PNY PR Horrors

For some time I’ve been endeavoring to do an article about a budget upgrade that doesn’t require you to throw everything away if you’re using moderately modern parts for basic things like RAM, HDD’s and PSU. My intent was to show how you could go from an older AGP system and recycle your DDR, SATA hard drives, optical drives and use a new moderate power supply or existing one if you have a 24 pin PSU. The one crucial piece of the puzzle I was missing was a PCI-e video card, I decided that since this is about direct performance comparisons I’d attempt to procure a review sample and after long consideration decided on PNY.

I’ve been a fan of PNY for some years. I’ve run PNY since I got one as my first hardware T&L card. I’ve had PNY cards up until this eVGA I’m currently running so I went to them out of brand loyalty. My how that loyalty was misled.

The first PR rep I dealt with initially said "Sure, no problem. Send me your contact info and I’ll see what’s available." Great. After waiting to hear something back from her I gave her a call a couple of weeks later and was treated to the shock of her thinking I’d lost my mind. She initially claimed that she’d never had any discussion with me about anything and it wasn’t until I’d sent her a copy of our email correspondence that she remembered I even had contacted her. What drugs are these people doing? Anyway, she again said get back to her and for me to call her next week. I did, got voice mail and left her a message stating I’d been calling as she’d requested. I heard nothing. This went on for a couple of MONTHS until I finally got her on the phone at which point I was told to try back in a month.

Hmmm… OK, I’ll do that. I tried back in a month to get the same thing. This went on up until August of this year. Now mind you, I’m not asking about getting a super high end card, just a budget gaming card. Anyway, this August the rep tells me she’s quitting and tells me to call her replacement in September. So, mid September I give the new rep a call. I waited a couple of weeks to give the new rep a chance to settle into the new job, no big deal, I’d waited 5 and 1/2 months already… what’s a bit longer. I call the new rep and explain the situation with her predecessor, she seems sympathetic and implies that the rep she replaced was no great shakes. She asked my email address and told me she’d be in touch.

A week goes by and I call back to see what she’d found out, she feeds me some stuff about waiting to hear from her superiors and asks for my number so she can call me back the next day or so. Great, finally some action. A couple of days later I call back and she tells me that she’d given it to someone to handle and thought it was done. WTF? How could it be done when they didn’t have my shipping info? OK, I’ll just play dumb to that and tell the rep that nope, nothing’s going on at my end. She tells me that she’ll personally handle it herself, verifies the card I’m interested in, asks my shipping info and tells me the card will be en route that day or the next at the latest.

As PNY is headquartered just a few states away I figured that at slowest I’d see the promised card in 3-6 days. On day 5 or 6 I call to see what’s going on with the card and to get tracking info. I wasn’t going to be home for the next couple of days and wanted to see when the card would land so I could make arrangements for someone to be here to accept it. She says fine, I’ll shoot that info to you, I verify my email address and wait. Nothing. I call back the next day and get voice mail. I leave a message about liking to know what’s going on and please get back to me.

The following day I get in touch with the rep, she tells me she has the info in front of her and would email it right away. Great, I’m not home and don’t have access to my email. I check my mail after getting back and no email. I’ve had no luck contacting the rep since then. Today’s day 11 so I call the rep’s boss and explain the situation to her and she tells me she’ll investigate it and get back to me and takes my number. Nearly 6 hours later I’m done. It’s been 6 and 1/2 months, several dozen phone calls and countless hours of frustration. I’m not getting anything, I never was getting anything except lied to.

Why in the name of decency do these people feel the need to blatantly lie to people rather than say "No, sorry, I can’t help you." I could accept that. To just jerk someone around for 6 months for no reason is totally unprofessional. From now on I will never buy another PNY product. Not only that but I’ll advise anyone else considering PNY to do likewise. If they’re going to jack me around this bad when a simple "No." would make life copasetic I shudder to imagine what trying to RMA to these idiots would be like.

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