ttt@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Tony Tong) (09/09/86)
< Cheerios, Cheerios, Chomp, Chomp, Chomp >
To all the user in net land, I'd like to share a recent experience I had
while ordering some new stuff for my PC.
One concerns the Mail Order Firm, 'Conroy LaPointe'.
They do a large volume of business with large, impressive ads in all the
monthlies, so I decided to give them a try. I was told over the phone that
the parts I ordered (A new power supply and such) was in stock, ad that
they would be shipped the next day via 'Two Day Federal'.
A week later, when the stuff had not arrived, I called the firm, and
discovered that the order had not been shipped -- they had not even
begun the check on my credit card yet! I was then assured that they
would do it immediately, and ship it out ASAP. Lo and behold, a week later,
and my stuff has still not arrived. Another phone call, and about fifteen
minutes 'on hold', and I found that the order was still in the shop.
So, on the basis of this one isolated instance, my advice is to stay away.
Has anyone else have any any other dealings with them ?
I have experience with a number of mail order/discount places, and they tend
to offer varied qualities of services. On a good note, I'd like to
recommend a firm called 'PC's LIMITED'. They are strictly no frills,
competitive prices, and no charges for shipping or credit cards.
I have seen similar discussions for other similar suppliers (eg Tennis
Equiptment and Camera stuff). How about some feedback?
Who's good ... who's not kind of stuff.
Tony
E-MAIL US-MAIL
====== =======
Tony Tong Vanguard Information Center Inc. U.S.A.
University of California 2620 Hillegass Ave #11
Computer Science Department Berkeley, CA 94704
... !ucbvax!cory!ttt Mark III Address
ttt@cory.Berkeley.EDU 4QK11 Catalog
Address is TONYTtankus@hsi.UUCP (Ed Tankus) (09/12/86)
> < Cheerios, Cheerios, Chomp, Chomp, Chomp > > > To all the user in net land, I'd like to share a recent experience I had > while ordering some new stuff for my PC. > One concerns the Mail Order Firm, 'Conroy LaPointe'. Description of problem here ... They have filed for Chapter 11 banckruptcy. I believe they are only accepting cash vouchers (no personal checks, please!) and tha could be the source of all your problems. Mainstreet Computer has gone under and so has Progressive Micro. Northeastern Software in Shelton, CT recently received an "unsatisfactory" rating by the BBB. Life's a bowl of jelly beans ... until you shake 'em. > Tony > E-MAIL US-MAIL > ====== ======= > Tony Tong Vanguard Information Center Inc. U.S.A. > University of California 2620 Hillegass Ave #11 > Computer Science Department Berkeley, CA 94704 > ... !ucbvax!cory!ttt Mark III Address > ttt@cory.Berkeley.EDU 4QK11 Catalog > Address is TONYT -- -- Ed. Net : {noao!ihnp4!yale!}!hsi!tankus Snail: Health Systems Int'l, 100 Broadway, New Haven, CT 06511 Bell : (203) 562-2101
nobi@mtuxo.UUCP (m.juliar) (09/12/86)
Re: Bad experience with Conroy-LaPointe Just a quick comment -- I've order from Conroy-LaPointe two or three times and have had nothing but the best of service from them, both in ordering over the phone and in getting a shipment from them quickly and accurately. I wonder what circumstances caused them to screw your order up? Are they going through financial problems like many other mail-order companies? (The competition is fierce and several have folded recently.) Is their load of customers increasing (because of other mail-order houses folding) faster than they can handle? I wonder. Michael Juliar mtuxo!nobi
joel@peora.UUCP (Joel Upchurch) (09/13/86)
>... !ucbvax!cory!ttt Mark III Address >I have seen similar discussions for other similar suppliers (eg Tennis > Equipment and Camera stuff). How about some feedback? > Who's good ... who's not kind of stuff. Sounds like a good topic. I bought a PC Clone and a lot of other stuff recently. I'll start out with my good experiences. CompuAdd Of Austin TX I ordered their Career Starter Kit. This includes a computer, keyboard, monitor, display adapter, and printer. The bundled software includes MS-Dos 3.2 GWBASIC, and the ZEN software series. All the necessary cables, printer paper, and 10 blank diskettes are included. The computer is a 8MHZ PC clone with an AT-style keyboard. The nameplate says it's a Standard Turbo-88, but all the documents refer to it as the PC II. Since the documents match the computer and it looks just like a PCII I saw elsewhere, I conclude that it is a private label version of the PC II. You can put up to 1 MB on the motherboard, and it comes with a driver to use the additional 384kb as a ram disk. It also has a clock, one floppy disk drive and a game port. The monitor is a 12 inch amber one made by Goldstar. I paid 20 bucks to have them upgrade the display adapter to a Hercules clone card. The printer it is a Citizen 120D. I think that the bundled monitor and printer change sometimes, so you should ask about the models included if you order. In addition to the starter kit I ordered 768K of additional RAM for the system, a 30MB half height hard disk, a 1200 baud short card modem and a 8MHZ 8087 coprocessor chip. The salespeople I dealt with over the phone were polite and knowledgeable about their equipment. I had one self-inflicted minor hassle caused by the me exceeding my limit on my Master Card, which was straighted out expeditiously. I received my computer about a week and a half after my order. When I checked out the computer, I found that the memory, hard disk, modem, and 8087 had already been installed, which from what I have read isn't necessarily SOP for mail-order firms. I hooked up the monitor and keyboard and plugged in the power cable and stuck the MS-DOS diskette in the disk drive and turned the sucker on. It worked, shucks I had more trouble than this with my VCR. I had one problem with the computer. It insisted that any floppy disk I tried to write to was write protected. I called CompuAdd technical support line and the guy there suggested I check the alignment of the write protect sensor and LED. I opened up the case and fiddled with the sensor awhile, after that the drive worked fine and has ever since. The Goldstar monitor has a little too much persistence for my taste, it tends to make the characters a little blurry during rapid scrolling. Other than that I like it fine, the amber display is very attractive. It looks real nice when I'm running Microsoft Windows and PC Paintbrush. The monochrome graphics display adapter appears to be a good clone of the Hercules card, at least I've told several software packages that it is a Hercules card and they all worked fine. The Citizen printer works fine too. It has a correspondence mode that won't be mistaken for daisywheel output, but the output is quite legible in correspondence mode. It can emulate a IBM Graphics Printer and Epson FX-80 also. The modem is made by Everex, is Hayes-compatible and comes with a communications program called Bitcom which isn't bad at all considering it comes bundled with the modem. The only problem I've had so far that I would term a hardware compatibility problem is that Microsoft Windows locks up when I try to use the RAM disk. The 384KB on the motherboard, which isn't included in the normal 640KB DOS partition, is configured as a 2nd bank of memory starting at 128KB. The included driver then uses it as a RAM disk. The RAM disk works fine with all of my other software, but with Windows it locks up. The ZEN Word that was bundled with the system is fine, PC Magazine gave it a good review in the Jan. 28 86 issue, which I agree with. They also said that ZEN Spell is junk, which I also agree with. ZEN Calc appears to be adequate for simple spreadsheet chores. ZEN Link appears to be okay, but I like Bitcom better. A few weeks later I ordered an EMS card and 2MB of memory chips from them. Again no hassles and the stuff came in about a week. The memory chips were still in the static carriers, so I had to plug them in myself, a tedious, but not too difficult job. It stuck me as a little odd to have a system with 48 times as much memory as my Apple II. The only problem I've had was that the range of possible output ports used by the EMS board overlaps those used by the on board clock. The EMS board driver apparently manages to zero out the year when it scans the ports to determine how many EMS boards are installed. I wrote a quicky Turbo Pascal program to set the year back to 86, that is executed by my AUTOEXEC.BAT file. I haven't gotten around to trying the technical support line to see if they have a patch to the driver yet. Windows works just fine with the RAM disk driver for the EMS card. All in all I am very pleased with my experiences with CompuAdd. While I wouldn't recommend a novice computer user use mail-order, there are some excellent bargains available for the wary and experienced user. Logic Array of Costa Mesa Ca I bought a 8MHZ NEC V20 chip to replace my 8088-2. Every- thing was fine - no muss, no fuss. Jameco of Belmont CA I got a replacement power supply for my Apple II from them. Same deal, the delivery was in a reasonable time, it was what I ordered, and it worked. Okay in my book. Northeastern Software of Shelton CT Here I had a lot of hassles. The 800 number was hard to get through on. The order taker was curt and unknowledgeable about their inventory. Practically all the prices were different, and higher than the ones listed in their ad. I was told that the offer of free air express shipping for orders of $150 or more had been discontinued, but it was still mentioned in their ad next month. I get a letter from them next week saying they had been unable to me reach on the phone to confirm my order. They hadn't mentioned that they needed to when I made the order or I would have given my work number instead of my home one. When I finally get a package from them two items have been back ordered, but when my Master Card bill arrives, I have been billed for all of them, which is tacky, if not illegal. 5 weeks later I tried to call them about the status of the item I hadn't received and I got put on hold and apparently forgotten twice. I gave up and sent them a letter canceling my order for the last item (Sidekick non-protected) and excluded the cost of the last item from my credit card payment, with an note explaining why to the credit card company. I don't intend to do business with them again. ------------------------------------------------------------- Insert standard disclaimer about all the proper names mentioned above are probably trademarks and that everything I just said is my own opinion and not that of my company. -- Joel Upchurch @ CONCURRENT Computer Corporation (A Perkin-Elmer Company) Southern Development Center 2486 Sand Lake Road/ Orlando, Florida 32809/ (305)850-1031 {decvax!ucf-cs, ihnp4!pesnta, vax135!petsd, akgua!codas}!peora!joel
mjb224@uiucuxf.CSO.UIUC.EDU (09/15/86)
Fantasic topic!!! I too had a run-in with Conroy-LaPointe. When I received a copy of Turbo Pascal from them it had a nice razor slice right through the book and diskette. I called and was instructed to order another copy and return the damaged product to them. They charged me a restocking fee even though I was explicitely told to handle the order that way (and I'm sure they are really going to restock a mangled piece of software.) Although at the time I was very irritated, the Comnroy-LaPoint account pales next to my experience with Texas Computer Systems (TCS). In brief: =============================================================================== * * * * * * * * DO NOT BUY FROM TEXAS COMPUTER SYSTEMS * * * * * * * * * =============================================================================== Not so brief: I ordered a 20 meg 1/2 height hard disk. Backorderd, I didn't receive it for 8 days. It didn't work so I shipped it back (my cost $7.00). They sent me the "serviced" drive back a week after that. I still didn't work. They instructed me to order another and ship the defective one back. I did and finally had a working drive in my machine just one mere month after I ordered the original!!! Two days after I received the working drive, yet another appeared at my door. TCS had charged my account for almost $1500 dollars at this point and were very lax in crediting my VISA account. It took three statements, phone calls and several multi-page letters to TCS, and letters to Visa and the Better Business Bearau in Dallas before they coffed up. The whole ordeal cost me over $40 in interest, shipping and phone calls!!! This is one company I would not mind seeing file chapter 11. Mike Bruno
sean@ukma.uky.csnet (Sean Casey) (09/15/86)
In article <128@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> ttt@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Tony Tong) writes: >To all the user in net land, I'd like to share a recent experience I had >while ordering some new stuff for my PC. > >A week later, when the stuff had not arrived, I called the firm, and This vividly illustrates the need to go about ordering things so that you protect yourself: 1. WRITE! Reiterate any promises made on the phone and make them a condition of the sale. Mention the person's name that makes these promises to you. 2. Make copies of any and all documents that pass between you and the company. 3. Pay by credit card or check. Credit card companies will help you out if you have been ripped off. 4. If you have problems, call or write PROMPTLY. If that doesn't get good results, contact your local post office. They can help enormously. If it really is mail fraud, they will go to great lengths to prosecute them. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sean Casey UUCP: cbosgd!ukma!sean CSNET: sean@uky.csnet University of Kentucky ARPA: ukma!sean@anl-mcs.arpa Lexington, Kentucky BITNET: sean@ukma.bitnet
mjg@ecsvax.UUCP (Michael Gingell) (09/15/86)
> > To all the user in net land, I'd like to share a recent experience I had > while ordering some new stuff for my PC. > One concerns the Mail Order Firm, 'Conroy LaPointe'. > They do a large volume of business with large, impressive ads in all the > monthlies, so I decided to give them a try. I was told over the phone that > the parts I ordered (A new power supply and such) was in stock, ad that > ............... I think I read in a recent Info World that Conroy LaPointe has folded.
jdo743@uiucuxa.CSO.UIUC.EDU (09/22/86)
Strange, I have nothing to say but good about my dealings with Conroy-LaPointe. The products I ordered were shipped promptly and I had no problems with their service or anything whatsoever. Jon Ogden
marty@ism780c.UUCP (Marty Smith) (09/24/86)
Organization: In article <10300013@uiucuxf> mjb224@uiucuxf.CSO.UIUC.EDU writes: > >Fantasic topic!!! I too had a run-in with Conroy-LaPointe. For those of you who have asked for info on where and which AT clone to by: Try American Micro Technology (AMT). See their ad in PC WEEK, PC MAGAZINE, etc. Four of us here have purchased the AT clone over the last eight or nine months. No complaints about hardware or service. Of the four AT's purchased, two had a problem with the power supply. AMT subsequently changed power supplies from the dog they were using to a FORTRON supply. They replaced ours immediately, no questions asked. I can't comment on their mail order service, because we all went directly to their store to get ours. But they're worth a look. The AMT-286 starts at $1199, which is an 8MHz 80286 and includes all the normal stuff. Marty Smith