A public appeal to monarchcomputer.com

Dear Monarchcomputer.com,

I am taking the time to write you this letter as a recommendation to what you may want to focus on in the future with your business.

I will state the facts which have brought me to this point of action.

On October 20th, a friend of mine informed me of a great deal on ram at your site; it was Patriots 512mb ram for $55.00 per stick. I thought man this is awesome, but then we noticed it may have been a mismarked item.
so i went ahead and ordered anyways.

Order Number : 454919 Placed : 10/20/2005 10:23:52
512 MB DDR (600) PC-4800 Patriot Extreme Performance (PEP2564800+XBL) 2 $55.00 $110.00 Shipping: Federal Express Ground - Five (5) to Seven (7) Day: $0.00 Sales Tax: $0.00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- Total: $110.00
It said 512 but we figured it might be 256 and you just made a mistake, but recently I had seen a post in a forum that you had taken advantage of a customer by making them wait a long time and I defended you because I had just ordered some ocz platinum elite ram and it came right away.
So, I figured well I'll stick it out and see what kind of company you are; will you send me 512 mb sticks I wondered? sure I hoped so, but I really dont care, I would have preferred an honest answer to my emails.

I ordered on the 20th of Oct right? Well, the 3rd of Nov rolled around and I hadn't heard a word from you, so I sent you this email:

me said:

can you please give me the status of my order?
Placed : 10/20/2005 10:23:52 MDT


i ordered 2x 512 MB DDR (600) PC-4800 Patriot Extreme Performance

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to which i got the reply that day

monarch said:

Current ETA on that item is 11/14/05.
Thank you.

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And on that same day I sent you this email:

me said:

this is the ram that is out of stock and due on the 14th?
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merc...e=M&Product_Code=141427&Category_Code=DDR-PDP
i see it says 256mb now, is this different ram then what i ordered?

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you had changed the ram from 512 to 256 which really confirmed it was only 256 to me. i thought maybe you might send me an email and tell me of this change.
hmm no reply, i wait for another day, then a week, nothing. so i ended up sending out 2 more emails over the next 2 weeks and on the 14th i send out this

me said:

ok i have you sent you 3 emails over the past 2 weeks and i havent gotten an answer yet to my original question below.
this is the ram that is out of stock and due on the 14th?
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merc...e=M&Product_Code=141427&Category_Code=DDR-PDP
i see it says 256mb now, is this different ram then what i ordered?

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to which you replied to me:

monarch said:

This part was out of stock and we have not yet seen it come in today. We are expecting it shortly.

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Then on the 15th of nov you send me this email

monarch said:

I do apologize but the memory on your order has actually was in extremely short supply and is not going to be available for a considerable period of time. I think it is best at this point to simply cancel this order and refund all money in full. Again, I do apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you, i removed the employees name here

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And this how you dealt with it: you avoided all of my emails, which confronted the fact that you made a mistake on your listing,
Maybe you didnt understand the question, right? I think anyone reading this can understand what I asked; I wanted an honest answer.
Why couldnt you just send me out an email saying that the ram was marked wrong, we made a simple grammatical mistake and sold you 512 mb ram that was only 256 mb. Your companies ethics have been shown clearly to me, and they arent looking real good. Here it is the 21st of nov and I still havent recieved a refund yet, I payed with paypal, maybe this is just another oversight also, right?
I'm not sending you this email and posting it on the net to make you lose business, I want you to get more business. But, I want you to get it because you are an honest store. You really need to address these issues of honesty and integrity within the inner workings of your company.

I want there to be more honest stores online. I hope you can become one of them. A reputation doesnt come easy online and I'm sorry that I have to bring this to your attention in such a public way. It seems to be the only way that change can happen though.
thanks, illya

Let me just start out by saying the people at monarch are crooks. I try to be a fair person. I know people make mistakes. Sometimes, its not their fault.
This IS NOT the case with monarchcomputers.com! Oct. 20, 2005 i got an email from them saying they had some "spooky" deals going on. So I checked it out. They really did have a great deal on some Patriot PC4800 512MB sticks.

They were only $55+free shipping. (I have a link to the picture for your viewing pleasure) http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b39/EvilCloudStrife/crooks.jpg

I placed an order for one set, then I placed an order for another set (2 gigs of ram would have been great) so then i waited. Immdiatly after i placed my order, monarch charged my card and takes money out of my account. I begin to check my order status every few days and it still says my order has been submitted to the warehouse. No problem, people make mistakes.

I called in about a week and 1/2 later finding out whats up with my order. I talked to a lady (who was nice, i might add) but just ended up giving me the run around. I asked specificly about the 512MB sticks I ordered, and she said they are on back order (on the website, it said they were in stock but the 256mb sticks were on back order) I think they were trying to switch my order to 256mb sticks without me knowing. She said she would call me back and never did. I called again after a few days and talked to the same lady. The same runaround happend.

I called in again and talked to a guy. He said it was a price mistake and he would honor it no matter what. I thought that was great however i didnt hear from him again. I called in again a few days later and talked to another person. He started to give me the run around and then I just asked to speak with Chuck (i guess hes a manager of sorts) and i was put on hold for about 20 minutes. The guy came back on and said chuck wasnt there.

I called again after another few days and spoke with the guy that PROMISED me i would get my ram sticks and i said just transfer me to chuck. I was put on hold for about 15 minutes and then the guy said he was at lunch. I made a few more calls there thoughout the 4 week ordeal, to no avail. What it comes down to is monarch does not care about the customer, no no.. they care about cash. Thats it. I tried to be patient. They had my money for 4 weeks.

It was gone out of my account. Now, in short, what really gets me is they just avoided me. If it was truly a price mistake then tell me the next day. No problem, mistakes happen. But DO NOT promise it to me, and keep my money for 4 weeks, meanwhile avoiding me like the plague. I had to contact monarch on the phone about 8 times and talked to 5 people. No one helped, no one cared.

I also sent 6 emails to 4 people. No one responded. I had to demand my money back to finally get it and then it took another week. In short, MONARCH DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. THEY CARE ABOUT MONEY, THATS IT. they refuse to work with you. They are never willing to make it right. They do not deserve your buisness, go elsewhere. You will be treated right.

EDIT: i just want everyone to know that i am not upset because i didnt get what i bought. Im not upset because they made a price mistake. Like i said before, those kind of mistakes happen. What i am upset about is the way they treated me. It is anacceptable. If you make a promise, follow through. or dont make the promise at all

they just now refunded me on Nov 23rd

rhino56 said:

they just now refunded me on Nov 23rd

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lol i guess they just saw this post. Hopefully theyll improve their services now...

Recently, I placed an order at PCDirect for an X2 Athlon 64 that they had mismarked by $100. They didn't honor the price, which was disappointing, but at least they sent out a batch of emails explaining that they had made a mistake on the order and wouldn't be honoring the price.

Also, they didn't actually charge the credit card.

The best case for a retailer is if they honor a mistake, but at the very least, they should be honest and up front and explain what happened.

Monarch has outstanding customer support. Just this week I contacted them for a member and they fixed the issue and wrote me back very quickly.

But you are a legend SSS.... maybe with other customers theyre not so great?

Vrykyl said:

But you are a legend SSS.... maybe with other customers theyre not so great?

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They're pretty helpful to all my friend, some vendors are not so customer oriented.

First time I ordered fromm monarch I was hugely dissapointed in every aspect of the transaction.

I had to RMA with them once and it completely sucked to say the least, customer support is atrocious and they flat out lied to me more than once.

Basically I decided to just never order from them again and let everyone know about my experience with them, you'd figure they'd go out of their way for a first time buyer who spent $500 and the transaction was borked form the get go maybe...but that was not the case, aside from their unproffesional mistake after mistake they didnt even try to make it up to me and were pretty rude on top of it.

Anyway, last week I was in a crunch for a 146 opty, I ordered it on friday and got it on this past tuesday, so I dunno I guess they are hit or miss. I will only order form them as last resort or if there is huge savings involved.

This company isnt even in the same universe as newegg IMHO

Rattle said:

...........
This company isnt even in the same universe as newegg IMHO

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So true man.

Personal experience is 3 purchases and 3 problems.
3 strikes and you are out in my book.
Too many others to chose from that deliver on their promises.

The only purchase I've made from them was my 3200 LBBLE Venice. Arrived with no hiccups. The only reason I went with them instead of the egg was because Newegg had a supposedly inferior stepping batch (and I was impatient ). Otherwise, its always Newegg.

Guys...if you don't like Monarch Computer.....give them a poor rating on resellerratings.com and pricegrabber...although this thread is informative, others need to know too.

i think i got my ram from monarch. it was delivered via FEDEX i believe and came like it was ran over by a tank!

sent them email and pics of package via their forum and got prompt replies. got rma for the ram. was corresponding to an ERIC i believe.

but in the process of the RMA they did screw up. they charged me on my card for the current price of the ram that they were sending, which was way MORE than what i paid for the ram i was rma'ing.

took a while too before i got the ram as it was out of stock but they kept telling me it will be shipped on this certain date.

guess its how they play. moral of the story.

dont let em think they can play you.

The few times i went through monarch it went very smooth, sometimes even above what newegg has done for me.

I have also had several transactions with Monarch as I live in Ca and dislike paying sales tax on anything over 50 dollars. All of my transactions were positive. I even decided to return an unused CPU since I decided 2 weeks after my order I wanted to upgrade from S754 to S939. Of course I paid a restocking fee, but otherwise the transaction went well.

Wow, I had an issue with monarcomputer about a year ago, and I made them give me $50 credit, and they did... it did take about 2 hours of hold, though.

I made a thread about it... had to do with a busted up BRAND NEW retail cpu, then a screwed up shipping label that held off my package at fedex due to half of my address label being cut off... they made up for it with me with a new cpu and another $50.

Anyway, that is ridiculous to hear about, rhino.

I had a good experience with Monarch when I had to do an RMA. I was rather upset with the way my Opteron was shipped (first time there was no packaging at all). But after discussing everything with them via email (almost 50 emails back and forth, to be exact), everything was cleared up, my new processor was set to a priority for shipping in the new arrivals they received, and I got the RMA shipment back bumped up to 2nd day air.

I'm having a small gripe with them too, ordered my opteron 148 from there due to them having the lowest price, friday (approx 3 days after order) talked to a nice lady who said your processor is going to be shipped out tonight and you'll get your tracking number the same night....no tracking number yet...obviously they go slow for 2nd day shipping?

Meh. If it's Priority Mail the tracking won't be very helpful, two USPS orders both said "status unavailable" for like 4 days and here they are. It still says that.