I'm about to purchase my first Digicam and considering an order from Hardware Street.com (telephone order). This vendor seems to offer some good prices. HAS ANYONE OUT THERE HAD ANY EXPERIENCE WITH THIS VENDOR? IF SO, PLEASE SHARE WITH ME! THANKS.

Bill at bparker@magnolia.net

-- Bill Parker (bparker@magnolia.net), October 25, 1999

Answers

check out www.resellerratings.com If I haven't heard of the place, I always check there before buying.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), October 25, 1999.

My experience with Hardware Street has been quite negative. They apparently are an e-commerce store front for a large wholsesale distributor (Ingram Micro?) but have a very very poor retail interface to customers. I ordered one item from them (an IBM Deskstar hard disk) and they failed to do the basic retail things like:

Confirm the sale Provide tracking information Respond to my 3 e-mails Deliver when they were supposed to (the old trick of "in-stock" stuff now back-ordered)

I complained to C-NET (uvision.com) where they were recommended as a "Certified Net Merchant" with no outcome other than a ploite "Thanks for telling us" e-mail/ I'd never use them

-- Larry Horwitz (lshorwitz@aol.com), October 31, 1999.

I have purchased quite a few things from hardwarestreet.com (and softwarestreet.com). They have come a long way. There have been glitches, but could someone please tell me what Internet company has NOT had any?

At one time I received a shipment that was sent FedEx 2nd day. I quickly called them up, concerned that I was charged for this when I only wanted UPS ground. I was assured that they do this sometimes, but I was only charged for the UPS charge.

All orders were confirmed by email. All orders were shipped very promptly. All customer service questions were answered professionally.

I would not purchase something from them if you want to have a dealer that offers tech support (such as PC Connection), but with most manufacturers offerring that, this is becoming a non-issue. I am planning on buying a camera myself through them.

-- Andy Voda (avoda@together.net), November 23, 1999.