forum and happy enough to answer the stickiest of questions so Im sure they will sort you out soon enough (whether it be refund or delivery).

Good Luck and please report back to us with the result of your dealings with them! It may be the deciding factor in whether I do business with them or not!

 

I hate to bring up this thread but look on page 3 of

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/547219-worst-decision-ever-3.html

Neil at Kobalt states the methods to reach them and get these types of issues resolved. Also you can try and PM him over these forums.

Good luck

 

Similar position to me i'm afraid I ordered a 970x way back in October and after getting to 'in the build queue' back in November it has not changed since. I had a few email replies fairly recently saying the laptop would go into production the last weekend but nothing heard since. They have taken close to £3K of mine as well!

I am rather torn because they do seem like good guys but what i cannot understand through all these stories is that if they take the money so quickly why
(a) they cannot refund quickly and more to the point;
(b) they are obviously sitting on a pile of orders and also sitting on a pile of cash why they dont just hire a load more people to get them shifted.

If they did this, they would get a great rep...more customers etc etc.

Going to hold on for another two weeks max and then quit...also don't expect this thread to remain open long!

 

I have been considering buying a laptop from kobalt as well as they seem to be the only uk reseller I can find. I have almost pressed the button a few times but have always been put off by posts like this. It is alarming that a company can charge 2-3k for a laptop and be so poor in communication. Also I don't understand why they charge upfront when they dont have the laptop in stock.
The other alarming thing from them seems to be the tendancy for them to get threads like this closed off which suggests that they have something to hide.

 

If you would like an update or information on your order then the first point of contact should always be the Order Tracking system. This system is not being used by some of our customers and when messages are posted in other places it lengthens the time we can respond in as we often have to match up forum usernames with customers names and order/customer numbers.

The contact us page clearly states:

"Please note that if you have any queries regarding your order your first point of contact should be made through the order tracking section of the website. This enables us to log and track your enquiry efficiently and quickly."

We also have a private section on our company forum called "Order Queries" (which MattPM mentoned earlier in this thread and I also listed clearly in the nbr thread that Marvin H Muckley III quoted above). On top of this you can pm any of the staff members on our own forum or you can send us a ticket, which I have seen replies to previous tickets that you have posted.

If we are give the time to reply to a ticket (max 1 working day) then 99% of the time we will be happy to provide a reply or update in this time frame. I would like to point out that some of the posts on nbr about communication have come about because messages posted to us late Friday afternoon/evening haven't been replied to until Monday - as we are closed Saturday and Sunday we can't reply until Monday and won't have seen the messages until Monday.

I know that the phone system has been a bone of contention for some time. It has taken a long time to get back online due to the problems we experienced over Christmas. There isn't any point in us having just one phone line open as we can deal with enqniries much more efficiently through the other channels I have detailed above. Doing this has prioritised existing orders over new orders.

I can't speak on behalf of nbr moderators but half of the posts which have been closed were because they were communication problems that were resolved very quickly, for example emailing our company at .com rather than .co.uk and not using the other communication channels. The other thing to bear in mind is that we cannot discuss individual orders on notebookreview, this is why we have an Order Queries section on our company forum. If this is used either instead of or in combination with the Order Tracking system (as should be the case) then there wouldn't have been the need for any of the threads on nbr recently.

I won't shy away from the issues that we had at the end of last year but we explained them in public in order to be honest about the issues. They are not inherent issues with Kobalt, they were the result of circumstance and we have worked extremely hard over the last couple of weeks to get everything back up on track. There are still a few outstanding issues that had rolled over from Christmas but in the next seven days all of these will have been resolved.

 

Ok I'm sorry but please if you can't speak on behalf of nbr moderators don't. I doubt this explanation having discussed the reasons in private. If they'd like to explain I'm sure they will. I don't think it's fair to speculate *cough*.

 

Hi Mat,

I'm in a similar situation. Trying all available mechanisms at present and hoping to get a reply. I will keep you posted on what I find. Good luck.

I may be cynical but it seems like quite a few people are basically giving Kobalt an interest free cash injection for a month or 2 until they get fed up and cancel their orders. Perhaps then a few lucky ones actually get a computer and the rest of us go through a long process of getting a refund. I really hope I am wrong as fundamentally the computers look great and I really want one

 

The fact that some orders have been delayed for 3 months does not make me believe that this companies communication issues are worse.
When you make an order and nothing happens with it for 3 months, that doesn't even qualify as a normal transaction, it sounds more like an unwilling investment.

If there is some way you could explain how your order tracking system and mix ups between .com and .co.uk were directly affecting the order time, this thread would make a lot more sense...

 

mwalter - I'm not speculating, I read the moderators post at the end of the thread where they explained why the thread had been closed.

niffcreature - I was merely making the point that the Tracking system should be the first point of contact. If there is a communication problem and the correct channels haven't been used then it causes problems. One of the threads on nbr was started because someone couldn't get hold of our company who had ordered spare parts for his laptop. He posted on nbr and lots of other people jumped on which made the issue seem much worse than it was - what actually happened is that the person in question only contacted us by email and was sending the emails to a .com address rather than a .co.uk so we didn't get any of them.

 

Hardly. Circumstance certainly played a role in it, but a substantial part of the problem is due to inherent issues. No company is proof against health problems with key personnel (look at Apple) or the various other misfortunes you've listed in previous threads, but you took no steps to warn prospective customers that their orders may be delayed by a substantial amount of time.

I could understand that if the delay was on the order of a week, but when the timescale is months, after a few weeks only somebody completely blind wouldn't have known that an order placed today will not be shipped on the usual timescale (if only because of the backlog). You could have said so to people about to order and this would have the double benefit of being honest and reducing your workload... but of course it would cost you money. Instead, even when asked point blank on December 8th whether the laptop would be available as a Christmas present, you quoted the standard 15 days (and of course it's nowhere near being there after 3 times as long). And on top of that, you took the money immediately and kept it for months.

There are definitely some inherent issues here, the circumstances have merely brought them to light.

 

Taking the funds at the point of sale on a private purchase is standard practice in any industry.

If we said that delivery would be before Christmas then at the time we would have expected that to be the case. The fact that the weather caused what turned out to be a three week delay in shipments comming in before and after this date meant that we, like many other much larger companies including supermarkets , had trouble meeting the Christmas deliery date. I would also add that couriers were taking much longer to deliver what we were sending out as well at the time. When the couriers have that much of a backlog then there isn't much we can do - no one expected it to cause problems to the extent that they did but the whole country suffered from this.

 

Mat - Been in contact via the ticketing with Andrew and Neil. My machine is due for shipment on Thursday. I will keep you posted on developments but it seems that things are moving again.
I used the support ticketing system for contact (and a few others) but this is the preferred route.

 

@Neil "Taking the funds at the point of sale on a private purchase is standard practice in any industry."

I am sure you will agree that it is also standard practice to expect any purchases to be delievered within 28 days.

Honestly your responses have put me off ordering from kobalt even more.
As other posters have pointed out if you know there are going to be delays why are you charging the money upfront. As I am sure I dont have to tell you a lot of etailers now only charge when they have started shipping.
Additionally if you have promised to deliver to a customer by a certain date and don't manage to do so I would expect the customer to not have to chase this up why isnt this automatically chased up and emails sent.

Re: The forums and closing posts issue: I noticed there was a post on kobalts forums this morning from someone who had brought his laptop to their offices to be fixed and didnt find anyone at their head office. Instead of replying to the post and posting an explanation the post seems to have just mysteriously disappeared. This doesnt exactly give a great impression to prospective buyers like me.

 

I was going to place an order with kobalt but to be honest, these delays have been going on since this time last year. I ordered a g870 which got delayed countless times.
I am now just going to order from the states and get it within a couple of weeks.
Kobalt could be a great company but let themselves down time and time again. I feel sorry for Neil having to keep coming on and defending his company, but sort the issues out and he wouldnt have to. Also be honest with your customers, if I knew the laptop was going to be 2 months I would probably still order. Better that than promise three weeks and then miss the date by miles whilst giving the customer no feedback and ignoring most mails.
And what is it with them never answering a phone!

 

it should be received at least less than a month, but a lot of factors can contribute to the delay, like weather issues and parts availability. i think what i experienced is only a month long delay, but that is understandable because my rep back then was always in touch with me and was informative about the progress.

but whether any problems occur, the seller should let the buyer know what on earth is happening with the transaction. it is solely communication wise. the seller won't wait for the email from the buyer, in my experience my rep constantly give me the updates and info and no BS excuses. they understood how the time frame is critical to general insight of reseller service. so beforehand, when the legit transaction is done and the item is ordered, fair communication is already established. who should take the pre-emptive action communication-wise? the seller of course. that's his job. the buyer should get the item (and service) he paid for.

 

Hi, if my comments have swayed your decision away from purchasing from us then that was of course not my intention and I am sorry to see that this is the case.

Just on subjects like this, I didn't delete the thread, I just moved it to the Order Queries section of our forum as it was an enquiry about an RMA. After I moved the post to the Order Queries section our tech support department were able to see it and called our customer to confirm the RMA and work being carried out.

We actually had a staff training morning off site that day which was why there weren't more staff in at the time. I also believe that a couple of staff were at lunch and therefore not in the office.

 

I've been looking at these threads since maybe half a year and I have to say they're quite entertaining. Of course it could be possible that *everything* that has been posted happened due to circumstances not in Kobalt's hands. How Neil always finds external influences or simply chance to be the issue and never takes responsibility for any particular case, always refers people to the "usual channels" without actually answering their questions and basically has an excuse for everything seems rather telling to me. I don't want to cause any bad blood, but I think right now Kobalt's popularity is at an all time low and the best thing for you guys to do would be:

1: Work on any systemic flaws (automated emails in case of delayed delivery maybe? Automated notifications of the sales staff in case of any trouble etc.) that lead to this situation

and 2:

Take responsibility and apologize for the delays. It doesn't cost you *anything* to admit that you guys had major troubles and that you are sorry for it and as I see it most guys on these forums have a lot of goodwill and a simple apology for what happened would satisfy them more than any number of reasons -be they out of your hands or not. Knowing you guys had personal/staff issues would probably work for you if you took responsibility as well.

Just my 2cents

PS: The staff training "reason/excuse" really does sound ridiculous, especially since ashman56 said "didn't find anyone". You should at least have a skeleton crew in the office at all times so it makes you look either a) unprofessional or b) like a liar. That they went to lunch just sounds an excuse for the excuse

 

@Neil
2-3k is a lot of money for me I want to have a stress and hassle free purchase. There seem to be quite a few people like me who are keen to order a laptop from you but they dont have the confidence to pay upfront and then wait 2-3 months before finally having to get a refund because they still haven't got anything.

Personally if you were to only charge when you have started building the laptop and thus should be able to verify the exact delivery date. I would be happ(ier) to order from you. Additionally if you are confident that you can deliver these laptops on time why dont you offer money off the order if you can't meet the delivery date.

"Just on subjects like this, I didn't delete the thread, I just moved it to the Order Queries section of our forum as it was an enquiry about an RMA. After I moved the post to the Order Queries section our tech support department were able to see it and called our customer to confirm the RMA and work being carried out.

We actually had a staff training morning off site that day which was why there weren't more staff in at the time. I also believe that a couple of staff were at lunch and therefore not in the office."

I can understand this but as the order queries forum isnt visible to the public you can see why its easy to get the wrong end of the stick.

 

Neil,

Its not your comments that swayed my decision personally. I am pleased you are posting on this forum and trying to resolve the problems rather than just ignore them.

The reason I am not purchasing from you even though I would like to is:
Previous poor support of my g870 order including -
Missing my order date then repeatedly missing the revised dates.
No communication or revised EDD's, leaving me to chase the order on a weekly basis.
Slow or no responses to PMs or Posts on your forum
Phones rarely answered
Items missing from my order which I had to chase continuously.
Order sent to the incorrect address (billing address not delivery address)
Refund from "no OS' option taking months and repeated phone calls to receive

Now having received that level of customer service a year ago and seeing people getting the same service now forces me to place an order from the states rather than buying from you in the UK.

 

This will be my last post on this thread.

I can't hold sensible discussions when there are people posting who have no relationship with the company, which I am a Director of, who are accusing me of lying over something as silly as whether our staff were at a training morning or at lunch. I know which day it was and I know what our staff were doing.

We have taken full responsibility for any recent issues, we have appologised both privately and publically on every occasion and have worked with our customer to provide the best solutions for the issues and yes, in some circumstances, compensation.

I am happy to discuss any issues which arrise correctly or incorrectly on nbr but I refuse to be drawn into these multi page threads when the original reason for the threads being started have been resolved imediately.

I have said that any outstanding issues will be resolved in the next 7 days and this includes the phones finally being up full time - again this is due to circumstances which I have clearly detailed and are ignored.

For those of you who have posted on this thread in a constructive manner then I am sorry that I can not continue the discussion here and I hope you understand the reasons why. If anyone would like to continue these discussion in private I will be happy to do so.

For any potential customer reading this, perhaps you can base any decision you make on our company's performance over the next month and not on the wrong conclusions drawn on this and similar threads.

 

If my PC arrives as promised it will have been 1 month from start to finish. Under normal circumstances that'd be fine and no issue. Sadly the communication problems that have been mentioned here and elsewhere have caused this to become an unnecessary bone of contention between me and Kobalt.

I think a review of procedures (as mentioned by others above) would stand Kobalt in good stead. It does look like there is a pool of goodwill out there towards Kobalt and it would be sad if it dried up.

I will keep you posted as to my Laptop's arrival and also my opinions of it once it arrives.

 

I really would like to hear if there are people at all who received their laptop from Kobalt on time or without many delays over the last year. If there are such people they should come forward unless they want to loose warranty.

 

thankyou for the various advice guys much appreciated will keep you all posted....................

 

I am a customer of Kobalt Computers. I ordered my laptop quite a while ago and paid upfront. The reason I don't have my laptop to this date is because I requested to wait for their new sandy bridge models to come out, so I cannot speak on behalf of those who are simply waiting.

However, my experience with respect to communication with the company has been acceptable at least. Although they failed to give me updates automatically, whenever I've emailed them asking for an update, I've always received a reply within 24 hours, usually a lot quicker, which is good enough for me personally.

 

i dont normally get involved in these sort of threads as i will be classed as being biassed as i am a moderator on their forum.
BUT i think you are bang out of order with that last comment.that is scaremongering at its best.
before all the finger pointing starts... no i do not work for kobalt. i am just a very happy customer that offered his services on their forum after my nightmare with alienware.

my department ordered 3 laptops in september and yes there were some delays. all the delays were totally out of kobalts control as these are specialist units for viewing hospital ct and mri scans and the parts were delayed abroad.

 

I received one of the first G860s in Nov 2009 from Kobalt. It arrived on time, and is still going well. Not much more I can say than this.

 

Hmm.

Well great job NBR consumer members, you really took this thread somewhere.

No but seriously, this should be a sticky. What is obviously going on here is that people have a common 'all or nothing' misconception of online buying, especially with boutique equipment (and pretentious buyers might I add).

Just because an order is taking a while and you may not have received a response from the people you are buying from does not necessarily mean they are trying to take your money and run. This is what some people seem to be so afraid of and its frankly ridiculous.

Furthermore... just because you're getting a perfect laptop doesn't mean you will get perfect service from whoever you are buying from. Seriously, for once being chill would be ok.
These people sell laptops, yes they have issues, no they aren't scammers.

I think this story should be over.

 

I guess the problem is with the ETA, people are getting suck too much in those and then they are disappointed.

 

@niffcreature
What I and other people are worried about is that if you have paid £2-3k for a laptop and then have to wait months to get it.
For most people £2-3K is not an insubstantial amount of money. It is laughable to suggest that you should just hand over your cash to a company and not worry about when you are going to get it. For most people I am guessing the worry isn't wether kobalt are going to run away with the money but when you are going to get the goods delievered.
Once a company has your money for any length of time there is always an additional risk that if the company has financial problems you might lose your money or having a load of additional hassle and worry to get it back.

 

I ordered a laptop from Kobalt on December 13th. It was given an ETA of 4th January. With all the problems that have been documented I expected it to be late.

I chased up after hearing nothing from Kobalt and my order status staying on payment received and taken. On January 11th I was told the next best ETA would be January 25th after I wrote a ticket via their support system.

Since that solitary reply on January 11th via their ticketing system I have heard nothing. I had replied to my ticket once a week since then asking for an update until yesterday.

January 25th has come and gone, and whilst I understand it was merely a 'best' estimate, the lack of communication has been very disturbing. Today with still no new replies to my on-going ticket or order status page I have written on both stating I wish to cancel my order and claim a refund.

Luckily the laptop was paid with by credit card so we can hopefully reclaim the funds via our cc provider if nothing happens on Kobalt's part.

I have no doubt that Kobalt are a legitimate operation that have suffered horrendous issues in the last year and a bit - simply by Googling you can tell that.

Kobalt are in a strong position being pretty much the ONLY Clevo reseller in the UK and because of this many have to deal with them if you do not wish to pay inflated prices at Cyberpower UK or import from Germany or the USA.

My issue is the seriously poor updating and communication - plus unrealistic ETA predictions. This is a niche market, enthusiast notebooks(!). Many customers as well as myself would have happily accepted 1-2 month (even 3?) waiting lists if we were just told that as the real case. As said, Kobalt own the Clevo market in the UK, it's not like we can go anywhere else?!

One dedicated customer services employee who keeps customers updated would solve 99% of Kobalt's problems I feel sadly.

Lack of updates and communication makes me jittery and because of this, I am canceling.

 

Has anyone here imported ( or decided to) import a laptop from one of the re-sellers in the states or europe. I'd bekeen to hear your experiences shipping costs and dispatch times.

 

d0llysh33p - there are only two posts on your Order Tracking, the first (this morning) asking for an update and the second 3 working hours later telling us you wish to cancel.

If you had given us a little more time to reply to you we would have been happy to have given you the information you requested.

 

Neil surely if you have taken full payment and missed two deadlines the customer shouldn't have to repeatedly chase you for updates. I am sure you must have known that you wern't going to meet the deadline at least a day or two before so why didnt you just contact him and say sorry cant meet this date here is the new date. It is just this kind of hassle that puts people off.

 

I think then your order status needs to be fixed... these are the exact time and dates I have posted onto your systems. Two posts on order status:

25th January 2011 at 03:37 (a request for an update)

and

26th January 2011 at 13:15 (cancellation)

And these posts on your support ticket system:

11th January (opened ticket asking for order update)
11th January (Andrew replied giving me an ETA of 25th Jan)
12th January (I thanked Andrew for the response)
19th January (I asked for an update as nothing was moving on order page)
25th January (I asked for an update again as I doubted I would be receiving)
26th January (cancellation)

I have now seen that my ticket has been closed with the reply: "cancelled order". No mention of a refund, or anything. Simply "cancelled order".

Stating I only asked once, and gave you 3 hours to respond is a blatant lie. Apologies for being accusatory but that is the case.

I will be calling my credit card provider and telling them I wish to request my money back.

Good day.

 

d0llysh33p - Andrew has already replied to your Order Tracking page with confirmation of your cancellation. You don't need to call your card company, we will put your refund through as Andrew has said on the Order Tracking page.

I have asked our site admin to have a further look into our Order Tracking system for us - it was affected by the ISP server hack as it's based online but I have been using it a lot recently for the Sandy Bridge upgrades and I haven't personally had any trouble with it. If there are a few niggles left over and if that explains the difference of post times on your page compared to when we were alerted by our system of the posts then of course I appologise for the miskake and confusion caused.

 

It is a shame if this is the case - especially as Andrew informed me that my order would have been updated today fully had I given more than "a couple of hours" for a reply to my queries when it was actually a full working day and a half.

I shall await the refund over the next 5-10 working days.

 

This thread has largely turned into a discussion that should be kept between the business and the client; closed.