Frontosa resellers BEWARE!

What a shocking experience with Frontosa.

I will admit that until now they have been pretty good. I place a fair amount of orders with them - they experience the usual supplier problems but nothing too bad, so thought they were pretty good, which I am sure most of you will agree with.

We have had our fair share of problems lately though, send the couriers to collect only to find out that the courier was sent away either because, a) the stock that they said was there was in fact not, which I can handle - or b)the payment's had been allocated to incorrect orders, and the account is pending. Annoying, but didn’t really say much and took it as it came, politely asked them to fix the problems so I can send the courier again. Never shouted, made a scene or anything for that matter - I am generally extremely relaxed and understanding, even though I pay for each and everytime the courier is sent away.

If I had to read the instance below I would think, ok - the guy probably annoyed them to the point that would warrant this sort of reply, but I assure you that this is the FIRST time I have ever announced my annoyance with them. Purely because we had now lost 2 customers because they *AGAIN* never bothered to let me know that there was a problem.

This is how the conversation went (via MSN):
Sales : Hi
Frontosa CPT : Hello
Sales: How u doing? Good weekend?
Sales: Apparently you couldn’t release my stock?
Frontosa CPT : No there is still funds outstanding in jhb??
Frontosa CPT : They blocked the account
Sales: JHB? Haven’t used them in Months! And Graeme wonders why I have removed everything from the site, why I buy as little from Frontosa as possible. You don’t have the decency to let me know when there is a problem, it could have been fixed on Friday, it’s now Monday - clients urgently need their products today, and now I am stuffed as I promised it today!
Sales : Your main problem (at Frontosa)
Sales : NO COMMUNICATION if there is a problem
Sales : Fook
Sales : As far as I am concerned you should be paying for express shipping to get my stuff here now
Sales : Will phone JHb (to sort it out)
Frontosa CPT : I will close your account here thank you for your time

Fair enough, I should not have sworn - it was not swearing *at* him, just over the situation. Frontosa CPT constantly don’t bother to let me know if there is a problem, they have my cell number, email, office number and EVEN MSN. Orders constantly don’t leave which makes them late for the clients and cost me money - and they don’t even bother to let me know. That was my complaint, no communication - so they close my account. Very good business practice!!!! Wonder if they take all their critisism that way?

Turned out that JHB had released stock in February without my confirmation, so obviously payment was outstanding! Again they are at fault for releasing it in the first place, as they clearly state that no stock will be released without payment. The stock even went off to our old offices (from 2005, even though we did send them updated details), and we did request that the order should be cancelled - so I have no idea what tempted them to ship them off. This doesnt really bother me though and I did make payment for this once I was made aware.

All I wanted was an "I am sorry, let's sort it out quickly and get your stuff off", free shipping was not really expected, but would have been warranted taking the situation into account. Instead a get an "I will close your account here thank you for your time"

So I post a comment on HelloPeter: http://www.hellopeter.com/the_comment.asp?recid=72181

A bit later out of the blue I get this:
Frontosa CPT said: http://www.hellopeter.com/the_comment.asp?recid=72181
Frontosa CPT said: YES I DID GET THE COMMENT FROM YOU
Frontosa CPT said: POST APPOLOGY NOW

Now that is laughable, demanding an apology from me. What for? I ignore his MSN. A bit later I get a request to phone Victor, the MD of Frontosa. I phone and he demands that I apologize, again - what for? This makes me even more annoyed. I then try to explain; instead he cuts me off, rants on as to who do I think I am to do this, and as soon as I start to explain he cuts me off and passes me over to the secretary. That's shocking from a MD of a company, who won’t even give a client the time of day to try and resolve the situation. I literally could not get 2 words in sideways. All that was needed was a simple apology, and it could have been left at that.

I then get an e-mail from Frontosa CPT which ends in the following:
"The sooner you remove the comment, the better for all of us – if you fail to comply, Management will take further measures against you."

Ok, that makes me even more furious.

So I send through an e-mail to Victor - letting him know exactly how and why it has got to this point. I now accept that my account is closed, and apologize for the swear word in the MSN. I am clearly not going to use them anymore, but they still have a PSU which I am waiting for them to return. My account is now closed, so I presume I need to get it done through him. No reply to the mail. Give him until Friday to let me know what is going on and get a replacement through to me. No reply. Frontosa CPT's Manager and my sales link in CPT have both now blocked me on MSN, I know this as I have 2 MSN accounts – and they are online on the other account - very mature.

Send Victor another mail on Thursday evening requesting that they need to give me my PSU, and that I will take it further if they don’t. NOTHING!!!! Try to phone him, but am told that he is not available.

Totally totally shocking, that a company like Frontosa could care so little - they can’t admit they made a mistake and didnt communicate, or even try to come to an amicable solution. A little bit of attempt could have made a huge difference. Instead they allow it to come to this, obviously thinking that I will be writing the PSU off – and that I would leave it at that! You cannot just start ignoring customers, without even trying a LITTLE to try and sort the situation out!

So just a quick heads up as to how quickly what you think could be good service with them can change! What a shocking experience with Frontosa, the Frontosa CPT Manager and Victor both need a lesson in PR.

Amazing how quickly what you think could be good service and people can change! In my opion this is just another typical SA company now! They can really take service hints from Rectron, who do actually care for their resellers....

This is making me feel like they have actually stolen the PSU from me now! *sigh*

No probs with Frontosa here..

@ iamannoyed : Well said mate. Frontosa lost my business ages ago because of the bad attitude of the staff, and the rude abrupt responses you get from their management when you try complain about it. They actually believe they are doing their customers a favour! I complained once, was told off, and have now decided to vote with my wallet. I suggest you do the same

~
scrnscrm

Same here - also had problems with them. Similar to the one you have experienced.

Their attitude towards customers is shocking. Left them long time ago and will never give them the time of day ever again!

Sorry - Mod, any chance you can move this to the correct section please?

Was meant to be under hardware/software. Not sure why it ended up here - must be my anger!

Sorry!

This seems a good time to add my particular woe to the list...

On 01 March, as a direct result of the specifications I saw in their mailshot I recommended to a VERY important to me customer of mine an ASUS Commando board - which didn't work; turns out there was a crack in the board! This came as a big surprise, if I've even seen this before I certainly don't remember it; never mind with Gigabyte boards ..hell, not even from up the road at Esquire either. But this conclusion was only arrived at after my having to cart the damn machine back and forth between Craighall and Midrand several times, prior to that their thinking was I wasn't giving the board enough memory voltage and so it wasn't booting ..hell, I even went so far as to buy an EXTRA CPU and RAM in order to disprove that theory. So, (too) many trips later and it seemed to be working OK.

But before I continue, in almost literal hair-pulling frustration I diverted most of the order for this machine from these clowns to Rectron simply because I was utterly unable to get through to sales to make an order ..and they NEVER phone back. Worse: the one guy they had that was on the ball has left and the remaining lot are largely fools and incompetent (note: I'm quite definitely wound up on this issue, this is an expression of my opinion)

Anyway, client then decides he's ready to now to SLI - only the Commando board does NOT do SLI, dammit ..but every communication I have from them says that it's "SLi ready" (sic). This being a less than satisfactory outcome I tried to reason with Mosi (their (hah!) sales "manager"), with their shirker/sh*t (apparently) of an MD and my client in the loop and asked fairly nicely for this to get handled.

And what I asked for? ..at a minimum to quietly take this board back and replace it with a Striker Extreme. Sure, it would have cost them a bit of money - in the region of a grand, but apparently that's too much to spend on goodwill and owning up to the fact of their having royally screwed the pooch ..so we'll do this instead, I'm sure it will be cheaper.

But, apparently I am not to be taken seriously; in any way at all. Below is Mosi's reply - verbatim:

Hi Bret

Thank you for your email below!!

Apologies for the wrong description on the Asus Commando motherboard!!
We always try to have efficient/enough info on the PL and Mailshot!!
Thank you for point it out for us, we will change accordingly on our price list!!

We can not honour the credit on the mainboard, since it have been invoiced out to you over a month ago, and it has been used!!

BUT, since your client does play game and use the same setup for work purpose,
what I propose is giving u a credit on the 2nd graphic card, and offer you a higher specs card at a special pricing!!!
Try to save your client time and hassle from switch back and forward between SLi and NON SLi environment for playing games!!

Thank you


Yuan-wen (Mosi)

| office: +27 11 466 0038/39 | fax: +27 11 466 0033 | mobile: +27 82 743 6346 |
| msn: [email protected] | skype: ftmosi |

Now, I know that English isn't Mosi's home language and I really can accommodate getting some of the basics wrong, but ..THAT??! Absolutely NOTHING about that should have been released as an official company communication. Hell, that would be sub-par for even a drooling semi-literate fool - and it absolutely fails to make the grade when coming from a (so-called) sales manager.

Evidently they have no intention of budging and, having read IAmAnnoyed's tale, I see this is the norm for them. This is why I've given up on trying to get through to these buffoons and have turned to the ASUS South Africa rep for a hope at some kind of resolution to this fiasco; HE at least replied with something meaningful and has undertaken to try to resolve this with "I can't guarantee that I can give you a satisfied answer but it will be reasonable." (sic) - yes, English isn't his home language either, but he at least is professional about trying to do something about this. But they're apparently moving office right now so I have to wait until Wednesday for that answer.

Here's hoping ASUS recognise how Frontosa is crapping all over their brand and take strong enough steps to make a meaningful difference to the way these clowns operate.

Reading this makes me quite sad to be honest. During my sales managing module I asked that if a customer were to swear how should I respond? Should I put the phone down or reprimand the customer?. The answer was NO. Always be consistently polite and deal with the problem. This is really basic stuff here LOL

Anyway point being that if you compare the level of service in our country to elsewhere you will be disgusted. Sure there is probably worse too, but service is also of major importance to growing business and an economy as a whole. Japanese agree that customer is God! no bulldust.

An interesting fact is that it has been found that a customer would probably be happier with a company that fixes their own problems and works with the customer rather than just being a consistently good company with no problems at all. The minute a company interacts with a customer and solves problems then suddenly the customer's satisfaction goes through the roof. It's like a paradox but true nonetheless.

So in light of this it seems that Frontosa don't know what they are doing quite frankly.

Another well known marketing trick is to under-promise and over-deliver. Do this and they will praise you this hardly happens in SA though, we are so used to being ripped off its actually pretty scary. If we ever see what resembles a good deal we always think, "but whats the catch?". Is this not true?? It should not be like this. I have said this all in another thread as well

Jonny Two Shoes said:

Reading this makes me quite sad to be honest. During my sales managing module I asked that if a customer were to swear how should I respond? Should I put the phone down or reprimand the customer?. The answer was NO. Always be consistently polite and deal with the problem. This is really basic stuff here LOL

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Well-l-l, this gets kinda grey but yea, both of those are likely to make it worse.

Anyway point being that if you compare the level of service in our country to elsewhere you will be disgusted. Sure there is probably worse too, but service is also of major importance to growing business and an economy as a whole. Japanese agree that customer is God! no bulldust.

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I may not go that far, but the customer IS your reason for existence. He may be an outright sh¡t but his money means you stay in business.

An interesting fact is that it has been found that a customer would probably be happier with a company that fixes their own problems and works with the customer rather than just being a consistently good company with no problems at all. The minute a company interacts with a customer and solves problems then suddenly the customer's satisfaction goes through the roof. It's like a paradox but true nonetheless.

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It's not THAT you land in crap, that's pretty much inevitable given enough time - it's how you handle it once you're there. I don't know that I see it as a paradox; for me it's a statement that the company cares enough about my worth to them as a customer that they'll not only take my money but actually put in some effort to both do the job right and keep me happy ..which, as has the effect of me feeling valued and wanting to KEEP spending money there.

So in light of this it seems that Frontosa don't know what they are doing quite frankly.

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Not by a VERY wide margin, it seems.

Another well known marketing trick is to under-promise and over-deliver. Do this and they will praise you this hardly happens in SA though, we are so used to being ripped off its actually pretty scary. If we ever see what resembles a good deal we always think, "but whats the catch?". Is this not true?? It should not be like this. I have said this all in another thread as well

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Heh, I've had this one beaten into me down the years - and for MONTHS now I've been trying to beat it into the heads of Virgin(ontheridiculous) "customer care" ..but that's a whooole 'nuther story.

bdt said:

Here's hoping ASUS recognise how Frontosa is crapping all over their brand and take strong enough steps to make a meaningful difference to the way these clowns operate.

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We get all of our Asus stuff for clients form Axiz. After reading these couple of posts, I am glad we don't deal with Frontoza. There has always been the odd nice case which we have been tempted to start sourcing but have stuck to our current suppliers because of the service they give.

Just BTW, we had a similar problem with an Acer notebook from Axiz not having the specs that were listed on the web site (Wireless_. Axiz went out of their way to sort out the problem. Although the customer did end up with a wireless PCMCIA sticking out of the machine, it cost the client nothing to get the wireless and cost us very little.

Abe said:

We get all of our Asus stuff for clients form Axiz.

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Good to know ..as they say in the classics "I was not aware of that" (Axiz being ASUS stockists)

@ bdt good stuff. It's reassuring to see I make a little sense sometimes, I don't mind some good critism either. On the same token I will quickly admit that my degree means very little without much experience especially at business level. Although Im getting there and dealing with the likes of Dell problems and such does give me a heads up, and being in corporate IT everyone I deal with internally are also technically customers. Was a waiter for nearly 4 years too before getting a serious job so I know all about customer complaints

@ IamAnnoyed. Prime example of what bad customer service does. Now not only do you know about it, but possibly a large community as well. Do you think I would be eager to do business with them now?! LOL I would at the very least be a bit hesitant having not experienced their services first hand. Same goes to the growing number of views on this thread, plus word of mouth from everyone who reads this thread to everyone they bring it up with etc. Hope some companies kindly take note!!! It takes such a little to cause upheavel It is possibly a pretty penny they will lose out on.

bdt said:

Good to know ..as they say in the classics "I was not aware of that" (Axiz being ASUS stockists)

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Another Asus stockist is Corex. Not too bad service received from them so far.

Toxin said:

Another Asus stockist is Corex. Not too bad service received from them so far.

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shot, of course I've got an account there, and I've seldom had meaningful problems from them ..in fact, the last time I did, they managed to get me on the mailing list twice. So I had a wee word to say about it - and got a reply from the MD to the effect that it would be fixed.

Which is of course how it's meant to work! (that they fix things, not necessarily that the MD get involved!)

IAmAnnoyed, please read this:

http://www.hellopeter.com/the_comment.asp?recid=73252

bdt you made such a big deal about being mailed twice the md got back to you

eish must be hectic to have you as a client making a huge fuss about a simple to fix thing rofl

imagine they messed up your order

Well, quick update.

Sent a link of this thread over to the CPT and JHB Branch (Victor) warning them that I will make it more public than just myadsl and HelloPeter if I continue to be ignored.

I got a very pleasant call from Rashied first thing this morning, dealt with him before on returns so I am familiar with him. After numerous apologies from him, and him promising to look into it I got a resonse from Victor requesting the proof of delivery and invoice numbers etc. Finally getting somewhere! Sent them the details, and did mention that simple customer service could have resolved the entire issue. Got a few responses from Victor, not an apology buy I am happy with his response and will leave it from there on his side. Issue with Frontosa JHB resolved, not entirely happy but satisfied.

Response from Rashied:
Greetings

My sincere apologies with regards to this travesty.
Please send your courier for the replacement unit immediately.

Please ask them to ask for me at the Technical Desk.

Once again, my humblest apologies for all the inconvenience caused.

This is an excellent response, and he gains all my respect. Will give him and Mosi credit, they have always been good.

BUT - not at all happy with CPT's response. What makes me even more furious now, is that Frontosa CPT has gone the "legal" route, and gave me a call from an Attorney - accusing me of being the cause of them having "bad" month, with loss of sales. I mean please, 1 day on a forum would never make them loose that much in sales - they really are dreaming. I did not mention anything about their products being bad, which I was also accused of saying - and can be proved by looking at my first page.

For the record, my complaint was not against anyone in the branch personally, it was against the total lack of service from them - no communication, then when I complain - I get a arrogant response that they will now close my account and they then demand apologies. Victor has come right, and is communicating - Pity it is so difficult for CPT, no wonder their sales have gone down! In my opinion they deserve it, if its so difficult for them to even try and rectify a simple complaint!

I did originally agree that I would leave the PSU issue if it was resolved, my courier is on their way to collect - so I would consider this issue with JHB resolved. Well done guys in coming right, pity it needed this though!!! CPT, well....shocking to say the least! I am rather relieved that my account is closed there now actually, after being threatened with legal action for a simple complaint which could have easily been resolved - who on earth would ever bother going back. Oh well.....perhaps they need to learn the hard way!

ja, Rashied is the coolest....

killadoob said:

bdt you made such a big deal about being mailed twice the md got back to you

eish must be hectic to have you as a client making a huge fuss about a simple to fix thing rofl

imagine they messed up your order

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Gandhi on Customers:

* A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

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Unsourced quote from Wiki.

killadoob said:

bdt you made such a big deal about being mailed twice the md got back to you

eish must be hectic to have you as a client making a huge fuss about a simple to fix thing rofl

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Actually, if you had (a) read what I said, being "get me on the mailing list twice" and then (b) thought about it some, you might even arrive at the correct conclusion. Corex have a reasonably high-volume mailing list, usually pretty graphics heavy ..which is fine, it's how we get to see what's on offer. But I don't want the SAME thing twice, every time a coconut.