| From: | Joseph J. Kanowitz |
| Date: | 29 Oct 2000 at 22:27:55 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIGEN: Pricewatch? (Floid's Pricewatch tips) |
On Sun, 29 Oct 2000, Moses Wildermuth wrote:
> >> Pricewatch
> > I got a bad experience with one of the vendor at Pricewatch.
> > They did not send the products, after I pay for it. They did not
> > send any refund. (I am from outside USA). Is there any
> > reliable vendor in Pricewatch?
>
> I too had bad experience with pricewatch. I ordered a 2 gig quantum scsu
> drive. It crashed completely a few months later taking most of my archives
> with it. This was before I had better backup methods, so I was screwed.
> That drive also likely contributed my current power problems as it was
> trying to draw an amp or two too many. bummer :-}
I've never really been burned by Pricewatch, except once after a flurry of
ordering led to an extraneous charge from a company that I never ordered
from (I'm guessing someone's CC# database was stolen; Mastercard covered
it)...
One trick is to examine the overall price listing brought up from a
search, and become familiar with aspects of webdesign and location that
can give a clue to an operation's professional level. If you get taken to
a Yahoo storefront, or all the lowest-priced sites appear to be in the
same general location and suffer from the same webdesign, you have to
learn to watch out. I never order from a company whose site-listed price
is different from what they show on Pricewatch- serious companies don't
screw around with Pricewatch-specific specials, or will list them on
Pricewatch's Specials page (most of those specials aren't that special..)
I wouldn't blame storage device failure on Pricewatch, either; it was
probably a fluke, or you may have ended up with refurb hardware (my
Pricewatch-bought refurb 'cudas are still going strong after 3 years of
severe physical abuse as they go back and forth from colleges)...
A few suggestions if you get in the situation of being a constant
Pricewatch 'victim'- McGlen.com, mwave.com, and computer123.com are
'anchor' sites I use to determine the going retail-discount price of
certain items. McGlen has proved very trustworthy with memory (I got a
stick of ECC SDRAM in replacement for what turned out to have been a
functional stick of plain, just for the cost of shipping), and Multiwave
and Computer123/Clifford Tech have proved paranoid to the point of
frustration with credit card info (which marks them as serious/trustworthy
in my book). If you see one vendor offering an outrageous deal over the
'average' price found on one of these sites, it makes sense to
examine everything more closely.
As a further note, operations out of the general CA area are generally
more trustworthy than those in the NY area, for obvious reasons (most
hardware is made in Asia and imported to the west coast... when an
east-coast vendor other than one of the big warehouses is offering a big
discount, there's a much bigger chance of a catch).
I'd also warn everyone off of Aberdeen, a big-name Computer Shopper vendor
now listing on Pricewatch... they seem to pop up often as a price leader
in my searches, and I'll just say that they used similar tactics back in
the pre-Pricewatch days... Apparently they still manage to be popular (and
maintain a strong presence as a vendor), and they're probably the only
company I've dealt with that maintains a strong professional impression
yet uses bait-and-switch techniques.
-Just a few tips; I hate to see people waste money when it's not necessary
(seen too many home-builders drop a cheap, flaky mainboard into an
expensive case, or spend 3x as much on memory to get a brand name on it)
-Joe "Floid" Kanowitz