The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Penguin Computing
Tuesday - October 21, 2008 01:55 PM in
by Peter Leppik
A recent server upgrade from Penguin Computing turned into the litany of customer service problems for us.
We had purchased from Penguin before, and were happy with the price and quality of the company's products. Penguin specializes in Linux server hardware, and there's a lot to be said for buying from a specialist like Penguin rather than a company which sells a little bit of everything like Dell or HP.
So when it came time to upgrade one of our servers, Penguin was on our list. The price and capabilities were right, so we placed the order back in mid-September.
The first problem came when Penguin tried to charge my credit card. I have both my home and work address as "authorized shipping addresses" on my card so I can order stuff online and have it shipped to work. Penguin's accounting system didn't care much for this arrangement, however, and interpreted the credit card company's "Charge Authorized" code as "Address Mismatch, Charge Refused."
When this happened, the person running the charge simply tried again. By the time they called me, my card had been approved for the same (expensive) server five times, completely consuming my available credit.
Once the credit card problem was squared away, we found out that a key component for our server was backordered with no shipment date in sight. When we realized that it would likely be months before our server shipped, I asked Penguin if they could offer a different model with similar specs for the same price. Penguin offered us a different model and knocked $700 off the price to match the price for the one we originally ordered.
The final goof-up came when the server was finally shipped (a month after we ordered it). Somehow Penguin attached our old address to the order (we moved about two years ago), and shipped our server to a vacant office. Fortunately FedEx caught the problem, so we received the order without any additional delay.
So will we order from Penguin again?
Probably--despite the problems, Penguin did right by us, sending us a more expensive server and eating the difference to get past the indeterminate backorder and service problems we experienced. We still like the price and quality of Penguin's products. The important thing, for me, is that the company stands behind what it sells, and they passed that test.
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