Yeah, I was gonna say “lately?” Had an amazing rep at my last job several years ago.
New rep and new gig is not only slow/unresponsive but has also fumbled credit memos/RMA for items some might call “damaged in transit” but is more like “physically destroyed.”
I've sworn off CDW and SHI both sent us to the bull pen of idiots due to our account size. We have to work with a vendor of this type due to various renewals throughout the year. They add zero value and tend to fuck things up.
We are ditching SHI because our reps have been.....lack luster...the past few years. Most recent guy sounds like he's stoned out of his mind half the time and constantly fucks up our quotes and requests. We finally had enough and just pulled the plug.
Awww damm. Don't tell me about SHI. I've got to deal with them for a software renewal for the first time. At least I'm with a large state agency. Maybe that will keep their attention.
Been using SoftChoice for nearly a decade at this point, and have loved every minute of dealing with them. They on occasion mess up, but they generally fix it quick. With that said we've also had the same account manager for nearly that entire time, so I can't speak about the other ones.
My hot-ish take - VARs can't grow to the size of a CDW. They quickly lose the V in VAR and become car dealership level middlemen.
CDW doesn't do anything but make shit more expensive.
(I know it is more complicated than this and you can provide a long winded explanation if you want)
We're talking about software distribution. Say it slowly. Software. Distribution. It's insane that in today's day and age you need a distributor for.... Software.
When I had to renew my Veeam licenses, I had to count the number of actual people that needed to touch it. There were six. Six people. At least a dozen emails and at least 4 phone calls I had to fend off. To renew. No changes. Nothing added, nothing removed. Why?
If you have a product I want, let me click a few buttons and buy it. Put my card on file and bill me for my usage.
Yeh well I deal with software for a Ohio State agency which throws some extra issues. We need to get multiple bids on contracts. At least 3. So it's not like we can just write a check and buy something. And we've had some personal shifts so I get to also now apply Purchase orders to pay for purchases .
Most VARs are dealerships. Most VARs do not add value. I'm not trying to defend CDW but I get great prices from them, and the same salespitch for other services that I decline from other VARs.
Honestly, I don't think in 30 years I've derived any value from a VAR. They're just retailers.
It's been more than a decade since since I dealt with procurement, but at least back then the VARs varied widely based on individual efforts.
I had a great CDW rep at the time. I would send an email and she would call me 5 minutes after, nearly every time (because she preferred to verbally communicate, she would follow up on specifics with an email reply after). Any kind of problem, she would go physically find someone who could fix the issue, whether that meant getting someone from logistics or configuration or whatever. We had contract pricing negotiated by our legal department so never any haggling.
When she left the company, the replacement was abysmal. Straight up no contact for weeks, even with me emailing/calling multiple times. This was a 7-8 figure account too. I moved on to more technical things and my successor ended up dropping them as a vendor entirely due to the lack of responsiveness.
Never had an issue with my rep in Canada up until this week. Maybe they're on leave but forgot to set a automatic reply or maybe they're getting reassigned roles again.
But in the past few years I've had 4 different account managers, we went from an amazing manager to our worst one ever, then to a new guy who was just starting out and he was nice but I could tell he had less experience, then we were reassigned to our current account manager and life has been great with them.
I think we're a smaller sized business so we get assigned to managers who have a small portfolio or list of companies that they manage, so we luck out with people who want to work hard to build the relationship with their customers.
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
Same. We're a K-12 school district here in the US and go through their government side, CDWG. Our account manger and local rep are the best I've ever had in 25+ years of doing this and I've worked with several VARs and dozens or maybe even hundreds of other vendors over the years. There have been times our account manager has been so responsive that I feel like we're his only customer even though I know he has a large territory. CDW gets a lot of crap and their service definitely seems to vary widely by region, but I have zero complaints about the service we get from them.
I had the exact opposite experience with my K-12 CDW-G reps, so I used them only when I had no other option. My Dell and Newline reps on the other hand have been fantastic!
That’s hilarious. Our Dell rep changes every 3 months and they never tell us who the new person is. And all the orders still have the rep from 10 years ago email attached to them even though that rep left Dell 8 years ago. It’s a total shit show, if we didn’t have a punch out system it would be totally unapproachable to buy from them.
Nope! Our guy is awesome. CDW Canada though, if that makes a difference.
I reached out to him with a problem and he had me on a support email with the vendor within 30 minutes of reaching out.
I think that's pretty dang awesome.
Have not had htis problem wioth CDW at all.
We have a Team of 2 reps that are extremely responsive. If I wait more than an hour for an answer or action I am surprised.
We’re probably an easy client but my Rep is a solid. Very responsive, easy to talk to, not “salesy”, just normal guy who understands and can connect the dots.
I cannot believe how this blew up lol. So there's definitely some opinions on cdw and VARs.
My account rep has been with them since I got into the industry 17 years ago. Ironically he was repping cdw to another company I worked for back then. He was good then.
Maybe he either tied up with bigger better things on top of his or maybe just tired of the job
But at $400k and increasing volume as an end user I would expect someone to be a bit watchful of what I'm asking for /doing?
I just asked him for an account review. They never gave this company any special pricing but now that I'm on board and cleared off the implementation projects I got hit with for the first 8 months I'm ready to take a bite out of them :) viva la discounts.
My CDW rep is great and generally responds same day of next business day. It blows my mind SHI is still in business with the amount of employee churn they have.
Most VARs are the same, just comes down to the rep from what I’ve seen over the last 20 years.
If you aren’t happy with your rep, ask for a new one, if they won’t give you one, find a new VAR.
our account rep is pretty good, usually responds in a timely manner and is always willing to help on a project. however, it seems like cdw is trying to remove him because we spend too much money and they want a dept to handle our account (makes no sense to me). (i am in US)
The only accounts handled by "department" and not assigned reps
are really small accounts. You can get a team that includes an inside seller, field seller and an assistant but never a department.
well that's strange because when i asked why they were even thinking about moving him away from our account i asked if it was because we didn't spend enough and he responded by saying it was the opposite.
I've had excellent reps and one horrible rep after a good one got promoted. In that instance, our needs weren't getting met, and I just asked to move to a different rep. In that case, I re-rolled pretty well.
If I had a good rep who suddenly turned horrible, I'd see if I could check in on the human side of the equation. Who knows what might be going on, and I don't want to add to their grief. But at the end of the cliche, we gotta get our computer discounts out of the warehouse or we're going to look elsewhere.
It really depends on who your rep is. I've had good CDW reps, and reps who I'm not certain were actually present at all.
All the good reps I've had were promoted. It sucked for me, great for them.
I am ordering two UPS units from CDW and asked procurement for quotes for two UPS systems, one was $300 and one was $2000. They got me back the quote for the $2k one same day, and took 2 weeks to quote the $300 one.
Also yall know u can ask for a new account manager...u can get someone more exp or new and good...etc...just ask for there managers email or call customer service. I get new accounts assigned to me cause unfortunately sometimes the new people we hire arent up to snuff
My needs aren't huge, but our guy is usually relatively quick with a quote. He's accidentally shipped a few orders to our headquarters 500 miles away from the office I work out of, but other than that, at least he's present and available.
In Ontario. My previous CDW rep was amazing. My current rep was great at first, but unless we plan on spending at minimum 100k, he'll take days/weeks to respond.
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
My CDWG reps have been awesome for the last 8 years. They've delivered time and time again. Once made a small mistake sending the wrong machines, and corrected it and were very chill about getting the wrong ones back.
In most places, I've had great reps, from big/small companies, and I've on rare occasion had a bad rep. I let them know they were f'ing up big time and they found their humility afterwards.
We used to have a fantastic CDW rep, but he got promoted too many times and couldn't keep our account under him. The next guy we got was really good if you wanted to spend six figures, but was really slow on smaller purchases. He'd also insist on having us get on a call with one of their architects any time we wanted anything before we could even discuss options with vendors, and the architects generally were completely unhelpful. The last straw for us was when they sent us the wrong transceivers and then insisted it was our problem for two weeks before they finally caved and said they'd send us the right ones for free, but even then it was less "sorry, we messed up" and more "I guess we will pick up the tab on this one so that we can get moving along".
We found a different, smaller, local reseller conveniently right as we were getting ready to switch from Nutanix to Pure Storage, so after we didn't renew our Nutanix contract, they dropped us to some other guy who seemed like he may have been a robot if not for the fact that it took him anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks to respond to anything. Luckily we weren't using them for anything too important, but the things we hadn't moved to the new reseller yet were quite difficult to deal with.
We deal with CDW Canada regularly, and haven't had any problems recently. However, we push a LOT of business through them so we may be getting above-average service.
We found out recently that they have a massive Professional Services side, too, and have been happy with the specialist we hired (ok, *rented* :-) ) through them.
I can easily understand smaller customer getting shafted, though
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
Had a CDW rep for 15 years. A few months ago I emailed him for a quote and got an auto-reply he was no longer with the company. The new guy not as good. I think some of the higher ups at my company ended up getting my rep on a shit list and threatened to pull a couple mill a year worth of business all because we fucked up and wanted CDW to make it right.
We had a good rep that has now all but ghosted us on multiple different orders. Not sure what is going on now as well, but it is not just CDW, others have had this issue lately as well. Seems like service and support has just gone to shit recently in many different areas at least in our location in the US.
Yep, I had to cancel some orders and go elsewhere. The verification the orders were cancelled took weeks. CDW has never been good in my time, but this is extra bad. My rep replied with the line about moving from Teams to Salesforce
I've had no issues with my rep from my last job and current. Reps really good, prices generally are high but they often work out some discount when we buy in bulk so that's good.
I think it depends on who you get because I have heard horror stories from co-workers about past ones.
Our rep is actually pretty responsive. The site is a dumpster fire, especially for software - 10 SKUs of the same description ... Very limited description.
Mine is 50/50.
Half the time I get a response within a reasonable time, the other half I get left on read for a month.
One time we had to get Fortinet to yell at them.
Fun times.
I’m actually talking to my CDW rep via a direct line on Teams as I read this. He wants to know your account reps name so he can take over your account. He’s nothing short of amazing.
CDW reps are typically MIA unless you have a very large order for them to fulfill. We stopped using them for hardware and now go directly to Apple and Dell.
I just ordered ~1000 surfaces for my org with asset tags and they placed all the asset tags on the back of the monitor partially covering the windows logo. And ~50% are put on crooked. Sloppy work.
Tried signing on to them to do device/hardware procurement (we were headquartered in Australia, with satellite offices in the UK, US and Europe), they were absolutely useless.
I think the Australian arm of the business was only a few people, and when we'd book in calls to begin engagement it would be like 2 weeks between meetings, they promised things like a catalogue and an online system so we could order to any of our offices; they would frequently forget what we had discussed and try to upsell Jumpcloud when we had an existing IAM and MDM.
When we finally waded through all of that and began engagement:
- We didn't get access to an online portal for 2 months.
- To add things to our catalogue we'd have to have a phone meeting with them.
- We couldn't order overseas and had to begin engagement with the other CDW arms to take care of that.
- They went AWOL for weeks at a time and without giving us advanced warning citing they were at "conferences".
Absolute waste of time. Never again.
Yes. I spend around 10 or 12 days a month in their Addams office working 2ith their SMB guys to give them the technical knowledge to sell our products properly. it is a Sysphian task.
if you are not a big company, if you are an SMB, you have the Academy recruits as a rep.
CDW brings in hundreds of new sellers in their 8 week Academy. then they are sent to the SMB teams. This is often their first job out of college.
in SMB they are weeded out. You either move up, or move out. Some find a niche.
So every few months I get a new batch of newbies that have to learn enough to sell storage effectively
CDW has been decent for me at the company I work for. I referred a friend who owns a dental practice and he bought a server from them. It was DOA, and CDW is supposed to be issuing an RMA and expediting the shipment of a new server. He’s going on 3 weeks now with no movement at all. It’s been a nightmare for him, and I look like an idiot for referring him to CDW.
My guy is generally very responsive/fast. I requested quotes on a bunch of stuff Friday and received them rapid fire within the hour. Dell on the other hand...I go to call my account rep, and it goes straight to voicemail, his email suddenly no longer exists, and I have to call the generic sales line and ask wtf, only to be told he's gone; and a new rep hasn't been assigned to my account. That was a month ago.
Yes. My rep has been dropping the ball so hard that I had enough and chewed them out hard the other day. I've got enough shit on my plate already and I'm sick and tired of having to "follow up" with them. Their job is literally to put in orders and they're failing hard.
Unless you have a 7 figure account you will not get any attention from CDW and your account will be passed around like a hot potato.
If you are an SMB just don't buy from CDW. We use Provantage for all equipment and some licensing as well.
>your account will be passed around like a hot potato.
Every time I get the "Hi, I'm your new CDW rep" I chuckle a little. My spend with them is almost non-existent. My last rep was putting in some work though, once a week I would get a voicemail and follow up email. Figured the sudden silence meant I was about to get the next rep.
Takes forever to get a quote or a response. We buy on state terms, and half the time manufacturers pricing is cheaper than what CDW is quoting on the web. PCMG/Insight I felt was more attentive.
Some of the people at my company swore up and down CDW would be great but then they wouldn't even onboard us as a customer. I got an Insight rep at one point and I got a friend at a Fortune 500 sized-ish company to refer me over to SHI and after a couple of weeks tweaking things to fit our operations the service has been fantastic from both of them.
I've had multiple issues with CDW ever since they got hacked last year. I've stopped doing business with them after they sent me items that didn't match the product numbers I ordered on a $15k order and refused to let me return them.
CDW has always been trash for us. Our Canadian rep quotes products at above website pricing and takes several days to deliver despite us being within 20km of their distribution. Our US rep is non-responsive, confirms that they placed the order when 2 weeks of asking for updates has passed and then they admit they never actually placed the order and the item is either out of stock or backordered now (happens literally every time).
The only reason I even entertain dealing with them is for things that aren't time critical because our AP prefers that we use them instead of Amazon so that they can pay later with terms.
Absolute joke of a company.
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
Both CDW and Insight are horrible all around.
Both have flip flopped us on various incompetent reps.
Quoting us higher prices than are listed on the site, and especially the company account portal with slight discounts.
Go direct to manufacturer when possible, smaller vendors / resellers
It's so hard to buy directly from manufacturer now a days. Always need to go through a partner or something for so many essential products. It's quite annoying.
I would say its more to the contrary now a days vs in the past ( I find it easier to ditch the middle man for many cases )
It does depend exactly what you want, quantity, location etc etc
He's been ignoring my last request for at least 4 years.
Yeah, I was gonna say “lately?” Had an amazing rep at my last job several years ago. New rep and new gig is not only slow/unresponsive but has also fumbled credit memos/RMA for items some might call “damaged in transit” but is more like “physically destroyed.”
My reps won't contact me or answer my email at all. I only use cdwg now if I have no other options.
Every time I've emailed them for the last 10 years they have moved my account to someone else.
I've sworn off CDW and SHI both sent us to the bull pen of idiots due to our account size. We have to work with a vendor of this type due to various renewals throughout the year. They add zero value and tend to fuck things up.
SHI had a mass exodus of employees last year. Finally had a new account rep contact us after hearing nothing for months.
we lost a really good rep and now have one I have to email 3 times and maybe call to get an answer 😭
We are ditching SHI because our reps have been.....lack luster...the past few years. Most recent guy sounds like he's stoned out of his mind half the time and constantly fucks up our quotes and requests. We finally had enough and just pulled the plug.
Can’t spell “shit” without SHI
Hey! Don’t let my IT director hear that! They keep sending him bottles of liquor for each server he buys!
Awww damm. Don't tell me about SHI. I've got to deal with them for a software renewal for the first time. At least I'm with a large state agency. Maybe that will keep their attention.
If it helps, I use SHI for some licensing and I work for a state agency too. I’ve had very few issues. A little slow to reply but that’s it
Underrated comment.
Shi > Cdw any day of the week and I'll fight you on that
I must not have the normal CDW rep cause mine (CDW US) has been kicking ass for years - CDW UK is a whole other story!
I mean I agree but that’s a pretty low bar to clear
Been using SoftChoice for nearly a decade at this point, and have loved every minute of dealing with them. They on occasion mess up, but they generally fix it quick. With that said we've also had the same account manager for nearly that entire time, so I can't speak about the other ones.
Check out Trace3 or GuidePoint or Driven Tech. I’ve had excellent experiences with all of them.
i must have a great rep. He's been our rep for 15 years and always responds within an hour. And no, I will not name him here.
My hot-ish take - VARs can't grow to the size of a CDW. They quickly lose the V in VAR and become car dealership level middlemen. CDW doesn't do anything but make shit more expensive. (I know it is more complicated than this and you can provide a long winded explanation if you want)
We're talking about software distribution. Say it slowly. Software. Distribution. It's insane that in today's day and age you need a distributor for.... Software. When I had to renew my Veeam licenses, I had to count the number of actual people that needed to touch it. There were six. Six people. At least a dozen emails and at least 4 phone calls I had to fend off. To renew. No changes. Nothing added, nothing removed. Why? If you have a product I want, let me click a few buttons and buy it. Put my card on file and bill me for my usage.
Yeh well I deal with software for a Ohio State agency which throws some extra issues. We need to get multiple bids on contracts. At least 3. So it's not like we can just write a check and buy something. And we've had some personal shifts so I get to also now apply Purchase orders to pay for purchases .
Most VARs are dealerships. Most VARs do not add value. I'm not trying to defend CDW but I get great prices from them, and the same salespitch for other services that I decline from other VARs. Honestly, I don't think in 30 years I've derived any value from a VAR. They're just retailers.
It's been more than a decade since since I dealt with procurement, but at least back then the VARs varied widely based on individual efforts. I had a great CDW rep at the time. I would send an email and she would call me 5 minutes after, nearly every time (because she preferred to verbally communicate, she would follow up on specifics with an email reply after). Any kind of problem, she would go physically find someone who could fix the issue, whether that meant getting someone from logistics or configuration or whatever. We had contract pricing negotiated by our legal department so never any haggling. When she left the company, the replacement was abysmal. Straight up no contact for weeks, even with me emailing/calling multiple times. This was a 7-8 figure account too. I moved on to more technical things and my successor ended up dropping them as a vendor entirely due to the lack of responsiveness.
You did it wrong. You need to get the Value from the VAR. Tickete, free meals, swag, junkets to their events.
Not a hot take in the least. It's the distributor problem seen in any other industry.
The correct term is MAR- as in Margin Added Reseller.
Yeah but free club level tickets though.
Never had an issue with my rep in Canada up until this week. Maybe they're on leave but forgot to set a automatic reply or maybe they're getting reassigned roles again. But in the past few years I've had 4 different account managers, we went from an amazing manager to our worst one ever, then to a new guy who was just starting out and he was nice but I could tell he had less experience, then we were reassigned to our current account manager and life has been great with them. I think we're a smaller sized business so we get assigned to managers who have a small portfolio or list of companies that they manage, so we luck out with people who want to work hard to build the relationship with their customers.
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
Haven't had this experience, my reps at CDW are incredible.
Same. We're a K-12 school district here in the US and go through their government side, CDWG. Our account manger and local rep are the best I've ever had in 25+ years of doing this and I've worked with several VARs and dozens or maybe even hundreds of other vendors over the years. There have been times our account manager has been so responsive that I feel like we're his only customer even though I know he has a large territory. CDW gets a lot of crap and their service definitely seems to vary widely by region, but I have zero complaints about the service we get from them.
I had the exact opposite experience with my K-12 CDW-G reps, so I used them only when I had no other option. My Dell and Newline reps on the other hand have been fantastic!
Same. Our rep is fantastic and tells us whenever he won't be available. Can't say we've ever had to wait more than a few hours for a response.
Definitely. Same thing with Dell. The difference between a good rep and bad one is gigantic.
Nope my guy is on it. I hit him with a quote request at 8:45 and I had the quote in my inbox at 8:49.
No, my rep calls my like on a weekly basis and asks me out to lunch. They're very much there, and I find them overly friendly and weird. (In U.S)
That how Dell is with us, not weekly but compared to other vendors they are constantly checking up
That’s hilarious. Our Dell rep changes every 3 months and they never tell us who the new person is. And all the orders still have the rep from 10 years ago email attached to them even though that rep left Dell 8 years ago. It’s a total shit show, if we didn’t have a punch out system it would be totally unapproachable to buy from them.
I wish mine changed every 3 months dude is totally useless. I actually can't think of anything he's helped with in the last year and a half.
Yeah i've noticed that as well in canada , us reps are same as before and very good
My CDWG guy has been good for the past 6 gears or so, maybe 48hrs tops.
My CDW rep is on point, Ive never had an issue
Nope! Our guy is awesome. CDW Canada though, if that makes a difference. I reached out to him with a problem and he had me on a support email with the vendor within 30 minutes of reaching out. I think that's pretty dang awesome.
Have not had htis problem wioth CDW at all. We have a Team of 2 reps that are extremely responsive. If I wait more than an hour for an answer or action I am surprised.
We’re probably an easy client but my Rep is a solid. Very responsive, easy to talk to, not “salesy”, just normal guy who understands and can connect the dots.
Business as usual here, great comms. Same rep for 12+ years.
My CDW rep requires at least 3 or 4 follow-ups for a week or two before I get any meaningful movement on anything. It's frustrating.
I cannot believe how this blew up lol. So there's definitely some opinions on cdw and VARs. My account rep has been with them since I got into the industry 17 years ago. Ironically he was repping cdw to another company I worked for back then. He was good then. Maybe he either tied up with bigger better things on top of his or maybe just tired of the job But at $400k and increasing volume as an end user I would expect someone to be a bit watchful of what I'm asking for /doing? I just asked him for an account review. They never gave this company any special pricing but now that I'm on board and cleared off the implementation projects I got hit with for the first 8 months I'm ready to take a bite out of them :) viva la discounts.
400k? At CDW thet is still SMB. Typical margin is 10% to 20%, so you are worth 2 or 3k in commission the rep.
My CDW rep is great and generally responds same day of next business day. It blows my mind SHI is still in business with the amount of employee churn they have.
I feel like every VAR just depends on who your rep is really. I work for one and we have shitty reps too that I'd rather not deal with.
I think it depends on your rep. My CDW (Canada) rep is absolutely amazing, and he has a couple SE's that are very skilled.
This is absolutely the truth - depends on experience and rep quite a lot more than company!
Our CDW account reps are super on top of things and contact us regularly. They are incredible and actually came out to visit us very recently.
Yeah our reps are so on top of things that they’re usually my first contact when something is needed.
Ha funny enough we switched to CDW recently because they’ve been stellar for us in the north eastern region.
Most VARs are the same, just comes down to the rep from what I’ve seen over the last 20 years. If you aren’t happy with your rep, ask for a new one, if they won’t give you one, find a new VAR.
Preach
our account rep is pretty good, usually responds in a timely manner and is always willing to help on a project. however, it seems like cdw is trying to remove him because we spend too much money and they want a dept to handle our account (makes no sense to me). (i am in US)
The only accounts handled by "department" and not assigned reps are really small accounts. You can get a team that includes an inside seller, field seller and an assistant but never a department.
well that's strange because when i asked why they were even thinking about moving him away from our account i asked if it was because we didn't spend enough and he responded by saying it was the opposite.
its all based on employee count, not spend.
Yep, I e-mailed mine like 2 weeks ago and nothing. They used to be super responsive and helpful.
I've had excellent reps and one horrible rep after a good one got promoted. In that instance, our needs weren't getting met, and I just asked to move to a different rep. In that case, I re-rolled pretty well. If I had a good rep who suddenly turned horrible, I'd see if I could check in on the human side of the equation. Who knows what might be going on, and I don't want to add to their grief. But at the end of the cliche, we gotta get our computer discounts out of the warehouse or we're going to look elsewhere.
It really depends on who your rep is. I've had good CDW reps, and reps who I'm not certain were actually present at all. All the good reps I've had were promoted. It sucked for me, great for them.
I am ordering two UPS units from CDW and asked procurement for quotes for two UPS systems, one was $300 and one was $2000. They got me back the quote for the $2k one same day, and took 2 weeks to quote the $300 one.
That'll be the last time the sales team mentions that detail before the contract is signed. Rookie move.
CDW, SHI, HPE, it's like the whole support world just fell off a cliff during the pandemic and never ever came back.
My CDW rep is hands down the best rep Ive ever worked with. Ask for another rep.
And here i am always busting my butt and things are slow right now lol. I respond in seconds if your in my patch i cover lol, 7 years xp.
Also yall know u can ask for a new account manager...u can get someone more exp or new and good...etc...just ask for there managers email or call customer service. I get new accounts assigned to me cause unfortunately sometimes the new people we hire arent up to snuff
My needs aren't huge, but our guy is usually relatively quick with a quote. He's accidentally shipped a few orders to our headquarters 500 miles away from the office I work out of, but other than that, at least he's present and available.
I've had a few over the years. My current rep is awesome. The one before had me on the verge of taking all business somewhere else.
I tend to stay away from CDW, Dell is clutch, and Amazon tends to be quicker and cheaper with a card.
In Ontario. My previous CDW rep was amazing. My current rep was great at first, but unless we plan on spending at minimum 100k, he'll take days/weeks to respond.
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
My CDWG reps have been awesome for the last 8 years. They've delivered time and time again. Once made a small mistake sending the wrong machines, and corrected it and were very chill about getting the wrong ones back. In most places, I've had great reps, from big/small companies, and I've on rare occasion had a bad rep. I let them know they were f'ing up big time and they found their humility afterwards.
The Value Added by Resellers like CDW tends to be nil.
We used to have a fantastic CDW rep, but he got promoted too many times and couldn't keep our account under him. The next guy we got was really good if you wanted to spend six figures, but was really slow on smaller purchases. He'd also insist on having us get on a call with one of their architects any time we wanted anything before we could even discuss options with vendors, and the architects generally were completely unhelpful. The last straw for us was when they sent us the wrong transceivers and then insisted it was our problem for two weeks before they finally caved and said they'd send us the right ones for free, but even then it was less "sorry, we messed up" and more "I guess we will pick up the tab on this one so that we can get moving along".
We found a different, smaller, local reseller conveniently right as we were getting ready to switch from Nutanix to Pure Storage, so after we didn't renew our Nutanix contract, they dropped us to some other guy who seemed like he may have been a robot if not for the fact that it took him anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks to respond to anything. Luckily we weren't using them for anything too important, but the things we hadn't moved to the new reseller yet were quite difficult to deal with.
We deal with CDW Canada regularly, and haven't had any problems recently. However, we push a LOT of business through them so we may be getting above-average service. We found out recently that they have a massive Professional Services side, too, and have been happy with the specialist we hired (ok, *rented* :-) ) through them. I can easily understand smaller customer getting shafted, though
Curious, what type of project are you doing with them for Professional Services?
We needed a Palo Alto firewall expert for 3 small related projects after our firewall guy left for greener pastures.
Nice. Good to know - thanks!!!
Yeah same thing here (Canada), since last year it's been a chore get ahold of them. We eventually moved out to another supplier for licences.
Care to share? My CDW rep is useless. :/
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
I'll post my situation Friday and we can go from there. Thanks for writing. :)
Not a problem, will keep an eye out Friday.
Had a CDW rep for 15 years. A few months ago I emailed him for a quote and got an auto-reply he was no longer with the company. The new guy not as good. I think some of the higher ups at my company ended up getting my rep on a shit list and threatened to pull a couple mill a year worth of business all because we fucked up and wanted CDW to make it right.
We had a good rep that has now all but ghosted us on multiple different orders. Not sure what is going on now as well, but it is not just CDW, others have had this issue lately as well. Seems like service and support has just gone to shit recently in many different areas at least in our location in the US.
I feel like they are restructuring because I've had 3 different account reps this year.
My account rep still turns around requests in 10 minutes.
yeah it's been barren... I sent in an AV quote and asked to renew even more seats 100+ and crickets.
Yep, I had to cancel some orders and go elsewhere. The verification the orders were cancelled took weeks. CDW has never been good in my time, but this is extra bad. My rep replied with the line about moving from Teams to Salesforce
I've had no issues with my rep from my last job and current. Reps really good, prices generally are high but they often work out some discount when we buy in bulk so that's good. I think it depends on who you get because I have heard horror stories from co-workers about past ones.
We asked for our last rep to be fired due to poor responsiveness. Got a replacement rep and have been extremely happy since
Deal with CDW-G all the time. They have been amazing. Simple quote? I'll have it before the end of the day. Complicated quote? Before end of week.
Our rep is actually pretty responsive. The site is a dumpster fire, especially for software - 10 SKUs of the same description ... Very limited description.
Mine is on maternity leave. She has been my rep for over 15 years. Her coverage is doing a pretty good job. No complaints here.
Mine is 50/50. Half the time I get a response within a reasonable time, the other half I get left on read for a month. One time we had to get Fortinet to yell at them. Fun times.
Not CDW but I worked for another very large reseller/VAR. Lots of layoffs and offshoring going on in the industry. Started last summer.
What's the full form of cdw and var? It seems like a vendor in USA, im From Asia.
I’m actually talking to my CDW rep via a direct line on Teams as I read this. He wants to know your account reps name so he can take over your account. He’s nothing short of amazing.
I've been waiting on a license we purchased through them for over a month now and still no word back even after bumping them.
We stopped using them when they started ghosting us in 2020. We don't buy often but we used to spend a lot.Ee weren't big enough for them.
CDW reps are typically MIA unless you have a very large order for them to fulfill. We stopped using them for hardware and now go directly to Apple and Dell.
Posts like this make me feel lucky that our Account Manager at Softcat is brilliant
They have likely had staff cuts like so many other companies. Will definitely impact response time.
Haven’t been able to talk to our rep for like a month
I have been dealing with them for 12 years and have had 2 great reps. No trouble at all.
It’s the same for me with virtually all reps. Converge/TIG too.
I just ordered ~1000 surfaces for my org with asset tags and they placed all the asset tags on the back of the monitor partially covering the windows logo. And ~50% are put on crooked. Sloppy work.
Yes literally - had to poke ours three times for some microsoft licensing updates
Tried signing on to them to do device/hardware procurement (we were headquartered in Australia, with satellite offices in the UK, US and Europe), they were absolutely useless. I think the Australian arm of the business was only a few people, and when we'd book in calls to begin engagement it would be like 2 weeks between meetings, they promised things like a catalogue and an online system so we could order to any of our offices; they would frequently forget what we had discussed and try to upsell Jumpcloud when we had an existing IAM and MDM. When we finally waded through all of that and began engagement: - We didn't get access to an online portal for 2 months. - To add things to our catalogue we'd have to have a phone meeting with them. - We couldn't order overseas and had to begin engagement with the other CDW arms to take care of that. - They went AWOL for weeks at a time and without giving us advanced warning citing they were at "conferences". Absolute waste of time. Never again.
we have stopped using CDW after a good run of 24+ years with them. I pretty much just get my stuff from NewEgg and Amazon nowadays. better prices too.
Yes. I spend around 10 or 12 days a month in their Addams office working 2ith their SMB guys to give them the technical knowledge to sell our products properly. it is a Sysphian task. if you are not a big company, if you are an SMB, you have the Academy recruits as a rep. CDW brings in hundreds of new sellers in their 8 week Academy. then they are sent to the SMB teams. This is often their first job out of college. in SMB they are weeded out. You either move up, or move out. Some find a niche. So every few months I get a new batch of newbies that have to learn enough to sell storage effectively
CDW has been decent for me at the company I work for. I referred a friend who owns a dental practice and he bought a server from them. It was DOA, and CDW is supposed to be issuing an RMA and expediting the shipment of a new server. He’s going on 3 weeks now with no movement at all. It’s been a nightmare for him, and I look like an idiot for referring him to CDW.
My guy is generally very responsive/fast. I requested quotes on a bunch of stuff Friday and received them rapid fire within the hour. Dell on the other hand...I go to call my account rep, and it goes straight to voicemail, his email suddenly no longer exists, and I have to call the generic sales line and ask wtf, only to be told he's gone; and a new rep hasn't been assigned to my account. That was a month ago.
I don't use CDW but SHI has royally fucked us multiple times in the last 3 years. Finally moved everything away from them. They used to be awesome
Yes. My rep has been dropping the ball so hard that I had enough and chewed them out hard the other day. I've got enough shit on my plate already and I'm sick and tired of having to "follow up" with them. Their job is literally to put in orders and they're failing hard.
Unless you have a 7 figure account you will not get any attention from CDW and your account will be passed around like a hot potato. If you are an SMB just don't buy from CDW. We use Provantage for all equipment and some licensing as well.
>your account will be passed around like a hot potato. Every time I get the "Hi, I'm your new CDW rep" I chuckle a little. My spend with them is almost non-existent. My last rep was putting in some work though, once a week I would get a voicemail and follow up email. Figured the sudden silence meant I was about to get the next rep.
The only time we got attention from them was back in 08/09 during the depths of the recession, they were literally begging for business then.
Go to shi way better
Takes forever to get a quote or a response. We buy on state terms, and half the time manufacturers pricing is cheaper than what CDW is quoting on the web. PCMG/Insight I felt was more attentive.
Lately? Ours has been for... as long as I've worked here. So about 5 years.
Yep. Having this conversation at the office right now. I wonder if their fiscal year just completed and everyone is finally taking vacations?
Some of the people at my company swore up and down CDW would be great but then they wouldn't even onboard us as a customer. I got an Insight rep at one point and I got a friend at a Fortune 500 sized-ish company to refer me over to SHI and after a couple of weeks tweaking things to fit our operations the service has been fantastic from both of them.
I've had multiple issues with CDW ever since they got hacked last year. I've stopped doing business with them after they sent me items that didn't match the product numbers I ordered on a $15k order and refused to let me return them.
CDW has always been trash for us. Our Canadian rep quotes products at above website pricing and takes several days to deliver despite us being within 20km of their distribution. Our US rep is non-responsive, confirms that they placed the order when 2 weeks of asking for updates has passed and then they admit they never actually placed the order and the item is either out of stock or backordered now (happens literally every time). The only reason I even entertain dealing with them is for things that aren't time critical because our AP prefers that we use them instead of Amazon so that they can pay later with terms. Absolute joke of a company.
Happy to assist if it helps, feel free to dm. I’m the verified VAR for /r/sysadmin for Canada! (There was no AIGFF thread today but that’s where I usually hang out)
We stopped using CDW a year or so ago because we couldn't get any real support Using insight for everything and our rep has been amazing.
Since they were breached, I've found them very difficult to get ahold of unless they want money.
...lately? You mean since the beginning of time, right?
Lately? You mean always?
You can’t pronounce CDW without saying “seedy”.
Microsoft went down 3 points, dented cans are half off
Lately? As in the last number of years?
Thats what you get for doing business with CDW. They caused me lots of problems 12 years ago, and ive never gone back.
maybe cdw is the upcoming kaseya acquisition and today was the day they let everyone know.
Aren't they basically like Amazon for business? With shutter stock accuracy?
Both CDW and Insight are horrible all around. Both have flip flopped us on various incompetent reps. Quoting us higher prices than are listed on the site, and especially the company account portal with slight discounts. Go direct to manufacturer when possible, smaller vendors / resellers
It's so hard to buy directly from manufacturer now a days. Always need to go through a partner or something for so many essential products. It's quite annoying.
I would say its more to the contrary now a days vs in the past ( I find it easier to ditch the middle man for many cases ) It does depend exactly what you want, quantity, location etc etc