I mentioned in a previous post that I was planning another customer services rant and here it comes.
A few weeks ago I decided to buy a new server from SCAN Computers. Let me start by saying I’ve used SCAN lots of times in the past for components and they’ve always been great. That’s one of the reasons I decided to use them for a pre-built system. I picked the relevant configuration (2x Xeon quad, 24G RAM, 6 Hard drives etc.) and paid my cash. What followed left me with a rather bad taste in my mouth…
- When I ordered the kit I was given an estimated delivery date of 2 days. I realized this was a rubbish automated message, but I later received a mail to say they were busy and couldn’t start the build for another week.
- After some more time, I was contacted and told they couldn’t start the build for a little longer because they were waiting for Intel to deliver the server motherboard and chassis.
- Once the build started I received an email as it passed each checkpoint. Once the build was complete it went into QA, then I received no more notifications.
- After 7 days I got pissed off and phoned them to ask what was going on. I was then told the build had failed QA and they were trying to rectify the issue in conjunction with Intel.
- After a few more days I was contacted and told they couldn’t get all the hard drives I ordered. I agreed to have it delivered with just 5 hard drives, rather than wait an unspecified time for the missing disk to arrive.
- The refund for the missing hard drive has still not arrived at my bank.
- The next email I got was telling me the server had failed to be delivered because they couldn’t get hold of me. Admittedly, my account had an incorrect mobile number on it, but the land line number was correct. I received no calls on the land line on the days when they allegedly tried to call. They also didn’t attempt the delivery without contact, even though the address on my account was correct and I was in on the day in question.
- The delivery was finally made 5 days after the first “failed” delivery.
- I opened the box and found there was no DVD drive installed. I phoned SCAN to ask what was going on. It seems the option “Use DVD Writer included in chassis”, actually means, “No DVD Writer installed”. I kicked up a fuss about this and was sent a DVD drive for free, which I had to install myself. The DVD drive came the next day, along with a data cable, but there was no converter cable for the power, so I had to go out an buy one.
- The lack of a DVD drive didn’t stop me starting to use the server. I just did a network installation of Fedora 14. In doing so, I noticed the RAID configuration was incorrect. I asked for a RAID 1 system disk and all the other disks just to be left alone. Instead the additional disks were in a RAID 0 set. It took me quite a while and a couple of phone calls to realize that in order to access the RAID configuration, the BIOS had to be switched out of silent boot.
So it’s just short of 2 months down the line, lots of phone calls and a refund for a missing disk still outstanding…
I would like to mention the server itself is awesome and the individuals I dealt with in customer service were nice enough, but the whole process has aged me. When you are sitting in the SCAN phone queue the hold music tells you that you’re a valued customer and SCAN are transparent and aim to provided the best customer experience possible. I think not…
Would I recommend them? From a kit perspective they are cool. You can choose the components you want (within reason) and it has been put together and cabled well. Unfortunately, the kit is only part of the issue. The whole experience has been really poor…
Cheers
Tim…