Do yourself a favor and don't buy at Plonter.
It's not that they're not cheap, it's their service that sucks. More than
sucks - they just don't give a damn about their customers.
I can give you more than enough sad stories from former Plonter loyal
customers that will even make Excelnet blush. I personally had 3-4 bad
experiences with them until I decided to go find myself a better online
hardware store (not an easy quest, BTW. It seems that Israeli stores do not
think that customer satisfaction is worth the trouble).
Let me tell you what you can expect if you order from Plonter:
You'll see a modem. It will be cheap, and just what you wanted. You'll order
it. After a week, you'll try to call them and ask them what's happening with
your order - it will be impossible to reach them. After a few days of
trying, you'll reach them and they'll tell you that they're very sorry, but
that specific model is not available in stock, and that you should order
another one. You'll ask them 'what do you recommend? Can you recommend me
something that actually *is* in stock?' they'll tell you to go to their
Internet site and order there.
You'll repeat the process, this time with another modem. You'll receive
(after about 7-10 days) a PCI modem that is a winmodem - it won't work with
Linux.
You'll call them and ask 'why did you send this? I specifically asked for a
controller based modem' and they'll say 'that's the only thing we have in
stock'. And so a month will go by and you're back in square one - without a
modem, but after wasted days of futile phone calls and e-mails.
The above story (with minor variations) happened to me *personally* twice
with Plonter (I had other bad experiences with them, but that's for another
occasion). I heard countless stories from several of my friends whom I
(mistakenly) persuaded to buy at Plonter's. I still have some of their
e-mails if anybody needs further proof.
What really makes me mad, is that I tried other online stores and they were
mostly the same (Peanuts.co.il, for example, is a real Plonter lookalike
when it comes to customer service).
I did have a good experience with omc (www.omc.co.il) and zozobuy
(www.zozobuy.com). Not a long relationship (just one order from each store),
but looks rather promising.
Maybe if enough people stop buying at Plonter and Excelnet (why are people
still buying there? Is masochism so common these days?) those stores will
realize that they need to put the same number of people on customer support
as they do on sales.
This reminds me of a quick test we used to do to check what stores think
about the customer before and after the sale: call your favorite store, and
ask for support. See how much time that took (usually a few minutes to hours
until you get someone who can help you). Now call back and ask for a
salesperson, and use a stopwatch to calculate how much time that took (won't
take more than a few seconds to less than a minute). This is a good
indicator of what this company thinks of you: We'll be happy to help you buy
things, we don't really care about you after that.
Just my few thousands cents (spent on computer hardware).
- Aviram
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shaul Karl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Matan Ziv-Av" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Isreali Linux mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2000 12:53 AM
Subject: Re: PCI modem
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Where can I buy a PCI modem in Israel (web order is preferable).
> > I mean a controller based modem that appears as a serial port. A
> > software modem is not good enough, even if it has free drivers.
> >
>
>
> Probably at www.plonter.co.il, although recent messages to this list claim
> they are not cheap as they used to be.
> Is this kind of modem so rare?
>
>
> > TIA,
> >
> > --
> > Matan Ziv-Av. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
> > =================================================================
> > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
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> >
>
> --
>
> Shaul Karl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Shaul Karl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>
> =================================================================
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>
>
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