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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

Coherent !

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Okay, to start this off, I was unsure whether it should be a review - or merely venting about a bad experience I had...I settled on the latter one.

I ordered a Coherent Fieldmax II- TO with a PM3 Thermal sensor head on Thursday morning, at 0930 CST. That is two hours before their office opens up, as they ship from Oregon. I mention the timeline for a specific reason. I paid with a valid credit card, and used their online ordering form. I paid for Fedex Overnight service since I am impatient, and wanted it Friday, before I took the family to Sea World on Saturday !

The order total was $2102.16 U.S.

I received an email at 1231 CST with the following in it :

Hi Gregory,

Can you Pls advise if this order should be addressed to a Company name?

I replied back with the name of "Stonetek" and asked if it would be shipped today or not - figuring it could make it in today's mail with no problems.

I received the following message at 1315 CST :

Hi Greg,

Can you Pls advise your MC Credit card number?

XXXXXXXX is all I received. <---the online form didn't take the last six digits of my CC number for some reason.

Your order will ship out tomorrow 6/6

I then sent her an email back - (IMMEDIATELY) instructing her to call me, as I would not transmit my CC number via email (Identity theft anyone ?)

Now - when I had her on the phone - I had to bring up the point of my early ordering time, and the fact that overnight would not reach me until Monday if they didn't ship until Friday. She said, well there is nothing I can do about that.

Now - I have thrown in a few comments here and there, but hte rest is just cold hard facts. This is the SECOND time I have ordered a meter from Coherent - the first time they botched it horribly, and ended up placing a hold on my credit card for $500 more than they were supposed to !

Lesson learned from me - if there is an alternative source of reliable laser measurement out there, I would highly recommend you buy from them, rather than Coherent - unless you enjoy paying for expedited shipping, and not receiving it. Perhaps I should have called them as soon as they opened, and asked them to send it same day - I kinda thought that if they received it with "overnight" shipping as a component that they would do so...alas, I was way off base !

So - make of this what you will - if you are going to order from them - just sit back and WAIT. Hopefully the meter they sent me works fine - as I cannot even imagine the RMA issues these folks would put me through !
 





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It really does amaze me how incompetent seemingly well-established companies can be.
 
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Oh - one thing I left out - when unpacking the box, I saw a "koozie". For those of you that do not know what a koozie is - it's a little rubber insulator that you put a can of soda or been in, and it keeps it nice and cool. Well - I was thinking, "Cool ! <hahahaha> a Coherent Koozie !" Well - there was a little slip of paper stuck inside it with little tick marks, etc on it - and I peeked at the book - damned good thing I didn't toss this in the cabinet, because it is supposed to be cut down to size, and used as an insulator for the probe ! {WTF??}

Sorry - I find that kinda cheesy, IMO....If they take the time to print out a whole page to show you how to trim a koozie <no foul jokes here, please> then why the hell wouldn't they JUST DO IT ? I don't pretend to know everything - but providing a DIY outfit for the probe is NOT what I would expect - to me, that is kinda cheesy - I suppose it fulfills a legitimate gap in the design - but they could have trimmed the freaking thing before sending it, so it was not put into service as a can cooler accidentally. Yeah - nitpicky, eh ? Just doesn't seem good to me, that's all.
 
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Hey Senkat, I ordered my LaserCheck from them in the wee hours before they opened, overnight shipping. It shipped the following day though, I didn't get mad at them though Why? Because IF you read their Policy for items that are marked as C24 Program, it clearly states when they will ship the item; items that are not marked C24 Program take even longer to get shipped out.

Quote;

"C24 Program
The following items are part of our C24 next day shipping program. If you place an order that exclusively contains C24 items, the order will ship from Portland, Oregon the next business day."


End Quote


While we would like to get it shipped the same day, it simply is not their policy to do so, and I found it to be clearly stated on their website. One can't simply have them change their policy on the fly, otherwise everyone would make that request; with very large companies there are many reasons why it is so. I think the CSR you spoke with was very honest with you.

Places like newegg.com for example have cutoff times to get it out the same day, and if you miss that cutoff time, unless you get very lucky, they can't ship it out after the cutoff time, Why because again they have procedures they need to follow internally for many reasons, just like Coherent can't turn an order same day, because of internal procedures/controls. I believe if Coherent could, they would offer same day shipping with a cutoff time, but I bet you there are darn good reasons why they can't, and they do state "Next Business Day" Yea I know that sucks sometimes, cause shipping something out on Friday overnight doesn't do you much good when you need it for the weekend, but again they tell you that upfront.

Cheers
 
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LOL Greg, I had problems on my order again too! Seems this isn't the first time we got together to bitch about Coherent, lol. They gave me the same "need company name" crap at first, and then I get an e-mail saying fedex says I don't live at that address anymore. No duh, that's what you get for shipping it to my billing address instead of my shipping address.

Every time I've placed an order with Coherent online, their system has made some retarded error without fail. Finally this time I wrote a semi-nasty e-mail back letting them know how I felt about that. Truly f**ktards over there
 
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Electron - I hear your case, BUT...since we are splitting hairs here, If you order BEFORE the company opens, that is considered the previous business day. Business has not started as of yet, therefor it is not the same day. When I called, I specifically asked for shipping to be done that day - my order wasn't even looked at for HOURS. They are total slackers there, I had MAJOR issues the previous time I ordered from them, and they repeated some of the same mistakes this time. Regardless of their policies and procedures, when a customer spends a whopping total (between my two orders) of over $3,000.00 you SHOULD treat them a little bit differently in my opinion. People that spend large amounts in my store receive free shipping upgrades (without them asking me even !) and possibly a few little "extras" to make sure I have made a lasting impression on them, and hopefully they will bring more business with them the next time they shop ! That is just good business ethics in my opinion (granted, Coherent seems to have a vastly different opinion).

The main issues with my last order were :

*the length of time before they even looked at the order
*the fact that they asked for a company name before looking further into the order
*the fact that they then asked for me to send my credit card number via an unsecured method
*the large gap in communications times

Granted - everyone will have their own opinions regarding the level of service they expect, and how they are treated....this thread is merely me, expressing my extreme dissatisfaction with the way they conduct their business. No, I am not hammering your comments !!!
 
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Hi Senkat, I'm not taking it as hammering me, no problem there. I really don't see any splitting of hairs though, the fact that their Servers received your placement for an order before they opened is not considered previous day.
They need to open up their business, then check orders at what ever time that do those kind of things during the day, and your order is waiting among many others for them. They then need to do all of the processing required internally, probably would make no difference if they did that at 9:00am vs 2:00pm because most likely the process is batched for a certain time of the day, and there would be basically no way around that; that is why you were probably told "there is nothing they can do about that for shipping".

No different if you placed the order late Friday night, it's not going to be shipped 1st thing on Saturday morning, they're closed; it will get processed on Monday and be shipped on Tuesday.

Large companies, especially manufactures get tons of orders, and while the amount of your order may seem large to you, to a company/manufacture like Coherent that order is a drop in the bucket, hardly even raises an eyebrow I'm sure. Now if you bought a pallet of them it would be much different. It's actually surprising that they even let the general public buy direct from them; it's not China. Imagine calling up the Ford Manufacturing Plant and asking them to overnight you a New Car? It'll never happen, you'll never even get to place an order. How about calling up GE and asking to overnight you a new Frig, never going to happen.

This is the way large corporations operate in the US, full of procedures and yes red tape. They can't jump for each and every individual order, they simply are not geared up or staffed to do so; the system is probably ran on a mainframe and they simply can't changed/override or pickup the phone and call the shipping department and say 'Hey do me a favor and send this out right now for this guy" large companies don't operate like that; Orders like this, while over time do add-up, are really a very small fraction of the sales that make-up the companies true profits.

Granted a small Mom & Pop company, an order like this is simply their bread and butter, no doubt. Large corporations are a whole different animal though.

Cheers
 
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electron, I understand that its not fair for me to put all the blame on my sales rep, and I told her than in my complaint and asked her to forward it to someone who could do something. This isn't standard big company woes though. I've dealt with so many different places, and had more order complications in a few years than I'd want to put up with in a lifetime. However, Coherent really has some serious issues - their order system is downright f'ed up. I have had worse, but Coherent is definitely near the top of my list of worst companies to ever get stuck buying from (buy.com takes the cake for me personally)

And it'd be pretty hard if Coherent's laser measurement division didn't let the general public buy from them. Its not like they commonly get orders for pallets of laser meters, or like they get sent out to laser meter dealerships where a slick salesman shows you around the lot for his commission. A lot of their business must come from universities and various entities that only need to purchase a few setups at most.

Also, both of the items Greg purchased are part of Coherent's C24 next day shipping program, check more up on it here: http://www.coherent.com/Lasers/index.cfm?fuseaction=show.page&ID=1509&loc=830. I don't normally expect a company to necessarily ship a product the day after I order it, but if they bother to promise it on their website... well.... yeah....
I see that Greg's order does not qualify for shipping until Friday according to what he posted though, so if he was expecting it to ship the same day, yeah that ain't a valid argument. Still doesn't change the fact that Coherent is seriously messed up! :D
 
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pseudonomen137:

That was my only point about wanting same day shipping, as I orignally outlined and quoted from Coherent's site which you provided a link to the same info I already posted about "The following items are part of our C24 next day shipping program" Thus when a human comes into to work at the beginning of the business day, regardless if they placed the order through a server overnight, Coherent states/needs one day to process the order and then ships it out the next business day; really that was my only point.

When I order something and pay for overnight shipping I too want/expect it to go out same day, However that is not always the reality, especially when they state their policy upfront.

As for the rest of the issues with Coherent, yes they need to step it up and correct those.

I recently bought from a company late on Tuesday evening and I paid extra for overnight shipping and their policy was 1 day to process the order with shipping out the next business day, pretty much like the Coherent model discussed here. However it didn't get shipped until Friday, which meant I paid extra to have it in my hands by Friday for the weekend and that never happened. It arrived on Monday, to which IF I knew that was going to happen; I would have just had them ship it out normal delivery; as I really can only get to the project on weekends, so I could care less if it arrived mon,tues, weds, thurs; let alone pay extra for it. The response from the company was, well we do our best to get the orders out as soon as we can. I wasn't too thrilled about that since I paid extra, So I do understand the point here, except Coherent does state their policy.


Yea I know what you mean about buy.com I stopped buying from them a long time ago, they simply stink to do business with. My favorite for quick service & prices are newegg.com

Cheers
 
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Sorry electron, point taken. I don't expect my order to be handled like its their top priority and it seems Greg was a bit too uppity about the ship time. For me, its just that an order is botched this badly I can't help but get upset anyway.

Anyway, got a response to my e-mail:


"Hello Carter,

Thank you for contacting us regarding your experience in using our web ordering system.  Our shopping cart was designed several years ago and we realize that it is outdated and not the easiest to use.  We are looking into several options to update the shopping cart to provide our customers with a better way to shop online.  We appreciate your feedback and will forward the information to the team who is working on this project.  In the meantime, we would be happy to work with you over the phone to answer any questions you may have or to place your order.

Again our apologies for the inconvenience.

Best regards,

Diane Hill
North American Sales Manager, LMC Products
800-343-4912 x2695
530-887-5627 Direct
530-887-5959 Fax
diane.bostwick-hill@coherent.com
www.coherent.com"
 
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Thanks for posting the email from Coherent, it looks like they are aware of the issues and are at-least trying to resolve some of them.

I guess I got lucky when I ordered my LaserCheck, they did everything in the time frame they promised and I didn't get any crazy emails; it was processed through the online cart system and showed-up at my door when I expected it should arrive, so I naturally don't have any complaints with them; I understand others were not as lucky though.
 
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Hey I was wondering how you come to choose the FieldMaxII-TO? I know the FieldMaster-GS that alot of companies use is being phased out this Dec '08 and I thought the FieldMaxII-TO was also getting dated, and I have had my eye on the LabMax-TO; not ready to pull the trigger on that yet, but I think that will be the one I choose when I decide to go for it.
 
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electron said:
Hey I was wondering how you come to choose the FieldMaxII-TO? I know the FieldMaster-GS that alot of companies use is being phased out this Dec '08 and I thought the FieldMaxII-TO was also getting dated, and I have had my eye on the LabMax-TO; not ready to pull the trigger on that yet, but I think that will be the one I choose when I decide to go for it.

Yep, the FieldMaxII-TO ain't the newest meter on the market, but at least it has USB connectivity unlike many of Coherent's older meters. The LabMax-TO is a better meter, but its also a sizeable amount more $$. If you don't need any of the extra features of the LabMax, the FieldMax will get the job done just as well, for less money (we're talking like $1850 versus $1100 once you tally tax and shipping)
 
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You guys are upset about the shipping... am I the only one who's bothered by the fact he had to carve up his own coozie? For over $2k for just about anything, you shouldn't have to do any work on your own.
 
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quadcam said:
You guys are upset about the shipping... am I the only one who's bothered by the fact he had to carve up his own coozie? For over $2k for just about anything, you shouldn't have to do any work on your own.

I THINK I mentioned how cheesy I thought it was to have to slice up the Koozie....If not, then YES - that was pitiful. I had a valid suggestion from a friend though - use a different Koozie for the sensor - and put the letters, "I and N" in front of the company name....then use it to drink beer....INCOHERENT would be good on a beer Koozie, I think ! :p
 
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Strange... I had the company/CC# issue as well when I ordered a lasercheck last year.
 




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