in a store.” The spokesperson
said this doesn’t apply to all
versions though—for software
downloaded directly from
the website, the clock starts
on the purchase date. Louis
said he purchased the three-
pack locally, so that’s not what
occurred. “The update process
should not take away any time
from his subscription. And
submitting a rebate would defi-
nitely not alter his subscription
date either,” the rep explained.
The spokesperson said
the company has not received
reports of this happening to
other customers. “We try to be
as transparent as possible in
all of our practices and by no
means would we intention-
ally do anything that was
duplicitous. Fortunately, our
customer service resolved
this issue directly with the
customer, but we do want to
make sure it doesn’t happen
to anyone else.”
Since some details of
what exactly happened in
Louis’s case aren’t clear, the
rep offered to contact him to
try to discover what could
have happened.
The lesson to be learned
from this is that you need to
track your subscriptions —
don’t assume companies will
do it for you.
Almost Everything
in Wonder
This one is a little compli-
cated, but here’s what hap-
pened: My girlfriend bought
an AMD All-in-Wonder 7500
AGP card from Provantage.
com for her father, but it
arrived without a remote.
He thought the description
on the website indicated a
remote would come with
it, so he asked me to take a
look at the website. I thought
the product description
was ambiguous, so I pinged
Provantage about the remote
and whether it was OEM or
retail packaged. To make a
long story short, a customer
service rep told me it did
come with a remote and that
it was retail boxed. The pack-
age my girlfriend’s father
received was OEM and came
with a driver disc and card—
no remote. My girlfriend’s
father didn’t want to bother
with trying to fight for a
return or the remote, so I
left it at that. But I think it’s
wrong for a company to tell
you a product comes withsomething and then not
include it. Provantage.com
is definitely not a company
I would recommend to any-
one who works hard for his
or her money.
—Zachary CothranThe Dog spoke with a
Provantage spokesperson
who said, “We did accidentally
provide erroneous information
to the customer, which hap-
pens on occasion. We process
thousands of orders per day,
and we cannot hit a home run
every time, although we give
our best effort to do so. Had
the customer been dissatis-
fied with what was received
and we were notified that
they were shipped the wrong
product, we would have gladlymade it right. Unfortunately,
we were not contacted, but
Maximum PC’s Watchdog was.
Provantage has been around
since 1984 and one thing
will never change: Customer
mistakes happen. We do our
best to correct any errors, but if
we do not know they happen,
there is nothing we can do to
make it right.”
The spokesperson said a
contributing factor to the con-
fusion may have come from
the fact that Zach’s girlfriend
ordered the part under her
name and Zachary made the
inquiry separately, so custom-
er service would never have
connected the two.
He also said that the
customer service reps aren’t
near the products, so they
can’t check what’s in the box.
The spokesperson said that if
Zach’s girlfriend wanted the
version with the remote, she
could return the card and pur-
chase a retail-packaged one,
which includes a remote.EMAIL THE WATCHDOG If you feel you’ve gotten a raw deal and need assistance
setting a vendor straight, email the Dog at [email protected]. Please
include a detailed explanation of your problem as well as any correspondence you
have sent concerning the issue.Apparently, not every All-in-
Wonder Radeon 7500 card
comes with a remote.we process thousands
of orders per day,
and we cannot hit a home
run every time....