Well ok This is a Rant...
Me and my mate, we are planning to do a killer h2o rig.. Dual Xeons, SR2, 24GB 2000mhz ram, Killer NIC, XIFI, (2) 240gb SSD raid 0, (3) 580 SLI, 3D surround, etc.. with all the high end gaming accessories..
So we go shopping... We visited a few stores and was told they don't carry the stock on hand and that it will need to be ordered.. This is fine..
We was told that shops don't stock these since with depreciation and lack of demand, it will cost them more to stock it and unable to profit if not already taken a loss.. understandable..
So we proceeded to leave deposits at a few shops and was told item will be distributed to them via their respective distributor in a few days time.. okay...
2 weeks go by, no phone calls... so I give them a call, was told "still not in stock".. and that it will take a few more days, will call me... okay.. not annoyed yet...
3 weeks go by.. still no phone calls... starting to get annoyed...
4 weeks go by, getting a bit peev'd, so I give them a call to find out what's going on... I can get a package here from Africa in a month, or walk from one end of HK to the other on foot.. How long can this take? I expressed my feeling toward this politely as possible and told them I am doing a project that is on a deadline, the reply was either "distributor don't have stock", "distributor sent them the wrong stock", "the person in charge of ordering is taking the day off", etc... getting annoyed..
The ironic thing was the ram I was looking for, I found at another shop upstairs that sold mostly corsair products, but the salesman from the shop downstairs where I left a deposit with told me his distribution contact gave him the run around...
of the 6 shops that I ordered my gear which include a list of boutique fans, hardware, liquid cooling components, custom sleeved cables, etc.. none of them offered a return of my deposit or even a simple "I am sorry Sir, we are working on this as fast as possible"... Some of them even sounded a bit rude and acted like they was doing me a favor..
The only shop that did not take any deposit even though I offered was Linke Computers, they even told me straight forward that they may not even be able to order the stuff I need, as they would try to order and contact me once they have it in stock. Kudos to them..
$100 here, $300 there, $500 there.. It may not seem like a lot of money, but when you put together all the people that are ordering stock, that's a lot of money... Money left in THEIR bank to collect interest while they are ordering or attempt to order your goods..
Moral of this story is, if it's not in stock, forget asking them to order it.. just order it directly overseas from a major vendor.. The time I could have saved just paying a bit on shipping and handling would have saved me more time calling these jack offs and running back and forth..
/rant off