Extremely Disappointing Experience - Misleading Sales Process
Business purchase through our government internal portal system for a total of two QNAP TS-h2490FU-7232-64G units, one from Tieva (Pure Data Solutions) and one from Akhter Computers Ltd.
Stock was purchased based on one unit being advertised as available from each supplier and with an average lead time of one to two weeks.
Email received from Akhter sales fairly quickly following order enquiring as to whether we also wished to purchase sold state drive storage units along with the main device, to which we politely declined as we already have these.
Unit ordered from Tieva received within three working days, with no contact around further sales queries.
Unit from Akhter was confirmed, in a very confusing manner, as not actually being in stock and a requirement for this to be ordered from QNAP directly by them. At this stage, we were also informed that orders with SSD storage were being treated as a priority by QNAP. We did not understand this comment as, to the best of our knowledge, QNAP neither manufacture nor supply SSDs compatible with this unit. We were also informed that the unit, once ordered from QNAP, would be subject to an approximate four week lead time. We knew at this stage that this would push us into our new Financial Year spend budget and so we had to go to a great deal of effort to reallocate funds.
The whole order then became further delayed due to some kind of misunderstanding on the part of Akhter Computers. Eventually, after approximately three weeks from point of original order, we chased Akhter Computers and politely requested a status update regarding when we can expect to receive our unit. At this point, we were informed that an order was yet to be placed with QNAP for the device because we had not confirmed that it should go ahead! This came as a surprise to us as we understood that the order had actually been placed some four weeks previously. We were then asked whether we wished to proceed with the order, again subject to a further four week of lead time. We very politely declined and requested the order be cancelled, in all honesty due to the principle of the matter and my reluctance to spend just over £12k with this company.
Although we do require two of these QNAP units, we'd rather place a new order for the remaining unit from an alternative supplier within this new Financial Year.
Although Derek Rouse, the Akhter Computers sales representative, was extremely polite in their dealings with us at all times, they most certainly caused us a great deal of frustration and annoyance at the fact that we had effectively been mislead around the original lead times and then further delayed unnecessarily due to what I an only assume to be Derek's ignorance around not ordering the unit from QNAP when they should have done so.
Our experience with Akhter overall is quite disappointing as we have placed other orders with them, very few of which have gone through routinely.
This particular experience has led us to create this review, in the hope that Akhter understands how unprofessional and unhelpful they have been in this case particularly.