Off to a bad start
A friend of mine who's been teetering on the edge of Mac ownership for a while now finally decided to go and buy a Mac Pro 8-core (he wanted the top of the line model). I recommended Stormfront in Canterbury - and I'm beginning to wish I hadn't.
Saturday before last, Stormfront Canterbury didn't have the MP8 in stock, just the 4-core model because "no-one ever buys the 8-core", but they assured us they'd order it the following Monday and it would arrive the following Monday, allegedly sooner than if he ordered from Apple Online - despite not being a custom order - and they promised to keep my friend informed of progress.
The sales guy knew very little about the product he was selling, had difficulty opening the case (and once opened, didn't really know much about the insides), claiming that a Mac Pro could easily handle images of 60 million megapixels and run 8 monitors from one graphics card.
It has now been 10 days since the order was placed, and my friend has only had one phonecall from them, 2 days before it was supposed to be delivered, explaining that it might not turn up.
Today, having not had a further update, he called them - only to be told it was Apple's fault and there had been a shipping error.
I'm getting retail rage on behalf of my friend, who is spending £2,500+ on a premium product at an Apple Premium Reseller, and getting frankly lousy service.
To be fair to them, they did throw in a copy of MS Office for Mac Home/Student, plus £20 off AppleCare and 10% off Parallels 4.
But I find it hard to believe it takes 10 days to order and receive a standard spec MP8 when you're an APR, when a personal buyer can order the same spec direct from Apple Online with 24 hour shipping!
