back to article Moduslink blames OEMs for Vista upgrade delays

ModusLink has said it regrets the lengthy delay experienced by customers awaiting Vista upgrades, but has pointed the finger of blame squarely at PC manufacturers. As we reported previously, customers who had purchased computers before the release of Microsoft's long-awaited operating system on 31 January had been promised …

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  1. Charlie MItchell

    Vista Upgrade RIP OFF!

    They had my upgrade voucher completed since the middle of January, I didn't receive my upgrade until 4th May.

    To add insult to injury, they've charged me £16.09 for the upgrade, I was at least expecting a DVD case or a Jewel CD case, not so, 2 CD roms in a jiffy bag with 2nd class stamp on them!

    This is their "administration charge" for shipping, pray tell please how it can possibly cost £16 to shove 2 cd's in a jiffy bag and stick a 2nd class stamp to it? I'd love for them to provide a full breakdown of their charges!

    From start to finish this company has been nothing but a joke.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so they're fairies!

    1. it was the wish of the customer to get bogged with Vista

    2. "fulfillment partner"

    3. "...we're just the facilitator..."

    therefore ModusLink is a "wish fulfillment facilitator", which is the politically correct name for fairies.

    'nuff said!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mine's finally arrived..

    Having commented ("Unbelievably poor show by moduslink") on the last article I'm pleased to report mine has arrived. It was shipped 18th April and finally arrived on 6th May - not exactly "Express".

    I particularly enjoyed my shipping notification email dated 18th April:

    "Your order has been shipped. You should receive your order within 3 weeks. If you do not receive your order, please contact us via email .... by May 1, 2007, for English language versions of the product"

    I for one will avoid purchasing any product that has any dependency on Moduslink as a provider of services in the future. I would suggest that they look to their p*ss poor communication before blaming OEMs. Samsung were nothing but helpful throughout the process, whereas Moduslink staff either couldn't or wouldn't help.

  4. Michael Coulter

    Vista - What Vista???

    I like may others who have gone for this Upgrade will have received e mails to say that there order has been cancelled.

    In my case they refuse to accept that payment had been made for the upgrade even after a fax was sent to the number provided by Moduslink with confirmation of payment being made.

    If any further promotions involve using Moduslink as a supplier then i think I’ll forget about it and go elsewhere!!!

    If nothing is received from them soon I will have to look at legal action against them!!

  5. Mark Simpson

    No new vista here

    December: Bought new HP laptop; registered for upgrade, arranged £12 shipping and handling by credit card; supplied scanned proof of purchase via email.

    January:Nothing happened

    February:Nothing happened

    March:Proof of purchase acknowledged and approved. Confirmation email that Vista would be sent out in a few weeks.

    April:Request for payment *by bank transfer* or order will be cancelled. I ask why and wait some weeks for an answer. Turns out they have taken so long to send out upgrade my credit card authorisation has expired. No credit card option offered to pay again.

    May:Tell HP and Moduslink where to stick their upgrade.

  6. War Monger

    Look on the bright side...

    At least you won't have to wait as long for the release of Service Pack 1.

  7. Martin Owens

    At least...

    With Ubuntu ship-it CDs they give you a cardboard cover and cover the cost of shipping. ok so it might take 8 weeks to get to the people in outer Mongolia but at least you wouldn't have to pay for it.

  8. Tim Bates

    Communications Manager?

    I wouldn't have thought they had a communications manager after the communication I had with them.

    I had emails with no content in reply to some questions I asked.

    My order was canceled with no notification (8 weeks after I ordered it!).

    They only ever answered my question about why it was canceled via Microsoft themselves (after I made a complaint to MS).

    Overall, I will now never, ever believe any MS offer again, and I will certainly never order anything via a Moduslink website.

  9. Chad H.

    Huh?

    Um, how is it the OEMs fault if the fulfilment guys didnt have the product to ship?? My understanding was the Vista came rom Microsoft, not HP, Dell, Toshiba, et al.

    Maybe I've got my wires crossed...

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmmm....

    Moduslink confirmed to me that part of the delay problem was down to large volume of orders to get through. Hence why mine has been suffering the same delays as others here, I'm emailing them today to find out about payment now that they have taken so long.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Moduslink - Would you trust them?

    I bought a new Laptop in February and immediately submitted the necessary proof of purchase and payment.

    Two months later I got an email, which I assumed was a phishing scam, asking for payment by Bank Transfer, with no reference to my order number or anything. After finding this was a legitimate email they claimed they didn't receive the payment which I made online in the first instance and payment would need to be re-submitted.

    After chasing for an acknowledgement for several weeks, Now in May I finally receive an email written in 'pigeon english' saying order was finally complete ready for shipping but they can't give me a date for shipping.

    Why do I get the feeling I'm at the end of a very long queue??

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Aren't they all partially guilty?

    I was one of the many people waiting for a Vista upgrade promised with my Acer laptop. The disks came in Acer cardboard sleeves, and did have Acer specific prep tools on the second disk - so I have no doubt that the manufacturers supplied the disks.

    That said, the Moduslink website was very unreliable, and when it did work, the information displayed was particularly unhelpful (especially in a situation when the whole process took more than twice as long as it should).

    It can't have been beyond the wit of man, to send a courtesy (delivery no cost) email to all the waiting customers explaining the delays, and likely resolution times - or do I expect too much for my £14 delivery charge (Jiffy bag / normal post, not even recorded / signed for).

    I may not be remembering this right, but I have a feeling that Moduslink were in a similar situation a few years ago with TomTom upgrades (the old PDA versions going from version 2 to 3). Horrendous delays, little or no communication, OEM blamed????.

  13. David Cunningham

    Shmodus-fink

    Bought my Sony Vaio on the 5th Jan this year, and proceeded to put in for the Vista upgrade. Initial form entry failed and locked my COA number. Tried contacting Moduslink on their 0800 number as shown on their website to be told by BT this number did not exist.

    After rooting around the web, I found the number for the Ireland branch (who have nothing to do with this offer) to find out the number was incorrect and should have read 00800.

    Having phoned this number, I had to wait a week for Microsoft to relinquish the COA, and I was able to place the order ... again. I was on my way to getting Vista...

    ...or was I?

    This week I received an email saying that my order had been cancelled due to issues with my card. I guess if it takes four months to place an order, then issues may well happen, so I tried remaking the order... only to be informed that the sony part of this order process was now finished! I despair at the poor quality of service form ModusLink, and wonder if anyone has any ideas of how we should ensure that we receive the product we rightfully deserve, in a relevant timeframe, with appropriate costs?

  14. Pat M

    At least you don't get forced to use vista

    I tried to buy a laptop from dixons a few days ago, and asked if they could supply one without vista- to which they responded no....

    At least all the people with vista upgrade vouchers arn't forced into using a power hungry OS which won't interface or show any performance upgrades when trying to run music applications and hardware.

  15. Jim Marshall

    Deadline come and gone

    Bought a Toshiba laptop on December 12th from Best Buy here in US, sent in voucher per instructions.

    Received notice from Microsoft's "official" redemption center in Orem Utah stating that they need the COA info that is on the sticker, something I had already included on the voucher itself, by March 31st.

    Day I received the notice: April 30th, a month after the deadline.

    I don't think ModusLink alone should be held in the lowest of contept in this situation, *All* fingers should be pointing back at Redmond for this one.

  16. Michael Coulter

    Total Incompetents!!!

    I have just received yet another copy of the same e mial I received yesterday saying that they cannot find any trace of a payment being made by me (see e mail below)

    Forwarded it onto their Marketing department!!!

    Dear Mr. Coulter,

    Thank you for contacting the Upgrade Redemption Support Centre.

    We regret to inform you that as we were unable to trace any payment for your order number… it has now been cancelled.

    However, if your account has already been charged and you wish to proceed with the order for your upgrade, we kindly request you to send us a proof of payment by fax to enable us to check our records and place a new order for you.

    Our fax number is + 31 55 543 39 46.

    If your account has not been charged, there is still a possibility to place a new order with a credit card on our website until 11 May 2007.

    The website for entering your order is https://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/Vista

    (or https://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/Vista/HP)

    To prevent any further delay in processing your new order, we kindly request you to send an email containing your original order number and your new order number so we can link the documentation previously sent to your new order.

    If, for any reason you are unable to place a new order on our website, please call us on one of the following numbers and we will be happy to place an order for you. To do so, we will need to know the manufacturer, model, serial number and COA number of your computer as well as the purchase date.

    Our toll free phone numbers are:

    00800 666 44 666 for Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

    For Spain: 900 973 154.

    For all other countries please use + 31 88 00 16 102. (this is not a toll free number)

    If your account has been inadvertently charged by us and you do not wish to proceed with the order for your upgrade, please send us your full bank details so we can process a refund.

    Name of your bank

    City of your bank

    Name of the accountholder

    Account number

    BIC/Swift code

    Sortcode/BLZ-code

    IBAN code

    Kind Regards,

    The Upgrade Redemption Support Centre.

    Address :

    Technical Upgrade Program Vista

    P.O. Box 252

    7300 AG Apeldoorn

    The Netherlands

    Web site : http://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/vista/

    E-Mail : Europe : MSTUPVISTAEMEA@moduslink.com

    What Muppets!!!!

  17. Claus Freckmann

    Only trouble with Vista-Upgrades????

    Hi, it seems, that they not only have problems sending out the Vista Upgrades. I´ve sent in a voucher for Office 2007 SBS upgrade on dec. 8th 2007, for a customer of mine. After some inquiries in Februar with the help of MS, they finally manged it to get the status of the order to "approved" That state is still the state today.

    several E-Mails, no reaction, yesterday, after not being able to reach them via phone after 6 p.m (I´m working at customers usually until 7 or 8 p.m., I called the US-Hotline (+1-800-817-5602) very friendly guy who tried to find out what´s up there and after not being able to access the european site, he promised me to leave them a message to call me back...

    Today, I got a call from someone of the RMGCT (Response Management Germany Core Team) [rmgct@microsoft.com] who told me, that microsoft has nothing to do with the Upgrades, the only guys who are involved are Moduslink and the OEM-Vendor...

    So maybe microsoft wants to sell licenses, but when there are problems, the OEMs are to be blamed. He told me, to avoid such problems I should sell DSP-Versions (isn´t that the new form of OEM, that´s what I though when I first heard something about no more OEMs, only DSPs are available...)

    Today I finally got also a guy here in Germany on the phone...

    He tolds me tha moduslink regrets the delay, but he has no access to the ordering system to give some information, when I can expect the Version... :-)

    Funny, isn´t it? You should call the Help-"less"-desk to be informed, that they can´t help you, because they are in germany and the company is in Holland.

    Hey, what kind of company is that?

    When I would have such reactiontimes or hotline-comments, I would not have any customers any more...

    My customer for whom I ordered the update gave me the laptop back and I gave him the money back and he ordered one with no OS on it, so that he can then have on it whatever he likes. So now I have a nice Notebook (I allready use one for my business) with Vista on it (Update sended out by Buhl data, arrived 2 days after Vista launch, great service) and still waiting for the Office. As you might think, the resell price for that notebook will be 50% or more off..

  18. Jimmy Higgs

    Slow slow slow

    I applied for my free gateway vista upgrade in February via Moduslink (actually £14 so not free) and the order was validated quite quickly (can't tell you how log it was so long ago!) so i was really happy and looking forward to the 6 week lead time.

    It seemed an age that i would check my order status on the order website and it never changed from order approved. I gave them plenty of time but on the 25th april I got impatient and mailed them, I must say they were timely in there reply and were back in touch the next day with the following message:

    "Dear Mr. Higgs,

    Thank you for contacting the Upgrade Redemption Support Centre.

    Please be informed that your order has been fully processed and validated; we have also received and processed your payment. Your order should be in line for shipment.

    Due to the huge amount of orders we have received we are unable to give a specific date for shipment. Please be informed that you will receive a confirmation by email once we have shipped your product.

    Should you have further questions, please contact us again. "

    Firstly, they hadn't taken the payment - this was taken on the 8th May. I checked the next day on their website and the order was shown as shipped.

    It's now 11th May and still no upgrade, by the looks of the posts above I won't be getting it for a while yet.

    Not happy at all. I reckon I will have got a new notebook before I get the upgrade.

  19. Jeremy Edge

    Complete BS

    I have had an order in since the end of December, and although my last email claimed my order was shipped and to expect it in 4 to 6 weeks (WTF? Is someone walking it to my house?) it still shows on the website as "order received". MS pulled off a huge coup with this one by selling off their excess XP inventory during the holiday season to all of us waiting for Vista. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that ModusLink knew they wouldn't be able to fulfill the required demand.

    Oh and the whole "OEM Excuse" is complete bollocks. I purchased the computer and boxed OS through NewEgg, so this is the retail version of Windows, NOT OEM.

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