Hey all,
Seeing as there has been so much debate recently about which online stores are good and which arent and seeing as ive just placed my order i have decided i'll post here on futureproducers for all the prospective buyers out there and (hopefully) confirm the good things ive heard about agiprodj.com (the store which i have chosen after many countless hours of browsing past posts, comparing prices, reading reviews and speaking to different ppl).
From what i can gather this is a first so i hope it proves useful. Im sick of reading tiny paragraph reviews of online stores which could easily have just been created by the store themselves to attract prospective customers.
I can tell you now I am in no way affiliated with any of the companys i mention in this post, im just an average joe consumer trying to help shed some light on what can be a smooth, easy process or extremely stressful and costly ordeal.
Once again i hope this proves useful and hope that at the end of it i can still speak about agiprodj in as high regard as i have heard others speak of them. If anyone has any further questions or comments feel free to add to the thread. As i begin this post i vow to take a hit for the team and see this review through to the end regardless of whether i end a happy and satisfied customer or embarrased, bitter and out of pocket (lets just hope for my sake its not the later.. ;]).
background:
Ok, so first things first.. I am from new zealand and am purchasing a rane ttm56 mixer. I have been really sceptical about purchasing things from the internet for a long time and as i said above have spent countless hours (the past few months basically) browsing many sites trying to find the best price from an authorised dealer.
To do this i visited the rane website and using as many googled US zip codes as i could find in conjunction with ranes dealer locator zipcode search spent countless hours finding all the authorized dealers i possibly could that sold online in search of the lowest price in the states for my mixer. interestingly enough i had to keep disconnecting from the net and reconnecting due to rane placing a maximum number of times a dealer information link could be clicked by a specific ip address before giving a msg saying contact rane on some given telephone number.. thank god for my 56k's dynamic ip (meaning each time i reconnected i was given a different ip address thereby bypassing ranes maximum click ban).
am i dedicated.. ? am i obsessed.. ? maybe its a bit of both.. ;]~
the decision:
i narrowed it down to a www.djdeals.com and www.agiprodj.com and i can say with 99.9999% confidence that these two stores have the lowest price out of all the US online stores for the rane ttm56.
I had to email to request the lowest price from both of them and as it turned out agiprodj.com won the battle by $6USD.
They arent allowed to advertise their lowest price due to some manufacturer requirement so out of respect for both companies (and also because i dont understand the reason why they must do this fully) i wont include their prices in this post. I dont really think its vital to the reason behind me writing this in the first place anyway so if your interested you'll have to visit their respective sites and email them yourself.
Apart from the $6USD there was two more reasons that made me decide to use agiprodj. Firstly the fact that they would allow me to pay via creditcard which is much more convenient opposed to a direct wire transfer which djdeals.com requires for internatonal orders.
This method of payment would end up costing me more, an extra $20USD for their bank fees and an extra $25NZD for mine.
The third and main reason that made me choose agiprodj was a great promotional offer that i was also told about in the email giving me their lowest price and that was that they would give me a free gigskin mixer case for making my rane purchase during feb, which i think is a real bonus.
After reading that offer and checking out the gigskin site i was sold and decided to place my order.
the order:
I visited the website and found out that agiprodj doesnt have an online order form which was slightly disappointing. The website has only recently come back online so one may be being created at the moment but we'll have to wait and see about that.
Anyway i sent another email the agiprodj sales person and he replied sending me an order form to fill out which i filled out and faxed back to them. Unfortunately a few of the lines were messed up in the sending of the fax (keep in mind i was sending it all the way from new zealand to oregon in the states) but ive had problems with my fax machine in the past so i wasnt to concerned and decided to just take the initiative to ring them and speak to him personally...
the phone call:
I rang the contact number on the order sheet and the call was answered by a woman who put me onto the sales person i had been dealing with via email.
He was very friendly and after i told him about the extreme difference in price between the mixer in the states and here in nz (which funnly enough is only seperated by an external powersupply, the mixer itself is identical) was surprised and said he was glad they could help, giving me reassurance that i was making a good choice in dealing with them.
He then went on to confirm that the gigskin offer was still available to me and i gave him my credit details and emailed him the confirmation sheet with my order/shipping info, minus the credit card details i had just given him on the phone.
We kept the conversation brief to avoid me racking up a massive bill and finally he told me he would email me with confirmation of my order once it had been processed.
On a side note I would just like to take this opertunity to give all the readers a quick word of advice.. email is NOT secure!
NEVER email anyone your credit card details or ANY information you would not want being made publically available!
email messages are plaintext and can be intercepted at hundreds of places before they reach their destination and if you've emailed someone your credit card details anyone could use them and charge up a storm! Thats is the whole reason why online stores use secure servers for the payment part of the online ordering process.
The main reason why i rung them and spoke to the sales rep directly was so I could give him my credit card details without taking that risk.
Treat and think of email as postcard that can be openly read by ANYONE! the price you pay for a phonecall, even if it is half way across the world, is NOTHING compared to what you could be paying if your credit card details fall into the wrong hands. credit card fraud is rife on the internet and is very hard to catch and unfortunatly by the time you've noticed something fishy is going on its already too late.
heed these words and dont become a statistic!
final thoughts:
Anyway thats about as much as i can report so far. I have yet to recieve my order confirmation email but i checked the time i rang and it was around 3:30-4pm friday so its quite likely he would have finished work shortly after my call and unfortunatly their weekend would have just begun so it is unlikely i will hear anything more for a few days.
So far my dealings with agiprodj have been great, their price is the lowest ive seen anywhere, the promotional offer is awesome and after speaking to the sales person he has given me the impression they are genuine and happy to have my business.
I will keep you posted on how my order turns out, i hope that it will continues to go as well as it has so far and to be honest i am confident it will do.
So far the only things negative things i can think of are:
1. the lack of online order system
2. the fact that the sales rep didnt reply to the email i sent him which gave him my order/shipping details stating he had recieved them and would get onto processing my order.
in reality neither of those are big issues at all. a proper online ordering system would have been more practical than the way i had to place my order (and would have saved me an international phone call during peak hours, my off peak would be after they've finished work) but im not to bothered about that seeing as they've said they're giving me a free gigskin which would cost much more than the phone call and as far as the reply confirming his recieving my details goes it just would have been nice to give me piece of mind.
so far so good but time will tell..
ez
Seeing as there has been so much debate recently about which online stores are good and which arent and seeing as ive just placed my order i have decided i'll post here on futureproducers for all the prospective buyers out there and (hopefully) confirm the good things ive heard about agiprodj.com (the store which i have chosen after many countless hours of browsing past posts, comparing prices, reading reviews and speaking to different ppl).
From what i can gather this is a first so i hope it proves useful. Im sick of reading tiny paragraph reviews of online stores which could easily have just been created by the store themselves to attract prospective customers.
I can tell you now I am in no way affiliated with any of the companys i mention in this post, im just an average joe consumer trying to help shed some light on what can be a smooth, easy process or extremely stressful and costly ordeal.
Once again i hope this proves useful and hope that at the end of it i can still speak about agiprodj in as high regard as i have heard others speak of them. If anyone has any further questions or comments feel free to add to the thread. As i begin this post i vow to take a hit for the team and see this review through to the end regardless of whether i end a happy and satisfied customer or embarrased, bitter and out of pocket (lets just hope for my sake its not the later.. ;]).
background:
Ok, so first things first.. I am from new zealand and am purchasing a rane ttm56 mixer. I have been really sceptical about purchasing things from the internet for a long time and as i said above have spent countless hours (the past few months basically) browsing many sites trying to find the best price from an authorised dealer.
To do this i visited the rane website and using as many googled US zip codes as i could find in conjunction with ranes dealer locator zipcode search spent countless hours finding all the authorized dealers i possibly could that sold online in search of the lowest price in the states for my mixer. interestingly enough i had to keep disconnecting from the net and reconnecting due to rane placing a maximum number of times a dealer information link could be clicked by a specific ip address before giving a msg saying contact rane on some given telephone number.. thank god for my 56k's dynamic ip (meaning each time i reconnected i was given a different ip address thereby bypassing ranes maximum click ban).
am i dedicated.. ? am i obsessed.. ? maybe its a bit of both.. ;]~
the decision:
i narrowed it down to a www.djdeals.com and www.agiprodj.com and i can say with 99.9999% confidence that these two stores have the lowest price out of all the US online stores for the rane ttm56.
I had to email to request the lowest price from both of them and as it turned out agiprodj.com won the battle by $6USD.
They arent allowed to advertise their lowest price due to some manufacturer requirement so out of respect for both companies (and also because i dont understand the reason why they must do this fully) i wont include their prices in this post. I dont really think its vital to the reason behind me writing this in the first place anyway so if your interested you'll have to visit their respective sites and email them yourself.
Apart from the $6USD there was two more reasons that made me decide to use agiprodj. Firstly the fact that they would allow me to pay via creditcard which is much more convenient opposed to a direct wire transfer which djdeals.com requires for internatonal orders.
This method of payment would end up costing me more, an extra $20USD for their bank fees and an extra $25NZD for mine.
The third and main reason that made me choose agiprodj was a great promotional offer that i was also told about in the email giving me their lowest price and that was that they would give me a free gigskin mixer case for making my rane purchase during feb, which i think is a real bonus.
After reading that offer and checking out the gigskin site i was sold and decided to place my order.
the order:
I visited the website and found out that agiprodj doesnt have an online order form which was slightly disappointing. The website has only recently come back online so one may be being created at the moment but we'll have to wait and see about that.
Anyway i sent another email the agiprodj sales person and he replied sending me an order form to fill out which i filled out and faxed back to them. Unfortunately a few of the lines were messed up in the sending of the fax (keep in mind i was sending it all the way from new zealand to oregon in the states) but ive had problems with my fax machine in the past so i wasnt to concerned and decided to just take the initiative to ring them and speak to him personally...
the phone call:
I rang the contact number on the order sheet and the call was answered by a woman who put me onto the sales person i had been dealing with via email.
He was very friendly and after i told him about the extreme difference in price between the mixer in the states and here in nz (which funnly enough is only seperated by an external powersupply, the mixer itself is identical) was surprised and said he was glad they could help, giving me reassurance that i was making a good choice in dealing with them.
He then went on to confirm that the gigskin offer was still available to me and i gave him my credit details and emailed him the confirmation sheet with my order/shipping info, minus the credit card details i had just given him on the phone.
We kept the conversation brief to avoid me racking up a massive bill and finally he told me he would email me with confirmation of my order once it had been processed.
On a side note I would just like to take this opertunity to give all the readers a quick word of advice.. email is NOT secure!
NEVER email anyone your credit card details or ANY information you would not want being made publically available!
email messages are plaintext and can be intercepted at hundreds of places before they reach their destination and if you've emailed someone your credit card details anyone could use them and charge up a storm! Thats is the whole reason why online stores use secure servers for the payment part of the online ordering process.
The main reason why i rung them and spoke to the sales rep directly was so I could give him my credit card details without taking that risk.
Treat and think of email as postcard that can be openly read by ANYONE! the price you pay for a phonecall, even if it is half way across the world, is NOTHING compared to what you could be paying if your credit card details fall into the wrong hands. credit card fraud is rife on the internet and is very hard to catch and unfortunatly by the time you've noticed something fishy is going on its already too late.
heed these words and dont become a statistic!
final thoughts:
Anyway thats about as much as i can report so far. I have yet to recieve my order confirmation email but i checked the time i rang and it was around 3:30-4pm friday so its quite likely he would have finished work shortly after my call and unfortunatly their weekend would have just begun so it is unlikely i will hear anything more for a few days.
So far my dealings with agiprodj have been great, their price is the lowest ive seen anywhere, the promotional offer is awesome and after speaking to the sales person he has given me the impression they are genuine and happy to have my business.
I will keep you posted on how my order turns out, i hope that it will continues to go as well as it has so far and to be honest i am confident it will do.
So far the only things negative things i can think of are:
1. the lack of online order system
2. the fact that the sales rep didnt reply to the email i sent him which gave him my order/shipping details stating he had recieved them and would get onto processing my order.
in reality neither of those are big issues at all. a proper online ordering system would have been more practical than the way i had to place my order (and would have saved me an international phone call during peak hours, my off peak would be after they've finished work) but im not to bothered about that seeing as they've said they're giving me a free gigskin which would cost much more than the phone call and as far as the reply confirming his recieving my details goes it just would have been nice to give me piece of mind.
so far so good but time will tell..
ez
Last edited:
Don't worry, Setbak...I'm not bagging on you. 
