You say right just 38 euros difference but the difference between the product
that you finally receive and the personal attention received is huge.
Leah said that all orders currently placed are due to be received before
Christmas. Well, I hope those orders will not happen to turn similar to the
order that my family and me placed with Minifree. In our case the laptop
arrived much later than expected and the customer experience that we had was
just something terrible. So my advice is that if you are planning to buy a
laptop from Minifree these days you better have into account everything that
I say here and rather consider buying from Technoethical or any other company
because if your order happens to turns to be like ours, you might not be
receiving your laptop on time not even and something that your might be
buying for a gift might finally be turning into a problem lasting weeks for
you.
I will try to make a short summary though in the future I want to write a
larger review comparing both companies.
Technoethical has more payment options than Minifree does. While with
Technoethical you have the option of paying easily with your credit card with
Minifree you do not have that option and you are forced to buy through a bank
transfer (or eventually with bitcoins). Although Minifree says that this is
due to privacy concerns of its owner, what I know for sure is that paying
through a bank transfer to a company from another country place you in a
situation of vulnerability compared to the seller if something goes wrong. Of
course you could think: "...but it's Leah's company. She is part of the
Trisquel forums!... I can trust on this!". Wel, we trusted her but it was not
a nice experience. We placed an order with Minifree some weeks ago and made
the bank transfer the same day within few hours. After having made the
trasnfer we even send Minifree a copy of the receipt of the bank transfer
With Technoethical you can agree the configuration that you would like your
computer to have, whereas with Minifree any attempt to suggest a
configuration was not even replied. In fact they did not replied to any email
until 12 days later, while with Technoethical they are always getting in
contact with you for giving you updates about your product, for asking you
how would you like this to be configured, etc...
If you get concerned about Minifree's lacks of updates about your product and
payment, do not bother in trying to contact they by phone... If your case is
like ours you are likely to receive the same answer as from your emails:
none. In fact Minifree just answered to us when we send them a notification
written saying that seeing the lack of any answer we were thinking to report
the case to the police. After sending that message they replied to us within
15 minutes ... at midnight! Incredible taking into account that all the
previous emails have been written in English and that message was written
intentionally in Spanish just for the case that we had to go to report the
police. What did not happen in 12 days before, happened within 15 minutes at
midnight ... That gives you an idea of the level of trust that you can place
in Minifree.
We finally received our laptop 17 days after paying for it. We received a
laptop that was not clean, with a charger which has on it big letters written
in typpex... I cannot say that it was bad packaged, however it was not in a
way that a person could expect that it was something fragile. The postman
just through it to the floor. Of course Minifree is not to be blamed for this
latter, but just you to have an idea of the fantastic overall experience that
we had. The funnies thing however happens when after several weeks the person
of the family for whom it is intended the gift arrived, turns on the computer
and cannot enter the user because the password provided it is not recognised.
We entered in contact again with Minifree and as we expected they did not
provided us with a real solution. They just say something like that they do
not have any idea about that and that because the computer was not encrypted
we could take out the HDD and do some commands on another computer to change
the password... So a clean and ready to use laptop, you see.
I read many promises about specifications here, but the true thing is that we
received a laptop without Bluetooth and without any cam. What about the
keyboard? Even though at Minifree's webpage they explain that they might
endevour to provide you with a keyboard from your specfic country if
available, the true thing is that they probably will not be contacting you
for checking what kind of keyboard your want and if you try to contact them
to make a suggestion are likely not to receive any answer as explained
before.
With Technoethical, we received a laptop that was clearly having taken care
of. Any extra that you could think of was there. The team of Technoethical
was always friendly and were contacting us frequently for giving us updates
and for asking us for they to have clear how we wanted our computer to be
configured. The keyboard was in Spanish. The laptop arrived soon and they. So
overall I can say that even though for some Technoethical might seems
expensive ... It really worths the money.
I am willing to make a more detailed comparison soon about the two companies
because I do not think it is fair to put Technoethical and Minifree companies
at the same level. As Zotis said with Technoethical "you know what you take"
while in the case of Minifree it was not at all what we expected. After
having bought several products from Technoethical I can say that it is a
reliable company, while in the case of Minifree our own experience does not
allow me to say the same.
