Good Experience with Monarch

[PhrazeMaster]

Hi you guys,

I just wanted to share an experience I had with Monarch. It started rather badly, but ended up better than expected.

I called and asked if they had any Opty 170's in stock. They assured me "yes." Later that day I ordered one, along with some other things. Then I got an email stating they had shipped the other things, but not the 170. I then emailed them and asked them to cancel my order--i needed the chip and thats why i had called to check stock.

I got a call from one of their managers, around 7pm my time (CA), after 10pm their time. Manager apologised and explained there had been a glitch in their system, they DID have the 170s in stock, and they would speed bump me to overnight shipping if I would agree to reinstate my order. he then proceeded to offer me better shipping on my next purchase. We talked for 30+ minutes, very personable guy.

He said if I would post my good experience, he would even give me a better deal on a vid card I am needing (this is the full disclosure part), so here i am. Although I can't say I like the website nearly as well as the eggster, I will say monarch seems to have a lot of heart and they seem to genuinely care about customers. I can't say how the whole experience will be, because I have yet to receive everything--and I know ppl have had trouble with rmas and yada yada, but fwiw, a manager personally called me and made things right.

Mike

 

[Greenman]

gg Monarch.

 

[doc2345]

He needs you to post a good experience because it's something they seldom provide! I went through a similar thing with them 3 weeks ago when the web site said the 170's were in stock. I placed the order and they hit the CC immediatley. Three days later after no response from them I called and they told me they had made a mistake and the ETA was two weeks later, of course I told them to cancel the order. Three hours later a manager called and said they had made another mistake and he had them in stock. I told him to CANCEL as I had ordered elsewhere. Ten days later I noticed that they hadn't credited back my card and call them again, it was three days after that before they processed the credit. Of course if I wasn't paying attention I would have been screwed. This is a BS way to conduct business. I have made four attempts of purchasing a product from them starting with a 4800+ 4 months ago. Every instance turned out exactly the same way..... They're history.........

 

[Chacranajxy]

I hear an overwhelming amount of negative stuff regarding Monarch... maybe I just got lucky in that I ordered a PSU and they sent the right product on time and everything... so maybe we're in the minority on the good experience thing.

 

[ITPaladin]

Remember the majority complains while the minority stay quiet.

I think I have only ordered once from them that I remember, which was recently for the Opteron 146. No problems here.

 

[rise]

i'll never place another order with monarch, paid user endorsements or not.

 

[eplebnista]

Originally posted by: rise4310
i'll never place another order with monarch, paid user endorsements or not.

Ditto!

 

[Dorsalphin]

I don't know if anything has changed, but I bought a majority of my last build from Monarch earlier this year and had no problem what-so-ever. It was my first (and so far only) purchase from Monarch, but I was more than happy with their service. I ordered a case, mobo, processor, video card, and hard drive from them using ground shipping. To my surprise, they bumped my order to fed-ex 2 day and I received everything a week early.

As ITPaladin pointed out, people tend to only post about their negative experiences, not their positive ones. Because of that, I felt I would chime in. Monarch's 1 for 1 in my book, and I will defintely use them again in the future.

 

[DerKaiser]

My Monarch experience. Last year, right before Christmas, I ordered an Athlon 64 3200 and asked it to be shipped to an address I had just added to my credit card account. Since I was going to be away for Christmas, I couldn't use my normal address. Well, they had trouble verifying the shipping address with the CC company so I just told them to cancel my order and I would place the order again after the holidays. Instead, they shipped it overnight for free to my regular shipping address (where I was going to be for another day or two before Christmas). I know they were just trying not to lose the sale, but I thought it was a nice thing to do nonetheless.

 

[doc2345]

Originally posted by: Dorsalphin
....... Monarch's 1 for 1 in my book, and I will defintely use them again in the future.

And because you feel that way you will get screwed eventually! Until they invest in a realtime order-entry system the problems won't go away. Anyone can get it right once........

As far as the dipsh!t that would like to call people that have experienced problems as "whinners", then he himself is the dipsh!t! Try sitting through a weekend when you expected a promised delivery or better yet, order thousands a month of product from online guys that don't deliver. Screw 'em, they can't be counted on...... There's too many choices!

 

[TankGuys]

I think part of the problem with Monarch is the website software they use, "Miva Merchant". We toyed with that for a while, and the problem is that it doesn't easily support real time inventory. It uses a proprietary backend database, so you can't make it play nice with mySQL or anything like that... ergo, it's tough for the people in the warehouse to update inventory when new stuff arrives. My guess (and it's just that, a GUESS) is that they have to do an inventory export from thier main database every few hours, and then import it into the Miva Merchant. It's a very cumbersome system, and doesn't allow for nice, real time systems. While Miva has it's benefits, this is one big problem with it. I quit using it after about a month of discovering issues like this

So, I don't think it's that Monarch is a bad company, not by any stretch... they are just limited by thier software at the moment

 

[hotdealdave]

I've bought from Monarch on several occasions. So far I've had either 4 or 5 smooth, uneventful purchases. My first negative experience was when I purchased an Opteron 165 a couple of weeks ago. I got a mail stating they were backordered a month, so I cancelled and ordered an Opteron 170. I received that 2 days later. Unfortunately I was charged for both, and didn't get credited for the 165 for 10 days. So all the next week I was driving only to and from work, and eating ramen noodles for lunch.

So I'd say Monarch is honest and have good prices, just don't order from them unless you're absolutely sure you're not cancelling the order, or unless you can afford to be without that money for 10 days.