Look at this b/s from SVC

I received the following email message this morning from SVC. Looks like they are trying to pad their reseller rating with a giveaway.

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Over the past year SVC has brought you a large number of products at prices which were previously unheard of. Round cables, CCFL kits, LED fans, UV fans and cables, and more. As a result of all these great deals, it was difficult at times for us to keep up with all of your orders and our service level was inconsistent (as seen in all the controversy surrounding SVC in the online forums). As a young company, SVC experienced many growing pains, but over the past few months we have been hard at work building new infrastructure, and increasing our processing overhead. Just a couple months away from our second anniversary, SVC has finally realized sufficient economy of scale to provide you with consistently excellent speed and service while continuing to lower our prices each day.

Our resellerratings are 9.33 for the month of February (6.92 for the past 6 months), and they will continue to rise. To speed the process, and to promote the rating of vendors in general, SVC will be giving out a FREE CLEAR ACRYLIC CASE on March 31 to a randomly selected customer who has left resellerratings for SVC. To qualify, you must (1) leave a resellerrating, and (2) email [email protected] with your order number and your resellerrating user id. The winner will be announced at www.svc.com no later than March 31, 2003.

No joke I got the same thing in my e-mail. Who knows they might be trying to make amends for all the problems I have heard about in the forums and at resellerratings.com. On occasion I get something from them but I am still a bit leary but would try again with them if there ratings stay high for a while possibly.

Mark

I just bought some round cables from them, great price and fast shipping, I would buy from them again.

-mamer

Notice, they didn't say you had to leave POSITIVE feedback, just feedback.

That said, I just bought some stuff from them, called back to add a couple more things. The guy who I spoke to on the phone ordered the wrong thing. I'd ordered AS3, they sent Arctic Alumina. So when I got the order confirmation and saw it was the wrong thing, I called them back the next day. The guy I talked to promptly set me up with a tube of AS3 and sent it out to me, free of charge plus I get to keep the AA.

mamer said:

I just bought some round cables from them, great price and fast shipping, I would buy from them again.

-mamer

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in order to qualify you for the free case you have to post that at resellerratings.com

got my SLK 800 in 4 days $29.99, not bad. what a cooler, thanks to you guys.

I'm upset. They charged me for the fans but left them off the order. Ditto with the Arctic Alumina.

Avatar28 said:

I'm upset. They charged me for the fans but left them off the order. Ditto with the Arctic Alumina.

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That qualifies as a dissatisfied reseller experience, I suggest you leave it.

I hate the "words" of a company, show me you can 'hack it'. I've ordered tons of stuff from newegg over the years, I have had only ONE issue with a damaged case (which earned me a partial refund and tons of freebies). If SVC can't complete your order properly, that's automatic disatisfaction IMO as they are failing to meet my main requirement of them -- sending me the stuff I ordered. I'd be a little ******ed as a matter of fact.

I called them up to confirm that they had gotten my mail. The guy told me that they would send it out, probably today. I asked to go ahead and change one of the fans out for a different one. The guy said he didn't want to change the order (I know they can). So I emailed their customer service. No response as of yet. I hope they can, cause I REALLY don't want to pay $5 for shipping on a $7 fan.

I have never had a problem with SVC and I have left resellerratings in the past. I just got a ccfl and 4 quad led fans for 30 bucks shipped to my door in 2 days. IMO that was adeal. I have read about ppl having problems but that is not the case with me. I dont order a lot of stuff at once though so maybe its hard for them to screw up my order. Now newegg on the other hand has never screwed up a order and I have ordered several complete systems. For me SVC is a great reseller and I will be buying from them again.

SVC did not break any rules, but allowing giveaways like this really abuses the ResellerRatings system. Although SVC claims that the winner is "randomly selected," many people will probably leave them a good feedback (or at least a less negative feedback than what the person originally wanted to give), just to make sure they would not be left off the contest "selection."

I'm going to hold off on my feedback until I receive the fans. They told me that they shipped on Friday, so we'll have to wait and see.

And while I'm sure many people WILL leave feedback that wouldn't be as negative, even the negative feedback can be a very useful tool for a company so that they can see where they need to improve too. In many ways, negative feedback is MORE useful for them in that sense, though, obviously, they would prefer it go straight to them rather than be in the public.

They may also feel that they've got their issues ironed out and that by getting more people to post feedback, enough will be positive to raise their score.

Edit: BTW, Directron does the same thing. If you buy from them and then leave feedback, either good, bad, or neutral at RR or another site (forget which) you will get entered into a weekly (or monthly or whatever) drawing they've got. That's an ongoing contest.

About a week ago, I ordered SK-7 and vantec fan 84.1cfm for $36 from SVC online and I pickup it 10 minutes later. It work great! I'll buy from them again.

SVC isn't the first retailler to do this. Last time I ordered from googlegear they had a similar giveaway going on for posting at RR

I received the same email. Don't quite know what to think of this tactic. But like someone here mentioned, people are inclined to leave positive feedbacks because of the giveaway. Something smells fishy here, and it ain't the tuna fillet I had last night.

I received the email I posted last week 2 days after ordering from SVC with a new email address so I emailed them and asked about it and that was the reply I got.

email from SVC
Subject: RE: Reply from campaign 2-20-03
Our resellerratings for the month of january were already up to 9.33 by the time we sent this email. We did improve our customer service and we are shipping everything on time. Our monthly growth rate averages over 30%, and we made significant changes to be able to maintain our service
levels at that growth rate. If you had followed the links, you would have seen that our resellerratings were around 3 in september, 8 in january, and 9.33 in februrary. And if you read the message, then you know that we increased our service levels.

Best Regards,

Rodney Wang
Silicon Valley Compucycle
www.svc.com

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but when the items I ordered arrived on Tuesday one of them was the wrong thing. It was a wrong color cold cathode light which really isn't a big deal b/c we ordered 4 diff colors for our tech room at work. So I exchanged a few more emails with rodney and let him know the problem and this is the most recent reply I got

email from SVC
Thanks for the information. That means that the shipper made a mistake. Our computerized order picking system will solve over 99% of these problems. It should be operational in 4 weeks.

In the mean time, I know you mentioned that you don’t want to bother swapping it, maybe even the blue/yellow is better. In any case, you are welcome to rma the unit and swap it out, or better yet, if you do ever place another order with us, email me the order number and I’ll give you a discount or free shipping or something.

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so I've gotta give them credit for trying and Rodney credit for good customer service. I plan to place another order with them in a week or so for some rounded cables and a cold cathode light for my home system. So I'll update this thread with any news

esit said:

SVC did not break any rules, but allowing giveaways like this really abuses the ResellerRatings system. Although SVC claims that the winner is "randomly selected," many people will probably leave them a good feedback (or at least a less negative feedback than what the person originally wanted to give), just to make sure they would not be left off the contest "selection."

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Newegg also offers free stuff to ppl that give resellerratings. At least they did I cant find the link now but I know it was there about a week ago. It seems to be a sort of trend that is going on right now. I agree it is pushing the limit a bit on ratings ethics but what the hell. Business is tough and companies will do what ever they can to get a advantage.

I had a bad experience w/ them so I'm not going back. I'm happy with Newegg.

I've bought 4 thing's from them with no problem at all.
I would do business with them again and probably soon. I need round cables!

My advice would be, if you had a bad experience a while ago with them, try again. Lately they have been doing VERY well, great service and totaly sweet prices. I still order most of my stuff from newegg, but SVC gets all my "small item" orders.