Worst decision ever

Hi everybody,

First of all I would like to say that this a great forum and I wish I am not posting this in the wrong place. I am facing a big problem and I hope I can get some help from you guys! Let me explain the situation:

Last September, I decided to buy a rebranded Clevo laptop from a shop which gets a lot of good reviews. I pulled the trigger and noticed that after almost 3 weeks the order status of my laptop was still at "payment confirmed". Since I was in a hurry need of a laptop I sent an email to the shop to ask them if I can cancel my order since they didn't start the order process yet. They agreed to cancel it and they told me that I should get my money back in about 3 to 5 days since their bank is a bit slow at processing money transfers.

Three weeks later I still didn't get the money so I sent them another email. About a month later, no news so I sent again an email but this time to a wider audience, I have included the sales team, the technical support and basically all the email addresses I could find on their websites.

After 3 months still no news, I tried to call them plenty of times but nobody is never answering the phone. The business seems to be still running fine according to all the posts they get on their forum so I decided to post a thread on it to complain and to ask them when I will get my money back. I don't need to tell you that they have reacted pretty fast to remove my thread and let me know that I need to contact them through their sales email address and not through the forum. I replied back explaining that I already did and still no news...

All I want is to get my money back. This is getting very frustrating and I hope you can give me advices on what to do next. Is there any legal action I can do? I basically paid a lot of money to a company who never gave anything in return after about 4 months and who refuse to reply to my emails.

 

Where is this site?

 

Did you try calling on the phone?

 

I am not sure it's wise to say which site it is. I just want to know what I can do to get my money back, that's it!

I tried but not recently. Whenever I was calling nobody was answering. They were may be on holidays or something. I will try again tomorrow but I am really getting sick of them.

 

He already said he tried calling plenty of times. I am really sorry for you man that sounds like quite the pain. If I recall correctly there is something your bank can do to force them to refund you your money but I forgot what it was called. If you don't mind mr asking what company did you try and purchase from?

 

It's fine to state the company. Any reputable dealer would like to know what they can do to improve service and this is one way.

Contact your credit card company and dispute the charge, see if you can get your money back.

 

The company is Kobalt Computers in the UK.
I will talk to my bank tomorrow I am just afraid they'll say that they can't do anything since the payment was done about 4 months ago.

 

I know they have at least one rep on these forums.

Look up Neil@Kobalt I think is his name and PM about what's been happening.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/member.php?u=126802

 

I have already PM and sent him several emails!

I have done this order only because of the good reviews they are getting, I seem to be the only getting problems with them.

 

I know you mentioned banks but was there any PayPal transaction?

 

No it was a credit card payment done on Internet.

 

If you paid for goods and never received them, you can contact your credit card company and initiate a chargeback. They will contact the merchant and transfer the funds back to your account.

 

Wonder what the excuses are this time. Quite the recurring theme here.

 

Yes, there was a long thread with lots of examples of Kobalt's horrible customer service and lots of people (Kobalt friends and relatives?) with lots of excuses for Kobalt claiming that they doing wonderful things again. Then a moderator closed the thread a couple of weeks ago as though, "Problem solved." Thanks for starting a new thread.

 

I wouldn't have waited so long but I guess you were not aware of the good protection you get when you use your Credit card to pay for goods. As others have suggested, you should contact your Credit card company immediately and they will get you a refund (chargeback) very quickly. I have done this before and there is no need to worry that it has been 4 months. I have to say I am very dissapointed to hear this situation yet again and will be looking elsewhereto get my future 485M / Sandybridge equipped laptop.

 

Yeah thats it! A chargeback, many have done it before with various companies and trust me you will get a response from them as soon as they see it.

 

Oh, you're very far from the only one having problems with them. It's just that threads about such problems tend to be locked for reasons that I personally can only guess at. Here's the most recent one.

As others have said, your best bet is a chargeback. Call your credit card company.

 

This is definitely NOT the first problem with Kobalt Computer on this forum regarding payment troubles and I have seen many times that user had exactly the same problem.

However,often it was fault of the customer and Neil solved the issue here quickly, maybe its your case

 

Out of curiousity, how would a company not responding to any correspondence (phone, e-mail, etc.), be the fault of the customer? I mean, I could see if there were payment issues (bad card, missing security code, etc.), but unless a company actually answers correspondence how does anything get fixed?

 

Try calling again I think they change the phone numbers at the time you made the order.

Kobalt Systems - Performance Notebook & Desktop Computers
Address:
Kobalt Computers Ltd
Unit 5
Redhill 23 Business Park
Holmethorpe Avenue
Redhill
Surrey
RH1 2GD
Sales Contacts:

Mon- Fri 10:00-17:00
Sat Closed
Sun Closed
Tel:
0845 230 1585 (local rate)
+44 (0)1737 763 841

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


Technical Support:

Mon- Fri 10:00-17:00

Please ensure that if at all possible before contacting technical support that you have checked our Knowledge Base system for help on your problem. This is regularly updated by our system engineers, support team and community members to provide in depth solutions to any technical issues.

Tel:
0845 230 1585 (local rate)
+44 (0)1737 763 841

When contacting our technical support department please ensure you have your computer's serial number to hand.

It will greatly help our staff if you have direct access to your computer whilst contacting our support department in order to correctly diagnose problems and to provide the best support to you. If you are at all unsure as to what support is covered under warranty please refer to our terms and conditions here on our website or on the back of your invoice.

 

Hi

I would much rather not discuss individual customers in public but considering that this thread is snowballing I need to post this time.

I actually know who GottaFeeling is because he uses the same username on our company forum and I swapped a couple of pre-sales pm's. I have just had a quick look through and the last comment I can see is acknowledgement of the cancellation in the middle of September last year and confirmation that the refund would be actioned. There aren't any comments on the Order Tracking page since then and I can't see anything in email either. At the time the Order Tracking page was the correct place to ask this kind of question.

Obviously if the refund didn't go through for some reason then I'm very sorry that we didn't seem to pick up on this but at the same time we haven't been told that the refund didn't go through.

GottaFeeling - can you please open a ticket from our new support system HERE and choose "Sales" as the Topic. Someone will get back to you ASAP and we'll get it sorted out for you.

 

Weren't you receiving PM's from him as he claims that he gave you a lot of PM's here at NBR?

 

This companies claim whatever is best for them. I have a problem with my laptop bought from Cizmo and noone is answering my mails for a year. I would say it´s too risky to buy such an expensive laptop as I did via internet. Next time I´ll go to my local shop and get some Asus or Dell with assurance of warranty.

 

Kobalt is really not doing good with customer relations until now. Whatever reasons your company gives, they are no excuse for such treatment.

 

No. I don't know if he specifically said that but as I mentioned above the only direct communication I have had was pre-sales. I have NEVER had a post sales email, Kobalt forum pm or NBR pm about the order.

Please see my comment above. This is exactly why it's not fair to draw conclusions from internet discussions as inverably the wrong conclusions are drawn. Also as I said above I really don't want to discuss individual customers in public as it isn't fair to anyone but at the same time I have to be able to put our side across.

 

When I said I sent a lot of emails it wasn't only to you but to other people from your company. As I said in my first post, I even sent an email to all the email adresses I could find on your website YOU included. That email has been sent on the 24th of November to the sales team ([email protected]), Andy B([email protected]), support([email protected]), PR([email protected]), webmaster([email protected]), YOU([email protected]) and Andrew([email protected]). When I created a thread on the Kobalt forums you were also the one who moved my thread from the forums visible by all online users to the order queries page which is visible only by me and the Kobalt team. I also talked to a moderator of your forum to whom I discussed my issue, he was very kind to take some time and offer some help and he forwarded you my message.

So this is at least 3 pieces of information you got post-sales.

I just created a ticket. I really hope you'll sort this out ASAP without me having to go to the bank to get my money back.

 

Try contacting trading standards - or take them to the small claims court. There is no excuse for this sort of customer service.

Caveat emptor.

 

I will continue this discusson in more detail in private with GottaFeeling as that is where it should take place, now that you have created a ticket we will get back to you ASAP.

For the record I need to clarify my points again:

1/ I haven't received any pm's or emails since September on this

2/ I also checked the sales emails just in case and there is nothing there

3/ Tomorrow I will check the other email addresses that were mentioned but if it isn't in my or sales email then it's highly unlikely to be in any of the other ones and if it was the other departments would have forwarded it to sales or whomever the email was addressed to.

4/ From memory I honestly can't remember if I moved a post on our forum to the order queries section (which is private). There isn't a post in the Order Queries section of our forum which relates to this enquiry but it's possible that it wasn't recovered after our ISP server was hacked over Christmas and all the data deleted. We had real problems getting the forum back up and running - that's why it was offline for 10 days.

5/ There is nothing in the Order Tracking area either.

I'm simply saying that I have definitely not received anything related to your refund directly and communications seem to have stopped mid September.

Now that GottaFeeling has got back in contact with us we will get it sorted out for him.


Varadero - There is absolutely no need for GottaFeeling to do this - we are now in communication and as I clearly stated in my earlier posts we will sort it out - now that we know there is a problem. How can it be bad customer service if we didn't know about the problem in the first place? There is no need for caveat emptor.

 

Damn i should have complain about my service with Eurocom here, thing should have move faster this way

 

if the complaint is stated here then more members will be aware and those resellers in question will know in the on the other hand. if there's a sticky here that is solely for support inquiry for individual reseller junction the better. i will just be clear that support inquiry not a flame forum. so that resellers who are members here in NBR will know and other members will know the how to do like RMA and tech support.

 

This is good.

Very few people are held accountable anymore. I think things like this SHOULD be brought to the attention of the people that may buy such products.

Furthermore I believe this gentleman as he went through the hassle of listing emails where he sent complaints and whatnot.

I think it's really sad that customers no longer come first! When someone comes to a forum and talks about the wrong doing companies try and lie and come out of the woodwork with a "solution" to fix an image of said company.

We are becoming sad.....Indeed!

 

yea indeed, theres tons more ppl you can bet that dont have the know how to come on to an forum like this and plead till a founding member has to step forward lol.

 

I highly doubt that all those seperate lines of communication failed. It speaks for itself if the director actually hide his thread away from public. I guess he hasn't got that sort of power power here. Even so, an issue such as a refund from a cancelled order should be a priority case. They've broken several consumer rights laws already.

But why even try to lie and deflect it away? Well I suppose to save public face.

I strongly believe that even if you do get your refund promptly you should seek some sort of compensation because it was a blatant attempt at theft. Fraud. They've had your cash for months man. Any cancelled orders get picked up by admin and should be dealt with there. You shouldn't have to go to the length of emailing half their employees let alone getting ignored for months.

I find it astonishing that a company would even try to do that these days because with electronic payments and communication it's all evidence you can use to nail them. Make a case and show them what dirt you have on them and if they refuse an out of court settlement, maybe a nice shiney new laptop, push it further.

By the way how did you pay? If it was paypal file a complaint, if it was on your card contact your bank and open a fraud case, they have the power to force a refund. Also go public with this experience as much as you can, write some reviews online ect, talk to some journalists/writers/websites that specialise in electrics.

 

actually the most important thing is communication between the rep and the buyer, as some of the reps are members in NBR, then some laptop owners are free to ask what they inquire to their respective resellers, if one of the sticky for this forums could be exclusively for reseller and customer relationship only. and when they do cross paths in that forum sticky, then they could discuss the matter privately by giving pms to each other. imagine most of the customized laptops today, almost all of them are ordered online, dealt online and will have liaisons online. so i was thinking the root of solution can actually begin here regarding online tech support. and in the other hand, guys like us will clearly know if a reseller rep steps up, he will reflect the good service of his reseller company.

 

This will not work. The one and only reason asking questions about bad behavior of resellers on this forum works is because a lot of people read it and the threads show up in Google searches so because of the bad publicity, it costs more to ignore the thread than to satisfy the single customer that has complained. If the post is buried in a 20+ page sticky that almost nobody reads, this won't be the case anymore and posting about it there will be as useless as sending them email, trying to call them and posting on their private forums.

 

I used to try to be an active and helpful member of this forum, I haven’t come out of the woodwork. Problem is that every time I post something it is flamed down.

I stepped forward because another member of nbr sent me a pm advising me of this thread. If the op had pm’d me then there wouldn’t have been any need for this thread in the first place.

Our forum has a separate section called “Order Queries”. This is a private section of our forum i.e. customers can post an enquiry about their order and only they and forum admin can see that post. If the thread was moved there then it wasn’t hidden away at all – it was simply put in the correct place on our forum. If someone posts a comment on the forum about their order then there is a strong chance that we don’t know who they are and so can only reply with full details by confirming their identity. We sell thousands of laptops and PCs a year, even though a very small percentage of our customers are members of our forum we can’t learn everyone’s forum name and match them up with a specific customer and order. Surely having this in private is better than having peoples names, order and customer numbers posted in public on a forum?

I have stated very clearly what we received and when. I am not lying and not making things up – that would be an incredibly stupid thing for me to do in public considering that I represent a company. Of course I am trying to save public face because this kind of thread does have a very serious impact on the reputation of a company.

No, it was simply miss-communication – please read what I posted in detail on page 4 of this thread.

That’s the whole point – we don’t have any emails. I have access to all our systems and my pm folders. There is nothing there and there was nothing posted on the Order Tracking page which is the separate system that has to be logged into for order tracking information from purchase to delivery. I pm’d the op yesterday evening and told him what actions we would be taking to get this sorted out. He has also raised a ticket which we will use to communicate with. There is no “dirt”.

Just solely on your comment about discussing matters more privately by giving pms – that should be followed before posting on the forum as this matter could have been cleared up straight away.

The whole problem with this is that threads like this will develop all the time. The effect that these threads have is seriously damaging – not so much because of the original problem but because the word of the company is never accepted. I pm’d Gottafeeling last night to let him know that although I really don’t want to keep replying to this thread I am continually forced to.

I will continue to reply to threads like this because I cannot allow the last post that people read, whether existing customer or possible future customer, to suggest completely incorrect facts and actions about myself and Kobalt.

 

Neil - If the customer wasn't able to get through lines of communication in your company after mass e-mailing everyone and you have no logs of it then it suggests a few possibilities:

1. Your system needs to be checked for errors.
2. You have lazy employees that don't document customer requests for refunds.
3. You are lying.
4. Customer is lying.

Either way, this shouldn't have gone on this long. It's reasons like this that I think Clevo needs to step up and create their own online presence much like Dell and other major players. Same goes for Asus.

 

U should by the laptop from mysn.de

They have the option to pay the package at your door, when it arrives.

One of the reason i choose them, to be honest.

 

I ended up getting an Asus laptop at a shop and I am very happy with it. You don't need to wait for the shipment, you can check the package at the shop and the most important, a person to talk to rather than dealing with emails.

I clearly didn't lie and can provide proofs. I can't understand how such communications problems can occur honestly. This is the first time that someone tells me he didn't get my emails.

The point is that even without any communication, the business should take care of the refund as soon as they approved it and they need to make sure that the money has been refunded to the bank account in the same way that they make sure they got the money when a customer buy a product.

My question is, assuming you haven't got any of my emails, why didn't you step forward when the webmaster of your forum forwarded you my message?
Why didn't you step forward when I created a similar thread on your forums? Instead you just moved it to the private section.

 

That's not true. It is usually almost immediately apparent when the person making the thread is wrong and ordinary posters will point it out. If the person making a thread is not wrong, but there is a misunderstanding, people who bought from that company before and were satisfied will usually defend it and a solution will be found. In fact, they typically continue to do so even when it looks like the company may not have behaved quite properly. It is only when specific issues arise again and again and again that certain patterns become apparent and a mistrust begins to build.

Long story short: you reap what you sow.

 

One of these must indeed be true, however I know that I'm not lying, I'm certainally not suggesting that GottaFeeling is lying. If there was an admin error then that's our fault.

We have recently introduced a new ticketing system so sales and support goes through that rather than directly through emails - we received the ticket from GottaFeeling last night and it's been replied to today.

I don't think that your suggestion about Clevo providing an online prescence can work on a number of levels. Mainly because we sell our own branded products, we don't buy a pre-built product from Clevo and then re-sell it. Dell sell direct and through resellers - if you buy direct then Dell should provide support and if you buy through a reseller then they should provide first point of contact support, possibly unless it's a tech support issue. I can't comment on what other companies do or should do on here because I represent a company myself, similarly I can't speak for what Clevo should do but Clevo don't sell complete products direct to customers so they wouldn't be able to deal with what companies like Kobalt sells.

Please note that I haven't suggested that you did lie. I have simply said that we didn't receive any emails after mid September. I haven't had any pms sent directly to me on our forum or on nbr. I honestly can't remember if a moderator pm'd me on our forum 4 months ago but my point is that we should have been contacted directly either through the Order Tracking system, direct pm on our forum or direct pm on nbr if you had sent emails that weren't replied to or acknowledged. I have explained that if I moved your thread to the Order Queries sectionof our forum then I would have done so to put it in the correct location for the sales department to reply to.

Though I deal with some of our specialist customers on both the laptop and desktop PC/workstation/server front as well as some of the tech support I do not deal with the majority of sales enquiries nor do I deal directly with the majority of builds or post sales communication. I am not best placed to do so as I have a lot of other responsibilities within the company. Because I am the only member of our company on nbr I was made aware of this thread and thus have become involved to deal with it.

I believe that today Andrew has personally looked into the situation and has replied to your ticket. It is being resolved and that should draw the matter to a close.

 

The first post was started over Easter when we were closed and the problem was a shiping issue with the courier. We also had a server issue which affected some email communications at that time.

The second post was started because our customer was emailing .com rather than .co.uk . It wasn't a laptop order, it was an order for spare parts and after we were contacted correctly at the .co.uk email address the situation was resolved.

The third thread - I explained in great length about the problems we experienced.

 

I can assure you being a member of many different forums for years that a community does not just seclude someone out to pick on.

You, being the owner of a business are exclusively responsible for your image. If you are coming to a forum that has anything to do with the product you are selling and being "flamed," then you need to work on customer relations.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you! And don't take the "woe is me" attitude when it comes to customer service (whether representing your company on a forum or otherwise).

Customer puts the bread on your table. Evaluate what YOU have done to feel as if you are being "flamed" and fix it! Top priority is you and yours! Do what you have to do and make people glad they have done business with you. We sometimes have to go out of our way to please others, this applies especially to a person whom has to deal with customer relations to guarantee a returning customer.

The ball is in your court! NBR has not just all the sudden hated you, fix your problems!

 

Interesting read.

All issues are now accounted for; the OP has successfully been contacted by the company; reason for all posts has been given; company representative is here and seems fairly active..

So, what else must the man do to 'fix the problems'? Beg? He put it quite right, this thread has been snowballing, and now it's not even giving me any information about whether Kobalt is reliable or not, it just shows - from the side - people asking somebody to do what already has been done, over and over, and insisting on 'problems' that are already stated to be fixed.

 

Well reputation is something that is earned over time (and I'm not talking about the forum rep system). This matter may have been handled right, NOW

How many issues have arose from this company? How many were solved? How many did the customer walk away feeling good about? How long has this taken to be resolved? Why?

These issues need fixed! I can't fix them as well as I can't just make them go away. Good customer relations to act when it might ruin the image of your company? Then we REALLY need to ask if he/she needs to beg? NOPE! Do the job the first time and do it right and things like this won't happen.

 

and you would be happy with a refund after waiting for over 4 months, right? we are talking about a lot of money involved not just a bit of bread a lot of customers will want to know about cases like this. cancellation is a consumers right, its just too convenient for a company to simply 'forget' and reap the rewards. i mean how could a clerk or someone in finance not realise that they have an extra thousand pounds in the accounts from somewhere it must get reviewed. im sure theyd notice if something was stolen but not the other way round. too convienient sorry i dun believe it stuff like that is easily accounted for with a medium/small sized business. they will check actualy sales probably weekly. and with all the correspondence this guy tried with the company its shows fundamental problems not just a lack of ethics. bluntly he was ignored by various people inside that organisation for whatever reason. if the OP didn't post here the situation might not have ever been resolved and they would of no doubt of kept the money, now that is simply wrong to go to those lengths, now imagine if that was someone a bit more vulnerable or simple had ordered and never gottn the cash back. but yeh just forget and forgive? how about judging a company by their actions! there are plenty of companies that i do business with and i will say good things about em but this kobalt is getting a track record now isnt it!

 

This is exactly what I mean about being flamed.

I can't have made it clearer that:

- we didn't receive any emails after mid September

- I had no pms from the OP on Kobalt forum or notebookreview

- there was no comment on the Order Tracking system from the OP apart from pre-sales.

We did not ignore him.

If the OP sent emails that weren't received or replied to he should have put a comment on the Order Tracking system. He could also have pm'd me or one of my colleagues directly on our company forum or pm'd me on notebookreview.

If I have to keep repeating these points then this thread will never finish. As I stated earlier and as X2Eliah stated, the issue has been seen to and resolved. We have been in direct communication with the OP.

 

I din flame you, just stating the obvious a companies reputation is judged by the way they act and it has to be 100% transparant case by case. you probably habve a lot of happy customers. but why should it just be a closed case after a refund there are still a lot of questions you need to ask within your company. if you cant see that it will happen again cos you wont do anything about it! the poor guy already said that he exhausted all messaging means, the only option he had was to go public and he was resilient to even name your company! and how can you be absolutely 100% sure non of your employees got his message and ignored it or deleted it because they were too 'busy'? you simply dont know for sure

 

Yes,yes, I flamed giving you pointers on how to keep a customer. Woe is you! The world must be picking on poor ole you.

Nothing to see here but a poor honest business guy and this must just be nonsense. Continue on let's not pick on this poor guy!