Whelp, they didn't post my semi-anonymous review so that qualifies for some treatment here then!
The
VIA "King" 8650 was purchased from
brandsdragon.com (not live linking to them so copy past any URL's from here on in). If you do a bit of due-diligence on them you'll find a lot of posts under the name "
davismicro.com" (also look out for "
everbuying.com"); there is speculation the owners changed the name not simply to re-brand but to try and shake off what appears to be quite a substantial amount of bad karma through what appears to be their poor handling of customer support, certainly with respect to selling into the Western Market. And that's the key issue here, selling into a Western Market.
Although these cheap Android tablets do work, the odd defective unit aside and relative to ones expectations and budget of course, they tend not to be set up properly for use by Western consumers because the applications and software typically installed by default are Chinese; Chinese menus, Chinese options, Chinese online stores and markets, none of which can be customised or changed due to licensing issues with various European and Western services, Googles Android Marketplace isn't the only one 'blocking' these devices, and it's likely they may never authorise them either due to pressure from big brand investments made over the years to get Android up-to-par. All of this has repercussions on usage confidence in the Western Market; would you submit your credit card details to an unknown site in Chinese? It's doubtful.
Before continuing I need to preface this next bit with a disclaimer to the effect that what follows is expressly an opinion based on what's been my observed experience. This issue of 'trust' or 'confidence' can also be applied to the hardware itself in that in certain instances you may very well find yourself inadvertently buying what appear to be "
grey-goods", i.e. lookalikes, unofficially branded hardware, or items just not correctly or fully licensed by the brand holder. The
VIA "King" 8650 "Apple" Android tablet above is a good example of this with its "
Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China" and "Apple" logo on the back (which looks to have been photo-edited out of the product shots incidentally). A couple of other products of exact same design are also on offer - the
UPad ZT-180,
DropPad M7009 and the
DropPad D10 - so one does have to wonder if they too are equally as "grey" (with accompanying photo-edited product shots). Need to contact Apple about that me thinks.
I found the experience with BrandsDragon itself a bit odd, they only seem to work Monday - Friday, a little peculiar given the 27/7 World we live in; not sure about anyone else's experiences shopping online but if I order something from Amazon on Saturday and it's in stock it'll be ready for shipping on Monday, meaning someone has done the packing and processing necessary for that to happen. The people at brandsdragon don't appear to do the same, and here I thought only Christians didn't work on Sundays!. Make sure you don't put an order in on Thursday or Friday then, because it may not see any actions until the following Monday or Tuesday, potentially four or five days from point of ordering. I also find it odd that they need to "check" items they have in stock to make sure they work etc., surely if it's in stock it should have already gone through some form of quality control before being put on the shelves? And with regards to taking so long to process orders, does it really take two days do those item checks before shipped out? What do they do? Play poker in the stock room?.
I'd be cautious about using credit/debit or other payments that require you to enter personal information because whilst seems legitimately
Secure Scanned by McAfee they don't appear to have a secure certificate in place for those critical areas of the site that require user input; pages are served up as plain "
http" instead of the more secure "
httpS". This may or may not be slightly moot to them because generally speaking, if the *site* is secure then the payment system similarly follows, I wouldn't necessarily bet my hat on that though. It would help end user confidence however, to get a secure certificate sorted out; if those things are good enough for Amazon, then I'm sure they're good enough for BrandsDragon. The upshot is to;
1) if you're going to punt on something and buy from davismicro/brandsdragon/everbuying,
spend only as much as you can afford to loose. Period. You will have hells own job getting a refund, and what refund you do get may be
subject to re-stocking fees and/or
postal charges for sending the item back (both of which seem to vary and irrespective as to your being in receipt of a broken item in the first place). And
2) and, use PayPal or other offsite and secure service where ever possible.
Just to clarify, brandsdragon.com/davismicro.com/everbuying.com
are not in of themselves out right scams, although you could be forgiven for thinking they are simply because of what appears to be a disproportionate amount of negative feedback littering the Internet, ostensibly posted by angry customers who have not had what they consider fair or reasonable recourse to the problems they've encountered with orders and/or product purchases.
There is a genuine and definite demand for tablets, Android OS or not, alternative to the main Apple, HP, Dell, Toshiba et-al 'cartel'. And yet companies like this constantly fail to properly capitalise on these opportunities be being woefully short-sighted, obsessing too much on 'managing' their online persona in stead of addressing customers problems; having affiliates or employees sign up to forums so they can post variations on a theme that "
davismirco is good service, buy last week, arrived good. Buy more" doesn't help build customer confidence or business reputations. Nor does it help to leave customers so frustrated with their experiences that they post "davismicro/brandsdragon/everybuying is a scam" because their issues never see resolution. You don't fix that by changing your company name.
Would I punt again? Maybe. I'd be more inclined to do so if the products had proper 'Westernised' versions available. I wouldn't necssarily recommend buying from davismicro/brandsdragon/everbuying either (unless you accept the risk involved), not until they address the issues raised above at least.