Technology for Mortals

About a year ago, I write about how Newegg has become a problematic vendor for me. I am currently putting together a new PC, and last night I ordered all of the parts. On a whim, I decided to see if Amazon had any of the parts I needed. Why did I try Amazon? Well, for one thing, I have their “Prime” membership, which gives me free shipping. But more importantly, Amazon has always been awesome about processing orders quickly and having things arrive when I expect them to, if not sooner.

For my full PC build, Amazon had about half of the parts I wanted. One item that was slightly annoying, is that they only had one of the RAM kits I wanted, but unlike Newegg, Amazon let me know how many they had in stock, which allowed me to decide if i would order it elsewhere or let it be backordered. The hard drives I wanted (I’m doing a pair of WD RE3′s in a RAID 1, and a single WD “Green” drive for backup purposes and to put the swap file) were not available at Amazon either. For some parts, Amazon was a bit higher in price (the thermal grease was a few bucks more there), on one item (the hard drives that were out of stock) they were a bit less, and on most items that both Amazon and Newegg had, they were the same price. In a nutshell, other than a few items that Amazon did not stock, there was no good reason why I could not have built the system from Amazon. For the items that Newegg was slightly cheaper on, Amazon’s Prime shipping more than offset it.

The real difference, though, is in the customer support. The last time I had to talk to Newegg, I waiting on hold for nearly an hour. My alternative was their online chat, which also has taken nearly and hour for me to get a representative for as well. In fact, it was worse than the phone, because all I could do was sit at the computer staring at the screen waiting for it to tell me that an agent was with me. With Amazon, the customer service rocks. I had a question about my order (my credit card declined the billing at first, thinking it was fraudulent since I so rarely use the card). I found the contact system, clicked “Phone”, and put in my phone number. The moment I hit “Submit”, by phone was ringing, and within 10 seconds I was talking to a representative who already had my order pulled up. In under 60 seconds, my question was answered by a live person. I simply cannot beat that.

The one thing to look out for with Amazon, is who is fulfilling the order. As long as Amazon is handling the order themselves, you should be assured of great service, fast shipping, and usually, Prime eligibility. I still like Newegg as a company, and their site is great at helping me figure out what product to buy; Amazon still hasn’t figured out how to give me a good guided search for parts yet. But unless something radically changes at Newegg, Amazon is my parts vendor of choice, which is something I never thought I would say in a million years.

J.Ja