Further to the earlier story by JAY LYMAN on Velocity Micro and the quoted paragraph from him " Unfortunately, we've had several reports from users who've had to make warranty claims after going through what they report as "very stressful experiences" with Velocity Micro hardware and tech support" unquote. I am one of those unfortunate customers that purchased a high end laptop, which much to my dismay, failed to bootup within 6 months of use. Then, having returned it to them for warranty repair and after 4 weeks of sitting on it.. voila..it shows up on my doorstep with the same problem..no bootup! You would think they would of stress/bench tested it before shipping it out! Now,after consistant emails back and forth...they inform me to wait for a shipping label for rma to ship it back to their factory so they can sit on it for another 4 weeks? Well,after 2 weeks of holding my breath I'm still waiting for the shipping label to arrive. Here's a quote from the ceo himself,Randy Copeland you ran in the same report ""I'm thrilled to see more awareness about the custom PC segment, not just for gamers but for creative pros, business PC buyers, multimedia enthusiasts, or anyone who needs a PC built to exacting standards, or has been disappointed by the reliability or tech support issues that often come with buying from a maker who churns out thousands of PCs an hour." He's got it all backwards because I've had much better support from the "big guys" then he could only wish for!

So, my advice to anyone out there considering purchasing from Velocity Micro,go straight to a shrink and have your head examined!

PS. What IS Randy Copeland REALLY up to these days??

For about the last six months, we've been recommending Velocity Micro to our members and clients. We did so because early on, they performed well. In fact, they still appear to be providing excellent semi-custom built hardware as reported by a number of of our clients who recently acted on our recommendation.

Unfortunately, we've had several reports from users who've had to make warranty claims after going through what they report as "very stressful experiences" with Velocity Micro hardware and tech support. So back in May 2008, I charged one of our lead developers with the task of purchasing a moderately priced PC from them and putting it through it's paces. I recently received his report that, after a few months of very odd problems with the machine that were initially blamed on the Vista OS, it became clear that the hardware was suffering some very subtle problems. So a warranty claim was made. That was the beginning of an agonizing process that, after almost five weeks of constant calling, has still has not resulted a cure.

What's really unpleasant, is that we now have evidence that the machine we purchased to test, was not even the machine we paid for. We paid for a specific CPU model and received a lesser model. When confronted with this fact, VM support's ONLY option was that we had to send the entire machine back to them and wait about three weeks for an unspecified resolution.

Frankly, Mr. Copeland's claims of a comittment to providing an "excellent user experience" do not ring true.

While Velocity Micro clearly has some fine people working for them, it appears that Mr. Copeland has not seen fit to prioritize the more difficult problems so that they can be resolved quickly.

Our advice: Before you buy from Velocity Micro, be sure to grill the sales rep on the exact content of the WRITTEN warranty support, to ensure that the warranty promises are nothing more than a lot of empty promises.

Needless to say, we're now a bit more guarded about recommending VM to any of our clients or users.

Anyone who would like to hear the details of our experience, please feel free to email us.