"This is the worst company to do business with. First lets start off with not responsive to their emails a day in a half before someone got back to me to the whole team, and secondly trying to just speak with accounting department regarding a matter with a bill to verses a ship to address. They will only ship to one address. I deal with lots of companies and been in business for 28 years and have never had a problem ever with two different address. Would not recommend this company and would give it a zero or negative number if I could......"
"Their prices are often above retail. They will only give store credit if they send you a defective item, make you pay the return shipping, and make you wait until they get their refund from the manufacturer. For in high demand items, they charge above MSRP, and bundle it with some piece of crap item that's impossible to sell."
"Very poor customer service, very inconsiderate, no concern for customer. They will be disrespectful and totally without any interest or consideration of what they have done to provide poor service They can disregard you without batting an eye. I purchase oem products from many vendors (non-retail packaging and no documentation, etc.) and they are all packaged and marked. From malabs, no marking, no packaging, rubber-banded to another item. It is a guess what you got, if it works, etc. And, they could care less. I have gotten defective/returned item sent to me as if new. Then, I have to return at my expense and wait until they clear it to send replacement. I bear the full burden and expense for their wrong-doing. They tell me with disdain that they do this all the time and nobody complains. If I don't like it, send it back at my expense and deal with it. This is an outstanding business not to patronize. You risk all, they risk nothing and they don't care."
"I've used MA Labs since 1996. Their shipping is fast, product availability decent. Their "wholesale" pricing is about the same as Frys retail pricing. I can frequently find things at Frys cheaper. Last week I ordered 5-23" touchscreens from tiger direct and they were $90.00 cheaper each RETAIL! with free shipping. Score for me because I based my bid on MA Labs pricing but they went out of stock. What is horrible about MA Labs is their RMA department. I recently ordered several Seagate enterprise drives for a build and delivered them. 3 days later 1 failed so I traveled to the customer, which required a ferry ride, replaced their 3 day old drive with a new one and RMA'd the failed unit to MA stating that I was sending them back a 3 day old drive and required a new replacement. A few days later I get a "certified repaired" drive from MA - something that I can not sell as new. I appealed to the RMA dept. and they literally said "tough luck" This weeks problem: we ordered a few cases - the same model we've used for years. We do the build and find that both fans in both cases run at 200 RPM which is insufficient and triggers the hardware alarm on the motherboards. Asking them to allow me to send back just the fans rather than un-build 2 PC's and pay for shipping on the whole cases - they refuse.
I have many more RMA stories over the years but it is definitely getting worse and it is becoming more and more obvious that they don't give a damn about their customers."
"We have been purchasing from Ma Labs since 1993 and have seen a huge decline in their service and product. Sure shipping is fast for new products and shipping is now higher due to Gas Prices obviously. The problem with MA Labs is that they will send you a Defective item as a new product. If they don't have stock on their product they will send you a damaged product in place of. They are the king of sting and will rebox an item with a smile on their face. Their RMA policy is a joke and 14 days for a BRAND NEW PRODUCT that was shipped broken like their parts have been for the last two years is deplorable. Pre 2000 we had one Rep., but since 2000 we can't tell you how many reps we have gone through at this company due the their visa's always running out. I wonder how many LOCAL AMERICANS THEY HIRE...HMMM? They finally went online after how many years and now you can login to their site and get updated prices without having to call the rep which is a GOD SEND! They are like the To Go Order rep at Chilis, absolute shit when it comes to personality. We agree with one of the users on this blog that it's good to have backup parts for your inventory of which we did the same thing, but you are going to have to have a backup item for every item you buy from them and that's not possible and will eventually bite your ever loving joy for this piece of shit slave labor fking company in your fking ass just like it did us. The sad part is we won't be there to enjoy it. We were born and live in America and we treat our customers with respect. We don't care if you live here come one come all, but when you call yourself an American and you sell to my American family than you better treat them with the utmost respect or you can get the fuck out of our house or we'll throw you the fuck out...and that's a FACT!!!"
"I have been purchasing from MaLabs off and on (mainly on) over the last 5-6 years. The last time I ceased purchasing from them was due to bad parts and returning refurbished parts in place of DOA MB's. Markups are low for resellers and shipping cost (both directions) just about wipes out the profit margin for a business. I just purchased some Gigabyte MB's in November, found a DOA board (no POST) and file RMA (RMA process is pretty nice now) and paid to ship MB back. 4 weeks later I receive a package with a REPAIRED MB. Start testing it and it will post now but fails to consistently handle BITS - Locks up when attempting to install Windows in different areas, long time to POST. I have not run hardware test cycles on it yet but I am sure most techs know these test are a 50/50 shot to find what is wrong."
"I've used MA Labs nearly-exclusively since 2005. I've had great luck with them. They always ship parts same-day, prices are competitive with NewEgg (sometimes better, occasionally worse - I find the parts for the computer towers themselves are always better, with the rest up or down), the sales rep I have (Doug) is the same I've had for five years and he's GREAT, easy to talk to and very knowledgeable.
I will say however that this company is probably not for the ultra-low volume reseller. I sell about $30,000 a month or so of total product and services and therefore can wait on an RMA or take the occasional price hit. RMA's take 2-3 weeks, occasionally longer. If you keep multiple parts in stock like I do, however, you just deal with that.
The best part is the service and the pricing on the individual computer parts themselves.
Plus, COD allows you to "float" your payment for a couple of weeks which has proven useful to me (kind of like a free, short-term loan)."
"This will more than likely be our LAST order with MA Labs... I have to assume that they changed their name in an attempt to get away from their poor ratings as knowledgemicro, but unfortunately their performance as a distributor will re-earn them a poor reputation quickly.
I ordered parts for 4 systems -- Asus motherboards, SuperTalent RAM, iMicro case (never heard of them before, but hey... it was worth a shot!)...
In any case, of the 4 Asus motherboards and 16GB of RAM ordered, 2 motherboards and 4GB of RAM failed within a week of delivery.
Now product failures are a part of doing business - and I cannot fault MA Labs for Asus having a design problem in their M2N-68plus motherboards... but I CAN fault MA Labs for their RMA procedures!
When we reported the first failure, we were supposedly sent a replacement in a cross-shipping arrangement -- only upon receipt of the failed MB, they shipped us (and billed us) a REFURBISHED replacement. Now I wouldn't complain if this was 90 (even 30!) days out -- but this was an initial use failure!
On top of that, they are billing us for all the shipping! So in effect, I have paid for TWO motherboards when I only needed one, and I've paid 3x the shipping (here twice, and there once!)
When the second (and not the refurb) MB failed, I asked to be credited for the return (after all, I have a refurb unit already sent in error), but was told they don't do credits, only replacements. Funny thing is that when I called to find out where the replacements were (after 7 business days!), the sales rep said she could see the credit, but not the shipping date. Then I was told that they were back-ordered (on the refurb items, not new ones), so I'd have to wait.
These might be acceptable terms for very large clients (who are building dozens of units at a time), or even a hobbyist (who can wait to build their own personal system) -- but it is wholly untenable for a small system builder. Needless to say, my clients have not been willing to wait and wait and wait for us to fix (or replace) their failed brand-new computers.
On a separate invoice, I ordered a pair of replacement power supplies for a server model that used SuperMicro hot-swappable supplies. The part number they provided matched the SuperMicro part number, and the link to their website showed the right part -- but the items shipped didn't even come close. Again, shouldn't be a big problem -- wrong item shipped. My gripe here is that when they figured out that they didn't have the supply I needed, and I shipped them the wrong parts back... they only credited me for the parts themselves! I wound up paying shipping BOTH ways for THEIR mistake!
As a system builder, I need suppliers that work with me in a partnership, and who take at least SOME responsibility when they ship bad (or incorrect) parts. THAT IS NOT MA LABS, unfortunately.
As an aside, I will say that I enjoyed working with our sales rep -- she was helpful, reasonably product knowledgeable (for a sales person), and really tried to make things right... but the corporate policy seems to be "we-re just the middle man, so it's never our fault... for everything we do, we either bill the supplier or the customer, but we never take responsibility".
As a result, once I finally get our account and the outstanding RMA's resolves, I have no intention of ordering from them again... even if they change their name 5 more times!"
"The prices were OK, but their RMA process is among the worst I've ever encountered. I received a controller card from them that failed within 2 weeks. They refused to accept it back."
"I have been purchasing from this company for a while now. Got to say....good turn-a-round time, But bad pricing. I am a retailer and I use all different distributors. MALABS is not good one. That just my opinion...here is why.
They own a retail web store called "EWIZ" and everything on "EWIZ" is priced at the exact same price they have posted on there "MALABS" website. And in some cases ( my case ) I purchased some ram from them ( MALABS ) and had my account rep. go through the pricing and we had sent several emails back and forth. And come to find out I payed $50.00 more than I should have for the ram ( very up set ). I will cut and paste the reply my rep.
First of all, I’m very sorry about this. I understand price is a very important issue. Regarding the prices on Ewiz, Ewiz and we have very different operations. I don’t know their prices and I can’t control it. The items that are cheaper on their website may are having promotions at this time. But please remember one thing that Ewiz is for end user, so the buyers need to pay tax! The price you see on their website is not the final price! But since you are a reseller, we didn’t charge you tax! So actually you save a lot with us.
Just because I save tax doesn't mean that we are getting wholesale pricing!!!! The state still wants there money you have to pay it back. Also you can purchase on EWIZ and not pay tax if you have a valid resale license, I have been in the wholesale and retail business for 20 plus years and I am telling you right know....wholesale pricing is usually a discount off the retail price....in most cases 15 to 25% depending on the product. And especially if they are selling it for the same price or less on their sister web site. I say be very careful I would find some other company to purchase from.
"
"We ordered 6 rack servers from this company over two years and their service was very good. We are a small company, so we do not need any new hardware. MA Labs has called our company over 15 times during the last year wondering why we were not ordering from them. We told them that we simply did not need any new hardware. They have also made an attempt to e-mail many of our employees asking the same questions. I view this as nothing short of harassment. Even when I asked for our account to be closed the phone calls and e-mails did not stop. I just recieved another e-mail today and I spoke to the account representative yesterday asking for the communication to stop. Please do not order from this company. You may never be able to get rid of them."
"MA Labs is our preferred distributor for the many items they stock. My sales rep (Jay) is friendly, lightning fast--calls within minutes to confirm an online order--and returns MY phone calls every time, without fail. We've ordered in excess of $5,000 worth of inventory from them, all of which arrived at our door the next business day (believe it or not) when shipped via UPS ground.
Looking, searching, feeling for something negative to say about them and my only complaint is though they sells tons of hardware, their software is limited to mostly OS and office applications. Overall a dream vendor."
"I own and run a computer store and have many reliable vendors. MaLabs is one of my best. They are fast to ship, take my order, polite and courteous, and responded quickly to my 1 RMA. R. Yeh, my Rep. there is great! He knows his business and knows my time is worth something."
"As the other person reported, they did the same thing to my company and me by claiming that a dead-on-arrival motherboard I shipped back to them by UPS arrived past the "14 day return period" when the UPS signature service clearly shows it arrived on time; and they had to send it out for repair. So here is is two months later, and 7 unanswered e-mails later and they stole a motherboard from me and more importantly, my time. Think twice and then a third time about doing business with these people, stay with good quality vendors and don't be lured by their $1 less pricing policy, the shipping is outrageous and they're out and out thieves."
"I have ordered tens of thousands of dollars worth of products from this company in the past 3 years without any problems whatsoever. The pricing is great, the shipping is a bit expensive, but they ship the day that I order and their website never claims something is in stock if it isn't. Their returns (RMA) department is very fast at turning around the 2 parts I had to return (out of over 100). Solid 5 star merchant; and I've dealt with enough 0 star turds to know the difference."