I’ll be brief in this post, because there’s not too much to say. But I wanted to make a point of calling out Antec, and their recent customer service experience that I had with them.

I normally have bad luck trying to deal with large companies, and their technical support necessary for their equipment that I may need serviced, replaced, etc. As an IT guy, I normally am able to fully diagnose the problem before I contact them for their support. Consequently, it quickly becomes frustrating when I need to rehash all of my diagnostic work with them, etc. However, in the case of Antec, it wasn’t as much of a technical support request, as it was a generic request.

See, I recently purchased an Antec Three Hundred Two computer case for my home server. I purchased the case specifically because of its toolless design, and perpendicular drive rails. It supports 6 total internal hard drives, and previously I had used 5 of them. Unfortunately, I happened to lose the last pair of drive rails that I needed to mount a sixth drive, which I had recently acquired.

So, I hopped on Antec’s website, filled out a request, and stated that I was wondering if it were possible to purchase replacement rails for the case, as I didn’t know where mine was, and didn’t want to buy a brand new case, just to get two plastic drive rails.

A day later I received a support ticket response back from Antec, stating that the Three Hundred case doesn’t use drive rails, but rather simply screw the drives into supplied mounting holes.” NO! I was frustrated. I had explicitly stated that I had the Three Hundred Two, and that it does, in fact, use drive rails! I was immediately annoyed, and vowed never to do future business with them again, if this was going to be the quality of their service if I had any questions.

I quickly responded back to them, reiterating the fact that I had a Three Hundred Two case, and that I did actually use drive rails, and needed to purchase a set of replacement rails. I hit send, and waited…

That was Tuesday. That very same afternoon I received yet another response back from Antec. I was scared to read it, because I didn’t know how much more fighting I would have to do to try to buy some stupid replacement rails. Much to my surprise, this was the response I received:

[…]I will be mailing just two rails free of charge since you need those two for one HDD. You should be getting them within 5-7 days from now.[…]

Wow! Talk about service! I didn’t even need to actually put in an order for two. They voluntarily sent me two, free of charge! I promptly responded back to the rep, thanking him for that, and that I would anxiously await the delivery of the rails.

Of course, that very night I happened to find the two missing rails that I needed, sitting in a pile of junk in my office! But, that’s beside the point…

Fast forward only two days ahead to Thursday. In the middle of the afternoon I received a text from my wife, stating that I had a package waiting for me at home, from Antec. Sure enough, there were my drive rails!

So, I went from an incredibly frustrating encounter with Antec’s support, to an extremely pleasing outcome.  Antec went above and beyond to ship me free drive rails, including paying for the shipping as well, and I received them in just two days!

Now that’s customer service that will keep me around for a future purchase!

– Admin