I have been having big problems with Mandrake Soft, both communication wise and with delivery of goods I ordered in April.
They have charged my credit card $566, and totally ignores any attempt at communication.

I have posted the thread from the members section at MandrakeClub, hoping this might serve as a warning to anyone considering buying online from MandrakeSoft.

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Posted 27-06-2003 at 17:45
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I must be having bad luck, or maybe I am not the only one out there.

I ordered a bunch of 9.1 Mandrake Software packages in April.

Mandrake charged my credit card at the end of April, informed me there was a delay with the order, but it would ship next week (This was just before Easter). Then nothing happened and the order showed up as "being processed" on the mandrakestore website.

Then after a month of sending repeat emails to Mandrakestore, I was finally told that there was a logistics (?) issue with DHL which they were trying to sort out. It is now the 31st of May. Still waiting, and beginning of June, I was finally sent an email with a DHL tracking number.

Finally I would be able to see what was going on, but no, keying in the tracking number on the DHL website, just gave an "Additional information required" as the status of the shipment.

Since then I have been mailing regularly (twice a week) to Mandrakestore. I have left messages at the phone numbers listed on the Mandrake website for business and delivery inquiries, but no one ever returns those calls.

I know the emails sent are being read (Delivery Notification is a wonderful thing), but no response comes back.

And now it is 2 months since Mandrake charged for the goods, and I still haven't received anything, and not heard anything either.

This is on par with the worst ecommerce sites out there.

Even though I have purchased from Mandrake before with no problems, this latest experience leave me wondering what is going on in there. (Had this been the first time , I would with no doubt be thinking they were a bunch of frauds by now)

I am beginning to doubt very much the longterm viability of Mandrake as a business if this is how they operate now.

Hope you all enjoyed my little rant, I had to vent out some steam here, and I would like to hear any others had similar experiences with Mandrake lately.


--
Kim Pedersen
CNCS Ltd.


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Posted 28-06-2003 at 00:53 by another MandrakeClub member:
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I order lots of stuff on the Internet, and stuff like that just happens occasionally. My father once ordered a R/C car for my brother that was postponed 6 months before the manufacturer finally informed the catalog that the item had been discontinued.

In your case I think they mean "Legistics" meaning contract/legal issues. (Usually contract issues.) This happens occasionally with shipping companies and postal services, where they sometimes unexpectedly change various policies without giving advanced notice to their clients. Additionally, the customs agencies of some contries do the same thing, which causes more problems.

As for the additional information needed, you might want to look at the main pages of the site as to what information is necessary, and try manually inputing the tracking number allong with that information. If you don't have that information you might want to ask one of the email sales reps at Mandrake's store for a corrected link.

I hope this can help you; if not now in future online orders. I seriously know the nightmare of getting some things mail order.


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Posted 05-08-2003 at 23:37
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Thanks for the good wishes.


Unfortunately it seems my troubles are not over. Mandrake Soft agreed to resend the goods, treating the original shipment as being lost.



From then on things looked promising, but I ended up in the same situation as before - still no answer after sending plenty of emails asking someone to at least have the courtesy of replying.



I have included my latest not so pleasant email to Mandrake Soft, if anyone should be interested. I just think they are totally subpar any decent business standards, and I am not quite what I should do with/about Mandrake Linux in the future.




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Attention please,





I have now for over 3 months been trying to get the goods I ordered and paid for in April.




You / Mandrakesoft are being very uncommunicative, not having heard from you in more than 3 weeks, despite several attempts on my part to have a dialogue about your delivery situation, both via the telephone numbers listed at www.linux-mandrake.com and via email (Which DSN notifications show me are being read, but I get no answer/reply from any who reads the email).




gparakh@mandrakesoft.com have read most of my emails, as I get a delivery notification everytime I have sent emails to Mandrakesoft from this recipient.





If you are unwilling to either communicate about either the order status or delivering the goods, then I see no other way than you refunding the US $566.00 you have charged on my credit card on the 24th of April 2003.





Charging money for a product, and not delivering, and then also ignoring all customer attempts at finding out what is going on, is fraudulous, and on the same level as the spam mass marketing companies offering vitamin pills to enhance body parts etc.
But this is worse, because with these junk offers, I have a chance of identifying them as thus, while Mandrake Soft is supposedly a reputable company, which I used to trust and have some faith in.





This is so ridiculous, and way below what I would have expected from a company such as Mandrake, and if you ignore this email also, I will do my best to create such a stink publicity wise in various forums on the internet, because I would want to make sure people understand what kind of uncommunicative company you are.





I am truly sorry for the low language in this email, but I am frankly quite tired of sending email after email, and seeing them being read and ignored.





Ideally what I would like, is for me to receive the order for the 6 English PowerPacks and 2 ProSuites I ordered.




But if that is impossible, then refund my money!





--
Kim Pedersen

There has always been problems with Mandrake deliveries. If its not one excuse, its another.
Its typical of Mandrakesoft im afraid :(
Try these contacts:
lemarois@mandrakesoft.com
Tl. : +33 (0)1 40 41 00 41

Hey thanks!

I will try so right away.

Using the phone number you gave me, I managed to get through to a human voice (Denis) and I was told that I would be sent the missing goods.

I still don't know why I was being ignored for all that time, and my confidence and trust in MandrakeSoft has taken a bit drop - no amount of apologising on their behalf can change that.


I'll believe this is over when I actually receive the items, but thanks for the help with the phone numbers!

Your welcome

They have a great product, but lousy service / management.
BTW , Welcome to the board !!

Typical Mandrake sadfully...i had the same experience a year ago, it's sad to see they haven't worked on it :(

I mean for an OS which u can get for free there are not many ways to make money...support and customer relations are very important here.

Yep: You hit that nail on the head, arise.

I have to wonder if I'm in the minority.

I ordered a 9.1 Power Pack straight from Mandrake's site, and I received it a week later ( I installed it and have been using it ever since).

Even after the horror stories I've been hearing, I still went ahead and ordered directly from Mandrake, and didn't have any problems at all.

:?: :?: Who knows :?: :?:

Inconsistancy is the Mandrake trademark! Most people don't mind gambling at the tables. After all, that's why they're at the river boat. But generally speaking, business does not work like that. :wink:

Yep difficult to see the new business model

It appears (as a customer) that Mandrake are very keen to take money (not surprising given their financial state) but are unable to divert any of it into logistics. Remember, France is a socialist republic. If the people in distribution aren't doing their job Mandrake can't fire them. All it can do is hire more people.

My guess is the logistics people, who can work for any company (unlike the developers and support people) want Mandrake to go bust. Under French law THEY will be the beneficiaries of any left over cash....
They certainly don't seem to care ....

I might get 9.2 or10 when it's out from an australian reseller,
www.everythinglinux.com.au

And they have great prices!! 9.1 Powerpack only $80AU, approximately 40US.

James

All of this is why I am contemplating going to RedHat or SuSE rather than 9.1 or 9.2... I just don't have TRUST in Mandrake's ability to deliver and I don't want to wait to get my product if I've paid for it. I know I can pick up RedHat or SuSE in BestBuy...

www.cheapbytes.com


Oops. Try the edited link!

Whatever you were pointing me to, doesn't exist currently...

No hyphen. Try it again. Before I got dsl, I did all my business with these guys. No phones, just email. I had a problem once with a destroyed delivery. They responded to my email within 2 hours and sent me another order the same day. Good ole' american service!

I tried it, but I really think I'm going to try going with SuSE,... in the end it will be less hassle for me if I ever try to get new copies of their distro.

I had wanted Mandrake 9.1, but my first Distro was SuSE 6.1, and it only makes sense to give them a shot again.

They have most linux distro's, including official releases with manuals, if you want the box.

I got SuSE 8.2 now from BestBuy,... I'll be checking it out later this afternoon/evening to see about migration from Mandrake 8.2...

I like the idea of having a distro that I can pick up at a store if there is an update. SuSE 8.2 also comes with the 2 DVD AND the 5 CDs in one package (8.2 Professional that is).

Like I said, I used to use SuSE 6.1 back in 1998 for a while, but didn't have a modem to use with it, and so I never migrated to it fully. I regret that now as I would be way ahead of the curve in terms of my Linux knowledge than I am now.

I tried a demo of suse once that would only run off of the cd. I noticed that suse personal edition is $39.00 no matter where it is sold. Cheapbytes only carries the professional edition, which is $79.00, everywhwere. While their pricing is obviously controlled by them, it sure beats the windex stuff! And suse is a viable business marketing their product. I wish I could say the same for mandrake.

Well,

I am now writing this from SuSE Linux 8.2, having converted all my desktop settings over...

I need to fix a few things yet (like a partial install that tries to keep renewing itself everytime I boot, only to abort and give me the KDE login screen). However, it's very nice.

If you post in the "other distros" section, I'll bet there are some suse users who could help out! :wink:

Yes JaseP,

you are gonna stick around, right?

ouch, that hurts. i always thought we had something going here... :(

just kidding,

ciao!

I'm sticking around. It's just specfic Mandrake tools that I won't be able to comment on any longer. But KDE is KDE, Gnome is Gnome, and Linux is Linux. The variations aren't as great as the similarities...