I'm gonna come right out and say that Agenda Computing (AC) has a POS customer service section.
Why am I saying this?
Well, I emailed AC at the beginning of the month to tell them that the VR3 unit they gave me became nonfunctional 12 hours after I started using it. They said that they would send me a replacement but that I had to supply them with information (name, shipping address, email address, daytime phone, style of product, and reason for return). I sent them the information, making sure that the shipping address was here, in Japan. They immediately replied back to me and stated that they would "fill this out immediately and send your replacement!"
Well, that was July 7th. Today, 13 July, I got a UPS notification thru email that the replacement VR3 is ONLY NOW being shipped. That doesn't sound like "immediately" to me. I further looked at the notification and found that Agenda had used my old purchase order to ship to THAT address instead of the address I requested.
OK.
Now, there's a problem here. Their website states they won't ship to APO/FPO (military abroad) addresses. The first time I ordered, I had to have Agenda ship to my parents' home...they live in North Carolina. My mom then sent me the unit, insuring it. When I received the unit, 11 days had passed from the time my mother shipped it. It took 2 days for UPS to ship it to my mother. That's 13 days.
OK...you still with me?
Now, I felt that since the first unit was defective, Agenda should go out of their way and ship directly to me in Japan. I asked them and they said they would ship it immediately. I didn't clarify the issue since it seemed they were in agreement. Remember, I received a faulty unit from their company. They sent the replacement unit to an address I didn't specify, which would seem not to be ethical becaue it would seem that they don't want to incur shipping charges. That's not my problem, it's theirs, since they sent me a VR3 that didn't work. To appease me, they should have sent another unit DIRECTLY to me. Any other company would do this, fledgling company or not.
They went out of their way to deceive me and I'm very angry.
Why? Because, now I have to have my mother ship ANOTHER package, with me incurring shipping fees. She's spending her money to send me a package that Agenda should have sent me directly...and I have to reimburse her. Also, I now have to wait approximately 13 days to receive this replacement unit, and since they didn't send the unit immediately as they stated and actually sent it seven days later, that 13 days has balloned to 20 days since I talked to them.
Also, in my initial order, I purchased an RS-232 cable. This wasn't inside the packaging when I opened the box after the package was delivered to me. I emailed them about this and didn't receive a reply. I then went to their mailing list archives and had to hunt down information on this cabling...I found that the cabling isn't yet shipping and when they are ready, AC will ship it out. Hrrrmm. Their website doesn't state that fact. They have my money, I have no cabling that I purchased, yet when they ship out the cabling, guess what? It'll be going to my parents' home again because that's where the original order's shipping address is. That doesn't seem fair at all. If they had posted on their website that the cabling wouldn't be shipping anytime soon, I wouldn't have ordered it and wouldn't be having to face yet MORE shipping charges. I was expecting them to ship everything in ONE package, especially since my mother would be shipping it to me from her home (with me having to reimburse her).
AC is really screwing up. I've given them my time, my money and my patience, but I'm no longer going to publicly support them. They don't seem to be trying hard enough to please their customers and the last straw was the bit of deceiving they did when they implied that they would send the replacement unit directly to me instead of the continental U.S.
Therefore, I'm on a bit of a vendetta. I'm going to be posting on every forum I currently have access to. I'm going to be sending this information to magazines and Linux lists. I'm going to be proactive in getting the word out that AC doesn't value their customers and instead plays word games with their email replies. It's not war, but if AC won't treat their customers right, I'm warning all of their potential customers. It doesn't feel all that good getting the runaround from AC and I'm betting others would feel the same if they were in my shoes, so I'm gonna try to prevent them from getting into my shoes by showing them my Agenda experience.
I'm tired of this mess and should have either saved my money for the upcoming Sharp Linux PDA or spent it on an Ipaq. This isn't a usual rant of mine. I sometimes whine but this situation is beyond the norm for me.
They WON'T be getting my money again.