Provantage

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.

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

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.

Not sure what clown is running the show over at Provantage but they need to get with the 22 century. First of all their website is down right esoteric, I understand their target customer is small business but why do you have a heading category of "computers" that has a sub category of "shelves". Why is your "memory" category under the heading of "Office", and for the love of all that is holy, why do you have a category... at all... of $#*!ing "typewriters"? So I navigated my way through this desolate hellscape and found the product I was looking for, great, they were even selling it for less than anyone else. So I get to the checkout and there is no Guest option for checkout, it's register with us or $#*! off. There is also no way to opt out of having them send you advertising emails, not until you get the first one at least. The final straw was the requirement for a phone number. I just wasn't having it, I get far too many robocalls as it is and this company seemed more than willing to sell my number for 50 cents. You HAVE to provide one though so I entered a fake one. Noticed there was no email letting me know I was charged and they were working on shipping. Turns out they require all their orders to be manually verified by an actuall ugh... Human. Humans that only work an 8 hour window monday through friday. Luckily I had ordered on Sunday so it was only ONE full day's wait for them to even start processing my order. However this Human sent me an email informing me that my phone number didn't match the one in my bank records and I would need to provide it. I started responding to the email that even my local gas station can charge a card without a phone number when it occurred to me that I could have already found, purchased, and even had my order processed in the two sentences I had written. So I did that thing and told the representative that it had cost me 20 dollars more but my order was literally being shipped as he read this and asked him to cancel my order. I then looked up reviews for the company (which lead me here) and finished my email with this sites rating of the company. To his credit he didn't rise to the bait and simply cancelled my order. It's not like he is in management anyway, probably agreed with me.

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.

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...

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?