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SVC Sale

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Monday afternoon I get home from work and what do I discover lying in the middle of my living room floor? A nice, cubical priority mail box neatly taped with the return address to SVC.

YES!! My heartbeat speeds up a notch as adrenaline surges through my geek blood. We all know that feeling from receiving geek gear. It's that "yes-I-just-got-the-biggest-baddest-heatsink/videocard/mobo-holier-than-joe-schmoe" feeling.

I carefully open the box and am greeted by a neat, impenetrable layer of pink foam packing peanuts. They stare back at me silently, daring me to disturb their orderly arrangement. Well, I am more than happy to oblige. I thrust my hands deep into their hidden recesses and pull out one of the red LED case fans I ordered. "Cool!" I think as I plunder for more hidden treasures. I pull out another case fan, 3 sets of rounded cables, the neat looking turbine fan grille, and the yellow cold cathode. My order is complete. But I rummage around for a few seconds longer to see if they included any extra "goodies" as other online retailers are sometimes apt to do. No dice this time.

Leaving a wake of pink foam peanuts scattered about as I fly upstairs with my hoard in hand, I excitedly run into my computer room, heart beating faster in anticipation to see how everything looks when it is powered up. First to get plugged in - the case fans. Taking them out of their containers and noting that they came with basic fan grilles, I plug it in and stand back with satisfaction. Yep, they will definitely do.

Shuffling the yellow round cables like a deck a cards, I decide that they can wait. Which leaves the yellow cold cathode - the defining element of my case mod. This will make it or break it, IMO. So I slip the box out of its cardboard sheath, noting how "professional" the box looks, but as I soon discover, looks *can be* deceiving.

Finding another free power supply connector, I plug in the *yellow* cold cathode, turn on the rocker switch, sit back and bask in the white glow...waitaminute, WHITE??? I look at the tube closely and actually put the tube inside the case. Yep, definitely looks white to me. I squint and squint and do all sorts of eye contortions to see if I"m mistaken. Maybe there's a yellow hue that I'm just not seeing. I double check the box and unfortunately, none of the colors listed are checked off.

Hmmm....giving SVC the benefit of the doubt, I leave it on a bit longer, thinking maybe it takes some time for the yellow to kick in. Haha. After a few more minutes, nada. Still looks pretty white to me.

The next day, I bring it to work & show a co-worker of mine. He thinks he can see a yellowish tint but he agrees that it looks mostly white. A quick call to SVC and a few minutes later, they are sending me out a yellow tube free of charge. I suppose I'll have to go through the entire waiting-building-in-anticipation thing to see if my hopes are dashed upon the rocky crags or lifted to geek heaven. If worse comes to worse and the tube they send is the same, I suppose I can go obtain some yellow cellophane somewhere and give it a true yellow glow.

That being said, their prices are definitely cheap, but sometimes you get what you pay for. I would probably order from them again in the future but not before shopping around some first. And wouldn't you know, they dropped the prices on the red LED fans by $3 each just a couple days after I placed my order. *grumble* Whereas I was a virgin SVC customer before and didn't quite believe all the rumors of incorrect orders, lowered prices, I feel now I've been properly violated and am much more 'experienced' in dealing with them.

We'll see in a few days if they redeem themselves or if they've seen the last of my cold hard plastic.
 
While I am sure there are people who have been disappointed with SVC like adinar, I just want to chime in that I have always been very happy with them. Their prices are good. Their shipping is usually very reasonable. Out of 10 or so orders that I have placed they got them all correct but one. On that one order (where I ordered manually adjustable, variable speed, LED fans -- and received identical looking thermal controlled variable speed LED fans instead), they promptly sent the correct fans and refunded me the cost of shipping back the incorrect fans. That gets an A+ in my book! (and no, I have no interest in the company -- it's just that in my experience there is a good reason why they have above average ResellerRatings)
 
I love SVC and have always had good luck with them.

However, please stay away from Powmax PSU's as I've had 2 of 3 die terrible deaths within months of installation. One was tragic as it cooked a couple floppy drives and a 20GB HD. Consider this fair warning.

 
I have never dealt with SVC before- couldn't resist the 400W power supplies. I also ordered one of their famous housebrand HSF.
received a floppy instead.
is this typical for them?
 
Originally posted by: davesaudio

I have never dealt with SVC before- couldn't resist the 400W power supplies. I also ordered one of their famous housebrand HSF.
received a floppy instead.
is this typical for them?
In my case it happened once out of 10 orders. Just call them or send e-mail and tell them politely that you would like to return the floppy and get what you ordered. They were very good about my RMA and if I remember right they even refunded the cost of return shipping.
 
davesaudio: you'll see plenty of posts here regarding various SVC screwups. The posts will go on to say, however, that SVC usually will fix the problem.

I've order maybe 3 times from them. 2 orders were fine. The 3rd got screwed up. I order some cheapo P/S. When it arrived the corner was smashed in. The packing box looked OK though. I called SVC and described the damage. They promptly said that it was UPS's fault and I need to file a claim with UPS. I got pissed because the box looked fine to me - meaning SVC damaged it. The guy I was talking to claimed that he packed my P/S himself and it was fine when it left SVC. Yeah, right. Anyway, after arguing for a while, he stuck by his guns. So I called UPS about a claim. UPS said that the SHIPPER is the one who has to file the claim. So I called SVC back and gave the guy a ration of $hit. He gave in and said he'd initiate the claim. I gave him a week and called back to check. He said "oh man I forgot" and he promised to do it.

About a week later I received a box from SVC with one replacement P/S, five GC118 HSFs, and ten 80 cm NMB fans. They never contacted me to send back the broken P/S or anything.

So in the end I scored a bunch of stuff for the price of the aggravation of arguing with them over the damaged goods.

I haven't order from them since, although I haven't ruled them out - they have some nice prices on some things.
 

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for your reply. We will send you the heatsink. As gift from us, you can keep the floppy drive. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Best Regards,
SVC Customer Service

cool

One true test of someone in a customer facing business is how they handle the mistakes
SVC left me smiling and ready to jump on the next deal!

Davesaudio

😀
 
I have dealt with them once. I ordered a fairly large amount of modding stuff for multiple computers I was building. Lets just say it was the worst experience I ever had with an online retailer. It took nearly a month to receive my shipment after specifically calling them and asking if the shipment would go out same day I ordered it. I was assured the shipment would go out same day.

A week later, no answer to my next 3 emails as to why I still have not received my goods. Even though I only live in Sac about a hour and half from San Jose. I call and receive a person on the phone that could care less, and after reluctantly looking for the order, he tells me the order was held for a "biohazard" grill that was out of stock. I told him to just forget the grill and send me the rest (8 fans, 4 cables, 3 lights, 4 assorted fan grills, 2 neon, ) He said fine, he would upgrade the shipping and I would have it in a day or 2.

well.... 10 days later, still no package. I finally call and speak to the boss, who looks the order up and says "no this is not being held for biohazard grill, we have those." Is is being held for a Spiderman Grill and we dont know when they will be coming in. "AAAAAARRGH" Just send me what you got! I told him. I then received my package on the following Tuesday, no upgraded shipping either.

The items that did come are all in working order and were packaged nicely though, no complaints there.
 
I myself am very happy with SVC. I ordered a 1700+Jiuhb0308(I believe) SPMW LT3C from SVC. I got it Thursday, and put it in my 8RDA+ running @ 200*12 and it booted right up! I'm using a Volcano 9 right now. I'll put it on my A7N8X later because it has an H2O set up on it. So far this thing is doing better than my 2400+(POS). Oh, and this is at a 1.5 stock voltage. I'll post pics later if I get a chance.
 
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