So far not so good with XoticPC

Recently purchased a Sager 8657 (P650RE3) from XoticPC on November 5th and the buying experience was rather easy on their website, everything is well laid out.

Soon after making my purchase I decided I no longer wanted the Sager and found something else I wanted. I read and understood that once an item moves from Phase 0 to Phase 1 that I was subjected to a 3%. It was only 30-40 minutes after placing my order did I send in a cancellation request via- their form. 2-3 hours later Megan M @ XoticPC e-mail's me and tells me my order has moved to Phase 1. I then came to contact to Pat about the 3% fee. I asked him if they could waive the fee since no one got back to me or canceled my order 2-3 hours ago when I asked them to. I also couldn't connect to their chat on their website. The wait time just kept looping and then said something along the lines of "error connecting to chat".

Pat tells me I will have to pay the 3% and he cannot waive it because the build has gone to Phase 1. I at the time didn't feel like it was my fault since I tried my very best to get back with them about my cancellation to try and avoid the fee. 2-3 hours later, my order still went ahead and proceeded to Phase 1. I told Pat I didn't feel like I was at fault but he said he couldn't do anything so I said whatever then, I will take the laptop still but would like to make a quick adjustment to the order if it would be okay. Pat told me that's perfectly fine so I asked him if both ram and HDD could be removed to reduce the cost. He said yes to the hdd and no to the ram and will forward my request to whoever will be building my laptop. I told him thanks and will wait for my laptop. This ends here as far as my cancellation experience goes with them.

Laptop ships out on November 6th and I receive it on the 12th. Scheduled delivery was the 11th but I wouldn't be available to sign for it so decided to have it held at UPS CC for pick-up. I go pick it up on the 12th and was pretty damn excited to get home, pop in my SSD and get'er going. I take the laptop out of the box and did a quick visual inspection. I noticed that an HDD is installed right away by seeing it through the cooling vent for the HDD's. I guess my request never went through even at Phase 1. I requested no HDD be included when I talked to Pat about the 3% fee... Sooo whatever, I get over it and told myself I will talk to Pat about it later. Instead of throwing in my SSD in first I simply turned it on to see if it even booted.

To my surprise just about every corner had back light bleeding. This did come with the 4K G-Sync option as well. The most severe was the bottom left and it was simply too much for me. When I gently grab the lid to close the laptop I see distortion on the LCD as if I was pinching it aggressively but I wasn't. Thinking about long term use, this was a big no no for me. I quickly clean it up, wipe it down to get rid of my fingerprints and package the laptop back up and contacted Pat again. He told me to send an email to their Service department so I did along with a video showing the back light bleed. I sent the e-Mail on Thursday and had hoped that they got back to me on Friday but all day on Friday was quiet which is fine with me, I am patient and have no issues waiting as long as I know I am being taken care of. I however wanted to go ahead and keep this open/updated until I get this all sorted out. I've seen to many bad reviews on XoticPC and long wait times on refunds.

ALSO, I am not nit picky and not a perfectionist.. I have 3-4 monitors around the house on various computers and all have back light bleeding. However the back-light bleeding is passable on those monitors. The back light bleeding on the Sager was just horrendous.

Pat if you read this, let me know so I can send you a video or a few pictures showing the back light bleed.

Dates for record keeping, I just want to keep track as to how long this whole process takes.

11/12/2015 - I send an email stating the flaw of the system and request a refund.
11/16/2015 - I get an email from Barry H, filled out a return form, serial number and all that jazz etc etc.
11/17/2015 - I got with customer support, Barry H tells me my RMA has been processed and will need 24-48 hours before he will get back to me with further instructions.
11/18/2015 - Received RMA #, laptop shipped back to XoticPC.
11/19/2015 - In Transit.
11/20/2015 - In Transit.
11/23/2015 - Laptop return showed as Delivered and Signed for.
11/24/2015 - Messaged received from Barry H on laptop arrival.
11/25/2015 - Nothing.
11/27/2015 - Nothing.
11/30/2015 -

 

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear about the issues with your PC. I believe the reason yours went into Phase 1 so quickly was because of a paypal payment and the fact that paypal handles the payment processing as long as the addresses match. When addresses match on paypal payments under 3k we typically just move them straight into production as you have already selected to pay with your payment method and the money has already been sent. The reason for the cancellation fee is because of processing fee's that we get charged when doing a refund and therefore the reason why we have to charge it once an order has entered phase 1. All change/cancellation requests take 24-48 hours to be received and processed, i'm very sorry that this caused an issue with your order. We try to allow order changes as a courtesy to our customers and do everything that we can to get them processed as quickly as possible. I'm sorry this one had issues.

Since you have been working with Pat already i am going to follow up with him in regards to this transaction and see where we are at. I will get our service team followed up with you as quickly as possible, if the request was sent in thursday to the [email protected] inbox they are probably still working on addressing the issue. Again these typically take 24-48 hours to reply to and we do everything possible to try to stay in those time estimates, sounds like today would be the 48 hour mark so i will make sure it is on their radar.

Again i'm very sorry for the issues and we want to do everything possible to take care of this situation. I'm glad the order went so quick for you but sorry that the screen is not working out on that model. I'm sure Pat has it as well but if you PM me your order number I will start taking a look into it as well.

 

I got an email earlier today from Barry H and filled out the short form he told me to.

I now have to eat the shipping fee as well for some reason? I understand the free shipping was from a coupon/code on your website but come on man... Are you guys serious? At this point I really just want to get this solved as fast as possible. I have funds tied up and need it back in possession soon so I can have a mobile computing device in which I desperately need. I appreciate the fast production/shipping times but this will probably be my last purchase from XoticPC.

I've PM'd you my order number.

 

Glad Barry got ahold of you today

I'm sorry for the issues again. Keep in mind that anything dealing with the RMA processes would be solely on Sager and while we have sway with them, we have to follow their policies for RMA's. We just act as a middle man for you and try to do everything possible to get it taken care of.

Typically if you send in for a repair they would not charge shipping, if you are wanting just a refund then you would likely be responsible for shipping charges. I will check with the service team to see if there is anything that we can do to help you out.

Again we are just going through Sager's RMA process so anywhere you purchase a Sager from would have the same policies as what we are going by.

 

It's fine.

I was already shot down when I asked for the 3% to be waived so I highly doubt "sager" would let me slide on the shipping cost. I am willing to pay for it just as long as I get taken care of in a timely manner. I've read a few stories about people waiting up to months for refunds and do not want to have to experience such a refund procedure. Again, I won't be dealing with XoticPC in the future so to make it fast i'll take the fees if that helps.

 

Ok i understand. Again if you'd like to get it repaired (screen swapped out) we'd be happy to do that with no cost.

We will get it taken care of as quickly as possible.

 

A refund is fine. Waiting on a RMA number or shipping information so I can send it back, thanks.

 

I came to start a new thread, but this one already captures so much of what I was going to complain about. I also placed an order with XoticPC for a Sager NP8658-S (Clevo P650RG) on 11/5, which went into Phase 1 the following day. It turned out that the 4K screen I wanted was backordered for an additional week and that I probably would not get the laptop in-hand by the time I needed it, so I decided to cancel my order and get a refund. That was six days ago. My cancellation still has not been processed and the customer service rep who was so responsive at first has not responded to an email since I told her I wanted to cancel my order. Right now my order is still in Phase 1, with no indication that anything will change. I was told that the cancellation would take 48 hours to process, I'd really like my money back. I was really looking forward to getting a laptop through Xotic, and by no fault of theirs did things not work out, but this experience is really putting me off of ever coming back to them.

 

I touched upon this in another thread. I've bought several machines from a Clevo vendor, and while quotes from their sales department and questions regarding my build were always answered promptly, the one time I did cancel an order took several days and I ended up having to call their accounting department TWICE to get my refund processed. Emails went unanswered. The rep I talked to on the phone promised to look into it and get back to me, but never did, hence why I called back a second time. I wasn't impressed.

Companies are generally extremely eager (they want your dollars). Once they have them, this eagerness mysteriously dissipates. Any sales-related queries I sent were very promptly answered, but any support/return emails? Nothing.

XoticPC is not the only company to exhibit this behaviour unfortunately.

 

It is very disappointing. I had never purchased a Clevo/Sager before, and the biggest apprehension I had was customer service if something went wrong, as there would be no physical location for me to return/exchange my laptop. I have not even received my laptop, and already this fear seems to be validated. On the other hand, I just went and picked up a new Dell XPS from Best Buy (since I am on a time constraint for a new laptop), and they will let me return it until the new year, no questions asked, for a full refund. It's hard to beat that, even if they have an inferior selection of laptops.

 

I completely understand this. It's why I shop at Costco. Sure, they're not always cheaper, but I can return anything, any time, no questions asked. Years after I even bought it sometimes. And the warranty/support/return service is every bit as prompt and efficient as the sales service.

Same thing (usually) with Dell/Alienware. I returned a Inspiron I had recently bought. Took all of 5 minutes from the time I opened the chat request to the time I had been emailed the return shipping label.

 

Im glad you guys chimed in. I honestly wish XoticPC takes note of how often this happens. Hitting the back button, a quick skim and I can pick out a few threads with the word XoticC on the title without trying to look very hard. All of which are complaints and again all of them include how poor refund process times were.

Its almost the end of my day here at work and still no email from Barry. I replied to Barry yesterday and in total received two messages from him. I honestly don't expect much communication being done today either seeing as to how its going. I hope potential buyers read this here thoroughly before consdering making purchase at XoticPC. I would also like to join in on the fast response times when it came to configuring my order. I received replies rather quickly and immediately. So far the return emails i've exchanged has been slowly returned.. real slow. I can understand if they are busy with orders but for the ones needing a refund, they should be in top priority as well. XoticPC would save themselves from a lot of these not so good feedbacks.

 

Yeah, this is what puzzles me about Xotic and other resellers. They sell custom-configured products from other manufacturers (and in the case of Sager, they basically just hand it from them to you), so the only opportunity for them to really differentiate themselves from competitors is quality of service. You would think they would try a little harder then, right? My initial experience with Xotic was so positive, I was considering reordering the Sager in a month and returning my new laptop to Best Buy, so that I could get the machine I originally wanted. Now, I have no plans on going back to Xotic unless they REALLY turn this experience around.

 

Updated OP.

I think it's safe to say I am not getting a reply back from Barry today.

I will try to make contact with them via-email today and see if I can get a reply tomorrow. Thanksgiving being next week and tomorrow being Wednesday, I highly doubt I can get the laptop to them and have my money back in pocket by Black Friday.. This is just all bad... If I don't get anywhere by Friday I am most likely going to initiate a charge back. Maybe that way, I will get their attention that way.

 

I emailed Customer Support and got a reply from Eric F.

After asking about my return and it's whereabouts I got this.

"Found it. Looks like you emailed 23 hours ago, and Barry has not yet reached that point in his queue. He is not ignoring you, he just has a very high number of emails to go through and is answering them oldest first. However, I will flag this one for him, since you replied to it and that reset it to the point where you replied (within the last hour) which means he would not see it until much later."

Barry soon after replied via-email saying that he went ahead and processed my RMA request and from what Eric told me it'll be another 24-48 hours so I guess i'll check back once I get a reply. I can already see this going into December, easily.

 

I believe unless you make certain reseller modifications it doesn't even go to the reseller but comes directly from Sager. They just put the order in. If I'm wrong someone please correct me.

It used to be resellers had a little better price then ordering direct but now it seems Sager is pretty aggressive and I see no savings.

 

It looks like you can order direct from Sagar USA, and they do have seasonal discounts right now:

Here is the one I am looking at, the 9870-S:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/customize.php?productid=957

The drop down for 17", 15", Workstation, GPU all show new models
http://www.sagernotebook.com/home.php

Funny, they come from the factory with IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU, I thought that was an extra cost item?

 

Wait, if you reply to your email it resets it to the end of the queue? That's a terrible system...

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I almost mentioned it to him as well since I thought that was absurd lol. It really just hit me and I had the awkward face like what the hell kind of system is that? I HONESTLY don't think I would have heard back if it wasn't for what I did and that was contacting customer support.

However good news is that I got an RMA # and the address of where to ship my laptop to. Hopefully they don't trying to pull anymore "fees" out of me. The laptop saw maybe 2 hours of on time, IF that. I wiped it clean and it looks like how when I received it so I should be in the clear. Paid for $1500 worth of insurance as well and the laptop should be there Monday.

 

It then seems they just don't invest enough in customer support if Barry is so bogged down with emails.

Again, the biggest differentiating factor between a lot of resellers is the service they provide, since these are all the same built-on Clevo machines (though a few offer options others don't).

In the past, people advocated buying through a reseller rather than directly from Sager because Sager support/service sucked hard.

I buy my machines from Eurocom, and they're a direct Clevo builder like Sager, not a reseller like XoticPC. So my experiences are a little different. But the problem seems to be the same - not enough money invested in customer service.

Keep in mind that people are far more likely to come here to leave negative feedback rather than positive. Kinda like going to a doctor - you only go when you're sick.

I'm sure there are plenty of satisfied customers who simply don't come here to leave feedback. It's just sad that the negative feedback that is left here is very often the same - poor customer service.

 

Hello,

@a15g Glad to hear you got the RMA number. Let me know if you need anything.

@frank_the_bunny Sorry to hear about your issues, i didn't see your post initially but please feel free to reach out to me and I can get things rolling in the right direction. The 4k screens at sager came in last friday I believe, if you already cancelled it would be in with our refunds department, so that wouldn't really matter.

@hmscott the -s versions from Sager include IC diamond, and the 30 day no dead pixel guarantee, this should be the same from all resellers when looking at a -s version.

I understand the frustration around emails resetting the order by replying again. What happens is all your emails are grouped together that are sent to the [email protected] or [email protected]. They do this so that we can see everything that we need as often times we don't get all the information from a single email. However in doing this we always try to reply to the oldest emails first and that can cause issues with regards to multiple replies into one of those boxes prior to receiving it. I know it's not a perfect system as i'm not sure that one exists, but i just wanted to explain it.

We are always trying to get better and do everything we can to help everyone of our customers. If you go to our website today you should see something new, well just about everything. We have been working on a new site for a long time trying to make it easier for our customers to receive the information that they need. hopefully this will be a good step in addressing some of the concerns here.

I do understand that there are a lot of threads on here about us, i think something to keep in mind is people are way more apt to go to a place like this when having issues, rather than when things are going good. We are the largest Sager reseller and also a fairly large MSI reseller and experiencing a period of rapid growth as a small company. You can see every person who works here on our website and everyone does want to do everything possible to ensure that every one of our customers are totally satisfied.

Anyone can always feel free to reach out to me with any concerns regarding Xotic PC and I will take care of it. This is what we consider our differentiator, you aren't dealing with a huge company where you never talk to the same person twice, you get a direct number for a contact here.

Again I do appreciate the feedback and we will continue to work on getting better every day as that is always our goal! Thankyou!

 

I have been emailing my support representative directly, and again, she was great and responsive until I decided to cancel my order. I filled out the cancellation request form last Thursday morning, and just yesterday afternoon, after several unanswered emails, she finally replied to say that JUST NOW was she going to pass this along for processing. I could see past the poor email support if the phone support were any better. I have tried calling Xotic three times since placing my order, nobody has ever answered the phone and I have never gotten a call back.

To top things off,it appears that your new website has swallowed up my account. I can no longer log in, and your system seems to have forgotten my email, so now I can't even check my order status on my own.

As I mentioned before, I needed this laptop by the end of this week, so even though the new panels did get back into stock this past Friday, I could receive no guarantee of delivery by the target date.

 

Try the forgot password link on the new site. They had to convert everything over and the passwords did not carry over.

If you PM me your old order number and email address I should be able to get everything taken care of for you.

Typically Sager builds everything else except the missing part so when the missing part comes in they ship out the same day. We had a bunch of the 8658's with the 4k screen ship out on Friday.

I'm very sorry we missed your call, typically if it rings long enough it would transfer you to a voicemail that then goes into our support email system so we can answer them as quickly as possible. I know this isn't a perfect system as we would much prefer to get to every call that comes in when it comes in as this is always our goal.

Due to the nature of computers we try to stay away from giving guarantee's with regards to delivery dates. The reason being is we could run into problems during QA that then lead to a missed guarantee, that many companies (such as amazon or newegg) wouldn't deal with as they don't actually touch the PC before shipping it.

We always try to do everything possible to fulfill orders as quickly as possible.

If you get me that information I will get it taken care of here and most likely wrapped up by tomorrow or Friday.

 

PM sent. I understand that guarantees cannot be made, and that is totally fine. I had to cancel because I was on a shifting time constraint, and I did not want to risk having my laptop get delivered when I was out of town and sit on my porch for two weeks. I was hoping that I might be able to return my replacement laptop in December and get the Clevo I wanted to begin with, but I really don't know if I would want to go through a reseller again.

 

On a related note, I just want to point out that the customer service issue does not seem to be exclusive to XoticPC. Prior to contacting them for my order, I also reached out to several other resellers and custom builders (Mythlogic, Eurocom, OriginPC, Maingear, and Digital Storm). Only two of them (Mythlogic and OriginPC) ever replied to any of my inquiries.

 

I received your PM and am looking into it. If you would shoot me your email address or name it would help. I'll do what I can with that right now.

FYI the forgot password link should be fixed however it may not show your order in the order history yet. New launch lots of fun things to get straightened out with the developers

We would also never want your new PC sitting on your doorstep All packages require a signature to be successfully delivered thankfully

 

I will let you know if I need anything Alex, thanks.

I see an RMA Status option in my account when logged in but says I have no RMA requests. Could you update that for me so I can get some sort of tracking on it?

 

That's not quite working yet. Previously we used a different back end for RMA than for Sales. Right now they are working on importing over all the sales stuff into the new system and then the RMA stuff will come second unfortunately.

Hopefully we will see that start to work towards the end of the week or so, while i haven't been given a time frame on it yet.

 

I get the feeling that with these smaller vendors, they don't have a dedicated CSR, and one person fills multiple roles. It's really the only way to explain how a sales inquiry (aka money coming in, potentially) would go unanswered.

When your business model is almost entirely based on online sales (digital communication) it boggles my mind that you wouldn't have a top-of-the-line software system to ensure maximum effectiveness and income potential. An email that gets no response is potentially lost revenue.

 

That is probably accurate. It seems that, even with much larger companies, customer service is the first corner to get cut when money needs to be saved. I think upper management tends to be short-sighted and sees money invested in customer support as a diminishing return. But the opposite problem always seems to bite them in the rear: poor service drives away customers faster than good service brings them in. I basically wound up going with Xotic because none of the other vendors seemed interested in taking my money, and those that were simply did not have what I was looking for.

 

<double post, please delete>

 

How do you "actually touch the PC" when it is being shipped directly from Sager to the customer?

 

In some cases, it might be shipped to us before shipping out to the customer. Otherwise, it does go through testing before it leaves Sager as well. I think he was just saying that many places don't have added tests / QA checks, they just ship product as the order comes through.

 

Pat -

I'm not just pointing this out about XoticPC only even though that is this thread's topic since I have come to realize that many of you re-sellers are selling systems that are shipped directly from the manufacturer.

However, on your configurator you provide, the "Xotic PC Difference" which includes: "Extreme QA testing by dedicated technicians | 24-72 Hour stress testing and benchmarking to ensure top performance and stability". (Other re-sellers imply that they are doing similar.)

Unless you are saying that Sager is doing this for you but are not necessarily running those same tests for other re-sellers?

 

Updated OP.

Laptop reached it's destination on Monday so I am just waiting on a refund now

 

Not sure if they were closed Friday but both Wednesday and Friday I have heard nothing from XoticPC. I understand Thursday was Thanksgiving.

 

I'll check in to this in office tomorrow and get you an update on it. Let me know if I can help with anything else as well!

 

Nope, just waiting for my refund and that is all.

 

Since it got sent back to Sager, we are checking in with them right now.

 

Sending you a PM for an update

 

Thanks.

Received word from Pat that I should be receiving a refund here soon so I guess that is that, money hasn't hit my Paypal yet.

 

This needs to go to the top. What a joke company.