#Techni-Soft redux
It's over. All 13 group purchase members have received their boards, and to
the best of my knowledge, they are working (perhaps with glitches, but no
out-and-out DOA boards at this time). Summarizing: I heard about this company,
Techni-Soft, selling a 2MB RAM board for $500. I called them and was told that
I could get them for $402.95 if I put together a group purchase. 12 people
joined me in ordering the boards for about $420 each including shipping. T-S
promised to deliver the boards by the first week in October. They didn't. I
finally got my board in late October after considerable phone time, pleading,
cajoling, threatening, etc. I must have called T-S 100 times to try to get
them to ship the rest of the boards. They arrived very slowly over time, the
last in mid-January. Meanwhile, the first board I received had memory errors;
T-S shipped me a new board and sent UPS to pick up the old one after the new
one arrived. The new board worked, but I eventually sent it in for a new PAL
to fix booting problems with the release version of AmigaDOS 1.2, also to get a
new edge connector that wasn't as exposed as the original one. It arrived back
quickly enough, accompanied by an astronomical repair bill with most of the
items labeled as covered by the warranty. Other group purchasers have had
similar experiences — if they send their boards in for repair or update, they
return in a decent amount of time and with most charges covered under warranty.
The boards seem to work. The passthrough is questionable. Delivery is
awful, with nothing but lies, evasions and delays on the phone. Once you've
got the board, repair work is fast and free under warranty (5 years).
In sum, I'd say that though the hardware seems ok and the warranty seems
real, the company does not have its act together. I personally would not buy
another product from them without having seen significant evidence of
improvement. Other memory products are now available at comparable prices.
The small savings from Techni-Soft are not worth the hassles and questions
about the reliability of the company. Stay away. >Bela<