My small business ordered several laptops from General Nanosystems in Minneapolis a few months back. What should have been a fairly straightforward purchase turned into a drawn-out, nightmarish boondoggle.
General Nanosystems is a "screwdriver shop, " that is to say, it builds computers from various parts and sells them. Their prices looked good, so I called their sales staff, told them what I needed and they recommended the system components. I placed the order and received my shipment a couple weeks later. But apparently their limited technical abilities resulted in computers built from components that are not compatible with one another. Some of the components even failed right away. All six of my laptops had a major quality issue.
My attempts to rectify this situation were met with hostility and indifference. The owner, whom I talked to on the phone, was defensive and arrogant. I tried to calmly reason with him and get him to cool his temper. But he remained adamant, stating that my only recourse was to bring them in person and they would "have a look." I have a business to run, but I decided to come in to give them a chance to make good. I drafted a detail account of the problems, in hopes that would help the shop technician repair the computers.
You simply cannot imagine the dump that is General NanoSystems' store on University Ave. It looked like a college dorm room. Junk strewn everywhere. There were long lines of customers all carrying returns, with counter staff doing their best to ignore them. Everyone there was returning stuff. No one seemed to be buying anything.
I was hoping to drop my defective laptops off that day and give the tech people a list of problems. Was I ever wrong. The tech support person refused to simply take the machines for evaluation.instead, he demanded that I power them all up on a table setup in the front of the store specifically for that purpose (there were 3 other suckers there doing the same). The burden was placed on the customer to prove there was actually something wrong and to help with the troubleshooting. Imagine that - the customer doing the technician's job! Meanwhile, the tech guy was standing outside, chain smoking.
After spending over 2 hours of my time at this "DIY tech support" I pointed out the various problems and the tech guy finally relented and took the machines for repair. Two weeks later (!!!) I received a call and was instructed to pick them up. They weren't about to ship them to me. I brought the laptops back to my offices and set them up. Same problems! I doubt that General Nanosystems even popped off the covers. They sat on them for 2 weeks and dumped them back on me.
I have since hired a third party technician to repair the machines. But I learned my lesson.
Buy your PCs from Best Buy, Dell, Office Max... Anywhere other than General Nanosystems. You've been warned.
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