Provantage

We've been buying from Provantage for years and have always had a good experience. The few times there was a problem, their customer service people always bent over backwards to help us out. Highly recommend.

I read the bad reviews and was skeptical, I mean how bad can this business be? The price was $200 less than a reputable retailer for an infocus projector, so I took the gamble. They claimed my credit card phone number didn't match, I provided an updated number, they said didn't match still and declined the payment method, asked me to wire them money instead with additional $35 fee. I'm not wiring $2200 to them! The whole point of using credit card is to make sure I have protection against shady companies like this one. I ordered elsewhere.

Received my Unifi cameras quickly from this seller. Cameras turned out to be non compatible with my system. Not allowed to return without an RMA. You must email them (filling out a form for this) and they will "get back to you" in about a week. A week to return an email? I finally heard from them telling me I to "Please allow up to 20 business days for this process to go through. Once finished I will email you the return instructions and where to return the items." How hard can they make this process?

I purchased a $1,500 laptop from them using my PayPal credit. I paid for rush shipping, as I needed it next day - I was to travel.

2 Days later I get an email saying that the their credit department wouldn't accept the payment and that I would have to pay via cash or money order. Ummm, what the actual F? Since when does a vendor decide if they will accept or decline a payment method that they offer? WTF!

That would be like buying a laptop at Walmart and clerk telling you that they won't accept your Capital One credit card. Even though they accept visa, amex and discover.

Yo, dummies, PayPal is the one issuing the f-ing credit, not you! Who are you to tell me how I can cannot use my credit?

After responding to the email with frustration, I received no response nor a credit for 3 days. Oh yeah, Paypal fully charged me for the damn thing.

I had to send another email threatening dispute in order for them to refund the money.

Long story short, they can improve their system and customer support. On to the next...

We have been doing business with provantage for many years. They often have stock when others don't. Fast shipping and low prices too.

My company has purchased extensively from Provantage. They have been a reliable source of products, as long as you know what you are buying. I would never go onto their site without a specific manufacturer part number.

Things started to go downhill a few months ago. Lead times and "shipping delays" started to get longer and longer, and they started playing games, demanding payment without shipping products. That's against the published terms of sale on their site. Their (suddenly anonymous) customer service swore up and down that "we would never do that!" at the same time as their A/R guy did it.

This morning, I noticed that Provantage charged us for a month-old order. According to Provantage's terms of sale, that means it has shipped. But when I checked the order status to pull the tracking number, it said, "Expected ship date March 22,2021." That's over three months away! So they didn't even bother trying to get us to agree this time; they just helped themselves to nearly $1,000 more or less out of the blue.

That was the last straw.

I can't tell you what's happening at Provantage. But I can tell you how it looks: bad.

My theory is that they are way behind on paying suppliers that have now cut them off. So they're trying to scrape up the money to pay off existing debts by taking (and trying to collect payment for) orders for high-demand products (e.g., AMD Ryzen 9 CPUs, Nvidia 30X0 GPUs) they don't have and can't get.

In my experience, reputable companies don't behave this way but companies circling the drain do. I will be stunned if they are still in business in six months. That's a shame; they used to be a decent company for what they are (a thin veneer over wholesale distributors like Ingram). I hope they turn it around, but their current approach sure won't do that.