Andrew's Stuff

Here we go again. It appears that Ebuyer have taken a leaf out of Microsoft's book, with regard to sucking.

Last Saturday I spent far too much money buying new computer components and stuff and, in order to make sure that they were delivered on a day that I wouldn't be at uni, I selected "Priority" shipping - Wednesday 22nd November. For reasons known only to themselves, Ebuyer split my order and decided to dispatch it from two different warehouses. That, in itself, is no problem - it should still all arrive on the same day, just in even more boxes than if it was sent from one location. The problem is that warehouse #2 appears to be totally and utterly incompetant. I would go so far as to say braindead.

Very quickly after placing the order - maybe Sunday, maybe Monday, I can't remember exactly - the two items from Warehouse 2 (a new 400GB SATAII hard disk and a KVM switch) had their status changed to "Allocated". This, according to Ebuyer, means not a lot. That part of the order carries an exciting message of "This is an internal shipment from a supplier warehouse into an Ebuyer warehouse.", and their help pages for the "Allocated" status indicate that this means "We have sourced your order line(s) and depending on the order status we should be shortly passing this order on to our warehouses for dispatch". It gives the impression that they're ordering in these items before dispatching them to me, which is stupid because according to their own site they have over 40 of the hard disk (over 50 when I ordered) and over 200 of the KVM in stock with both "usually shipping within 24 hours".

On Tuesday I received an email from them at 10:30am to say that the rest of the order had been dispatched - which was fair enough, since things get dispatched the day before delivery. However I am informed not long later that the items which had just been dispatched had just been delivered - a mere fourty minutes after receiving notice of their dispatch! Upon closer inspection of the tracking section of City Link's Web site it was easy to see that they had actually been dispatched on Monday evening, but Ebuyer were slow to inform me. No big deal - it arrived a day early, but it was delivered. That was the good part.

By the end of Tuesday I had received no email regarding the dispatch of the remaining two items. This was not totally unexpected, considering the delay on the first dispatch email. However as Wednesday wore on I grew increasingly suspicious, and by the end of the day still nothing had arrived.

So I'm slightly annoyed at this point. I was planning to have my new system set up on Wednesday, then install the XP Pro 64-bit Edition disc I had downloaded from MSDNAA and leave me with only the problems of finding 64-bit drivers. Trouble is that I wanted to install it on the new hard disk, which had yet to arrive. I have no intention of installing XP on one of my current disks, then doing it again a few days later when the new one arrives. Besides, the whole point of getting a new disk is that the existing ones are starting to fill up. I couldn't very easily blank a hard disk for a fresh install as I have nowhere to put the data it contains. (Also the new motherboard has Intel's P965 chipset which flat-out refuses to support PATA disks, so the motherboard only has a single PATA socket, which isn't even controlled by the chipset, so getting a SATA disk sounded like a good idea.

So, frustrated, I go to raise an enote on Ebuyer's site asking them where my stuff is. Then I see the note that they have posted on the enote section, informing their customers that they're currently experiencing "1-2 day delays" on some "1 and 3 day delivery orders". My order was a "2 day" order (i.e. delivered 2 working days after I ordered it) so that doesn't really apply to me, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that my order may also have fallen into their batch of 1-2 day delays. Fine; I wait 2 days... Thursday evening comes along, and still no dispatch email, so I sent them an enote asking what has happened to it. "We will endeavour to answer your request within 7 days!" they proclaim. Oh good! If they choose to take the full 7 days to reply I jolly well hope that my stuff has actually arrived by then, which would make them replying essentially useless. Though I asked if they would refund any of my delivery payment, since I had paid extra (only a couple of quid extra, and most of my stuff arrived "on time", but it's the principle of the thing), so not entirely useless.

Friday passes - it's approximately 22:00 on Friday as I write this - and still no sign of anything happening with the order. The two items in question are still stuck with the vague-and-apparently-meaningless "Allocated" status, I'm still void of SATA hard disks and Ebuyer might not even bother replying to me until next Thursday.

Oh well, things could be worse. I read on the Ebuyer forums earlier that some guy bought a £200 graphics card from Ebuyer, but then City Link delivered it to the wrong part of his university accommodation: Ebuyer are claiming it's City Link's problem (and fair enough, really), City Link are claiming that because someone signed for the package it's out of their control so he should contact the police and report his order as being stolen. Rather him than me, I can tell you that much; though I came dangerously close to losing an £80 Ebuyer order thanks to the incompetancy of my university's accommodation staff last year.

/rant.

Oh yes, and why do all my best friends disappear at the same time?! I haven't seen one since Wednesday evening, another since Thursday morning and now yet another is going to be busy for the rest of the weekend. Woo! :P

Edit: And also I've fixed a small bug in the comment submission so that if there are errors in your attempted submission you actually get informed of them, rather than having your browser complain about JavaScript errors. Oops :P