August 13, 2003

Crucial.com

Crucial.com is the next computer-component-selling website in my line of reviews. I have already reviewed AllStarShop.com … you can find that review, here. Crucial was recommended by a very computer-savvy friend of mine so, despite being more expensive then a few other sites, I decided to order from them.

Crucial is known throughout the world as being a quality RAM distributor. Their parent company, Micron, is a DRAM manufacturer. Though, not the most inexpensive upgrade supplier, they have the reputation of producing stable and reliable RAM.

For a price of $94.33 I purchased a 512MB PC2700 (DDR333) Kingston piece of memory. I placed my order on 08/08/2003 at approximately 9:00am EST. The item, according to the UPS tracking system, was shipped from Crucial at 4:57pm, on the same day. Same day shipping is such a great thing. So, what did it cost me to have the item shipped the same day using 2nd Day Air via UPS? Nothing. Not only was there no shipping charge, but there was no rush delivery charge.

There is an additional piece of information that I should add, regarding the price, at this point. THEY CHARGED ME MICHIGAN SALES TAX. This irked me because I am not used to paying a sales tax when ordering online. I checked out the Customer Service portion of Crucial.com to find out that the Crucial parent company, Micron, has a ‘business presence’ in Michigan. Damn.

The piece of memory arrived on 08/12/03 at 5:22pm EST. Four days is acceptable for UPS 2nd Day Air because the two of those days were over the weekend. The packaging of the memory was O.K. It was shipped in an anti-static sealed bag, in a little cardboard box, in a UPS sealed bag. I would have liked the memory to have been secured in the box somehow but instead, it was free to bounce around. In my opinion, it doesn’t seem like impact damage would be good for memory.

In the future, I may order again from Crucial.com. Their service and their website functionality is impeccable however, their packaging prowess may need some fine tuning. The sales tax was an annoyance but I do understand why I was charged … they have a business presence, so it is law. Now, let us hope the premium price I paid was worth the stability the chips are rumored to have.

SITE FUNCTIONALITY : 10/10
ORDER PROCESSING : 10/10
PACKAGING QUALITY : 6/10
PRICING : 8/10

Total: 34/40

Posted by J. at August 13, 2003 11:00 AM | TrackBack
Comments

MTThreadedComments

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All best,

Johnnie Wilcox

Posted by:misterquid on September 3, 2003 02:42 AM | Reply to this