From: tim@boxhill.com (Timothy Jones)
Subject: Is Gateway a publicly held company?  I think I'll short some stock...
Organization: Box Hill Systems Corporation, New York, NY
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 23:08:18 GMT

I'm totally fed up.  I'm a little new to the PC market (I work mostly with
Suns and other UNIX workstations) and am *appalled* by the customer service I
have received from Gateway.  I wonder if all the PC mail order houses treat
their customers this poorly...  I guess a Sun salesperson who sells machines
costing $20K a piece cares a little more about the individual customer.

Anyway, one month ago, I ordered a 486DX2/66 system from Gateway (about $4K
total).  I was quoted ~two weeks until delivery.  I understand that
salespeople will naturally take an optimistic approach with information like
that, so I didn't expect it to ship in exactly two weeks.  On the expected
ship date, I called to ask if the system had been shipped by some stroke of
luck.  "No" I was told (after waiting about 30 minutes on hold); furthermore,
the person on the other end had no idea what the hold up was or when it would
be ready.  Okay, fine, I'll adopt some patience.

I waited another week, then called again.  "Sorry, not yet" I was told.  I
called my salesman, thinking he might be able to apply a little pressure to
keep his customer happy.  Ha.  The best he could offer was to call me when it
shipped.

Another week went by (four in all), and I was getting pissed.  Not once did
anyone bother to call me and say "sorry, but due to abnormally high volume,
we're experiencing a delay which is why you don't have your machine".  I felt
totally forgotten.  When I spoke to my salesman, he had no idea what the hold
up was and seemed totally incapable of finding out.  (I would expect a
technology company to have a reasonably easy way to obtain such information.)

I finally found out (after about 10 phone calls and probably two hours on
hold) that the entire system had been held up for a SCSI controller that was
not in stock.  After one month, it came down to that.  The machine had not
even begun to be assembled.  I had the salesman cancel the controller so that
the thing would be put on the assembly line.  He still doesn't know when it
will ship.  Arrgh.  I'd cancel the entire order, but Gateway has a good
technical reputation and I don't feel like starting a similiar fiasco with
another vendor.

I did quite a bit of market research before deciding to go with Gateway, and
never heard complaints like mine.  Did I just stumble onto incredibly bad
luck, or is Gateway usually like this?  What about other vendors?  My company
(quite small compared to Gateway) also manufactures computer hardware, but our
order tracking database is miles ahead of theirs, which is kind of
frightening.  If we treated customers like they do, we wouldn't six months.
The volume of units we ship is much less, so maybe that's it.  I just can't
believe that you can do business like that and stay alive in a cutthroat
industry like this.

Tim
--
Timothy Jones                                           e-mail: tim@boxhill.com
Box Hill Systems Corporation                                voice: 212-989-4455
161 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10013               fax: 212-989-6817
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware