Attn: XoticPC Skinning Team

Hi.

You hopefully have been working on skinning a Sager NP9130 since July 30th. I hope that this has been a wonderful experience in showing your true craftsmanship. Now has come the time that I politely ask you to respond to Derek on the other side of the XoticPC building so that he can relay information of why it's taking so long.

Thanks for your patience with me as I'm just trying to be patient with clients that I am pushing out deadlines while being without a laptop.

If you have trouble locating the laptop, look for this branding on the back:

View attachment 82402

I really could use this sooner than later. So, please respond to your team member Derek.

Thanks.

 

You try calling them?

Best of luck, and great design!

 

Oh yes, I've talked to them plenty on the phone. Putting things on NBR was an absolute last resort.

Anyways, update on this was I got a call this afternoon from Derek (xoticpc) and he said that the Skinning team had to order the design again after the 1st one they had "wasn't quite right", so they had to do the whole process over again. The biggest issue is that there was NO communication to me, the customer, of what happened and thus keeping me in the dark (and apparently their colleague Derek as well). Communication is key for happy customers and I think that they should reevaluate the decision or the lack thereof for not notifying me of the issue.

Things happen and we're (mostly) all adults. I can handle another week if I know the reason. Pretending it's the "normal" process as usual is not acceptable.

So, hopefully this 2nd round of Skinning goes as planned.

 

COMPLETELY agreed with this thread. The building of the laptop is expected 6-12 days. The skinning is predicted to add a 7-13 days.

The building of the actual laptop for the NP9130 I ordered took well within the estimated time. Hell, it took just the minimum after payment was processed: 6 days.

The skinning has taken FOREVER. Today is the 25th day after payment processing so basically the skinning has taken up all the days that it was predicted to take up as well as the days that the building of the laptop had left over.

I bought this July 19th and expected to receive it before August 25th, when I move into my college dorm. When I saw that the building of the laptop took 6 days (and if I remember correctly, it wasn't even 6 business days), I expected it to get it well in advance.

But now it's already August 23rd, and it hasn't even shipped out yet. XoticPC has been great with the actual building of the laptop, and if I didn't opt to get it skinned, I would have been perfectly happy, probably even beyond expectations.

But the skinning process has just been atrociously prolonged.

 

Unfortunately with the skinning process there are problems that arise that cause those skinning times to go longer. I wish we could predict when those happen but unfortunately they're pretty unpredictable. Once the skin takes to the machine according to our standards, we actually let it set there for a while after to make sure that bubbles don't form underneath it. We understand that our customers want their computers as fast as possible, but when it comes to skinning, it's a process we don't like to skip quality control on. In fact if we could let it sit longer we would. We could put the skins on pretty quick, but there would be a very large and angry customer barreling after us when their skin arrives peeling and bubbling. We want to make sure when the laptop arrives to you it is going to be exactly what you expect of us.

So sometimes the skinning process will take a little longer, keep in mind that all of our production times are subject to testing and are estimated times that we base off an average of what we've seen in the past, but rest assured it'll be quality when it arrives. We do appreciate the patience you both are having. Mastermoo420, if you want to PM your order details, I can take a look into it.

 

I actually don't have enough posts to PM, but I've become satisfied with your reply. The care and attention to quality is much appreciated, and I guess the "estimated production time" are really estimates and I shouldn't have expected them to be set in stone as when to expect the laptop. My only regret now is that I hadn't ordered the laptop sooner, and XoticPC has been good overall with the delivery.

Like others have said, though, it would be good if there was some e-mail that went out if something happened during the skinning process to require a second skinning to at least provide communication between the customer and the skinners.

I even sent an e-mail to verifications in regards to the ETA of my order, but all I got was a vague reply saying that it will "possibly be shipping out this week sometime" - which was information readily known by the predicted delivery date - without anything in regards to my question of if there were any delays with my order (such as a second skinning being required).

Overall, I'm fine with how long the laptop's taking to get to me due to the attention to quality, but I just wish there was better and clearer communication all along the way.

 

I understand and the concerns are duly noted. We do our best to supply you, our customers, with as much information as possible. The reason why we tend to not give specifics is because, as I'm sure everyone here knows, computers and electronics do weird things sometimes. We cannot predict that any better than anybody else. So when we say that's it within standard times that means there is no cause of alarm, updating you with every step along the way or any setbacks that occur would not only have us spending more time updating you with that information rather than fixing the problem, but it would also flood your email with updates as there is a lot of stuff that goes into the building of these units. Getting these things out fast does require a little bit of ambiguity just to let our production team focus on doing what they're here to do, build you awesome laptops! I understand that dropping this kind of money on a machine causes them to become sort of like a child of your own and wanting to know everything that's happening on it, doing that would only slow us down and cause you to be upset once again. Quite the pickle really.

We do our very best to supply you with great machines as fast as possible. It does us no good to cause our customers to wait, just like it does you no good to be waiting. We always do everything we can to stick within the estimates we provide and we definitely do appreciate the understanding our customers tend to share in those situations where the time goes outside of those estimates. It does not go unnoticed. Thank you very much