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Reply With QuotePEO (17th May 2009)
Hi All,
I’ve been reading a few posts here over the last few months and feel it’s time add a few comments.
My name is Ravi, I’ve been working at Viglen for nearly 9 years and I must say things are very much on the up. I’ll be honest and say that things haven’t been right in the past and this is purely due to setting correct expectations from the outset and poor customer service / account management.
However, over the past couple of years we are very much focusing on customer service.
Apologies for those you have had a bad experience and if there is anything I can do to help please shout and I will assist.
Viglen are in a very good space at the moment, backed by Sir Alan Sugar we are cash rich and no have no debts. Unlike Dell and HP making hundreds of redundencies we’re recruiting.
You may be aware that Viglen recently were awarded the OGC 10 contract, supply of over 70000 desktop PCs and Toshiba Laptops to over 40 councils across the UK. This win was the largest the single Government contract in recent years and against all the Tier 1’s, Dell, HP, Fujitsu etc. Follow the link below for further information.
Viglen awarded public sector computer contract worth up to 30 million :: PublicTechnology.net :: e-Government & public sector IT news + job vacancies:
<edited due to unauthorised advertising dos_box>
My moto is always best value and service, that’s what I would want personally when buying something for myself therefore I stick with that same attitude for my customers.
Again, if any issues with Viglen please PM me and I’ll personally assist.
Regards,
Ravi
PEO (17th May 2009)
Just done a masive upgrade for the second time with Viglen, Ravi has been our accout manager and has done a superb job making sure evrything goes the way it does with out any stress.
Technical support is fantastic, I tend to use them for a second opinion or if I'm totally stuck on a problem. Technical support is always friendly and happy to help and advice where ever possible.
Hardware returns for products under warranty or not is always quick.... often next day delivery.
Due to my expereiences with Viglen, I would much rather get my gear from Viglen rather than HP, Dell, and especially RM.
Cheers Ravi for all your hard work recently
Kev
Originally Posted by PEO
Thanks Kev
Ravi
In my present job we only use some of Viglen's more specialist equipment but at my last place we had a lot of Viglen PCs (I think we bought about 1000 in the last year I was there). The service we had was excellent; the machines were excellent and I'd happily recommend them to anyone.
If you've not looked at Viglen equipment for a few years then take another look - there machines use Intel motherboards and are made to a very high standard but don't have a very high price to match.
I've not heard of Viglen if i am honest, that will change now, but i just wanted to welcome
James.
Last edited by EduTech; 17th May 2009 at 08:47 PM.
I've always discounted Viglen as a supplier, but if you're all singing their praises I may have to get some quotes on our next round of purchases to see how they compare.
Can't seem to get onto the viglen website at the moment however. Is it down for anyone else or just me?
Blank pages all around.
Must be the excessive demand since this thread was started
I recall Viglen having a unit similar to the RMOne (Omnino or something?), which looked nicer from the pictures, though I never did query the pricing on that. Similarly to Soulfish, we have never really considered Viglen as a potential supplier before, simply because there is that much choice of suppliers we never really felt the need!
Do Viglen supply components and accessories (such as cables and smaller devices, the kind of stuff you would go to dabs/misco for), or is it mainly just hardware and specialist software?
I have been waiting for someone to put up a less rosy experience at the hands of Viglen. Nobody has so I guess it falls to me.
Without going into much detail my experiences with Viglen have not been good.
I honestly do hope things have changed at Viglen [both for the sake of the company, its employees and the schools that opt to buy their solution]
BTW: No I do not want any private messages to talk over my experiences/issues with Viglen: We have a vanilla network now which has issues but we are working through them.
As I said I just wanted to put the other point of view over and to Viglen and their customers [in all honesty without any sarcasm [can't find a smilie that sums that up]] good luck I hope it all goes well.
Last edited by DaveP; 18th May 2009 at 01:31 PM. Reason: Correct spelling mistake.
Not really had any problems with Viglen kit or services at the lone school I have with a Viglen setup. The only quarm is that the laptops are not of a great build quality - akin to Acer if anything. However they're older machines (Centrino based) so I don't know what the newer kit is like
(Mind you, in the hands of many a student, that's hardly a bad thing - take those RM laptops apparently built to be rolled over by tanks, cars, dropped from heights and given a shower - they can survive that treatment very impressively, but put in the hands of a student and I'm soon amazed at what can go wrong!
Positively, it's good to see representation here from such companies and Viglen's input would no doubt be greatly appreciated, as these forums are a great way of putting across more informal queries you'd not normally want to bother them with support call requests and the likes. So, thanks and welcome
We have started dealing with Viglen recently, we've just brought into the Its Learning platform which Viglen market in the UK, and have been very impressed with the service we've received so far. We are currently looking into Viglen supplying us with Desktop PCs and possibly more hardware for the network.
The person I've been dealing with has been very professional, no question is too much bother to answer and they are more than happy to be flexible with what they are quoting you for, and explain in detail exactly what you are and are not getting for your money, so there's no surprises. Can't comment on the quality of their hardware, as we havn't actually brought any yet, but that may change in the near future.
Mike.
I'm not going to start Viglen bashing here but the past history here with them is not a great one.
The omino units (which got a mention above) turned in to a death traps! One of the tech's here actually got hosptialised by one. Every single omino unit we have has now been replaced due to every signal power supply blowing up and most of them went just after the 3 year warranty finished.
Server solution support was not great either. They installed an external disk array and put a password on it. The tech who set it all up then left without telling anyone the password to it!
whops look like it turn into abit of a bash in the end!
Oh and viglen if you want to contact me about this then feel free!
Are you a candidate from The Apprentice?
I'm going to have to join the ranks of those who haven't had good experiences with Viglen.
Our School bought into Viglen about 3 years ago, the PC's supplied at the time were under specced, and required complete replacing after just 2 years (we couldn't afford to do it then, so they've had to last 3) just to allow us to run all the software that we need to run.
The servers are unreliable, we've had one server blow 25 hard drives, and when you mention it to viglen, the response has been far from helpful. Plus when we had an issue with running some software, Viglen told us they couldn't tell us the fix over the phone and we'd have to pay £850 for an engineer to come out and fix it. Engineer turned up, spent 20 minutes with a crib sheet he'd had sent to him, and then expected to leave. Very poor.
And from my personal experience, I've found classlink to be extremely inflexible.
/rant
How is it Viglen's fault that you choose to buy under specified machines? You can buy under spec machines from anyone (and, yes, I've done it!)
If they tell you they're going to deliver (say) 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo and you find they're 2GHz Celerons then fair enough
Only you know what you're going to do with the machines. They might well say "school X buys 2GHz Celerons and find them OK" but unless you know that school X is doing the same as you then there's no value in taking that advice.
It's similar with things like classlink - all of the management systems are less flexible than a vanilla system and you need to decide before you buy it whether it's going to be OK for you.
Of course, if you come into a school after someone else has bought a product then none of that's any help but it's still not the fault of the supplier that someone else bought something which isn't suitable for what you want to do!
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