Rosewill Customer Support - IMPOSSIBLE to Reach

Just wanted to let people know about Rosewill if they?re considering purchasing from them.

My story briefly;

I wanted to upgrade RAM and was looking at Geil (which I?ve heard of) and noticed on ChiefValue.com that Rosewill had 1 GB sticks for cheap. Although I?d never heard of Rosewill, the RAM came with a lifetime guarantee. That was the deal breaker, so I ordered two sticks.

I soon received the memory, installed it and off I went. Over the course of about six weeks I noticed a plethora of problems, ranging from Java error logs closing browser windows to Halo closing during play with the dreaded ?Gathering Exception Data? error to cryptic messages like ?The instruction at ?0x012dd3d0? referenced memory at ?0x012dd3d0?. The memory could not be ?read?.?

After switching memory modules around I narrowed it down to one of the Rosewill sticks. I have removed the stick and haven?t had a problem since. So, I decided to contact them to replace the memory. HERE?S WHERE THE STORY GETS INTERESTING.

I called Rosewill, a California based company, after hours at around 9:00 PM their time. At best I hoped to reach customer support. At the least, I expected a recorded message stating business hours, how to return merchandise, etc. What do I get instead? A very unprofessional, ?Hello??

I said, ?Yes, I?m trying to reach Rosewill Manufacturing.?

?We?re closed,? the voice responded.

?So why are you there?? I asked.

?I?m in a different department.?

?So when are you open? What are your business hours?? I asked.

?I don?t know. I work in a different department.? (Yeah, probably the janitorial department, I thought)

So I decided to call the next day during business hours (whatever they were) and guess what? Now I get an answering machine. But instead of getting the usual ?Listen closely as our options have changed? spiel, I get what sounds like a $14.95 answering machine from K-Mart stating that if I want customer support I must e-mail them and also that if I?d like I could leave a message. Well, after leaving messages, of course I didn?t get a return call. That?s been roughly 10 days ago.

So, if any of you are thinking of purchasing from Rosewill, BE ADVISED THAT THEIR CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS NON-EXISTENT. ?Willy? the janitor is manning the phones! (No offense to anyone named ?Willy?)

I?ll end this story on a positive note: I contacted the vendor, ChiefValue.com and expressed my concerns. They said to ship them the memory (yes I had to pay $1.99 of my own money ? no big deal), they would ship out another stick (I received 3 e-mails already confirming that the replacement is on the way) and they would deal with Rosewill themselves.

Now ChiefValue did not have to do this for me. I ordered this memory in late April and here it is August. I think that was terrific customer service and I will order from them again. I WILL NOT, HOWEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, ORDER FROM ROSEWILL.