Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!iuvax!purdue!haven!decuac!mountn.dec.com!shlump.nac.dec.com!frambo.enet.dec.com
From: balzer@frambo.enet.dec.com (Christian Balzer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Warrantee problem: please help
Summary: Buyer beware!
Keywords: Intercomputing, scum, business practices.
Message-ID: <4123@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 17 Aug 89 12:41:02 GMT
Organization: DEC SWAS Frankfurt/W.Germany
Lines: 64


In article <5660052@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM>, charles@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM 
(Charles Brown) writes...
[Real sad and true story/letter about troubles with Intercomputing
deleted in favour of bandwidth.] 

I assume that upon your public letter someone from Commodore will/has
contact(ed) you. Please note that the CBM'ers who read this group are
mostly non-[sales/service/customer support] people, so don't expect an
ultra-fast reply from a person in the right place.

Now, about Intercomputing, I have a story or two to tell...

In February '87 a small (not physically, damnit :-) German distributor
(and Amiga fanatic) and my humble person (used as translator.device :-), 
visited the US, made some deals in the LA area, visited Fred Fish in
the always toasty city of Tempe/Phoenix, and the more icy regions of
the Cltd. premises in Wichita. During this trip my friend also ordered
a large quantity of soft/hardware from Intercomputing, including some
Microbotics RAM expansions for the A1000 (Starboard?). These items
where delivered without any serious delays to Germany. Two of the
Starboards died in the following year, so we took them with us on our
trip last year to the AmiExpo in Chicago, to mail them from inside the
US, thus saving some money and avoiding time consuming customs hassle.
The boards were to be fixed (warranty was over) and the coprocessor
board was to be installed.
This time, Intercomputing took it's time. I did take over 4 months and
several phone calls from my friend and the nice guy w/o an Amiga, John
Kjellman (thanks for all, John!), to pry them out of their hands and get
them back to Germany.
Seems like their performance is going down over the years...

A substantially larger German distributor whom I also know well,
finally stopped doing business with them after several disputes.

We (The Software Brewery) wanted to distribute one of our few commercial
products thru them (you might have seen the AntiVirus add in Confusing
Computing ;-), but after endless delays and ever dropping profit
margins decided to pull out of the American market. Sold several
hundred packages in the "homeland of piracy", though. Not too bad! ;-)
And this with 4 times better profit than Intercomputings last offer and
at half the US price!

>Is Intercomputing an authorized Amiga dealer?

If they ever were, they shouldn't survive the dealer/distributor
reorganisation going on in the U.S.A.

>	Charles Brown	charles@cv.hp.com or charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com
>			or hplabs!hpcvca!charles or "Hey you!"
>	Not representing my employer.

All this will do Charles probably no good, but at least the audience
(that's you, buddy ;-) is warned.

Regards,

- 
--  _  _
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