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FrozenGate by Avery

I'm Done with DealExtreme!

I always had pretty good luck with DX. UNTIL my last experience. Not to say it was horrible, but kind of annoying. My order was originally for 14 things. 7 of them arrived in fairly decent time. Then a week later 2 very small items I ordered were delivered. Then a week and a half went by without seeing another package. At this point I still needed 5 items.

So I get through to the online customer support chat, to find out they STILL haven't shipped the rest of my stuff, because one item is falsely advertised as "in stock". So after a few days of beating a dead chat horse, they finally switch it with another product and the order gets processed.

The package comes, and there is still one item missing. The last item was an iPod charging cord that was listed as "in stock". Well...of course it wasn't in stock even though that too said it was, so I just told them to cancel that last item and mark my order as complete. It took another few days to finally have them send me an email confirming they will send the paypal difference between the swapped items and the refund for the iPod cord.

I'd like if DX could get their shit together and properly adjust items as they come in and out of stock. I can understand product quality getting skewed on occasion, as they are a drop-shipper, not a manufacturer. But jeez, keeping up on "in stock" and "out of stock" status would alleviate so many headaches.
 
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They're not Amazon.com, but I'd say their time from order to shipment has improved quite a bit. I used to factor in a month's waiting time, but now they get that stuff out pretty quickly (for them). Not sure about the out-of-stock stuff, but they got me my oscilloscope far earlier than I had expected, especially after reading about how people waited months on end to get it. At least $100 cheaper than anywhere else on the internet from what I found.

As for in-stock stuff and all that, I do avoid purchasing things in one big order because I'd rather have them ship out things out as they get them. Their loss, but that's how it goes.
 
I uses to get stuff from DX in 2 Weeks no more.(This was Exactly 1 year ago.) Now it takes >1 month.

I use EMS now and it still take near 3 weeks.!

Un-Real.

I try not to buy from DX anymore. But there not as bad as kaidomain on shipping.

Regular orders not EMS for me takes near 2 months. EMS is ~1 month.


Dino-Direct is better but i hate there site it so freaking slow.
 
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Anyone know of other chinese sites with real comments & reviews?

The comments & reviews on DX are really useful to me. DX hasn't given me problems (other then delays) so I love em so far.
Just got a EDI-T P4 flashlight in 10 days from DX. Someone else ordered well before me & stayed in 'backorder' hell even after I received mine. They canceled it. Always a game of chance with most chinese sellers.
You can't find everything on Flebay but its certainly cheaper when you can & I would rather have the option of a flebay dispute.
 
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There are sites that often have the same exact or similar item, at a slightly higher price... like gadgettown for example. They ship a lot of items from a brooklyn, ny, warehouse, so delivery time is cut down drastically. Of course the price is also usually a tad higher, but if you need something inside of a month... it's the better route imo.

Also just ordering off of ebay feels safer to me. If the buy it now is too high, I just set a sniper program on what I want, and forget about it until i get an email alert to pay:)
 
It sounds like DX is suffering from their own popularity.
The usual problems are apparent. Loss of inventory control, communications issues, poor response times mixed with excellent response times.
Yep. I've seen this many times. I've worked for a couple of places with the same issues arising. And when the people in charge refuse to recognize it I got out. Those businesses failed too as a result of the poor service. One complaint outweighs 10 positive comments. (That's why more websites are making sure to post those good comments up front. They are trying to overcome the bad ones !)
You see, usually only 1 in 10 to 1 in 100 will take the time to actually complain in writing. So when you see a negative comment it probably represents between 10 to 100 people who had similar experiences.
Try to remember that when you are checking up on a company and their business practices. Every bad comment is 10 to 100 bad experiences. So if you see 20+ bad comments in the first few minutes then find somewhere else to get you stuff from. The record is too bad for that supplier.
But it isn't too late for DX, yet. They could still get a few more staff to work on the backlog of communications, upgrade their software to include more responsive data on inventory levels, and get back on top of things. It all depends on the top echelon wanting to keep in that business and investing some of the profits back into it or just allowing it to slowly fail so they can start again under a new name.
:confused:
 
These sites come and go. The push for market share, then once they get it, they rest on their laurels and let quality of service go down.

You get what you pay for to an extent, but there are competitors where you can pay the same (or less as Jerry mentioned) and get more. I used to defend DX on the basis of price/value, but at this stage, their competitors are doing it better than they are, and have more selection.

DinoDirect has better selection at this stage. Their site f-ing sucks, and the use of flash and moving content is just beyond annoying. I actually use adblock on DinoDirect, not to block ads, but just to block annoying site content - only time I've ever had to do that!

But, like everything else, DinoDirect will go down the tubes too eventually. They all come and go, and I'm pretty sure that half of them are all owned and run cooperatively anyway. They probably have 10 incubator sites in the background for every DinoDirect or FocalPrice that we're conscious of now ;)

What I will say, is that the coolest hosts I've come across seem to be from Chinese sites that don't offer the traditional "free shipping" + cheap crap model.
 
I find the fact that DX doesn't censor bad reviews, or forum complaints, etc. good, and it is why I still shop with them. They've rectified all the problems that have occurred, for example packs of connectors missing some pairs, by sending out whole new packs, and just letting me keep whatever I bought. Their shipping... it's always been bad. I've never bothered with EMS because it was never actually the slowest link in the chain. Still, that's what I expect anyway, and as long as the stuff gets to me in about a month I'm happy.

As for Dinodirect: To their credit, they rectified (to some extent) their mislabeled product with a $90 giftcard, but I've still got my doubts. Their site is hard to navigate, has obnoxious animations, all their reviews look made-up (even the names!), and their selection sucks. After using them, DX seems very high quality. I also wonder how much they spent on their marketing materials like papers, logos, etc. Because they really pack in a lot of stuff like postcards, stickers, etc. that aren't even that effective.
 
Bionic-Badger said:
As for Dinodirect: To their credit, they rectified (to some extent) their mislabeled product with a $90 giftcard, but I've still got my doubts. Their site is hard to navigate, has obnoxious animations, all their reviews look made-up (even the names!), and their selection sucks. After using them, DX seems very high quality. I also wonder how much they spent on their marketing materials like papers, logos, etc. Because they really pack in a lot of stuff like postcards, stickers, etc. that aren't even that effective.
Click to expand...

Oh, you know what's even crazier?

They sent me a full colour Christmas catalog!

- First off, why would they think I want to look at a catalog? What a backwards approach to advertising for a website that basically makes its bones by having a gigantic selection of really cheap stuff online and searchable. A catalog with the 1% of their inventory, the 1% that they decide to bring to my attention, including coats and shoes, is not of any use or interest to me. But you know what it did do? It got my female friends interested in checking out the site, so perhaps not so dumb after all.

- Second, it was printed, with Canadian currency prices, and I received 3. So not only did they go to the trouble of customizing it to locale of the recipient, but they actually over-mailed it, by sending me multiple copies, separated by a few days.
 
rhd said:
Oh, you know what's even crazier?

They sent me a full colour Christmas catalog!
Click to expand...

What the hell? And I thought that snail mail was dying!

I thought it was bad enough they stuck a sticker "Dear Customer: I inspected this merchandise myself and guarantee it is of top quality. -- Quality Controller No. 10" on a 2-pack of 18650 Ultrafire batteries I tossed in the order to qualify for a coupon. Yeah, thanks for the battery inspection.

All this ridiculous marketing material doesn't make people want to buy their... uh... wedding dresses? and other stuff. People want the goods to match their description (like "ILDA" in the projector product title), timely shipping, and a good price. Not having some stupid-ass faked reviews would help too.

On another note, at least the catalog isn't like Mouser sending me one of their phonebook-sized catalogs for their parts. Who the hell looks up electronic parts for an online site in a paper catalog anymore? Who could even find anything in there even if we did? It's pain enough using Digikey's crappy website, but Mouser doesn't even have a dumb website.
 
eBay is a lot cheaper then DX. I mean, they can offer 2* US to EU plugs for $0.98 including shipping, while DX can only offer one for $0.84 or something like that, and eBay has a fee of like $0.6 out of those $0.98, so they also have to fit in the shipping into that small $0.38 and they can make it..
 
I can still remember the best topic title ever of some time ago when seeing this thread: "DickXtreme and Fuckallprice" or something like that:p
 
I bought some flashlight hosts from DX 2 years ago. Then they started spamming my email regularly, saying that I had outstanding orders that needed to be processed. Dirty, scummy tactic that caused me to ignore them as a source. :/
 
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