I am thinking about buying a computer from them today because of the special sale listed on the Deals page. However, I have found some very bad reviews of this vendor. Supposed they they used to be caslled aipc.com.

I have been trying to call them to ask a question on the video card upgrade they offer. They do not answer the phone at all.

They offer an ATI 9800 all-in-wonder card as an upgrade, but it does not indicate that it is the PRO version?

Anyway, although the deal looks great, at 50% off, I think I will have to skip it because it seems their customer service is non existant.

How can a company expect to do business and not answer their phone?

Thanks.

[Tim Abbott]

Glad you posted a thread on this as well, Adam. After a litte research, I believe they were actually www.aipcs.com out of NY somewhere. The NY BBB registered 133 complaints over the last 12 months regarding this company. That is a TON of complaints from my point of view.

Just wanted to make people aware of this.


By the way, here is the BBB link if you are interested in the info: aicomputers.com

Yeah, its a shame becasue I was very close on pulling the trigger on a gaming PC. I thought if the forum posted the sale in the deals section that they were OK or prescreened.

Oh well, they still aren't answering the phone.

[Gabriel_Lam]

We have a good working relationship with that company. Though we've had a couple order problems, they were quickly solved. That's a very good record considering how many people have ordered from them through our links in the past few months already. You can read more here:

http://www.gotapex.com/forums/showth...ighlight=aipcs

In a nutshell, the problem they had before was with a finance company they used. If you read each of the complaints carefully, you'll see they all stem from this. The finance company took the deposits and ran. They've since cut ties with that company, and have even set up a restitution fund.

Right now, the phone lines are down. They're upgrading to a T1, which the phone lines will run though as well. This takes a few days to transition over.

We've been keeping on top of it though, just watching out for our viewers.

Well I guess it was just bad timing then. I needed to ask them a question before I pulled the trigger. And them not aswering the phone definitely swayed me away from them.

I guess I missed the boat on the 50% off, but better safe then sorry.

I would like to here from any forum members that did order from them during this sale and how it went.

Thanks,
Adam.

[Neal_C]

Adam,

If you go to the Gotapex forum site there is a pretty long thread going about the deal.

I ordered one. What do I have to lose? If something goes wrong, just call your credit card company and dispute the charge.

You can't put to much stock in the reseller ratings number because you can look at companies like Dell, Circuit City, Best Buy, Office Depot, etc, and they don't have any better rating than AI.

Neal

[Dave Sabo]

Everyone over at Gotapex forums seem to be in the same boat... no real communication on their orders yet...

I'm thinking it's time to bail on this deal myself...

Any differing opinions from you all here at HTF?
My opinion is it's beginning to stink like a scam unfortunately.

[Neal_C]

Yea, since my last post here I have decided to cancel my order with AI. I have sent them two cancellations emails and have yet to get a response back.

Just for anyone that might have ordered and doesn't know it, they have a security flaw on their order tracking page that allows anyone with an order # to see anyone else's information. You can't see CC #'s, but you can see addresses, etc. I have deleted all my information.

If I don't get an email response today or get to talk to the AI rep on ICQ, I am calling my CC company and filing a dispute for fraud.

And by the way, as I'm sure it is obvious, the longer they go without shipping any computers, the less this becomes such a great deal, especially depending on your video card choice.



Neal

[Dave Sabo]

Just making sure this is visible... off the deals page...

Quote:

AIComputers - Note on 50% Off Deal from April 27-28 (Posted by: Apex)
This is a note for all of you who took part in the 2-day 50% off promo back in mid April. Unfortunately, aI is closed and done for. No further orders will be fulfilled. Warranties on received systems are valid (they were prepaid) through the 3rd party company on your warranty cards. ALL charged cards will be credited back to your card. Again, I sincerely apologize I was not able to compel this vendor fulfill the orders. In the last 9 months, we posted smaller deals for them, slowly building up to bigger deals, just to make sure they were legit. They fulfilled all of those orders properly (we kept an eye on threads about this, as well as kept email logs), so we felt it was safe to post this deal. Unfortunately, they were unable to meet their financial obligations this time.

More information can be found in this thread at the GotApex site. Scroll down on the page to post #966 by Apex, where he explains they have closed shop.

Oh well, guess I'll wait on my upgrade after all