Lost all faith in Kobalt Computers

Hello, this is my second time on these boards. I was here two and a half years ago when I was buying my first Sager and ended up buying a Kobalt Comanche SLI (Sager NP9262) from Kobalt Computers for approximately 3100 pounds. All my experiences with the company were positive during the process, the computer was amazing when I received it and the customer support helpful.

A bit under two years later (last November, 2010) , the screen suddenly had a huge crack in it (I am not sure how this happened but someone probably stepped on the bag it was in), so I sent a message to Kobalt Computers explaining the damage and asking how much a repair would be. They told me it would be 180 pounds, but I would have to pay for the shipment as well, so I started considering buying a screen from somewhere else and looked around the internet.
Under half a week later, one of the GPUs (my system had two Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTX cards) suddenly started malfunctioning, so I wrote another message to Kobalt Computers. They said that the computer was still under warranty so they would collect the computer, repair the GPU and send it back, free of charge. If I paid for a new screen, they could also replace the broken one during the process, no problem.
I was relieved and had no concerns when my computer was picked up the following month, assured that I would get it back and fixed in no time.
I could not have been more wrong.

When they received the laptop, I was charged the 180 pounds for the screen repair and was told that they had to charge me an additional 40 pounds so that the computer could be cleaned as it had apparently had loose parts inside of it after the transport. I still had complete faith in the company after my good experiences and paid the additional 40 pounds. After this, months passed without updates, my questions to them were either left unanswered or were ignored in their responses, and I was now told that they might not repair the GPU under the warranty as it could have taken damage during transit due to poor packing. I was not home when the computer was picked up, so I had my friends pack it for me - that was a stupid mistake by me, but I didn't think it could jepoardize my warranty. I tried to explain to them that the GPU was broken before shipping and that it would need replacement no matter if it potentially could have received further damage during transit. My remarks were ignored.
I was then told that they would not repair the GPU due to the reasons previously mentioned. I was frustrated as the repair had not only already taken several months, but now I was not even getting the expensive GPU repaired, and the 40 pounds I had been charged for cleaning so the problem could be diagnosed was completely irrelevant to their reason for not repairing the GPU. More months passed before I was told, on the first day of April, that they would not cover the shipping back either, but could ship the system back to me the same day. I finally accepted that I would not be getting the GPU repaired and at this point just wanted my laptop back again and told them this.
I did not get a response before May, repeating the same thing as the previous message, but telling me that as a sign of "goodwill", they would pay for the shipment back to me, I just had to tell them my address. I did this and another two weeks passed without any response. I had to post a message on their public message board before I finally got a response (took a few hours). They were very sorry for the delay and the system would be shipped back to me the same day or the next. Four days passed before the system was shipped, the GPU was still broken, but at least I was getting my laptop back after them having it for seven months, eight months after I reported the problems.

I just received my computer today. Although slightly annoyed over the ridiculous amount of time taken, horrible costumer service and broken GPU, I was still relieved that I finally had my computer back. As I was unpacking the laptop, I remember thinking "at least I have a working screen now". I turned on the computer. THE SCREEN WAS STILL BROKEN! Eight months in the process, seven months without a computer, countless hours spent on sending replies and not getting any in return, no repair of the broken GPU, 220 pounds charged and they had forgotten to repair the screen? I could not believe it, my positive image of Kobalt Computers had already been destroyed months before, but this was just ridiculous.
The repair should have taken at maximum a few weeks, they spent seven months and did absolutely nothing during the time? As I was sitting with the lit-up broken screen and horizontal lines all over the non-cracked part of the screen as a result of the still-broken GPU, the computer suddenly turned off. I turned it on again to find that the fan under the GPU was now also defect on top of everything.
I just couldn't believe it. My initial experiences with Kobalt Computers had been so good and I never would have imagined the repair process turning out to be a living nightmare.

I have sent a new message to Kobalt Computers, although I am hesitant about even sending it back to them again if it is going to take another seven months. Any advice on what I should do? Please tell me I am not the only person who thinks that this is one of the worst cases of customer service I have ever heard of.

EDIT: I just received the fastest response I have gotten to any enquiry so far:

"Because of the length of time we couldn't find the payment, I apologise that this was not discussed with you prior to the laptop being shipped back, with all the lengthy discussions regarding the repair of the graphics cards this was forgotten.

We have 2 options that we can do, the first is to post you a screen that you paid for and you can fit it yourself, the alternative is to refund you the £180 that you paid for the screen.

Let me know your preference and I will arrange it today/tomorrow "

Seriously, am I the only one thinking that this is unacceptable in every aspect?

 

Wow that's pretty terrible. I'm not sure what's worse- The screen being broken still or that it took 8 months.

 

Xander,

It was myself who replied to your ticket as I am the Support and Production manager for Kobalt Computers and well known on these forums.

I have already apologised that the screen wasn't noticed before it was sent back. There is nothing that I can do about that now and I have offered you two solutions which you have copied above.

The length of time that this has been taken was 100% down to the debate that we have been having regarding the packaging that you sent the laptop back in. As it was totally inadequate the laptop was damaged in transit despite our clear instructions with our RMA procedure. As such we had no choice but to cancel your warranty and ask you if you wanted to pay for the repairs.

As far back as 10 weeks ago I asked you if you wanted the laptop returned to you in its current condition and yet we only had a reply recently for the return confirmation (Which we didn't charge you for as a gesture of goodwill)

As I mentioned above I apologise that the screen wasn't fitted, however due to the elongated exchanges over the validity of the warranty this was overlooked.

Regarding the cleaning fee, due to the debate as mentioned above we never took that fee and if you check your statements you will find that there was never any charge.

If you update your support ticket in due course with your response to the 2 options I will have it actioned for you.

I will not be discussing this any further in public, however I do feel that the sake of clarity the nature of delays should be correctly directed to the damage sustained in transit and the exchange of emails between you and myself regarding the cancelation of your warranty.

Regards

Peter Collins

Support and Production Manager - Kobalt Computers.

 

@ XanKage, how did your friends package the laptop?? But, still 7/8 months is a long time for a screen to be fixed, yet not....

 

Just for clarity again we only got his laptop back The day before Xmas break 2010 so we had not had it for 7 months and of the time till present nearly 3 months of it I have been awaiting for a returns confirmation

But yes we did have the massive Sandy bridge recall in the mean time

Regards

Peter

 

Always two sides to every story, which puts it into context. And with the Sandy Bridge recall.. (Good luck with the later PMAN, no holidays for you!!)

 

Heheh, holidays...if only!

Pman

 

Omg just when I thought there would not be another anti Kobalt rant thread any time soon on here another unfortunate story comes to light. First the threads about delays, excuses, missed ETA’s, refunds and poor communication and now this. XanKage I am sympathetic to your situation it is unacceptable what happened to you.

Hate to hijack your thread but the title “ Lost all faith in Kobalt Computers” sums up my feeling towards them right now. I ordered a Kobalt G150/Clevo P150HM from them in April and they never even got around to building it and yes I am aware of ALL the delays they are well documented. I was quoted 2-3 weeks like every new customer is although they know they have a backlog from Christmas, and are well behind in production but they won’t admit it because they don’t want to lose potential customers. I say give us the truth we should be allowed to cancel if you are unable to fulfil your terms don’t butter us up with false ETA’s just to keep us as your customer!

As far as I’m concerned their reputation has fallen there is no doubt they DO make a good product my problem is that the process to get that product is well below what we have come to expect. I’m currently taking action because I know my rights and I was not given the service expected as well as some other personal stuff which I won’t be discussing on this forum.

 

Wow. I've read both sides to the story and you both have clearly good reasons for what was occurring, but in all truth a lot of the times many companies react quickly only when people like kage post threads on public forums. They quickly post and respond simply to recover their company image and only then would they give you the best customer service.

And I'm not stating this only to be intended towards Kobalt, but many of the companies out there.

 

There is no such thing as a false ETA.

What in heck are you talking about??

Its estimated time.

Would you like them to "not butter you up" with having a legit customer service email, having nice looking ads, bullet points for the specs, ETC?

Would you rather know the "truth" about how they really want you to buy their product because they are a business whose goal is to sell a product?!

Because if you didn't know that they want you to buy their product, and you didn't know what the "E" stands for already, then you do not have the appropriate knowledge to be buying online.

Yes we all love the absolutism of computers, fortunately real people are more trustworthy when it comes to your actual money. Service should not be all black and white, and should NOT be an automated system!

The fact that they have many orders backed up but are still trying to get them all in makes you DIStrust them?
They are doing you a favor! And they are genuinely trying hard to satisfy their customers!

We all seem to be missing something big when these threads show up. Well other than the fact that no one has EVER lost all their money because of a reseller and its completely obvious none of them intend to take your money and run, because they would have done it already...

One of the biggest reasons we buy Clevos from resellers in the first place is because they are REAL people, with REAL interest in you happiness as a buyer and a REAL reputation!
If you can't deal with the fact that their legitimate, rare but successful small business are sometimes affected by much larger factors in ways that inconvenience you, then you can go buy an Alienware!
You could post as many of these threads you wanted on any other forums. But you and I know that once dell makes a final decision, youre screwed.
This is the only forum where we can actually talk to the people who build our systems, ask about their reputation and specifics of our systems before any of us have seen them. Right now this is a privilege that is being abused.

props Pman, I could never do it.

 

Again....

Do you expect the company to have no image whatsoever?

There is NO way you can imply what you are implying without evidence!

If in your eyes all companies public communications are a sole effort to preserve their image, then don't post about it here! Post on a business forum!

I just can't even believe how jaded these attitudes are. Why don't you feel like your telling that to Pmans face? Because you should, and you're insulting him and accusing him of lying outright.

 

Hi Mate,

I agree with pretty much everything that you have said there tbh, we are exceptionally busy at the moment pushing out more laptops then ever before!

Obviously as the Support and Production Manager I would prefer that mistakes such as the screen above wouldnt happen. However it is also my responsibility to make calls such as the warranty mentioned above. Sadly no matter how much we or any other business tries we can not please everyone and we are not perfect (again as much as we would like to be!).

I should work standard office hours and switch off in the evenings, but I sit here at home over 6 hours after I "clocked off" and answer emails, tickets and forum posts both on here and on our forums, not too mention talk to customers on Steam. This is not a service or facility that you would get from some of the larger laptop builders (aka Dell, Asus etc...) I dont do this because it is in my job description, it is not I do it because I have a genuine interest in this subject and have owned several Clevo machines prior to working at Kobalt.

Just on a point to Iris

With this customer we have been exchanging alot of emails over the past few weeks and the largest period of inactivity was when I was waiting for a decision from our customer.

I do not like going into details in a public forum, but sometimes unless I do people just make assumptions and do not see both sides of the story

As I have said many times, people can get hold of me, Pm here, on our forums or via our support section on the forum or just general email As I am sure it is quite obvious I am a busy man, but I ALWAYS get back to people as soon as I can.

All the best

Pman

 

I wouldn't go that far. People certainly have lost their money, either because the reseller never sent the laptop or because they sent their laptops in for repair and the laptops were never returned, never mind repairing them (see, for example, this thread and more specifically this post).

This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, yes, it is nice to interact with a small business where you can talk to the people who make decisions rather than a large multinational in which you're mostly dealing with people who lack the power to step outside their script even if they had the motivation to do so. But on the other hand, there are a lot of disadvantages to this as well.

It's not so much the outright scams which quickly get found out (although not quickly enough for everyone to avoid them; see above links). It's a combination of the facts that 1) there is a relatively small team to do things and 2) honoring the warranty is a lot of money out of their pockets. The small number of people means that it doesn't take much to overload them and force a delay and if something goes wrong (e.g. somebody gets sick or leaves for a new job), the people their customers are very unlikely to get prompt service. Kobalt is actually pretty famous for this in these forums -- search the NBR Sager/Clevo section for threads complaining about them and be entertained by the sheer variety of excuses they've offered over time.

The second point is just as nasty: they have every incentive to make you jump through hoops to get them to honor the warranty. A GPU is extremely unlikely to be damaged during shipping. Hard drives can certainly be damaged by impact, displays and casing can possibly be damaged if somebody decides to toss the poor thing around -- but somebody really has to do a number on that machine to affect the CPU or GPU(s).

Big companies like Dell and HP are a lot less finicky about the warranty, mostly because they buy parts in bulk so it usually costs them less to just fix the thing than to do a detailed analysis of why your warranty is now void and spend hours of their employee's time arguing with you. The difference in service is really quite substantial, at least with the business workstations. I used to be a fan of buying from small resellers (my current laptop is a Compal JFL92/Sager NP2092), but after seeing how my sister was treated, I think next time I'm going with a business machine.

 

This is a public forum and we are all entitled to our individual opinions. Let’s not forget that I was not the one who started this thread I am only giving my perspective you really have no idea what is going on so don’t come in here with your accusations and assumptions. I am just one of many unsatisfied customers. With regard to the ETA what I mean is that it’s an estimation that is not based on current circumstances.

Like they had a Norovirus outbreak with 75% of their off and give me an ETA that does not reflect it. I would much prefer it if they had been straight up and said June and not just extend it by a few days in May which is 100% unrealistic. Why else do we have so many people complaining on these forums about this kind of stuff?

Let’s not forget about this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/531986-kobalt-computers-lead-times.html

@Bytles “It is always better to tell a customer that he will receive the order in 30 days and actually receive it in 20, then to tell him he will receive in 20 and actually receive it in 30.”

Maybe you think everyone on here is crazy too I only came on here to speak fact you only want to incite hate.

 

Just for further clarity, there was a massive crack in the chassis base itself directly over the graphics cards and the motherboard support mounting was cracked as well. There is no way this would not have effected any sensitive graphics card.

I do not cancel warranties very often, in fact out of all the RMA's that have come through Kobalt since I joined 3 months ago I have only cancelled 3 I think for various reasons.

The thread you linked to was last updated by one of our customers in January, 5 months ago...that is not reflective of our current practise.

I was one of those staff effected and it was not nice being confined to the house for 3 days and it does effect small business' far more then it does larger ones like Dell, Asus etc, we have never pretended to be anything other then a small family run business.

One thing to point out is that out of our hundreds of customers that we service every year only .5% even think to join the forums never mind grumble about something, when you see a few posts on places like here in comparison to the actual amount of customers we supply its a very small amount. Also not to forget that we have quite a list of testimonials on our forum as well, from as recent as yesterday...

I think this has run its course now, the OP has been answered and he knows full well whats going on and why we had the machine sitting in our RMA bay for the period of time that it was.

Pman

 

I'm closing off this thread. Kobalt has already stated they will not discuss this further (nor should they) and that has turned it into a private matter.