News by Shaolin Dave

Just so anyone still coming to this site knows, I have officially taken over authoring
responsibilities to Game Jumpers (now with a new keenspace URL). actually, i was
suppose to be updating it for a while now, but some stuff got in the way. things like
military training, and computer problems. man, i do no know how to pic a computer manufacturer.

well, first dell kinda screwed me. my computer broke while i was in tech school, and they refused to fix it. apparently the warranty doesn't cover any repair or exchanges (?) anyway, i everntually got a 70% refund for that computer. it really was a pain though, so i'm not dealing with them anymore. however, they were saints compared to the next company i bought from. more on that, now...

DON'T BUY FROM IBUYPOWER!!!

they go buy the company name 'american future technologies', 'ibuypower.com', and 'cyberpower.com'. they claim there are affiliated with alienware somehow, i was even told by one of their reps they use the same parts, just they don't sell the name. well. this was a lie.

so i bought a $2000 computer from these fucktards. it was broken when i got it. When inserting DVDs, CDs, USB flash drives, portable hard drives (pretty much any media) the computer would freeze randomly. i'd say, one out of every four times. the paint job was absolute crap, the screen had no protection during shipping. the batter wouldn't hold a charge so i didn't get to experience the benefit of laptop portablitly. the USB drives would sometimes shut off, disconnecting whatever was attached. the PCMCIA slot would crash whenever a card was inserted. the MMC reader just didn't work at all. there was an odd moving dotted line going down the screen on certain color backgrounds (like the background color for this site) because of a video card flaw. the LAN port was pyshically unable to hold a LAN cable, apparently a motherboard flaw.

the companies policy was that if i called within 30 days, i could get a complete refund, minus shipping. so i did. they lied and said there were giving me a return shipping label. when i called back to check, they still said they were sending it. after the 30 days passed, some rep looked up the call, said the rep i talked to made note of our conversation, but never actually sent the label, who knows why. must've just forgot. but oh well, that's my fault for not checking more often. man i was pissed when they said that to me.

i won't drag you through every detail of what happened over the course of the following year, but during my warranty period i sent the computer in for a repair. it came back even more broken (it wouldn't even boot half the time.) so i was promised a refund again, by one of their managers, Steve. however, after i sent the computer in they changed their minds about the refund, and decided they were fixing the computer instead.

when i got it back again, it was still broken. actually, when i turned it on the screen just blinked black and grey like old broken NES. never seen a PC do that before. my warranty was up in 10 days, but the other manager Bryan told me that he would not allow me to send the computer in for repairs. i had to hand deliver it. so i drove four hours to drop this thing off (two hours each way) and in person pointed out the problems to him.

like a month later, i get the computer back. bryan claimed he replaced the whole computer except the monitor. acutally, apparently this is the third time that the motherboard and video card have been replaced. however, all the problems are the same. when i called bryan back up he yelled at me, accused me of breaking my own computer just so i could call back. i asked to speak to his supervisor, he lied to me and told me he owned the company so there was no one else i could talk to. since then, he's hung up on me every time i called and instructed the other employees to do the same. i've asked the few who are still polite enough why i can't get my computer fixed and they said my warranty is expired. i remind them that i sent it in three times before the warranty was up and they just say that doesn't matter.

since then, i've made several better business bureau complaints. the reps at the BBB said they've have a small number of simular compaints, nothing compared to what the bigger companies like dell get. however, ratio-wase (size of company or number of customers to number of compaints) they are far worse. and also they havn't been BBB members for nearly as long, only a couple years. unfortunately, none of them could provide solid proof that ibuypower did anything wrong. so i provided as much proof as i could. it's on the way to them now via snail-mail.

some of the other reps have validated my suspicion that bryan was lying about being owner and even gave me the extension to his supervisor's voicemail (the board of directors). i havn't heard back from them yet though. i probably never will. looks like i'm out of $2000.

still, i hope that this will dissuade any potentional customers of theirs from wasting their time and money. i'd hate to see any of my fans go through what i have.

if this blurb has helped you out at all, let me know. or better yet, let them know. i'd love for them to hear that their mistreatment of me has lost them more customers. contact info for that is on the right side of this table.

thank you.

if the blurb
to the left
has been informative,
and you've decided
not to buy from
ibuypower.com,

email them
or better yet
call them
at (888) 462-3899

at let them know
that because of the
way that
Bryan (ext 141)
and
Steve (ext 147)
treated Shaolin
Dave (customer
number 39293),
you won't be
buying from them.
if you'd like
to leave a voicemail
for Bryan's supervisor
to tell them the
same thing, ask
to be transfered
to their voicemail
at ext 144.

thank you.