This one is a little complicated, but here’s what happened: My girlfriend bought an AMD All-in-Wonder 7500 AGP card from Provantage.com for her father, but it arrived without a remote. He thought the description on the website indicated a remote would come with it, so he asked me to take a look at the website. I thought the product description was ambiguous, so I pinged Provantage about the remote and whether it was OEM or retail packaged.

To make a long story short, a customer service rep told me it did come with a remote and that it was retail boxed. The package my girlfriend’s father received was OEM and came with a driver disc and card—no remote. My girlfriend’s father didn’t want to bother with trying to fight for a return or the remote, so I left it at that. But I think it’s wrong for a company to tell you a product comes with something and then not include it. Provantage.com is definitely not a company I would recommend to anyone who works hard for his or her money.

The Dog spoke with a Provantage spokesperson who said, “We did accidentally provide erroneous information to the customer, which happens on occasion. We process thousands of orders per day, and we cannot hit a home run every time, although we give our best effort to do so. Had the customer been dissatisfied with what was received and we were notified that they were shipped the wrong product, we would have gladly made it right. Unfortunately, we were not contacted, but Maximum PC’s Watchdog was. Provantage has been around since 1984 and one thing will never change: Customer mistakes happen. We do our best to correct any errors, but if we do not know they happen, there is nothing we can do to make it right.”

The spokesperson said a contributing factor to the confusion may have come from the fact that Zach’s girlfriend ordered the part under her name and Zachary made the inquiry separately, so customer service would never have connected the two.

He also said that the customer service reps aren’t near the products, so they can’t check what’s in the box. The spokesperson said that if Zach’s girlfriend wanted the version with the remote, she could return the card and purchase a retail-packaged one, which includes a remote.  

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ati, Watchdog, OEM, All-In-Wonder, agp, provantage

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