Paragon Technology, Inc. seemed, at first, to be a pretty good mail order company. They had decent prices on some things, and their web site, while somewhat lame, wasn't utterly hateful. It even used to work.

Of course, everything had to change. Here's my experience with them to date...

Most Recently

I'm a dork. I went to order some more stuff from them. What a sucker. This time, they shipped part of the order okay, but then the rest never showed up. In particular, I was waiting for a Celeron 466 and like some memory or something (like I said, they'd already shipped the hard drive from that same order so at least they had that going for them). So the remaining stuff never shows up. So I call and ask "what's up with that?" They tell me that Celeron 466s are impossible to get - of course, they weren't ever going to go to the trouble of telling me that themselves, I had to call and get through to find out. (I should point out that their phone service has gotten better since my dealings with them that were just plain nightmarish wrt phone service.) I forget exactly what we decided to do about the order then, but sufficeth to say I was still expecting to get some things from them. Days went by and nothing showed up so I called one more time, and this time they told me that their ordering system won't send partial shipments out unless it's like over $100. I think the memory was like ninety bucks or something, so I would never have gotten my order pretty much ever, 'cause Celerons were never coming in. I guess overall it was clear that their system wasn't designed to help us, the customers, at all.

From a While Back

Their web site plain doesn't work any more. It hasn't worked in over two months, as I recall. Their server cuts off the order page after you log in, so all you get see is pure whiteness (I'd like to point out that they specify only the background color of their page, which is so utterly poop-head stupid) unblemished by any information, such as a form which would let them take your order and your money. I fail to see how a company can put up a web site that doesn't work when they are trying to maintain an income - the poster child laughing stock of ecommerce.

You may be wondering what lured me to call them, then: well, they had refurbished motherboards real cheap. Color me lollipop. When it turned out the motherboard wouldn't power up, I called to get an RMA number and sent the item back. I'd like to note that the sales person I talked with to get the RMA was plain obnoxious. That generates a realy warm and fuzzy feeling which makes me really want to buy more things from then.

Trying to call them most often results in either a busy signal or infinite ringing with no answer. About one time out of five you actually get onto the hold line. Whoever recorded their "please keep holding" message should have their larynx forcibly removed; their voice is so annoying I expect Satan will track her down and offer her a job in Hell.

I've started to believe that there's only one person there, and he just uses different names when answering the phone. It's always a guy, and they all sound alike.

If you try to contact them via email, you will receive nothing but silence in response.

While trying to determine the status of a returned order (more than three weeks have passed since the package was delivered to them), I was told that their toll-free number connected to the sales people, and they could only track if given an RMA, and were helpless with an actual human name. The person said only tech support could find things based on a name; I was given a direct toll number to call to supposedly get through to their tech support folks.

It is ironic, therefore, that I called the given number only to have the sales people answer the phone. When I explained that I was trying to get tech support, I was told two things: first, that there are no direct lines to tech support, and second that the sales people had no way to transfer me to tech support.

I would appreciate an explanation of how a group which you cannot contact can be considered to be supportive.

Oh, and their sales folks claim to not have a manager, so there is supposedly no way of getting anybody to change anything.