zhao liang

I paid a premier service for a shipment from US to UK and here are some interesting discoveries I have made with the tracking no.

1. It takes 2 days for the parcel to be delivered to UK by USPS for a 2500 mile long journey.

2. It takes 2 days for the UK Custom to clear it.

3. It takes 3 days and ticking for Parcelforce to deliver Custom notice with the depot 5 miles from my doorstep. They are also shameless enough to charge an 8 pound process fee for that.

It is safely say this company has all the incompetent and ignorant sides of Royal Mail which in turn is usually an excellent service provider.

The miracle of their survival is totally based on the unfair competition of using the Royal Mail’s existing network and infrastructures which are not available to other very hardworking, organized and responsive services. They won’t survive for a day without the support of Royal Mail given the service they provide and the fee they charge.

In short, they are shite!

The reason why people find this company useful is when they try to sort out the lowest price this company usually pops up.

However, they are cheap for a reason. They don't have their logistic supply chains, thus they don't get a hold of the goods they sell. All they do is they phone a real supplier company and let them ship the goods. As you would imagine, buying process could become more complicated with extra parties involved. If crescentelectronic can’t acquire your order they will just send you a preformatted email telling you they don’t have that in stock leaving you wondering what about those stock numbers? Don't you never ever trust their stock numbers, they are all wrong and they want it that way so that you can prepay confidently. Surely they know orders will most likely get delayed and they even have preformatted emails to explain that. If you are not a few quids short, DO NOT buy from this company, especially you are buying for a production environment. They can get you fired.

Their RMA process is problematic as well. I bought 6 WD RE4 1TB enterprise class hard disks for a RAID6 array built. With a very rare luck, 3 of them are dead on arrival. The RMA went on well until the replacement disks arrived a few weeks later.

First of all, the disks are not sent by Crescent Electronic and are sent by another company-the actual supplier of the disks.

Second of all, the supplier company sent some overall 80 pounds cheaper Caviar WD blue 1TB consumer class disks for replacements (we will call this company the 2nd company for short).

Correct me if I am wrong, People generally would expect to get a BMW 3 series back if they send in a BMW 3 series for replacements, wouldn't they? Well, I got lucky and I got a Vauxhall Astra back!

I phoned the 2nd company trying to tell them how ridicilous is that and a young girl in her 20s picked up the phone telling me “those enterprise disks are out of stock so they decided to send me these”. From the fair natural way she talks about it I decided not to argue with the people with the wrong logic to start with. It is not my responsibility to stop them from destroying themselves. I contacted the Crescent Electronic again to get things sorted. With countless emails, waiting and worrying for a month and a half I finally got my refund.

This is really a classic scenario when things go wrong, you would be left in this time and money wasting triangle relationship Crescent Electronic has very successfully implied.

I felt that with this sort of experience a 3 star would be an overstatement, 1 star would be proper. However, with the fact that I got the refund I will give them 1 extra star, no more.

2011 09 14 update,

I revised the 2 star rating to 1 star as crescentelectronic is trying to cover up my very honest review.

The staffs of Boston Limited are very resourceful and helpful. Items ordered arrived in a blazing fast speed and currently awaiting for second despatch.

They stock some of the smallest Supermicro chassis accessories e.g. a DVD bezel to whole server arrays. If you are building Supermicro systems, this dealer is the only and good choice in the UK.

II felt this is a company with service in mind. I put my enquiry of SAS cable on the web and they phoned back within 2 hours. Very helpful and informative responses as well.

Generally speaking, I will shop with them again. Yet to stress test an online dealer the best way is going through their return process, that is something I am yet to do (I hope I don’t have to). Hence this review can not give an account for that.

-original 2011 07 26
Beware of Return.

Many other people may have positive experiences, but I don't.

My return (within 7 days of purchase) was refused and I was told so to contact the producer to return the product. How ridicilous! Then there is the total silence.

-update 2011 07 29

Return with customer paid shipping was offered after the original negative review and threat to bring the case to Small Claims Court (which I would). This doesn't repair the damages done.

At the customer service manager's request, I amended the score from 1 star at the beginning to a 2 stars at the moment.

Liang