My Xotic PC Experience, or "How come it never goes smooth?"

"Never goes smooth. How come it never goes smooth?"
-Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds​

A bit of Backstory:
Back in 2010, I purched a laptop from XoticPC, an ASUS G75GW. Everything went fine, laptop was good, and I never spoke to them again. (Didn't have to, never needed warranty work). Well, The old Asus is showing her age, is out of warranty, and I decided to get a new laptop. I decided on a Sager this time.

My chosen Machine:
Sager NP8275-S (Clevo P170SM)

- Display: 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Screen (1920x1080) (SKU - SSC002)
- Dead Pixel Warranty: FREE! - 30 Day No Dead Pixel Warranty
- Processor: Sager - 4th Generation Intel® Haswell Core™ i7-4700MQ (2.4GHz - 3.4GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache) (SKU – SPU201)
- Thermal Compound: FREE! - IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
- Graphics Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 780M (4.0GB) GDDR5 PCI-Express DX11 [User Upgradeable] (SKU – GPU020)
- Ram: 16GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) (SKU - S4S822AP)
- Branding: Remove All Branding
- Exterior Finish - XOTIC PC Custom Painting (Full Chassis): No Custom Laptop Painting
- mSATA SSD Drive - Configuration Option: Non-RAID Storage
- mSATA SSD Drive ( Slot 1 ): 240GB Crucial M5 mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive ( Operating System – Drive C: )
- mSATA SSD Drive ( Slot 2 ): NO mSATA Solid State Drive
- Primary Hard Drive: Remove Primary Hard Drive
- Second Hard Drive: 1TB 7200RPM [SATA II - 3GB/s] (SKU - HDD097)
- Raid: HDD Raid Settings - OFF
- Optical Drive Bay: 6X Blu-Ray Reader + 8X DVDRW/CDRW Super Multi Combo Drive (Sager) (SKU - ODD084)
- Optical Drive Bay Hard Drive Caddy: No Extra Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy
- Wireless Network: Sager - Intel® Dual Band AC 7260 802.11 A/AC/B/G/N 2.4/5.0GHz + Bluetooth™ 4.0 (SKU - WIFI94)
- Wireless Network Accessories: No Network Accessory
- Memory Card Reader: Internal 9-in-1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD/Mini SD/SDHC/SDXC/MS/MS Pro/MS Duo)
- Camera: Integrated Digital Video Camera
- Sound Card: Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio - Included
- Battery: Smart Li-ion Battery (8-Cell)
- Fingerprint Reader: Integrated Fingerprint Reader
- Headsets: No Headset
- Keyboard (Internal - Laptop): Standard Sager/Clevo Non Chiclet Backlit Keyboard
- Operating System: ~Windows 8.1 - 64-Bit (64-Bit CD Included) + MS Office 2013 Trial
- Warranty: Sager 3 Year Parts & LIFETIME Ltd Labor Warranty w/ Lifetime 24/7 DOMESTIC Customer Support - Special! (SKU - WTY097)
- The XOTIC PC Difference: * 24/7 LIFETIME U.S. based technical support
* Extreme QA testing by dedicated technicians
* 24-72 Hour stress testing and benchmarking to ensure top performance and stability
- Build Time: Standard Production Time


So all in all, a nice system. I opted to remove the primary Harddrive (-$80 on Xotics' site), and replace with an mSata 240gb Drive, and upgrade the stock Secondary HD to a 1TB 7200rpm. I wanted to move one of my existing Hard Drives into the new laptop, and since the Sager had the space, seemed like a good idea.

I head over to XoticPC, and engage one of their sales people in chat. It went pretty nicely. I explained what I wanted, he made a couple suggestions, and said I would likely qualify for a returning customer discount.

I place the order, and the next day, I get a phone call confirming my order, and payment. Later, I get an e-mail as well, saying that the discount would be $15. Not a lot, but the margins on computer hardware is *very* tight. So far, pretty happy.

Then another e-mail. I am told: "I just heard back from our Sager distributor about the following HDD removal:
- Primary Hard Drive: Remove Primary Hard Drive (-$80.00)
Typically we do not allow this type of removal however Sager is ok with the removal for $60.00. Basically
I’ll just have to charge you an extra $20.00 for the discount. "

Well, That's odd. XoticPC lists removal of the primary HD at -$80, as does the Sager configuration. So.. It cancels out the discount. Very odd, but I went with it. I probably shouldn't have.

Laptop is assembled, and ships, and I even receive it a day earlier than expected. I power it up, make sure it works, and I'm pretty damned happy! I start to install some software, leaving the SDD fairly empty, as I want to install most of my software on my 1TB drive.

Only it's not there.
I check the BIOS. No options for it.
I pull out the manual, and open up the Hard drive bays. Maybe it came loose in shipping.
Both of the sata Hard drive bays are empty. No Hard drive.
Well, I'm not happy anymore.
I send off an e-mail asking about it, and it gets forward to technical support.
I get a reply the next day, basically asking me to check the BIOS, and if I'm willing to open up the laptop. I reply that I did. No Hard drive.
Next day I call them, asking what's going on. I'm told that there's little anyone can do, as it's in the hands of management for approveal, and I might not hear anything until the HD ships, if approved.

Well.. Now I wait. I have enough space on my SSD to install some games and the like (Glad I got the 240!), and I really do like the laptop.

What I suspect happened, is that someone got communication mixed up, and Sager though I wanted both the primary, and secondary Hard Drives removed, thus the odd 'have to charge $20 for removal of the primary Hard drive'.

So at this point, I'm stuck in 'wait and see' mode to find out when, or if I'll receive the Hard Drive. Hope I get a caddy with it as well.
I'll keep people updated, but right now, my review of XoticPC is 'Good.. But be wary, as pricing may suddenly charge on you'.

 

Hey Shalamar,

Thanks for the input! I'm trying to locate your order as from reading what you've wrote it seems like whoever contacted you has provided you inaccurate information. I want to locate your order though to make sure that I'm understanding the situation better and shed some light to help out if I can. Can you PM your order details so I can take a look into this for you?

 

Hey again, just got done talking to you on the phone but just for resolution of the issue, it was mixed communication on the options that caused the problem. Error was on our end and just again want to apologize. Problem arose due to misunderstanding of the configuration by our processing team in relaying the order over to Sager. I had advised them to go about it a different way but in wrongly communicating the configuration over to Sager wires did get crossed and they misunderstood what the question was we were asking. Not to go into too many boring details but after seeing this I went ahead and kicked as much butt as I could and got your order reviewed, was able to show them where the error lie, and had your payment reviewed to show that we actually even owe you a discount. Looks like they had the HDD slated to ship hopefully today. To get to you should be pretty quick with your location being near Sager. We're getting that payment credit applied back to your card right now.

So again, we do apologize about the mixup and I do hope I was able to get everything resolved satisfactorily for you. Let me know if you run into any other troubles that I can help with. I'll be there to help you out.

 

Thank you very much for your help. I thought that some of this would have been miscommunication. I'll keep my eyes open for the Hard Drive.

 

Not a problem at all. I asked to be provided the tracking info once Sager gets it to us but you'll probably have it by the time they get it to us!

 

And in more amusing news (because I have to laugh) one of the fans in the laptop died, preventing the machine from booting.
Maybe I'll get a new fan, and the Hard Drive at the same time.

 

Oh no! Shoot an email to our service team, they'll be able to get one sent out for you.

 

Shalamar, Did you by any chance try to unplug that fan and plug it back in to see if that had any affect?

Looks like we have a request into Sager for this already

 

Yeah. I did. No Change.

And then I swapped the two fans (They have the same power adapter), and the problem didn't follow the fan... I just sent Tech Support an E-mail explaining that.

 

Good news!

The missing Hard Drive will arrive on Monday!

Bad News!

The Laptop is being sent back to Sager for repairs!

I have to say that XoticPC has been helpful during all of this.

 

You betcha! Does us no good if you're not happy with the machine. We'll always be looking to make things right. Sorry that it ended up having to be sent back in though!

 

The Hard Drive arrived.
Thank you very much for the assistance. I'll keep you updated on the status of the Laptop itself.. I imagine I should have it back in a couple weeks.

I just think I have bad luck with Sagers.