SUBMITTED: Monday, February 23, 2004
POSTED: Tuesday, February 24, 2004
after leaving another message today, 2-23, Mary called back. she was argumentative, she said we were taking advantage of HER. she would not even consider bringing me a 40gig hard drive, even a used one. she said if she did that she would take back the rest of the system. i asked her if she recalled leaving the message on my phone saying she would give me a NEW pc since we had waited so long. (i have that saved) i asked her if she recalled asking me if i wanted her to put xp on the system or if i was going to put it on. she said that the kids did not need xp. that is not the issue here. she knew i wanted xp on it and my children are used to the interface of xp so that is what i wanted. the hard drive she gave me does not even have enough space for win98 much less xp AND it has bad sectors. i checked prices on the phone and online. she has roughly put about $150 into this pc. there is an economy type AOpen, a Duron instead of the Athlon i requested, and i didnt get the package of keyboard and mouse that she said i would get. she would not let me finish sentences...she accused me of yelling, she played the victim, and it ended in us ultimately cussing each other out. once she started cussing at me i let her have it. i dont have an email address for her so in a final attempt toward resolution i sent this email to her partner:
Mary,
I regret that what I thought was a friendship of sorts has come down to you and I cursing each other out. more than that, I regret that I feel that WE were taken advantage of as do others who I have consulted regarding this issue. yet you feel you were taken advantage of. I don't see how. you refused to listen to me. you accused me of yelling which I cannot do because I have a terrible cold..so yelling was not even in my realm of capabilities at this time. you continued to talk and yell over me while I was trying to talk despite the fact that you said that I could talk. now, lets look at why WE feel we were "screwed by a friend" because I cannot for the life of me understand how you feel taken advantage of.
you know I HATE hp, yet you opted to give me an old dirty non functioning hp....well that tells me that you did not regard anything that I had said. period. leads me to think that you felt since we were "friends" you could put me off on to the back burner while you dealt with other customers and that you thought you could give me a piece of junk since it was for the kids.
you made that right after a long period of time. too long. way too long. which again leads me to think that you put me on the back burner.
on the phone message that I have saved, you CLEARLY state that you are building me a NEW pc since we had to wait so long. which I do not understand why we had to wait that long anyway. this is a ridiculous way to carry on business. And again, I feel that we were put on the back burner because you felt you "could". we could not reach you by phone you either wouldn't answer or your voice mail was not taking messages, when we did get thru to leave a message you would not call for days, I guess you said forget us til you had some news. We felt put off. And in a nutshell we were. I would hope you don't treat you other customers like this.
That hard drive is obsolete, period. it has bad sectors. you said that you would have it ready wednesday or thursday. Friday, it was finally ready...you said that we should pick it up after school let out because that would give you time to check it all out. I don't see how you could have even checked it out considering that Win98 would not even load on it. the command.com screen would come up..the welcome to win98 screen...but it would only flash. it would not read. I repeatedly tried to put win98 in, it would not do it, it would say that there were bad sectors, it would say there was not enough space for it, it would not read the cdrom and would continously say it was trying to read E:\drive. you were so busy talking over me that you would not or could not have heard me saying that. if you did, then its obvious that you have no problem selling things that do not work.
Time: lets just TRY to consider for a moment that our time and our lives have some value. so, lets talk about how first, we went to drop off the money and rather than drop it off to YOU we had to go to J'ai's office, do you do everyone like that? we had to wait on her to get back to do that. we did end up going to the beach, but, that wasn't on our agenda of things to do we did believe it or not have other things to do that day. ok, lets get to when we were told we could pick up the computer, Finally...after no responses even out of courtesy as to where the pc was in its development....and we again have to wait, again, we went to the beach. my son was here from arizona, we had other plans for that day, but, we were there. time wasted waiting on your reply, driving the thing BACK to ocean shores, now, here we are, more wasted time, we had to sit over an hour, actually closer to two hours waiting just to pick up this pc. I think ANYONE would be VERY frustrated with this sort of treatment. unprofessional.
you said you wanted to make it right when you gave me that HP. which I still cannot believe you did. if you couldn't get the athlon that I said I wanted, if you couldn't put a 40gig hard drive in, then you should have let me know instead of just thinking I would take whatever you opted to toss together. I did not get an athlon, I got a duron. I did not get a stable hard drive, I got one with bad sectors and 5.5gigs. I did not get the mouse or the keyboard that you said would come with it, which I do have another keyboard, and I did go buy a mouse. so im not even worried about that it's the principle of it.I got no warranty info, nothing. no reciept, nothing. if you would have bothered to return my calls last week, you would have known I was more than willing to put more money into it if necessary, that is why I needed to get in touch with you to find out what you were putting in it for sure because I absolutely made it clear to you that I wanted Athlon. period. do you even understand why our confidence in you has been shattered? first the hp now this? and do you realize that yes business is business, but you didn't even treat me with BUSINESS respect, let alone friend respect. we are just as upset with the way someone we respected and thought of as a friend juiced us as we are with tossing $325 down the drain for a pc that wont work unless we put more money into it, and knowing we could have gotten a better one for LESS! but, no, we went to you because we thought of you as a friend and because we will ALWAYS support black owned businesses before another. we did not think you would screw us over. you know that money was not disposable to us, we have five kids for gods sake plus he pays $500 per month for another child...we are disappointed and hurt. and on the note of respect, I tried to talk to you on the phone, you continuously interrupted me, chastised me, and would not listen. you get respect when you give it. and you have given us none. I would have been content with you BRINGING me a used 40gig hard drive and I would give you the 5.5 piece of crap...rather than a refund. I just wanted a pc that would work. that's it. but you wanted to make it even worse.
Angela
i will let you know if anything changes. i am just hoping that after this many weeks and two computers that do not function there can be a resolution. yes i could go out and buy a new hard drive but i would have a $250 dollar pc that i paid over $400 dollars for. not fair. a true RIP OFF!