August, 1996
Formerly: EMPTY SEALED PENTIUM PRO BOXES
Where are all those Pentium Pros?
Every once and awhile strange things happen in this industry. Years ago a hard drive manufacturer was doing poorly. To increase the apparent shipments of product, the company started to ship bricks instead of hard drives.
This morning we opened up two Intel Sealed Boxed Pentium Pro Processors. Instead of processors we found Hewlett Packard Ink Cartridges. They weren’t even new cartridges.
After calling Intel and being bounced around, a poor female tech support person took my “Ooooo Come on… you are telling me Intel isn’t going to investigate?” According to her, I needed to go back to the distributor. If the distributor didn’t reimburse or supply the processors, then Intel would consider it theft at that point.
What is Intel’s problem?
Someone has stolen product, someone tries to report the problem, and they don’t give a rats behind. Ok, that’s life. But according to one source, this isn’t just an isolated incident. Worse, I think Intel has a customer relations problem. They didn’t even say, “Oh this is terrible sir, we will get on it right away!”
Why did I get upset enough to write this html document?
After placing the call to our distributor, it became apparent that this is not an issue of reboxing. We were not the only dealer to call the distributor about “empty” boxes. This is an Intel issue. Someone within that company better take notice, or the value of their boxed program is ZERO.
There must be more to this, right?.
Here is the kicker and why I am really upset with Intel. According to the Intel representative and her boss, their security is for internal purposes only. I could not talk to someone in that department. So in my snide comment moment I said, “I talk to Cyrix security,…” Unfortunately for the poor tech person she claimed, “Well, this isn’t Cyrix.” True. Very True. Cyrix seems to care about theft. Personally her comments were stupid.
I realize there are employees of Intel who have bought from Ein Stein’s Computers (and now you may from ESC Technologies). I also know some of you are in management and would love to find out more information. I can be reached at 800-427-DRAM. Let’s see how quickly Intel can react. Tick Tick Tick
Update August 30, 1996:
An Intel representative called and explained that they are very concerned about the Boxed program. He continued that Intel ceased over 10,000 counterfeit Pentium Pro CPUs. Good job, Intel. Thank you for returning our calls.