Explorer Micro swindle
Kragen Sittler
kragen@pobox.com
Thu, 27 Jan 2000 23:06:11 -0500
(Aspire Visa Card Company: I will contact you by phone to discuss this
matter. Please have this email handy for the person to whom I will
speak on the phone so I do not have to explain it all over the
telephone.)
On 1999-12-23, I ordered a computer from Explorer Micro. I located
Explorer Micro from an ad on pricewatch.com in the category
"Systems - Linux". I selected the options I wanted on the Explorer
Micro web page and submitted the form. In response, I received a web
page containing an order number and an accurate description of the
configuration I had requested. I printed out this web page.
The base computer I selected was $299.00. The monitor I had selected
was $149; I also selected "Linux 6.0 (CD Only, No Manuals, No Support)"
for an extra $3. Linux is an operating system. The total price, before
shipping and sales tax, was $480. The total price, including shipping and
sales tax, was $536.68. It should be noted that the monitor constitutes
slightly more than 30% of the price of the whole system.
There were several shipping options on the order page, including UPS
Next Day and UPS Two Day service [check]. From this, I inferred that
shipping my order would not take more than a few days --- otherwise,
there would be no purpose to offering the more expensive Next Day service,
as the difference in delivery time would not be significant.
On 2000-01-04, not having received the order, I called Explorer Micro.
After I gave the order number from the printed-out web page to the person
to whom I spoke on the telephone, he told me my order would ship the
following day (2000-01-05), and arrive 2000-01-06 or 2000-01-07.
On 2000-01-14 [check], I still had not received the order. I called
Explorer Micro again that morning and spoke to a fellow who said he
had been out of the office on 2000-01-04. I gave him my order number.
He explained that my order must have been delayed for some reason, and
he would call me back with further information within a couple of hours;
to facilitate this, I gave him my office telephone number, which has
voice mail. (That same telephone number was attached to the original
order, so he could have called me at any time.)
After several hours passed, he had not called me back. I called him
back and threatened to cancel my order and have the credit card company
chargeback the account. He responded that that "was my prerogative,"
but two weeks from order receipt to shipping was normal for them, they
had been somewhat overwhelmed by the Christmas rush, and there were
400 other people who also wanted to know the statuses of their orders,
which was why he hadn't yet been able to call me back. He promised to
call me back either later that day or on Monday. With that understanding,
I did not ask him to cancel the order.
He did not call me back that day or Monday (2000-01-17), but I did not
bother to cancel the order; I was busy with other things and was tired
of the hassle of dealing with Explorer Micro. I rather hoped I would
find that they had decided to cancel the order themselves.
It should be noted that, at this point, Explorer Micro had lied to me
at least four times:
- once about their shipping schedules; either it was a misrepresentation
that they offered both Next-Day and Two-Day delivery via UPS, or it
was an outright lie that their normal shipping time was two weeks;
- once about my order shipping the day after I spoke to the fellow on
the phone;
- once about calling me back within a couple of hours;
- once about calling me back later that day or on Monday;
- also, as noted below, they appear to have misrepresented their policy on
operating-system availability.
On 2000-01-25, a package from Explorer Micro arrived at my house via UPS.
The UPS tracking information from www.ups.com follows:
Status: Delivered
Delivered on: Jan 25, 2000 6:16 P.M.
Location: FRONT DOOR
Shipped to: DAYTON, OH, US
Tracking Number: 1Z 480 987 03 1502 001 8
Service Type: GROUND
PACKAGE PROGRESS
Date Time Location Activity
Jan 25, 2000 6:16 P.M. WEST CARROLLTON-SOUT, OH, DELIVERY
US
5:10 A.M. WEST CARROLTON, OH, US DESTINATION SCAN
4:27 A.M. WEST CARROLTON, OH, US ARRIVAL SCAN
Jan 24, 2000 11:40 P.M. COLUMBUS, OH, US DEPARTURE SCAN
8:24 P.M. COLUMBUS, OH, US ORIGIN SCAN
Tracking results provided by UPS: Jan 27, 2000 8:47 P.M. Eastern Time
(USA)
I still had not received any communication from Explorer Micro, despite my
having given it to them over the phone several times, and despite their
promises to call me back. The phone number on the order was my home
phone number, which does not have an answering machine or voicemail, so
had they tried that during the day, they might have a reasonable excuse.
However, they also had my email address, my home mailing address, and
my work phone number, and I have received no communications from them
by any of these channels.
On 2000-01-27, I also received my credit card bill, which included a
charge to "EXPLORER MICRO INC 614-436-6300 OH" on 12/27 for $536.68 ---
the full amount of my purchase, including the monitor.
The enclosed packing list listed, among other things, a 15" monitor.
Unlike other items on the list, it was listed with a "0" in a column
marked "Ship", and a "1" in a column marked "B.O.". I assume that
"B.O." stands for "Back Order", meaning that the monitor was not yet
available.
No monitor was included in the package. In fact, the box was not large
enough to hold both an ATX-case computer and a cathode-ray-tube monitor
of any size. It might have been able to hold a monitor by itself,
but nothing else.
The box included a hot-pink sheet of paper, which included the following
text:
*************STOP STOP STOP STOP*****************
Because this computer was ordered without an operating system
installed, we can not offer free technical support for software
installations or problems arising from software installations
(including the loading of drivers) via our telephone lines.
You can obtain software technical support for $10 per incident
up to 20 minutes*. We offer the following basic instructions
as a customer courtesy. Thank you.
This text was followed by information on how to install "Windows '98"
and "Windows '95".
It should be noted at this point that the most recent versions of Linux
itself are 2.2 and 2.3; however, there is a product based on Linux, called
Red Hat Linux, which had a version 6.0 a year or two ago. I assumed that
was what I was getting, but the fact that Explorer Micro was not aware
of the distinction suggests that they are very unfamiliar with Linux.
Among other items in the package was a heat-sealed antistatic plastic
bubble. It contained a variety of items, including two CDs; one was a
CD-ROM labeled "Magic Install", and the other was a CD-R (CD Recordable)
marked "RH6.0" with a permanent marker, scratched and covered with dust,
inserted into a paper pocket.
In the retail PC market, it is extremely unusual to sell a computer
without an operating system installed, for several reasons.
First, a computer without at least a rudimentary operating system
is completely useless without extremely-expensive special test
equipment.
Second, installing an operating system on a computer requires
configuring various elements of the operating system (generically
called "device drivers" or "drivers") to work properly with
various parts of the computer (called "devices" or "peripherals"),
which often must also be configured. Doing this requires detailed
knowledge of the particular devices in question, and often,
a certain amount of trial and error. If it is not done, the
devices, such as network cards, SCSI controller cards, and video
cards, cannot be used.
Typically, a skilled computer technician with access to manuals
for all the various parts of a computer can discover the correct
settings for all the drivers within an hour or less, although it
is not uncommon for the process to take several hours. Sometimes,
settings for one device must be changed to get another to work
properly, and sometimes, particular devices are not compatible
at all.
Once one knows the proper drivers and settings to use for a
particular device, one can set them up very quickly and need not
use trial and error. Accordingly, computer manufacturers can
often use automated procedures to install a properly-configured
operating system on a computer hard disk within a few minutes ---
a small fraction of the time it takes the end-user to install
and set up the operating system.
Having done this, manufacturers are in a position to test
a sample machine to verify that it works correctly with the
drivers supplied.
Third, and more or less irrelevant, is Microsoft's business
practice. According to the Findings of Fact in the US
vs. Microsoft case pending a decision at present, Microsoft's
usual deals with computer manufacturers include a proviso that
no more than a small percentage of those manufacturers' computers
will be sold without an operating system already installed.
This has the effect of making it hard to buy a computer without
an operating system, which tends to discourage separate purchases
of operating system software.
So, when one buys a computer with an operating system, one need not worry
about whether the operating system will work properly with the computer's
peripherals, or how long it will take to install the operating system
and configure the device drivers. One can simply plug the computer in
and turn it on.
I was very surprised. Contrary to what the hot-pink sheet of paper
stated, I had ordered a computer with an operating system. I had
paid more for several of the components of the computer than if I had
ordered them separately, under the assumption that, like other computer
manufacturers, Explorer Micro would install and configure the operating
system, saving me potentially hours of trouble, worth several hundred
dollars, at very little cost to them. Furthermore, the advertisement
of this computer under "Systems - Linux" on pricewatch.com led me to
believe that I was ordering a Linux system, not a system on which Linux
could be installed.
Plugging the computer into my old monitor and plugging the supplied
keyboard into the computer allowed me to turn on the computer and see the
boot sequence; the computer complains that there is a system disk error
and prompts me to insert a floppy disk, which confirms that no operating
system is present.
The only floppy disk included with the computer is a disk with drivers
for the network card, presumably for Microsoft operating systems.
The computer was ordered without a CD-ROM drive; my old computer has
a CD-ROM drive, and if an operating system were installed and properly
configured to enable use of the network card, it would be possible to
use my old computer's CD-ROM drive over the network. Thus, there is no
need to have a CD-ROM drive on this computer for ordinary use. However,
it is not possible to install the operating system from the scratched
and dusty CD-R without first installing a CD-ROM drive in the computer.
Here is what the printed-out order web page says I ordered:
Integrated AMD K6-300 System (--- No CD-ROM ---) (3 Year Labor / 1 Year
Parts Warranty) (L01-37 Floppy Drive) (D01 - 32 Meg 100 MHz SDRAM)
(C01 - AMD K6-2 300 3DNow! CPU) (A91 - ATX Mid Tower-Grey (3)5.25
(2)3.5 (1)3.5 Hidden) (SoundPro 16 Bit Integrated PnP 3D With Wave)
(180 Watt Juster Speakers $5.00) (BTC Keyboard $8.00) (D-Link 10 Base
T RJ45 (OEM) NIC $12.00) (Linux 6.0 (CD Only, No Manuals, No Support)
$3.00) (Mitsumi Mouse $4.00) (4.3 Gig UDMA Hard Drive) (15 in .28 dpi
SVGA Digiview Monitor $149.00)
Options Total: $181.00
I have a couple of minor quibbles.
On inspection, the mouse that was included is labeled, "Today's Mouse",
and does not mention Mitsumi anywhere on its packaging. Indeed, the
nearest thing it lists to a manufacturer is the following notice on
the packaging:
Made in China
Today's mouse [sic]
47505 Seabridge Drive, Fremont, CA 94538 U.S.A.
The address listed for Mitsumi Electric in the whois.networksolutions.com
database is in Irving, Texas, not Fremont, California. This is not
conclusive evidence that Mitsumi does not manufacture Today's Mouse,
but it is at least strongly suggestive that Mitsumi does not want their
name associated with Today's Mouse, and perhaps Today's Mouse is actually
not associated with Mitsumi at all.
The second minor quibble is that the "180 Watt Juster Speakers" do
not say "Juster" anywhere on them. They come with a sheet of paper
identifying them as "MLi-699 Active Full-Range Speaker System", and
bearing a copyright notice saying, "(C) 1998 MIDILAND INC. All Right[sic]
Reserved."
The specifications on this sheet explain that the output power of these
speakers is 14 watts, while the "PMPO" is 120 watts. I have not been
able to find a definition of "PMPO", but it appears to be a relatively
meaningless measurement.
On the front of one of the speakers is the legend "MLi 699". Both
speakers and the sheet of paper that came with them do not mention the
name "Juster" at all, and they are 14W, not 180W.
Explorer Micro has lied to me repeatedly. Explorer Micro shipped my order
32 days after receiving the order and 28 days after receiving payment
for it, and they still have not shipped 29% of the order's value, despite
leading me to believe my order would be shipped promptly by advertising
one-day and two-day delivery. Explorer Micro substituted peripherals on
my order without asking or even notifying me, and the peripherals they
substituted appear to be inferior even to the bargain-basement ones they
were advertising. (In the case of the speakers, the speakers they sent
me were capable of less than 10% of the power output of the speakers
I ordered.) Explorer Micro has shipped me a computer that cannot
be used at all in its present state, because they did not install an
operating system on it, contrary to my reasonable expectations based on
their advertising. Furthermore, unless I install more hardware in this
computer, it is impossible to install the operating system I ostensibly
purchased a from the media I purchased it on.
I want out of this deal. I want the $536.38 charged back to Explorer
Micro and taken off my Visa card bill. I want to ship this computer
back to Explorer Micro, at Explorer Micro's expense. I do not want
to receive the monitor which is presumably to be shipped as soon as it
is available. When these things are finished, I never want to hear from
Explorer Micro again.