" My recent order was not fulfilled without much explanation. The following is the entire response I receved from them regarding my order status:
"This item is no longer carried by cdw. I will cnl the
order. Thanks, Jason"
With the inflated prices on their stock, I would expect correct inventory information to be provided on their site and (at the very least) customer service reps who show enough concern about repeat customer satisfaction to provide an explanation that doesn't look like it took less time than it took me to log in to make my purchase.... You can't feel much more irrelevant to a store than when they can't even take the time to spell check the last 15 words you'll likely ever read from them. Any appropriate reply from this store would have confirmed that my credit card wasn't charged instead of forcing me to take additional time to confirm it myself."
"I do not understand the low rating for CDW. In my experience, CDW has ALWAYS been a first-class, five-star reseller. I have always gotten excellent service. If you are a business, you are assigned a sales rep. That sales rep is a human prone to mistakes. But if any are made, they are quickly rectified.
Perhaps the difference is with individual consumers versus business accounts. CDW probably does best with businesses. Lets be honest - they make very little one each sale as it is and they are really wasting their time with individual consumer purchases. BestBuy or CompUSA are available in most cities and have great bargains for individual consumers. They also offer immediate reparation for problems whereas with mail order, you have the hassle of doing RMA's. And, as a matter of fact, the Compaq business line of computers I use is not even available at local retail outlets. So individual consumers - perhaps it would be best for you to stick to local retail stores. Businesses - read on! (Note - Individuals employeed by firms with business accounts at CDW can get their firm's volume discount!)
My main issue is how quick can I get an item when my boss says we need, for example, 10 computer systems in a couple of days. By going to CDW.com, I can zoom in quickly to my favorite business computer. After going, for example, to Hardware, Desktops (by menu selection at the top of the main page), I select the speed desired (I go for that "sweet spot" just below the fastest available range).
Then, at the upper-left, I select the desired brand (Compaq for desktops, Sony for laptops), then I set a sort method (along the top again). The list is sortable in a number of ways. I always go with lowest price first.
Then it is just a matter of finding the right price range for a desired feature set. While I scan the list I also check for availability - which is clearly indicated for each item.
Finally I phone my sales rep. You can order completely online, but I prefer calling my sales rep. (If I can't reach him, I leave him an e-mail to double-check my order and then call me for confirmation that everything is truly available.
A quick note about availability - If their web site states Same Day, they mean same day! If it says 1 to 2 weeks, then a shipment is expected from the manufacturer. If the site says 3 to 4 days, the equipment is housed at other warehouses. CDW has a massive warehouse, but their space is still finite. There are several other high-level jobbers that deal only with resellers that keep even more items available. So if the web site states 3 to 4 days, call a rep to find out how fast an item can be shipped.
About pricing - With an assigned sales rep., he knows he has ALL of my tech business and will do what he heeds to do to keep that business - even if it means undercutting whatever competition is out there. As a loyal customer, I don't make a game out of playing resellers against each another. They treat me fairly and I do the same with them. HOWEVER if I become aware of a substantially lower price from another retailer, I will ask and usually recieve a lower quote. If they cannot undercut another retailer because the margin would drop too low, they tell me that. But if it is a matter of not getting an extra $5 off on each of ten computers, I'll still stick with CDW due to their reputation with me!
About the person with problems clustering computers - Why oh why did you build your own computers? Clusters are difficult enough to set up without the added hassle of building your own server computers!
As usual, I went with Compaq for my cluster. The first tech company I hired in to do the clustering failed miserably. But that wasn't the fault of the equipment or CDW. The next firm did an excellent job and we got our cluster up and running. It has been stable during several years of service with automatic failover and failback enabled.
The clustering is standard Microsoft all the way. No proprietary software or hardware was used other than off-the-shelf Compaq parts using optical cabling between all the components. (The servers run Windows 2000 enterprise edition.)
All said, an outstanding company. I'd recommend them in a heartbeat. (They have saved my skin numerous times!)"
"I recently purchased a printer from CDW. I have been a long time customer, and have always found their service to be quick and reliable. I was frankly surprised by the negative comments on this site as of recently, but now I am in the same boat.
After a phone call to verify that the printer was in stock, and assurances it would go out in 1 business day, I finally received a shipping confirmation 3 days later. I requested FedEx 2-day service, but the weekend had arrived, so I waited for 4 more days. When the printer hadn't arrived today, I called my sales rep. He informed me that the printer didn't actually ship until today, 1 week later. He appologized, but offered no compensation.
I spend a sizable chunk of my company's yearly IT budget with CDW, but after having to take the heat for equipment I told management would be here days ago, I don't think I will let them put me in this position any more."
"Follow up to previous:
Now I find out CDW has charged my cc $70 in shipping for an order that I was previously told hadn't shipped, which I then cancelled-these guys are unmatched in their arrogance and ignorance. I would suspect some low level scams going on, but I suspect they are too disorganzed to pull anything off.
cancelled order after many conflicting stories.
will never do business with cdw again."
"*** CDW shines when things go wrong! ***
CDW may not offer the best prices on the web but you can always get a rep to do a price match. Chances are, they will come to within a few dollars higher or oftentimes even lower to compensate for freight. I've never had problems with them. If the items they ship are DOA or does not work, they will take it back and ship you a replacement without costing you anything more. Once I had to RMA a wireless keyboard that I needed for a tradeshow. They overnighted the replacement. That I say, is worth a few bucks extra!!!"
"CDW is horrible. The rep I dealt with (Derek Skuble) lied, and caused nothing but problems. When I complained with the BBB, they refused to reimburse me for damages."
"I live near the showroom, so I shop in the store. The people they hire do not always know anything about computers. The floor help are trainees and not very knowledgeable in computers. When I do finally buy something, it takes about a 1/2 hour to get the product. They have a huge warehouse and it takes their clerks a long time to pull parts. So I have to spend about 2 hours to get the order placed and picked up"
"What an aweful experience so far, and I haven't even had my order shipped. I ordered a $63 software package. The account rep called me once to verify my name and address, several days go by, calls me again and tells me that I don't own my home?!? Because my phone number is unlisted they can't ship to me. I've never heard of such a thing. Caught between a great price and lousy customer service, I perservere. I call Meghan at CDW back and she tells me she will email me an authorization and I can just "email it back". Well, it's in .pdf format, no quick turnaround there. So I'm left to fill it out, with a copy of my drivers license and credit card, and fax it back to her (no 800 number). All of this and the item hasn't even shipped yet. Are the savings really worth it, not where CDW is concerned.
**Follow-up** After multiple phone call, emails and a fax, Meghan (the account rep) emails once again to tell me that she could not offer that price, it was for multiple licenses only. No clear statement of the same in the product description on the web. Needless to say, I cancelled the order. I HIGHLY recommend against any purchases through CDW."
"I have been buying from CDW for 3 years now. If you compare prices from other stores you will find that most of what CDW has to offer is cheaper. Everytime I have found a better deal somewhere else my CDW account manager manages to find a way to beat it and give me the best price!"
"further updating: We're still not able to use this cluster. I fully blame CDW for poor behavior and poor support. This is now mid-October, after investing this much money into a cluster, we should have been well into production with the new machines. Instead we are still negotiating RMAs and trying to get the hardware up to where it should have been on first order. The latest, over the last two months, has been that the Tyan motherboards that they originally shipped were an early version. Tyan wanted to swap them through CDW, but CDW has not allowed this. We're still negotiating. I would strongly advise anyone interested in purchasing from this company (academic or otherwise) to go elsewhere.
sorry: the original posting was deleted when I updated. Here's a short recap -- We placed our order with CDW-G after several weeks of price-checking. This was for a large cluster of 40 boxes (built from parts). The total was nearly $50,000 with more business to follow if things went well. The order started to come into the lab in early June and trouble was seen right off. The problem is that the order was very poorly packed and many items were damaged in transit. CDW was extremely slow to respond to this situation and we lost about two months getting the RMAs and equipment exchanged. We had 37 of 40 hard-drives that fully failed due to packing, one case (still not RMAed), and one motherboard. I also was disappointed that they required us to absorb the return shipping costs and packing. All told we lost a great deal of time and expense in the initial time from late-May to early August, just to get some rough rendering of the cluster assembled. This is with a group that already has done this before (56 other boxes already in three other clusters). This was easily the worst of our experiences in ordering parts and equipment for a cluster. It may not have been the sales-persons fault, but the company is not structured for return business and not responsive to rectifying poor shipping/packing. "
"No problems whatsoever. I want to up their rating so that other people will know that this is a good company to do business with.
"
"Order Date: May 19, 2003
Credit Card Charged: May 20, 2003
Order Shipped: May 20, 2003
Delivered: May 23, 2003
Product Packaging: Excellent
Expected vs Received: Excellent
Products appear new: Yes
Every ordering experience with CDW is the same for me. I know what to expect and when to expect it. There is no guessing and that is a good thing for me. My only complaint would be on their pricing. However, it would appear that they target a different market than the likes of newegg.com, googlegear.com and such. Their web site and order tracking tools are much more professional looking and more refined. My rep Dante is prompt and fairly willing to work with me on pricing although they do loose a tremendous amount of my business on this one point alone. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give CDW a high 8. If pricing were not such an issue in this industry then they would score a perfect 10."
"I ordered a Canon camera case from CDW and received it within 3 days. It was to be a gift for my wife. Unfortunately, she did not like it because of the size. I sent an email to CDW requesting an RMA and received it in less than 24 hours. CDW was courteous and professional, as well as prompt. I will definitely order from CDW again."
"I made a purchase from this company after a friend recommended it to me. I didn't know a lot about network storage but I was told that CDW's gurus would help me choose the right solution. I called, spoke to one of their technical experts, and went with the system that he recommended. Needless to say, it was an overprice piece of junk that never worked. It eventually failed taking all of our data with it. Later I learned that the expensive solution I purchased, was half the quality and twice the price of a dell drive which I now use. I went from a 200GB raid 0, to a 200GB raid 5 that came with Red Hat tech support. And all of this and at a much better price.
I'm no IT guy, but I can tell you this, I know when I've been played for a sucker. I won't be using CDW ever again."
"I just don't understand how people can complain so much about CDW. What other company gives you so much personal attention? And as for items not being in stock -- CDW has over 80,000 different products on hand in their enormous warehouse. Apparently, the people complaining just have bad luck choosing the wrong products. And when I ordered an item that went out of stock, my Account Manager called me within 5 hours to let me know and give me reasonably priced alternatives. Also, CDW DOES NOT charge credit cards, etc.. until the item has left the warehouse to be shipped to the customer. I do not understand people who say they were charged, but never got the product. Look at your credit card statement one more time, because I think you owe CDW an apology."