Blogs - DarKWerX

A further update to the 3770k drop ship order via Tiger Direct...

Apparently, no one, not one single person at Tiger Direct even bothered to check inventory @ Intel before placing the special order in the first place. 3 additional customer service reps, and a supervisor I've spoken to twice @ TD also failed in their guarantees that they would follow up with Intel, & let me know of the status by the following day.

After being on hold via phone for an additional 2 1/2 hours over the past 2 days, I finally got a genuine human on the phone. To which they finally admitted that Intel had no stock (& obviously won't have again, since the 3770k is EOL), for which they have kept me hanging for 3 1/2 weeks with my funds in pre-authorization limbo, for no apparent reason.

The burning question in my mind is; why in the ever living F*** didn't any of these people do their job to begin with?!? With that firmly in mind, you can bet that it will be a frosty day in the lowest depths of hell before they get any further business from me, or recommendations that anyone else do business with them.

Well, that's the breaking point for this saga. I won't patronize anything Fleabay or Paypal, due to their ripping off of sellers a few years ago (the rate hike on seller fees, and charging that same percentage on the shipping charges as well). Between that, and the only people in the U.S. having a 3570k or 3770k currently, are all on Amazon, 3rd party sellers with prices well above MSRP. Or used at just below MSRP. There wasn't any other viable choice left, so I dropped the money on a cheap used dual core just so I can get back into my personal accounts. Probably going to part the damned thing out as soon as I do too.

If anyone needs a fresh from RMA replacement Asrock z77e-itx motherboard for their home theater pc, let me know...

This is going to be an ear burning rant, so be advised & take precautions. :D

So after an extended RMA process with AsRock on my Z77e-itx board, being finally approved & replaced, I found that my almost golden 3570k (4.9 Ghz under custom water cooling) was dead as well. This is amusing in a dark way, seeing as I'd been running it at stock speeds since being relegated to my HTPC, when I had acquired my 4930.

In the words of the immortal HTPC, blessed is the silence. :)

Well crap. So, I went looking for a replacement, seeing as how that computer contains every, everything, since wiping my 4930X rig & selling it. Then the fun began... /sarc

First I found a single solitary 3770k @ a place that was not full of Amazon marketplace ripoff's, errr... sellers, on NCIX.us. I emailed support, inquiring as to whether the one that they showed in stock (at MSRP price no less, for a 3 yr. old cpu) @ their Washington warehouse was actually in stock, or a phantom in the inventory, since there was no add-to-cart button. Alice A. replied, and assured me that it was in stock, and further that it had been put on hold for me to order. I contacted her again after payday, and informed her of the issue of the product page ordering being disabled, and placed the order over the phone.

Apparently, everything she told me was a lie. After the order, suddenly I get an email stating my billing info doesn't match. I called my issuing card company, verified everything, and called her back. Busy, said another sales rep, so I left a message. She never returned the call. I called & emailed again the next day, nothing but the same unprofesional sales rep I spoke to before being shunted to voicemail the day prior, who promised Alice would return my call. Again, she didn't. Nor email either. 2 more emails, 2 hours on hold further, and still nothing over the next few days.

I can only conclude that Alice lied. The inventory was never checked as requested, the cpu wasn't actually in stock, and this was the typical brushoff customers get from dishonest sales people. I've purchased 3 cases, 2 gpu's, a motherboard, and some assorted odds & ends from NCIX prior to. I cannot recommend anyone to do business with them, based on my experiences with them in recent times. Seriously, just go elsewhere if you value customer service.

So after a week of these games from NCIX, and Alice A. Prolly stands for A-hole from what I can gather, I then found one that didn't come up in search results at Tiger Direct. YAY! \0/

Except, nope.

It's been on order since the 23rd of last month. No indication on their product page that it was not in stock. After completing the order, the email confirmation of the order arrives. No indication of anything awry, pre-auth went through ofc (e.g. Alice can suck it, lying about addy verification to cover her other lies. Really, TD says no problem to the same addy... Pathological liar working for NCIX, who'd have thunk it).

However, I didn't get an invoice from Tiger. Stopped in and checked my account @ TD at lunch the following day, and again after 10pm (Tiger Direct is in my home state). Nothing. No problem, patience is a virtue. The following evening, site showing that the item is being drop shipped. Ok, that explains the delay (once upon a time during a recession after being laid off, I worked for a large mail order/etailer/brick & mortar co, I know what drop shipments are like, intimately).

A couple days later, still no invoice. So I called...and sat on hold for an hour and a half. While on hold, I emailed them with a query. The email, they didn't even respond for 2 *business* days. I called again the next morning, finally reaching someone, Carlos. He assured me he would look into it, and email me when he found out what was up. 3 days later, no reply. I called again on the 4th day after speaking with Carlos, speaking with a lady of Indian or Pakistani decent (I didn't catch her name, I'm good with accents, but was caught off guard with the phone on speaker after being on hold for 48 minutes, and the speaker distorted when she initially spoke. I got the same assuaging answer, that it would be looked into, and emailed back with an answer. 4 days after, still nothing.

6 more calls, 5 more hours on hold. Couldn't even get anyone to answer the phone. Now, after 3 weeks (order placed on the 23rd June), I'm starting to get angry. Really angry, like thermonuclear levels of pissed off at being put off, and the simple task of following up on a customers order request fumbled or just plain ignored, a customer who's money you have locked in a pre-auth, and has been for weeks. One last call will take place in the morning, and this time, I am not going to be nice. Someone's ears are going to be burned off with the rushing stream of invectives that I will invoke if I do not get a satisfaction one way or the other.

...one way or the other. Filing a dispute w/ my cc holder, is going to be the first order of business.

Second, I am advising that no one do business w/ TigerDirect.com. There is a reason they're going under, and closing their physical store fronts "to focus on online sales". Yeah, they need to focus on online sales, because this one is going completely unacceptable with a quickness.

Third, BBB complaint.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am beyond jaded with these crappy companies. Anyone feel like crowd funding a real business that cares about customer service? Because, f these other guys.

Well, it's looking like that's all she wrote for my HTPC's 3570k. Just received my z77e-itx back from AsRock as of this afternoon, and she's still afflicted by the exact same problem as prior to sending it in for RMA, even after AsRock replaced it with a new mobo. No video output from either the igpu, nor any of my 3 [verified working] dgpu's in BIOS.

Pulling the 295X2 & dropping my 270X Toxic in the slot, it has only 2 led's illuminated on the power phase led's on the backside of the pcb. Same as prior to the RMA. Tested with 2 different psu's, per stick/slot of ram, swapped ram entirely, no change.

It's looking like it's time to contact Intel, and dig around to see if I can find the hard copy of the invoice from 2 1/2 years ago (if not, I'm surely screwed, I think). For sure, I am certainly not paying those obtusely high prices those a**hats are demanding on Amazon for a nearly 3 yr. old cpu. Seriously, $308-$519 for a 3570k *new*, & $498-$900 for a *new* 3770k?!?

Think I'm kidding? I only wish I was.

http //www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007SZ0EOW/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1434509565&sr=8-1&keywords=i7+3770k&c>

http //www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007SZ0E1K/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1434509594&sr=8-1&keywords=i5+3750k&c>

I can get an i7 5820, 16Gb of DDR4, AND A motherboard for less than some of those jerks are asking for a 3770k. I think I paid $235 for my 3570k to begin with! That sort of behavior will make you feel completely justified in wishing HerpeGonnoSyphilAids + colon cancer on someone. And yeah, I hope they do...