Kobalt problems

Unfortunately, i didn't see the thread about Kobalt's troubles around christmas until after i had placed my order, which can be called poor research by me.

However, the order was placed and processed jan 5th. I made one support request, which was handled within a week or so. Then, when the ETA was overdue by a week, i made a new service request to ask if there was a problem. This request has not been answered. It is now 8 days since i made the first request, and two more request has been added to this in the mean time. In the final one, i asked for cancellation if they would not reply to me by today. No reply has been given. I have also sent a PM to Neil@Kobalt here, and made an order support thread on the Kobalt forum, but been given no reply on either channel.

Hopefully, i will be able to a) get what i actually ordered within one week or b) get my money back. The excuses they have posted in various threads are sad and all, but it really has no influence on how i perceive their business, which is far from professional.

So, the reason i made this thread, is to warn others against ordering from Kobalt. Maybe this is a temporary thing, but it doesn't help if you're affected and have no idea what will happen.

 

here we go again.
what lappy did you order?
i notice you only joined their forum yesterday. if you had joined sooner and posted on their we could of tried to give advice a lot quicker.
it has been highly documented on their forum that their isp was hacked over christmas and took a lot longer than expected to repair.this also carried on into january.
if you havnt already done so could you leave a message in the order queries thread on their forum. this is hidden to me so i have no way of knowing if youve posted in their or not.
thanks

 

I'm already tight on budget, buying from a US reseller and spending around $250 to ship from the US to the UK is not a good option for me. This is not the first thread nor will it be the last. will someone say something encouraging

 

Yeah, i've made a thread in the order queries section.

Like i wrote in one of my requests, i didn't really mind the delayed delivery, but it's the lack of feedback which really gets to me. I would not have posted here for another week (or at all) if they had given a few comforting replies.

 

If you ordered one of the new sandy bridge laptops then you won't be getting it for a while anyway...

Not saying that's an excuse for them not replying to your queries, but this SB recall has badly affected all clevo resellers.

 

thats why i asked above what model had been ordered. if it was the SB models then as far as i know every customer was updated about the options to take.

 

It's not an SB.

If only i could get my cancellation through, i would just buy a laptop locally, save 500£ and lose 20% graphics performance.

Ahh, the days when i ordered from xotic

Edit: Which i didn't use this time because i wanted to avoid a wire transfer. Not exactly a gigantic problem considering the current circumstances.

 

Well, i finally got a reply, and everything sounds ok. Here's to hoping

 

According to Kobalt, everything is always ok. However, their consistantly and repeatedly missing ship dates and horrible lack of communication is not ok. I suspect they are out of money and are using new customers payments to fund purchases of wholesale parts for previous orders. This is just a wild guess on my part but it would explain their inability to get caught up.

I wish there would continue to be a warning thread here about Kobalt until a few customers have something good to say about Kobalt's deliveries and communication.

dt

 

Yeah, i'm not exactly sold yet. They said it would be shipped today, so i'll report back if nothing happens. In that case, it will be even worse, considering that i haven't been served any direct lies so far. Once you start doing that, all credibility is lost, and you really can't get it back.

 

I've got a W860CU ordered from them last spring. Took 2-3 months to receive the laptop, there was the volcano issue but still it thought it shouldn't have took that long.

The machine itself has proved to be excellent, so I ordered another lappy from them this September as I thought their issues would have been temporary. For some reason they couldn't get this new purchase delivered before christmas so I decided to cancel - it took them about 40 days to refund the payment but the refund eventually showed up on my account.

This is just for your information, to give additional feedback on the issue.

I hope they don't lose too many customers as they're clearly in a dire situation. Their customer service however has to sharpen up.
I've heard it from too many people they wouldn't mind the wait but the lack of communication and replies.

 

Kobalt have had problems and have been pretty open about it. I was in the same boat, I ordered back at the end of November and it only got shipped this week. There was a communication issue and dates were missed but the guys at Kobalt have been straight up with accepting fault where appropriate, so I really can't blame them. They were also very forward with offering money off as compensation for the delay or a full refund if I wasn't satisfied without any prior request to do so from me. To me that says they're honest guys trying their best to get it all sorted.

They're a small company with a large amount of orders to get through after recovering from a couple of months of unavoidable problems which have kept them low on staff and unable to get the parts delivered to them. It's not surprising they're having trouble keeping up with all the orders and prioritising them so that everyone is happy.

Also, "lies" is a bit of a strong word. Is it a direct lie if they believe it to be true?

Personally I'm happy enough with them, I had just as many delays when I ordered my Vostro off Dell and Kobalt's been a lot more friendly. They're good guys and aren't trying to rip you off even if they are late, however it has been made very clear they've had problems recently.

If you order knowing about the problems they're recovering from then delays should be half expected, especially when coupled with country- or industry-level problems like the snow and Sandy Bridge recall cropping up. If you were blissfully unaware of their problems and didn't research where you were ordering a few grand's worth of computer then consider yourself lucky you didn't end up in a far worse position than your laptop being late thanks to an actual scammer. Harsh to say, but it's a harsh lesson of the internet. If you don't research where you spend your money then you could easilly end up giving money to a scammer.

That said, my G970X just arrived through the door, so now I'm off to unbox it

 

This is pretty much my whole argument. If you're in this situation, why don't you prioritize communication to the customers? Just imagine the headaches they could save themselves. Actually, i think i'm most annoyed by the fact that they want to dig themselves into a ditch like this. Hire some kid off the streets to send out a few e-mails or something.

To me, a broken promies equates a lie, especially if the promise is broken one day after you gave it. It indicates that you knew you couldn't keep it. (Philosophical quagmires are left as an exercise to the student.) I have gotten no shipment confirmation yet, but the day is still young

The delay has not been a big issue for me. It's all about lack of communication.

Are you saying those nigerians aren't going to return my life savings?

 

I wonder how long before this thread gets locked down. The last few about this company have all been allowed a very short life span.

Which is sad, given that for many people this is a very significant purchase, and in technology terms, a delay of 3 months may as well be eons. Mine was delayed by six weeks, although communication remained OK (passive, but at least done).

At the very least, Kobalt are incompetent, at worst they are having cash flow issues that future customers need to be aware of. It is bad enough Kobalt locking their complaints off their forums, without NBR silencing them too...

 

This is almost a common practice in business. The only real problem would be if they're doing it instead of taking out loans and then making it a long term problem for customers orders, which I am not convinced they are doing.
I don't think you should be wildly guessing about things like that.
You may very easily say something that contradicts some of the founding principles on which Kobalt was founded. And this business is some peoples whole life here. I for one would not be happy with someone simply speculating about my morals and ethical obligations being of very bad intent.

On some level its like wondering if someone is a pedophile. Do think thats OK just because its a possibility with everyone you meet and it could protect you or something to anticipate?
This is what always bothers me about these threads, the immediate assumption that if someone isn't talking to you then its highly likely they are willing to take all of your money at a moments notice without giving anything back.

Why not first take a wild guess and say that some of Kobalts employees have spouses that don't know of the companies difficulties? Not that I would care, but its just as personal and irrelevant.

Nope, no not at all. You cannot just say "a broken promise equates a lie". That is not logical in the slightest, it is completely possible for someone to be ignorant. No, we are not incapable of your philosophical misrepresentations here just because we are more into computers.

If someone breaks a promise a day after they make it, that is in no way overtly indicative or implicative of their dishonesty that day or the day before. To think that is an entirely paranoid.

 

timtomtim - I have replied to your pm through nbr, please bear in mind that this isn't our company forum and I don't always see pm's on here immediately. I believe that your laptop shipped today and have also discussed the Order Query messages in the pm.

Staff - we can't just hire a kid off the street but we have made changes to our staff recently (which I hinted at on a previous thread) which includes a new senior staff member starting on Monday whom will be familiar to a lot of people here on nbr! This is one of the steps we are taking to improve our company after (at the risk of repeating myself) the issues at the end of last year.

Previously closed threads - the reasons that moderators have decided to close threads on nbr have been detailed by the mods.

Our forum - as I have mentioned on previous occasions we do not delete threads on our forum or lock complaints. It is our company forum so we do have control over it, but as I have explained we will move threads to the Order Queries section if that is where they should be discussed and will usually only resort to deleting threads if they are unapropriate for our forum.

 

Alex Darby is one of our customers, he is also on our forum. At the same time I'm pretty sure niffcreature isn't one of our customers and he has almost 2000 posts.

We did not respond to timtomtim after he posted on nbr, in fact we were in communication with him on the Order Queries section of our forum the day before this thread was started and I replied to this thread and timtomtims pm when I was made aware of it - which was after his laptop shipped.

 

yeh loads of ppl have come on here worried with no messages from kobalt for months thinking that they have been wiped off the earth or been scammed. shame that they have to go to such extremes. neil you come across as a nice guy but all i see are excuses, your company needs a kick in the ars*. even if your company has had ongoing issues why don't you tell them before ordering that there are potentially long delays and give them realistic dates. you will get loads more respect for doing that instead of accepting peoples money and not replying for weeks!!!!

 

Hi John

In fairness we don't take peoples money and then not reply for weeks. I don't want to go into details in the case of this thread in public as I have pm'd timtomtim separately but we were in communication the afternoon before this thread was started which was 2 days before his laptop shipped.

In regard to the etas's - this is something we have been looking into recently and we have taken on board comments from lots of our customers about this. We weren't giving eta's that we knew we couldn't meet, we simply encountered a number of issues at the end of last year, most of which were out of our control. I know that I have said this before and it doesn't go down well with people but it is true. We have learnt lessons from the way that we dealt with these instances and have implimented solutions, including taking on more staff, so that our capacity under normal operation and when under other more demanding circumstances improve in a manner that is imediately apparent to our customers, both current and potential.

 

First of all, i am very happy to hear that my laptop has been shipped. As far as i am concerned, a delay of about 15 days isn't a big deal when ordering custom built systems.

Like i've repeated too many times, not getting any sort of reply for more than 8 days simply doesn't cut it. I would never have made this thread if i had gotten an update in that period, regardless if it was positive or negative.

This one girl promised she would call back :cry:

 

If I spend such a large amount of money on a new laptop, whether it is a custom build or anything else, a delay of 15 days is a big deal. Of course all of that depends on the reason for the delay. From what you said it just seems to send a message to the reseller that they don't need to worry about such delays and almost as if they are to be expected because you ordered a custom built system.

 

given that you are informed about the delay and reasons why

 

Something I always think about is whether time is more important than the quality of what you are getting...

Whats funny is that only applies to Clevo, if I ever bought from any system builder I would not be bothered by delays short of a month. I'd rather that then they screw something up and cause more time to be wasted in the long run!
With a corporation like asus its of course totally unacceptable because it makes no sense why they wouldn't get the laptop to you in a month, theres no reason for that just because of the way they do things.
With a clevo system builder in this situation theres just something wrong here, shouldn't we have more trust in this sort of company because its obvious they are real people and they can prove it to us? Isn't that the point?

Just imagine yourself in the same situation having to deal with a different person in india instead of neil every time you have a complaint.

Its not that theres nothing to agree with here but your post is just pretty blindly abusive so I'm going to report it. No one has given up on this thread being productive like you seem to think.

 

A delay of up to a month is totally unacceptable to most of us. You say that delay is better than poor quality. No one is asking Kobalt to sacrifice quality, just keep their promised ship dates. No one is forcing Kobalt quote ship dates that sacrifice quality or that they can't honor.

A delay of two weeks is enough to make most of us wonder if we bought from a bad source. A delay of two weeks without reasonable notice and consistent lack of communication would make anyone wonder how the supplier stays in business.

Since Kobalt is a company of "real people" they should be able to tell the real truth about lead times and they should be able to send real accurate replies to emails asking when they will finally ship. Real people should also reimburse customers in a timely manner when the customer cancels because of lack of delivery and poor communication.

Essentially you are saying that customers should give Kobalt a break because they are good honest real people. In essense, they have proved they aren't because they are inable to forecast ship dates, communicate in a timely manner, refund money without being threatened. They don't allow negativity on their forum and apparently they have friends come on this forum and accuse honest customers and innocent lurkers like me of not being fair to Kobalt. That clearly smells like a lack of integrety to me.

 

Heh, it is a very valid point indeed, yet it seems to me that one of the very reasons this thread had emerged (as well as many previous threads concerning Kobalt Computers did before) is the absolute absence of possibility to "deal with neil" or anyone else, for that matter, whenever you have a complaint, or even when you are desperately trying to get a refund.

So, based on this thread and the previous ones - it might be better to deal with a different person wherever, than to have your phone calls and emails thoroughly ignored by Kobalt Computers due to "volcano", "Christmas", "staff getting ill", "office moving", "ISP changing", "phone line problems", "ISP issues", "evil hackers"... errr... guess there might have been some UFO sightings as well, but I don't remember all the previous Kobalt Computers threads in details.​

Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, yet it is exactly how it seems to be.

 

Very well said! This is the exact impression the whole situation gives.

 

You accused us of exactly the same thing on another thread - I will categorically state again that we do not have friends and relatives who come on nbr, we have no influence on what anyone posts on this forum positive or negative.

With respect you are wrong - we were in communication the day before this thread was started and didn't have a chance to reply to a comment posted late at night before this thread was started.

As I have already stated in this thread:

- the OPs laptop was in production before this thread started

- it shipped on Friday which was before myself or other Kobalt staff had seen this thread

-it shipped before I had seen the pm on nbr

- the TNT tracking information was posted on the Order Tracking page on Friday after the laptop shipped and before we knew about this thread.


I won't reply to any of the other wildly speculative and un-informed comments posted.

 

I don't feel like dragging this out now, but let me say this: It's true that i made this thread almost immediately after posting in the order queries section on your forum. However, i had sent three service requests the previous 8 days which were unanswered, and the first of those was sent about a week after the ETA given in the order confirmation. One reply during those 8 days = no thread on NBR. You gave me just enough time to (over)react.

 

Sure I only have a couple of posts, I am new to the whole Clevo laptop business and so never had reason post here before. However I have been lurking here for about 5 months since I started looking into. In that time I've seen a lot of speculation from people guessing at Kobalt's situation, reliability and ligitimacy when, frankly, it seems most of them have never had any personal experience with Kobalt.

I've dealt with them, experienced the "problems" their actual customers have complained about here on NBR and experienced the other side of this whole thing which the vast majoritty of NBR users DONT see: the interaction betweek Kobalt and their customer. This, in my opinion, puts me in a far better position to comment than the vast majoritty of users here who have never had any dealings with the company yet feel compelled to sling out harmful and reactionary so called "advice" to their actual customers.

The thing which was making me the most concerned about my order as the delays went on was not actually the communication issues of Kobalt, but the senseless scare mongering and paranoia which seems to be the go-to answer from NBR users when a thread like this pops up.

What I read in most of these threads was basically along these exagerated lines:

Kobalt Customer: "My order's a day late and they haven't replied yet today. Just wondering if any other customers are having similar problems?"
NBR User 1: "Get a refund! They're scamming you! They scam everyone!"
NBR User 2: "Don't bother asking for one, just get your bank to refund it!"
NBR User 1: "What? They're refusing to give him a refund?"
NBR User 2: "OMG! How can they possibly do that? CALL THE COPS!"
NBR User 3: "I saw another thread where people were saying the same!"
NBR User 1: "I know, I posted it there but it has to be true!"
NBR User 2: "We should start a crusade so everyone's aware of how Kobalt are scammers!"
NBR User 4, 5, 6 & 7: "Kobalt should go die! They're refusing to talk to the OP!"
Niel@Kobalt: "Uhh... we're talking to the guy already. Calm down."
Kobalt Customer: "Yeah, it's being sorted. Thanks niel!"
NBR User 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7: "Niel you're lying! Kobalt are such liars! We wont calm down cos you guys should be sued!"
NBR User 8: "Yeah, until a SATISFIED kobalt customer appears, I won't believe a thing!"
Another Kobalt Customer: "I'm satisfied. They took their time but I'm satisfied with the service they gave."
NBR User 1: "You lie! You're biased! You must be paid off by them to say that!"
NBR User 2: "Yeah, don't believe anyone who says they're satisfied! They're completely fake!"

Talk about knee-jerk reactions. This is, ofcourse, while all the NBR users are completely ignorant of what's actually gone on between the customer and the company through the proper avenues of communication. Just because you don't see a post saying "Oh, hey, they got in touch with me" doesn't mean the OP's still sat with a thumb up his while he waits.

I posted my balanced views and an accurate account of my experiences but it seems my lack of posts here means I'm a "friend" of Kobalt and completely biased rather than just being the satisfied costumer I am, thus making my whole opinion null and void while reactionary idiots screaming "SCAMMERS COS I SAW A POST!" at the top of their voice are being taken for gospel. Is that really the sort of community this place is? If so then it hardly makes me feel welcome enough to stay around long enough time to get my post count up passed the "biased fake liar" level and up to "oh he's real person now?"

 

Good luck with getting a refund! Still waiting for mine. Told it would take 5 - 10 working days, it's number 13 currently.

 

I am new on NBR too, and from my point of view, there is a lot of truth if what you wrote!

Just for the skeptics, I am a French student in engineering, I'm 23 years old, and I am not related to Kobalt in any way.

I'm posting here because I'm really interested in buying a new laptop from Kobalt, and at this occasion I have read lots about Clevo computers, and the Kobalt Company. This has led me to think that there has been too much flame about Kobalt on NBR forums, and that Kobalt has not deserved this treatment.

Moreover, I just sent a ticket to the Kobalt sales team this morning (at 10:07am) to get some information about their GS150 laptop, and I’ve had an adequate answer in less than 3 hours (12:52pm). This means 2 things:
1) Kobalt DO care about their customers or people that just ask questions like me
2) Even if they have add a serious problem of communication recently, what I believe to be true after reading complains on NBR forums, they are now able to be quite responsive compared to other big companies (3 hours for a email answer is quite a good performance in my opinion).

I assure you I am posting this out of my will to share what I believe to be true. There’s not any far-fetched conspiracy here! (BTW companies usually don’t lie or do false testimonies, because the authorities do not really tolerate it).

Best regards !

 

I'm closing this thread; it is turning into a back-and-forth argument.