Remember Hybridgear.net? It appears that they've been reincarnated as PCMW - UPDATED

i had no trouble whatsoever cancelling. just tell them its not right for you. if you tell them you found a competitor be ready for a fight because apparently they have no basement they cannot reach in their pricing.

 

Maybe it's been so long I've forgotten my basic maths, but where does the $75 come from? By my figuring, the difference between the two prices you stated is $67, not $75 (yeah, I know, small potatoes; just humor an old geezer, though ).

 

lol the post was a 6:00am to early to do math

 

Doesn't anyone else see the irony of a user named "Shyster" doing all this research on Mr O'Brien?


In case you didn't know, from the Merriam Webster Online dictionary

Note that I am in no way impugning upon the level of detail and dedication that appear to have gone into making this thread, I just found the above hilarious.

I'm with those who view this as a thread that should not be stickied.

 

lol and what is your name supposed to be dtwn83 (not to say that mine means anything). very descriptive. Shyster did a good job and people should know about this.

 

I'm quite pleased that you see the irony, as it were; in general, and quite apart from this issue, that is why I choose to use the moniker. One of my little pet hobbies is lawyer jokes (the way I look at it, I'm perfectly happy to laugh right along with you, since in any event I'm still laughing all the way to the bank ); e.g.:

What do you get when you cross a lawyer with a pig?


EDIT: Also, not to toot my own horn, or to take sides on the stickie/no-stickie argument, but to provide circumstantial evidence that tends to favor the stickie position, I would note that the view count on the thread has continued to climb at a decent rate, notwithstanding the lack of continual posting to the thread - that implies that there is some continued value to the availability of the thread even though the conversation it contains is only infrequently added to. That doesn't resolve the argument itself, just shifts the balance of the equities, as it were, a little to the stickie point of view.

 

Wow, been away for awhile and what do I see when I come back, a corporation war in this forum

Personally I think the warning measure applied around PCMW far outweights previous clames against their practices around the forthcoming PCMW/Clevo laptops.

This thing just got dirtier and dirtier.

I do applaud Shyster rigorous effort and investigation about PCMW but I do question his motif. This since he was "against" the company before even though there were no PCMW customers on this forum that were unhappy about their service.

So basically his motif IMHO, is not to englighten customers or potential customer as he says (public interest) but to clearly demotivate people from buying from them. Every single finantial/business problem around the owner, including speculating about his current finantial ability to face previous dept is posted, back to early 2000. What else can I conclude?

In the end who stands to finantially benefit in the US from this post? Well if you don't know the answer you will learn soon.

I say clearly becouse make no mistake, whoever made this post knows precisely what he/she is doing and what are the consequences for the object being targeted and their customers irrespective of PCMW intentions.

So who is the next Sager contender on the list to be bought to public scrutiny in this manner?

Anyway, I'm off this particular forum. It is mainly the means for some company to sell their products rather then discuss technical issues around notebooks and new launches.

Have fun you all and enjoy life has much as you can.

Lighten up dudes.

Trance

PS: Why is this thread a sticky? I did had some people that I looked forward to ear from them everytime I came here, one of them Shyster. Most of them are gone and now Shyster with this post went too far for me. Do you charge by the hour or you just like to pick a target? First EUROCOM, now PCMW who is next?

 

I know that one! Nothing. There are things that even a pig won't do (or a variation of it)

Well, I see that as a vicious cycle. The stickie leads more users to notice it (That's how I noticed it. I generally avoid the Sager/Clevo forum thanks to the fervent worshippers.), which leads to a higher view count.

If interest in the matter is as high as it appears to be (which it does, indeed) , this thread would definitely stay within the first two pages of the forum. Users aren't likely to let such a matter die by itself. New users are also likely to note the amount of attention (and the title) and gravitate towards it.

 

Bingo!

That's fair enough; however, just viewing a thread is not enough to keep it at the top of the thread list; for that there has to be continual additions of new posts, and if no-one has anything substantive to add to the conversation, then someone has to resort to the noxious habit of posting a "bump" post to the thread. So, while I do agree that there is some truth to the self-fulfilling prophesy argument, I also think that the continuing increase in the view count does justify those who made the decision to stickie (which group did not include myself).

 

Agreed. Which is why I mentioned users would definitely continue chiming in on either sides of the argument, thus likely keeping it in the first two pages.

I understand that you had no power over the decision to stickie the thread (well, aside from possibly requesting them NOT to, at which point they may or may not accede to your request).

As far as I can tell, a majority of the buyers from PCMW (those who have received their notebooks at least and have chimed in, thus disqualifying the "edge" pre-orders [not discriminating against you guys, but rather since you have not received your laptops, you are not included in the above group]) seem satisfied with their purchase.

While your initial post was largely about providing information for users to make their own decisions (which I wholeheartedly agree with), subsequent posts by others seem to reflect a bias against PCMW due to the information provided. These posts include those by other retailers, users and mods. All are welcome to make their opinion known, as that is the purpose of a forum, however, these posts will also help shape the opinions of other users.

To be honest, I would rather have other retailers avoid commenting on this issue. As competitors, it does not seem appropriate for them to be commenting on the issue, favorably or otherwise. Would you expect Dell to comment HP's products? And if they did, would you expect them to be fair and without bias? Picture HP creating a review website, and then posting a negative review of a competitor's product. How would readers construe that article?

Unfortunately, to me, the issue of whether they are being fair and without bias isn't the largest issue, as a retailer, any criticism of a competitor can be construed as an argument against buying the competitor's product and purchasing from that particular retailer instead.
Perhaps stickied, and then closed to prevent users from making comments?

PS: this thread makes me want to read up on my business law again, particularly on bankruptcy issues.

 

@Shyster
Everyone likes dirty things. That is why this sticky will never die that soon. You know that, I know that so let's just not pretend that no one knows that

Even if Clevo manages to put the 9800M GTX in the 15" Clevo laptop (as PCMW said that it was coming an now removed the clame) this one is for long.

@dtwn83

"To be honest, I would rather have other retailers avoid commenting on this issue."

They are IMHO the main reason why this issue came to light, so why shouldn't they comment on it? To pretended that this job was done for the sake of the public? Shyster posts around vendors apart from Sager has always been biased against their practices. If that does not shape an attitude I don't know what does

Trance

 

DFTrance, if I've offended you on some other matter elsewhere, I apologize; however, I do not think that this sort of invective is justified. In particular, please point me to the source for your statement that

Every so often I get bored, and I go fishing through the public records that I know are available just to see what I can find (public records, I would remind everyone, are just that, public, so anyone who wants to can go fishing in them for whatever reason, including personal curiousity or boredom, or even for no reason at all). At one time or another I've poked around about most of the resellers who come up on the forum, including Sager, xoticpc, powernotebooks, and hypersonicpc in addition to PCMW. I've not posted anything about these folks because I've never come across anything that would raise serious concerns to me.

In addition, contrary to the assertion contained therein, this statement is quite opaque:

Since you choose not to accept my own stated reasons for posting this information, would you be so kind as to enlighten me as to the ulterior motives I have apparently indulged in.

Finally, this last statement of yours is simply wrong:

or have you simply forgotten about the long, drawn-out discussion we had regarding the DPC latency issue and the stuttering you were having on your system?

With all due respect, DFTrance, I sincerely hope that this is merely a matter of someone having hijacked your username, and not an honest reflection of your real thinking on these matters.

EDIT: DFTrance - do you understand the mechanics of how the thread list is constructed? Unless a new entry is posted to a thread, that thread will rapidly sink through the list until, at most within a day, it is on page 2, and thereafter will rapidly sink out of sight. Since, other than myself - being the blabbermouth that I am, there have not been a lot of additional contributions to this thread, it would in all likelihood have been relegated to page 3 or 4 by now absent the stickie.

 

@dtwn83:

Am I reading you correctly? Do you really think that I'm a retailer - a competitor of PCMW? What sort of evidence would satisfy you that I'm not (and no, I'm not going to make my identity a matter of public record here, although I have revealed my identity where necessary to those whose discretion I trust).

Also, with respect to critiquing my subsequent posts, particularly since you have such a low opinion of the other members' ability to engage in independent critical thinking, you should consider the likely effect on such impressionable minds of the mere presentation of documentary evidence without context or explanation of any sort. Since you consider most viewers to be so impressionable as to be swayed by my own poor writing rather than their own critical evaluation of the posted documentary evidence, do you think that anyone as impressionable as you seem to claim most viewers are would know, in the absence of any explanation by someone such as myself, who does know, the difference between corporate and personal liability, the fact that, as a technical matter the debts of the shareholder are not those of the corporation, or vice-versa, but that as a practical matter the assets of a closely-held corporation, subject, of course to the corporation's liabilities, are often at risk of being liquidated to satisfy the claims of the sole shareholder's creditors simply because those creditors will frequently be able to obtain the shares of stock of that corporation from the debtor-owner, and thus become the shareholder of the corporation and entitled to liquidate it as any other ordinary shareholder might? If you review some of my posts you will see that I have made every effort to highlight and clarify both the technical point and the practical problem.

Need I go on?

 

In short, no. you're reading me wrongly. Very wrongly. Give me a minute to peruse the rest of your post. Also, I do know about the particular laws you mentioned, hence why I mentioned I'm thinking of doing some reading up, particularly of the U.S laws on this issue, as I'm not too familiar with the U.S Code on this issue. I'm inclined to believe it's similar to that which I am familiar with, but I wouldn't like to bet on it.

I was referring to the subsequent posts made by other users after having read your initial post, thus explaining my next line reading

Besides, why would I criticize your post after

Let me just fix the earlier post to make sure people don't misinterpret it. Be back in a minute.

PS: You spend way too much time in Political to be a retailer.

Is my earlier post clearer now?

 

In reverse order:

Yup, a lot clearer now, thanks for the clarification!

Does it show? I quite agree with your estimation, thanks!

 

Good to clear up any misunderstandings.

Also, the irony of a user "Shyster1" presenting this makes me happy. Unaccountably happy.

You should pm the administrators to switch you to "Shyster" if it's unused.

 

Likewise. I thought about switching once, but I've gotten too accustomed to being #1!

 

Okay, as much as I hate to post this (because of some pride issues, surrounding my former stance).

I realize that I defended heavily my PCMW purchase, and I bucked at any of those attacked my decision (which I still feel was not right, it's my decision to make) I really appreciate the unbiased facts, and I have some very disturbing ones myself from my own experience with them

Last week (the 9th to be exact) I spoke with a PCMW rep about changing my order from credit card to a cash equivalent (to gain from my own argument of cash discount). Throughout the entire month that my order had been placed the card was never charged. I asked the rep specifically to take my card off of the account to be sure that I wasn't double charged, and after recieving his assurance that he had done so, and even seeing the status change to awaiting payment online I sent them a check for the discounted amount as was instructed. The very next day my card was charged.

Now I have tried literally for two full days of being on hold to get a hold of them. The phone has never been answered on any extension, not even sales.

I filed a dispute with my credit card company to get that money back, and placed a stop payment on the check (that cost me $35).

I had only discovered that the card was charged yesterday, and as a result I didn't get the stop payment in until today, which takes another 24hrs to process. I am just hoping that it doesn't go through before then.

Either way, thanks Shyster for providing solid unbiased information about this company. I had made my decision to cancel my order just before I found out that Xotic's prices were going to be competitive. And I am glad that they were.

I would now warn anyone against them, and again it is not because they offered anything that ended up not being compatible, or because they offered it for sale before the official specs were released, or anything else that had been brought up until prior to Shyster's update of the original post concerning PCMW's likely primary shareholders shady history.

 

I knew sager's prices are gonna be competitive 1-2 months ago

 

I did check check XoticPC's and Powernotebooks prices and also noticed the 9800 GTS/GT and 128 GB SSD drives so I emailed the sales rep at PCMW earlier this morning to cancel. Then I read greyreaps post and got scared so I called the Thomas , the sales rep that took my order, at his ext. and he picked up right away, said he saw my email and is looking into the 9800 series and said that they will offer the OCZ SSD's and will change that in my order and regarding the pricing, he said he will compare the quotes that I sent him and adjust it accordingly. I don't know guys, they seem pretty legit so far, not sure if I should stick with it though. Have to admit I am concerned after reading all this, 2k+ is not a small amount.

Is anyone else sticking with PCMW? Anyone else live in the southbay? I can drive there but work is a bit busy, maybe I'll visit it during lunch tomorrow.

 

@Shyster,

I think I owe you an explanation if for anything, for the fact that you actually were the only person that had a clue of what I was talking about and helped me research the reasons behind my problem. A problem that I never found a solution for apart from lowering the systems resolution to 1280x1024 (now all the time)

I have no reason to attack or defend PCMW or any other particular Clevo "VAR".

You may be well inteded. Nevertheless the timing your post does rise suspicion. New models are coming up and every reseller wants to jump in the badwagon and win the sales race. It is my impression or PCMW is indeed one of the strongest US based Clevo VARs around in terms of sales and as such a target for others? Of couse Sager is bigger but in comparison with other smaller resellers.

I don't have the time to look for all your posts where you have written personal opinions that were in line with Sager resellers about others Clevo VARs. But I know I read some, and I'll live that for whoever wants to research that aspect further. Maybe it just simply happened by chance.

You may get bored and your brain seams to run at 300mph and its deep, I like that. But when you go and reasearch someones backgarden in search of garbage or gems, and once found you display it for public scrutiny as you did, you must know that in this case it has the potential of having really bad consequences for the owner and ultimately the business outside the scope of the law.

If the company was big, like so many others that faced lawsuits previousely, some of them of millions, the impact could be minimal. In this case I'm not so sure (I just don't know how big it is).

Before you posted this info have you tried to contact them/him to get their comments over it? As an impartial researcher/lawyer you know you should have done so considering the sensitive matter don't you? At least just to get some info about the actual busines health of PCMW has you seamed to fail to get, although it seam to be the main objective of the first post as far as I understand your response to me.

Anyway, I take no offence as it is nothing of my business, both PCMW or any other Clevo VAR, and you have to right to do as you did, but it does not make it good enough considering the objective as you have stated to me. I just expected more from you.

The reason for me to leave to this forum to rest is becouse I dislike when whatever computer business uses is own voice against others in matters not directely related either with technical competence or quality, and lately this has been IMHO monopolizing this forum. Right on time for the new Clevo notebooks just as it happened with Eurocom last year. It just does not feed my technical brain, something I want when I browse technical forums such as this.

Honestly have fun. I really miss your technical research abilities. You seam to be a nice guy that could do well at any descipline that requires a good brain

Trance

 

@DFTrance:

With all due respect, exercising my rights as a member of the public to go and take a look at what's contained in documents that are expressly part of the "public record" is not researching "someones backgarden in search of garbage or gems" and publishing what one finds is not displaying someone else's dirty laundry for "public scrutiny" primarily because that has already been done precisely because those documents are already a matter of public record. That is precisely what the term means - in this case, anything filed in a court of record is automatically displayed for public scrutiny by the very person who files it unless the court in question is willing to grant an order sealing the filing. In point of fact, as a matter of almost universal acceptance, if something is stated in a document that is considered to be a part of the public record, everyone who is or might be affected by that document is considered to know what's contained in that document, regardless of whether or not he or she has actually read the document. In that regard, it seems rather pointless to complain about letting people actually know the information that they are already deemed to know.

As far as PCMW being "one of the strongest US based Clevo VARs around in terms of sales" I have no earthly idea whether that statement is true or not, and I suspect that neither do you; on what basis have you formed your "impression" on this point?

This deserves special quotation:

On what basis would I be charged with a duty to independently verify facts contained in the public record, in particular, less than favorable facts with the person about whom the facts are recorded? The whole point and purpose of making certain documents a matter of public record is, precisely, to do away with any refined notions of verification - I, and everyone else, is entitled to rely on the contents of a document made a part of the public record without having to independently verify those contents prior to such reliance. If a document in the public record contains errors, then the obligation is on the person about whom the document speaks to take the necessary steps to correct those errors, or at the least to put into the record a statement refuting such errors. In point of fact, and I trust that I'll be excused for picking on PCMW here since I do so merely to answer your accusations, PCMW/Mr. O'Bryne has had every opportunity to answer the statements contained in the documents filed in the Brazos County civil action, and has chosen not to do so, since the record contains not a single answer or reply from Mr. O'Byrne, and the matter has been set for a hearing on the plaintiff's motion for a default judgment - a default judgment is only considered if the plaintiff has demonstrated that the defendant has been properly served, or that all reasonable and necessary steps required under the applicable service-of-process statute have been taken in an attempt to serve the defendant properly, and that despite these efforts the defendant has failed to appear in the action. In point of fact, if the defendant had appeared and simply said "nope, not me, not my responsibility," the plaintiff's motion would have been one for summary judgment, not default judgment, thus, it is perfectly reasonable to infer that Mr. O'Bryne has uttered not a single word of complaint or objection to the documents filed in that matter.

As to the effect on PCMW, I did consider that impact; however, I also considered the potential impact on every person who became a customer of PCMW without having the benefit of actually knowing information that, had they objected after the fact, they would have been charged with constructively knowing since that information was already a matter of public record, and in the balance I decided that the equities favored taking steps to let potential customers make fully informed buying decisions over protecting the financial affairs of a corporation - a constructive "person" that exists only on paper - simply because the public record contained documents that were not favorable to that corporation. I must say that I am a little surprised that you would prefer to favor the financial interests of a corporation over those of innocent consumers.

Finally, suppose I had approached PCMW, and further suppose that they had chosen to give me substantive responses instead of just ignoring me as they have ignored the Brazos County district court, what would have constituted a response sufficient to rebut the facts contained in the public record such that I should not have brought them to the attention of interested forum members? Personal assurances that "that's not really what happened" or, in other words, simple say-so? On top of which, if PCMW really has a basis for rebutting the facts disclosed, they are as free as you or I to come post that rebuttal on the thread - in point of fact, I was half-expecting to get a post from one of the attorneys in the Brazos case stating that the case had been, or was about to be, settled in an advantageous manner, thereby rendering the whole point of the $73,000 in unpaid rent moot. Regrettably, there hasn't been a single objection, complaint, or refutation posted by someone who is willing to state that they represent PCMW. Do the folks who purchase in good faith a computer from PCMW deserve any less?

 

@Shyster,

With all due respect I think you understand what I meant about going to someones backgarden but what you did require some skills and some contacts thatr go beyond usual customers make or have. Of course documents are public, and in this case they reflect reality in particular moments in time regarding the owner.

When I asked about you contacting PCMW was not to comment specifically on the facts you have found documented. But indeed to ask that given those facts what is the finantial health of PCMW as seamed to be the objective of all your research.

But you did not. You alone have choosen to use the concerning documentation rightly available to the public to rise the suspicion of probable eminent PCMW bankrupcy over the cover of consumer to consumer advice. Warning potential customers that by paying upfront the goods (like in most Internet business) they may well be in risk of loosing their money or if fill the need they should look for the legal advice of an attorney.

That question may be irrelevant to you, but ethics says otherwise if the objective was to help potential customer in making a fully informed decision.

"and n the balance I decided that the equities favored taking steps to let potential customers make fully informed buying decisions over protecting the financial affairs of a corporation"

If your question was not answered in an appropriate manner (net proft ot whatever you saw fit) then you could at least state that in you document - "PCMW refused to comment" or whatever. That would at least provide further evidence directely from PCMW.

So buyers now are more informed about particular passed events of the owner but not fully informed about PCMS finantial status as you seam to imply. Indeed, you have carefully stated that the owner and PCMW are two distinct legal and business entities. In other words, the dept of the owner is not transferable to PCMW, but the later can be used as an asset to be sold by the owner to cover the dept. We all know how that works so even in this possible case it is important to know the finantial status of PCMW as it seams to be the all point.

I for one if that was the case I would not be here posing arguments over this particular action.

So I appologise if it sounds like I'm accusing you Shyster, but as we don't know each other persoanlly although we seam to appreciate each other efforts here and there, I'm stating that I believe you have putten things in an biased manner even though it might not be intended, nevertheles rises the suspition.

Anyway, their phones must be ringing like Santa Claus rein dears on Chrismas Night. Good for them as they allowed a simple issue to escalate to this point by simply not participating in this forum

Trance

 

If we need to we must pierce the corporate veil! Shyster1 will understand this comment. lol

I don't think we'll need to get to that though.

 

@DFTrance: Neither ethics nor morality requires anything of the sort. If you cannot grasp that basic concept, then I'm afraid there's not much point in thrashing the debate anymore.

 

I lost track of this thread a VERY very long time ago (last time i posted) I don't have the time anymore to read all this (new job)... But i can't imagine why this thread is still going. THe fat lady is singing (the edge is out). Either they send them all out and every1 is happy with their fast computers from a company that nobody has had any major problems with. Or this so far trustworthy company runs off with hundreds of Edge orders... thats it...

 

I called and asked PCMW about the information in this thread. The person who answered didn't seem to know (or at least pretended not to know) anything about Hybridgear or Matthew O'Byrne. He wasn't even sure if PCMW had a predecessor. When I asked about the 6 years, he said he didn't know because he recently joined.

I finally asked if anybody at the company was aware of this thread (I sent them an e-mail a while back). He said that he had heard about it and that people there were discussing it.

 

@Lokix, do you expect to hear "Yes we bankrupted once" from his mouth?

 

WOW. What a blatant lie they told you. Dial their number and when it asks you to choose an option, just press # and then a moment later when it asks for initials just press # again and wait. It will take a minute to get to him, but Matthew O'Byrne's extension is among the many listed (they do list quite a few empoyees contrary to prior assumptions).

 

I try not to double post, but I felt this needed its own space.

Earlier I said that I would warn anyone against buying from PCMW.

I finally did get to talk to someone today. Teebo gave me Thomas' extension, who finally answered the phone for PCMW (after about 200+ minutes of being on hold total).

He actually gave me a sensible reason as to why my credit card was charged after I spoke with a rep to be sure that it was taken off of my account. It was horrible timing. After an entire month of not being charged, the day that I called is the day that it got charged. So when I spoke to the rep to be sure he took my card off of the account, he did. The problem is that it had already been put in to batch that night and as a result showed up the next day. As I proved before, I may not have come to know all of the ins and outs of the business when I was in the credit card processing industry, but I do know that what he said was true.

Further, when I finally got a hold of him he spoke with accounting to find out that they had already caught it(given they probably "caught it" because of my voicemails) and had refunded my credit card.

So it was really a highly understandable mistake that my credit card was charged and they had my check. He still couldn't give me any reasonable excuse for not answering my phone calls, emails, or returning my voicemails.

Since I had already placed my order with Xotic I went ahead and cancelled my order anyway, and they voided my check (which I already spent $35 to stop payment on because I couldn't get a hold of them and was getting nervous).

I do have to take back that I would warn anyone against them.

They can give you some really good deals. I attempted one last plea before final cancellation (moving me up to the X9100) and Thomas tried, but said they were already in the red on my order.

I have come to find out though that their customer support can be pretty low (though sometimes they responded very quickly and always were very helpful when I could get a hold of them).

For me though I had a hard time getting past the panic caused by the little mix up. And in contrast to my recent experience with PCMW, Xotic has been extremely responsive, even in non business hours.

Again, I would not tell anyone that buying from them is a bad idea. I was just very scared earlier. I felt like I had been to trusting, and got taken. That wasn't the case (at least not the got taken part).

I apologize for scareing anyone with my previous post. Like Drth_Sti said, just be careful and try to protect yourself where your payment is concerned.

 

No, but I thought I would give them the opportunity to respond to the information in this thread. I was curious as to what they would say. Do you find it that irrational that someone would call PCMW and ask them about this?

 

Shyster, how is your research on XoticPC, PowerNotebooks, RJTech, ISTNC, Sager, Prostar, Kobalt et al coming along ?

 

I'm certainly not interested in getting into this little vendor war, but for what it is worth, I purchased my 9262 from PCMW during one of their sales several weeks ago, and for the simple reason that their price was simply considerably lower than the competition. I had no problems with the experience aside from a week-long delay apparently due to 8800m card supply issues, although I suppose it is possible they were secretly debating whether or not my order constituted the "over the top" contribution to the slush fund they are compiling before absconding with the money . Apparently, my contribution was not sufficient and they opted to meet their obligation regarding my order.

The system arrived, booted properly, works very well to date (although a few weeks is hardly enough time to call this conclusive over the long-haul) and, except for the 8800m GTX drivers (I have tried several and am a bit unsatisfied with all), I am extremely pleased with the computer, particularly at the price I paid at that time. That subsequent prices may be even lower at other retailers is of no concern to me - once a technology purchase is made I consider it ill-advised to price check as you can only be disappointed.

Regarding PCMW customer support, I did call to make one change to my order and they were slow to answer the phone (although they did eventually) but they were certainly there to do so - the change, incidentally, was made to my order and the system arrived correctly configured. Whilst they may certainly have some history, and whilst I am reluctant to recommend them overwhelmingly (one experience does not, in my opinion, warrant either a good or bad recommendation), I can at the least say my experience was smooth enough to make me happy. As I refuse to pay for extended warranties from any company that does its business overwhelmingly over the internet (no matter what their reseller rating and assurances of excellence), I am not particularly concerned.

That said, if you are uncomfortable ordering from a company with a previous bankruptcy, that is certainly reasonable. As I said, I’m not picking a side, but I feel it is worthwhile to relate my overall good experience with this company.

My 2p.

Good luck, best wishes and Cheers!

 

Just fine; thanks for asking! Just FYI - I know even less about UK law than I do US law, and I don't have UK resources, so Kobalt is your bailiwick, not mine (or any other non-US business, for that matter).

Of course, I am assuming that you've already carefully read my post regarding ISTNC morphing into CC&TS from back on March 25, 2008, so you are quite well aware that, when I find something that seems to be of material relevance to people doing business with a particular company, I post about it.


EDIT: Just to clarify a point that Hellion9 and Nirvana (and quite possibly others) seem to be getting mixed up - so far as I can tell, there are no bankruptcies involved in any of the relevant events. More specifically, Hybridgear is/was a sole proprietorship, which means that there is no separate legal entity running the business, and the proprietor of that business has not filed a bankruptcy petition or received a discharge order as far as I can tell.

Second, PCMW is not a sole proprietorship, but is a corporation, which is a legal entity separate and apart from its owner(s), and it is the corporation that, technically, owns and operates the business known as PCMW. PCMW has also never filed a bankruptcy petition or received a discharge order either, as far as I can tell (and quite honestly I would not have expected the corporation to have done so).

I now that that seems a little nit-picky; however, these are precisely the sort of nits that have to be picked in order to keep a reasonable perspective on matters.

Finally, I, too, would welcome any response PCMW or any of its directors, officers, employees, or related parties would care to post on this thread, even if the response scuttled the entire premise of the thread (so long as it was adequately documented). What I have not done, and will not do, despite the criticism of some, is contact PCMW myself and then report back what, if anything, they said to me.

Why? One simple reason - hearsay, or to put it in plain English, he-said/she-said. Suppose I called up PCMW, and - purely hypothetically - caught Mr. O'Bryne in a self-reflective moment, and received a blanket confession from him?

Remember, I said "suppose" so this is all fictional, not real!

If I then came back and reported, verbatim, what was said to me, but without any extrinsic proof, like a tape-recording, or a signed document, would anyone believe me? Would anyone be justified in believing me? To the first, my answer is, yes, or no, depending on each person's preconceived idea of what's going on. To the second, my answer is, no, no-one would be justified because I would not have the objective, extrinsic evidence necessary to support my reportage.

Now, let's pretend that I called up PCMW, spoke with Mr. O'Byrne, his attorney, and the attorney for the landlord who's suing Mr. O'Bryne in Brazos County, and got a rock-solid statement that all had been worked out, that it was just a matter of drawing up the right papers and getting it all submitted to court, and that not only was there not the slightest bit of financial risk to PCMW but that they were, in fact, swimming in clover.

Remember, I said "suppose" so this is all fictional, not real!

If I then came back and reported, verbatim, what was said to me, but without any extrinsic proof, like a tape-recording, or a signed document, would anyone believe me? Would anyone be justified in believing me? To the first, my answer is, yes, or no, depending on each person's preconceived idea of what's going on. To the second, my answer is, no, no-one would be justified because I would not have the objective, extrinsic evidence necessary to support my reportage.

(Ahh, the quick-witted among you will have spotted already that I just cut-n-pasted the paragraph immediately above from the paragraph farther up the page, very good! )

Since the end-result of my talking to PCMW would be the same, regardless of whether I brought back rotten news or brilliant news, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that my talking to PCMW, in the absence of any extrinsic evidence, is pointless because it would have no effect on the outcome. For that, we need either (i) more extrinsic evidence, which, if it exists and is in the possession of PCMW, could be more easily posted by them than by me, or (ii) a representative of PCMW to come here and make a persuasive argument on behalf of PCMW that does not come through me.

 

@greyreap.
if they don't answer your phone in the accounting department(assuming you go there).. try the sales department... for some reason the wait time for a call being answered is very less compared to accounting

gl

 

Right, my mistake, mate - I perused the thread as I can't get too puffed about it either way and saw the word bankruptcy with regard to a previous company to which you have linked the current company or some of the proprietors therein. I don't really care one way or another as I've my purchase in hand. I'm just relating my experience in an effort to assure people that they do exist as a legitimate business and ship that which they promise to deliver, or did in my case, at any rate - I suppose one never knows, does one.

Warning appreciated, however, and had I been purchasing now instead of then I might have been concerned, but what's done is done and as a recent purchaser, I feel it's important to at least address that they did not treat my order in any way I interpret as suspicious.

Edit: Lest I give the impression I am somehow a PCMW apologist simply because I have done business with them, I purchased my wife's 9261 from Powernotebooks last autumn and similarly experienced no problems aside from a 2-week delay due, apparently, to some sort of motherboard swapout or supply issue or some such. To be objective and impartial, I suppose it is possible the delay was due to them secretly debating whether or not my order constituted the "over the top" contribution to the slush fund they may be compiling before absconding with the money. Apparently, my contribution was not sufficient and Powernotebooks opted to meet their obligation regarding my order as well .

Point is, PCMW met my requirements (as did Powernotebooks) within my tolerance for customer service and satisfaction and thus (speaking strictly for myself) I am pleased and can say (also strictly for myself) that they were honest brokers (with regard to my recent order).

Cheers!

 

No worries; I wasn't trying to bash on you, just trying to make sure the language stayed straight - sometimes it's a little like the game where you've got a line of people, A to Z, where A whispers a phrase in B's ear, B does the same to C, and so on, until you get to Z who, frequently, will have heard a phrase that bears no relation to the phrase A originally whispered to B.

EDIT: I quite agree with you that it's important to get reports from as many satisfied customers as possible so that a fuller picture can be built. It's only be means of having that sort of data reported that others can get a better idea of how to risk-weight the other data that have been reported so far.

Lastly, I am glad that you got what you wanted and with a minimum of fuss.

 

Not a problem - see edit above, by the by, about my motivation therein.

Cheers

 

Again, thanks for the additional, useful, data. As to your motives, I never doubted that they were other than what they seemed to be - if you had been some sort of covert apologist, as you put it, I think there would have been a lot more crocodile tears and a lot more bluster; since your post had neither, I never doubted that you were anything other than a sincere customer who had a good experience. That being said, it's probably best to CYA at this point and take pains to state your motives in the open, as you've done.

 

If PCMW are run by the same clowns that run Hybridgear.net, who also went by the names FutureTop, CommandTop....be VERY careful before you put any money down. I laid down $4k to buy a laptop from them about 4 months before they closed shop. The system was never built. They gave me one excuse after another about the delay and it took me weeks and weeks, daily phone calls, and finally intervention from my credit card company before they gave me a refund, which happened to be right before they closed shop and ran. I was one of the lucky few who came out relatively unscathed.

 

Oh dear now I'm getting a wee bit confused, and I seek for clarification!
"
Shyster wrote now:

"Just to clarify a point that Hellion9 and Nirvana (and quite possibly others) seem to be getting mixed up - so far as I can tell, there are no bankruptcies involved in any of the relevant events. More specifically, Hybridgear is/was a sole proprietorship, which means that there is no separate legal entity running the business, and the proprietor of that business has not filed a bankruptcy petition or received a discharge order as far as I can tell."

1)
Does anyone one knows why Mr. O’Byrne decided to close Hybrid Gear and start PCMicroworks for a fact? Ok I understand that Hybrid Gear did not have the best customer satisfaction rate, but did anyone know of anyone that lost their money or warranty benefits over this transition?

I can imagine all sorts of reasons why one might want to do that (close one business and start another in the same line) not related to lack of funds as for instance a change in its legal status!!!!!! This can at least happen in Portugal and it does not mean that previous customers are left in the limb. Indeed the first post did not mention any action filed from customer(s) or supplier filled due to that move!

2) Was any customer property damaged in that "transition"?

3) If there was no damage to previous owners property we are only left with two things:

3.1) Bad reseller reviews in the previous business (a change in name does not mean a change of business) but none of them indicating a fraud as far as the documentation presented shows. All other things are mere speculation using terms such as "fled", "run", "former company was goind down in flames", "Looks to me like someone was already planning the move to California and starting a new company" etc etc, etc etc etc etc.

3.2) A lawsuit that Mr. O'Bryan lost over value of around $65k in rent.

Then it is speculated that PCMW is a business in danger becouse Mr. O'Bryan lost a case of $65k (he owns $65K to a former supplier). This is not a lot of money!!!!!

In conclusion:

There is no documented proof being presented that they guy to the customer money and fled, run or something. There is no documented proof other then one supplier that Mr. O'Bryan has nay other depts.

If the opening post just focused on the facts it would be a good research. But is mixed with a bottle full negative speculation and coments disguised as facts!

This thread is making me sick!!!!

Trance

 

^--^
I thought it was a bit odd that you would take a stand for a corporation instead of for protecting individual customer's interests...but now it is clear from your last post that you did not take the time to read the CNET Forum thread (it is only 4 pages and 51 posts) before making your comments.

Please, go back and take the time to read that thread and I think you will have a totally different perspective, and will not have to ask the questions in your post above.

 

Personally, as in I personally observed all of the alleged facts? Not so far; but, do I "know of" someone - as in have knowledge that someone, somewheres, with whom I might not be directly acquainted - who lost either money or warranty benefits? Indeed, I do "know of" someone who has alleged just such a loss with sufficient specificity to be prima facia believable.

Had you bothered to peruse the linked CNET thread, you would have come across a posting under the username mtf612, which I will quote in full here:

Now, following back on the username link for mtf612, we discover that mtf612 states that he is Mike Frieda, who at the time lived in socal(aka Southern California), and who at the time was a 10th grade student.

Now, as far as confirming that this is/was a real person, we don't (yet) have direct evidence, but we do have some nice circumstantial (i.e., indirect) evidence; specifically, we have this Wikipedia Featured picture candidates webpage, which lists the creator of the image as "Mike Frieda" and the username of the Wikipedia member who sponsored the image as "Mtf612" thereby giving us another connection between those two terms in a completely unrelated context in which there is no reason to believe that there was falsification of identity. It should be noted that the fact that the "M" in "Mtf612" from the Wiki page is capitalized is of neutral probative value, because the Wikipedia user seach function automatically capitalizes usernames - in this case I tried a search on the term "user:mtf612" and was sent to the page stating that there was no user page for user "Mtf612."

Now, if I may be permitted to draw a speculative inference from this, I am going to conjecture that the person who made the quoted CNET post was a young man by the name of Mike T. Frieda, or, more formally, probably Michael T. Frieda.

In addition, we also have a profile for the username mtf612 from the website ultimate-guitar.com, which recites information that is consistent with that reported on the CNET profile for mtf612.

So, I'd say that I "know of" at least one person who lost their bought-and-paid-for warranty coverage.

 

And if we free ourselves of the constraints of legalese and return momentarily to the common sense world that most of us like to think we inhabit (no offense Shyster ), it's obvious that the dealings of Hybridgear resulted in lost money for far more than just one person. Trying to prove otherwise (rather than just trying to discover the truth of the matter, as Shyster has done) is going to make people question your motives. After all, the potential damage done to reputation by a thread like this is IMO nothing compared to the damage done to an ordinary consumer when they see a purchase of several $1000's go down the tubes, especially when you consider that this thread has been based as much as possible on impartial information from verifiable sources (notwithstanding conjecture like my own recent example, which it is anyone's right to make in a forum like this).

 

Wow man that was the worst blunder I ever read over a PC starup. The guys did got in a lot of trouble.

I did saw a lot of BBB compains, but also until the last post I saw some resolved. Customer really had a lot of trouble getting support after the close down. As far I read no money was kept without delivering the products but support was lacking and they fled.

I wonder why Mr. O'Bryan did not kept his former customers with PCMW. That I don't understand. Start over I can but not that.

@Mr. O'Bryan (I suspect you are out there).

Bad management, really bad management. Hope you learned the lesson.

That forum does rise some concerns IMHO at least from a customer experience point of view! I hope PCMW can correct that! Lowering down the prices is not the way to have a profitable business Mr O'Bryan, you need to have enough margin to provide the service (such as answering phone calls ASAP) and hire good personnel. From reports of PCMW customer you seam to have corrected some, but not all of them.

You seam to have a marketing/sales gift above the average, but good Maketing is not about playing with uncertenty, but actually improve the public visibility over a product and let the public do the rest.

This is the nicest thing I can say to you over a past blunder that you seam to be entirely responsible for.

Trance
PS: Fundamentally stop pretending that your business is more then actually is, a very nice startup as far as I can see. That is what got you in trouble in the first place!

 

As far as undelivered laptops for which the price was not refunded, perhaps you're right. I can't recall seeing anyone claiming that happened, although it doesn't necessarily mean it didn't happen. In any case people were often inconvenienced and scared by being deprived of the money in question until they could reclaim it from HG or via their CC company.

However you're forgetting that support is also something that people pay for. A warranty agreement can cost hundreds. Those customers who received their laptops but not the support they paid for did directly experience the situation you just mentioned - money was kept without delivering what was paid for.

 

I did not:

"I wonder why Mr. O'Bryan did not kept his former customers with PCMW. That I don't understand. Start over I can but not that."

Shyster mentioned at least one. Just one does not make it any better then a thousand IMHO.

I appologise for not getting the clear extent of this problem.

@Shyster,

Next time you do something like this I suggest to strict with the facts on the first post and make comments on some other. People intelligence can do the rest

It would make the facts stand out more. In the midst of so many words and links, I overlooked the main one.

I appologise to you to, for the greef. Thanks for sharing!

Trance
PS: We are all assuming that all information presented is correct!

 

None taken!

 

wow Shyster1 your new avatar freaked me out. seriously.

 

yeah, I'm not sure I can handle that...

I was actually picturing the last avatar as you, and could see that guy talking and making all the points you make. But now - it's messing with my head!