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JustDeals  Gripe, Gripe, Gripe....

JustDeals sells closeouts of computer related equipment.


August 17, 2000. 

I placed my first order with JustDeals through Egghead. On the Egghead.com web site, I won an auction where JustDeals was the company selling the item. The product was a 3Com Megahertz 10 Mbps LAN PC Card with XJACK Connector, model number 3CXE589DC. It arrived on time in the mail, after that.......

I ordered a NIC card and got a NIC card. What I didn't get was:

  • Drivers, in fact, it came with no software at all.
  • Documentation. There was no manual.
  • Warranty
  • Registration card
  • Plastic case to keep it dust free when not in use
  • A wire. In addition to having the XJACK jack, it has had another jack. What's this jack for? Beats me, without any documentation, its hard to look it up. But 3Com must have included a wire that hooked into the jack.
  • A serial number. This is about my sixth or seventh PCMCIA device from 3Com/Megahertz. I know where on the card they put the serial number. On this NIC card, the serial number was wiped off and the spot where it goes had a label over it that said "06/2000".
  • The model number that I ordered. It was close, but no cigar. They are both 3Com 10 Mbps NIC cards, but they are different colors. 

 

Kind of like buying a car, sight unseen and having it delivered without tires.

Adding insult to injury, the NIC card was scratched and dented. If this card is new, there is a bridge in Brooklyn....

Adding injury to injury, it didn't work either. I tried to use it three times. In laptop number one, I tried it twice under Windows 98 Second Edition. In between, I un-installed the device and rebooted a few times. Each time, Windows automatically detected the new device and loaded drivers for it from the Win98SE CD. However, both times it caused the OS to hang and the machine had to be powered off. I got an introduction to ASD a feature of Windows 98 I had never heard of before that Automatically Skips Drivers for devices that screw up the OS. 

Wanting to be fair, I tried the NIC card in another laptop running Windows 98. Again, the OS detected the device and loaded the drivers for it. Windows 98 calls it a "3Com Etherlink III PCMCIA 3C589D". Again, it caused the system to hang and the machine had to be powered off.  

Eventually, I returned the NIC card and was given a credit on my credit card without a hassle. I dealt with Egghead for the return, but mailed the NIC card back to JustDeals. 


September 4, 2000. 

Another item purchased from JustDeals was Norton Anti-Virus 2000. The CD itself was fine. However, the CD-ROM copies of the product manuals were old.  Norton Anti-Virus 2000 is really version 6 of the product. The CD-ROM had manuals from version 4! 


September 6, 2000. 

3COMPCMCIA.gif (6901 bytes)Another item purchased from JustDeals was a pcmcia modem by US Robotics, aka Megahertz, aka 3Com. The model number of the modem was 1560J. I had already owned a model 1560 and was happy with it, but research on the US Robotics web site failed to turn up any mention of the 1560J model. I ordered it anyway. The J was for Japan. The writing on the modem was all in Japanese. 

   Page last updated: October 5, 2000