June 2007 - Posts
For those who never read the related post, go here, and then perhaps you will start to understand why right now my blood pressure is through the roof .....
The saga continues;
Not wanting to wait until next week to have this resolve I decided to drive out to offices of digitalplanet in Sandton and collect the correct product myself.
Upon return to the office I opened up the packaging and opened the case to reveal a Western Digital WD1200UE drive. A quick look at Western Digital's website shows that this drive is in fact a 5400RPM and NOT a 7200RPM drive as specified on the digitalplanet website!
Well now................
Remembering that Cipherwave is a local product, www.cipherwave.co.za, I went to go look at their specs for the unit. True as nuts it also states 7200RPM!
http://www.cipherwave.co.za/cw/content/index.cfm?navID=1&itemID=5 (go look quick as I suspect this will be changing shortly, or the site will miraculously cease to exist; in which case I have a pdf of the page captured which I will upload here)
WTF!?!?!
A call to the company and a discussion with the product manager ensues and blah blah this and blah blah that he finally admitts that the information on their website is inaccurate and that a 120Gig 7200RPM drive does not exist. This after trying to make out that the information on their website has been compromised; like somebody would take the time to sit and hack a purely informational site where there are far juicer conquests out there ...
So now what?
Is this just a simple mistake ....
Hmmmm, not so sure. It sure smacks to me of trying to take the consumer for a ride.
How do I sue for false advertising?
Surely this is illegal business practise?
It makes my blood boil that we as consumers get taken for a ride day in and day out in South Africa and there appears to be nothing we can do about it! We just are expected to time after time put away the vaseline and smile as we're taken advantage of over and over again!
... and quite frankly should stay there and leave people on earth to go about doing business without them.
What a bunch of complete and utter useless idiots!
No wonder online shopping in South Africa is struggling to gain the popularity that it enjoys in "technology" savy countries around the world.
I ordered a product. Cipherwave 2.5" external HDD, from them on the 1st of June. When ordering there was no warning or indication that they had no stock and that my order would be placed on back-order. Therefore imagine my surprised when I called them 4 days later to find out that in fact they didn't have and I would have to wait until they got stock. Fabulous!
Then I get a call from a very proud and happy sounding employee of the zoo stating that they in fact did have stock and would be shipping my product that day. That day and the next came and went and still no product arrived. So I called them again and this time they told me that my delivery address was a "bad" address. Imagine my confusion when sitting at my desk at that very address knowing I drive to it every morning. Also knowing that Mr Delivery and Scooters and various other companies have been able to deliver to the SAME address countless times before without any hassles. So I polietely and patiently requested that they re-dispatch the item ... This was yesterday afternoon at about 13:00. "Sure, we can do that sir but only on Monday morning". What, don't you work on Thurs afternoons or on Fridays at all? No, the reason was that the item was, and I quote, "too big to ship overnight". The item is a 2.5" external HDD! Sure we might be imperially challenged and not understand that 2.5" is 6.5 cms (Thanks to Google converter) After much screaming and shouting and management intervention I was promised that I would have the item today, Fri 8 June.
Much to my surprise the courier guys walked into the office a few minutes ago (funny how a bad address can become good overnight) to deliver my tiny package measuring no more than 15cm X 20cm in size and weighing hardly anything. So I signed, they left, ripped open the package only to find they HAD SHIPPED THE WRONG FREAKING PRODUCT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They shipped a WD Passport. Looking at the invoice, I have been invoiced for the correct product, looking at the product in my hand i have the wrong item.
So I called again. No surprises for guessing that my tone was a little less than friendly this time around.
"Um, sorry sir" was the reply. "Don't know how that happened". I know, it's cause you people don't have a clue!
"The device is the same spec as the one you ordered sir" Um, no it is not!
The Cipherwave:
Rotational Speed 7,200 RPM (nominal)
Average Latency 4.20 ms (nominal)
Read Seek Time (Average) 8.9 ms
The WD Passport:
Rotational Speed 5,400 RPM (nominal)
Average Latency 5.50 ms (nominal)
Read Seek Time 12.0 ms
Rather crucial differences I'd say. I don't care that the one the shipped me in fact costs more, so I should consider it an "upgrade". If I had wanted a slow 5400RPM driver I would have ordered one. I specifically wanted a 7200RPM drive because performance for me was paramount.
So now they have to send the courier company back to collect, which can only happen on Monday (best case scenario). Then once they have the product back I can apply for a refund which knowing their fantastic unbelievable service record will take another week!
So please .... i beg of you .... if you want to buy something online do not consider these moronic idiots! Rather use a store like www.jump.co.za or http://www.computersonly.co.za/ as these guys actually have a clue.
I am sure you have all at least heard of ReSharper from Jetbrains and perhaps like me you figured what's the big deal .... Why should I go buy yet another Visual Studio plugin that does what Visual Studio already does out of the box .....
Well lemme tell you a story ....
It all started the other day when I had the "privelage" of doing some peer development. I sat and watched (and added input every now and then :P) and was amazed at what I saw. With a few simple keystrokes I couldn't quite recognise stuff magically appeared, dissapeared, and moved around. How the heck did you do that? And that? Wow, that was cool, do that again ..... Turns out he was using ReSharper and using it properly. Turns out that ReSharper is much more than just a little tool which adds extra colour to your already colourful code. So he gave me a quick re-introduction to the tool and sent me over to this blog post, 31 Days of ReSharper, by Joe White's blog. Here Joe spends 31 days getting to know the product very intimately and discovers some of the really cool features of this amazing tool.
I like to have my machine as clean as possible and find that when you have this tool for this, and that tool for that ultimately good ole Windows starts to complain and things get slower and slower leading up to the inevitable blue screen of death, or the equally painful hair ripping out sessions I have done all too often (and my baldness is testament to that. Now here is a tool that replaces multiple other tools in one neat, configurable, concise and easy to use manner.
Well worth the $149 .....
I see 3.0 Beta has launched, and if you purchase the current version now they will offer free upgrade to v3.0 when it launches ....
Watch this space for some more once I've used it a bit in everyday life.
