buying from simply nas

Nice product but a little pricey

Based on their web site, I think that their business is *precisely* a "package of qnap+6 hard drives".

They appear to be taking the bare NAS and adding the exact quantity of the exact drives that you want. It's not just "3tb drives". It's Seagate Barracuda 3 TB Desktop drives. You can buy similar products that have Seagate Constellation drives or Hitachi Deskstar drives or Hitachi Ultrastar drives. Etc. And they test it before shipping.

For some people that is a very useful service. For others, meh!

I don't recommend buying from simplynas.com. I had a very bad shopping experience with them. I will NEVER buy from them again - and suggest that you not either.

Readers
At SimplyNAS we try to please everyone, however, once in a while we do fail and that is mostly when customers want us to provide services that con tradict our terms of trade and returns policies. We have terms of business that are more than fair and we disclose everything up front and not after the sale takes place this allows all our customers to be treated equally.

This user (bruceindfw) has posted one post and he had an issue with a unit that was tested over the christmas period when we were closed, and as it failed our burn test, we were not able to ship, the customer was was very upset for us not contacting two days after the christmas holidays infrom him, he had to call us, despite our offices being closed during the christmas period and not officially being open until Jan 3. We will not publish a full report as we never wish to discreet anyone publicly, we are sorry this user has to do what they do.

Please feel free to pursue and check other sites to see our reputation, in fact call us and judge yourselves.
Edited by SimplyNAS - 2/23/13 at 12:23pm

I don't understand why you don't just research what NAS you want, buy it, and put hard drives in it. It's not that hard, especially not on a model with removable drive bays.

I like Synology waaaaaaay better. Get a DS413, throw in some drives and you will be set ...

Just wanted to correct a couple of items in the post from SimplyNAS...

1. I was NEVER told they were not open over the Christmas holidays - this is the FIRST time that has ever been mentioned.
2. I asked before I ordered the unit if they could have it delivered by the Wednesday after Christmas - and they said they could.
3. When you tell a customer that you will ship something, and you cannot ship it - for whatever reason - you should contact the customer as quickly as possible to let them know that it didn't ship - and to determine how to proceed. This is just basic customer service - of which SimplyNAS has no clue.
4. If expecting a company to do what they say they will do - when they say they will do it - and for the price they advertise is EXPECTING TOO MUCH, maybe I was just expecting too much.

Save yourself time, money and the hassle of dealing with less than stellar companies like SimplyNAS - just buy the NAS and drives separately.

As i said we have discussed this already and we are not prepared to have a a slanging match publicly.
We do wish to point out to readers why and how this problem occurred.

This only occurred as you pleaded with us to ship the parts separately and no longer wanted to wait to get it tested (after the unit had failed)!. We warned against DOA’s and we that we would not be able to help except replace, you agreed and wanted to ship next day we did, as a result you had a faulty DOA drive and then called and caused havoc blaming us for not shipping the original order in time and this might have not happened and started to blame everyone and wanted a refund on shipping for next day (despite having had the benefit as well as us shipping the new drive to you as well) etc…

We printed this to let readers know that this can happen when you buy parts un-tested and wish to build your own, but when it does please exercise care and fairness when you need replacement, and not blame others for your decision and shortcomings. Dead On Arrival (DOA) is common occurrence in the electronics industry. We do not like to ship anything without testing, and most of our customers respect this.
We are pleased to respond to any emails or request for help from AVS readers

Yes this is true buy a diskless and add your own drives.
At SimplyNAS we sell diskless as well as populated, the latter being as a system so its comes tested and ready to use.

Yes this is true buy a diskless and add your own drives.
At SimplyNAS we sell diskless as well as populated, the latter being as a system so its comes tested and ready to use.

SimplyNAS continues to misinform...

I never pleaded with you to ship the parts separately. Your representative offered that option because YOUR COMPANY did not do what it said it would do - AND - YOUR COMPANY dropped the ball by not contacting me the day it was supposed to ship to say that you couldn't ship it. In fact, you never called me - I had to call you the day after the unit was supposed to be delivered. That is POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! Yes, I was mad because you did not do what you said you would do - and didn't even bother to call to tell me. Only after I called your rep the day after the unit was supposed to arrive - did he offer to drop ship the NAS from QNAP - and he said he would ship the drives directly to me. Then, upon receipt of the drives - one of them was DOA - and you made me pay for the shipping and the new drive before you would send another - then, you didn't want to pay for return shipping on the DOA drive - and you only did so after I continued to complain - over and over. SimplyNAS simply has POOR customer service and the "manager" has a bad attitude if there are ANY issues with an order. Everything except this last sentence is 100% factual - not opinion. If you want to deny it - I will be happy to file a complaint with the BBB and provide documentation to prove it. You can't buy me off like you have some other people that posted complaints. I have found a less expensive purchasing option that provides GOOD customer service. I will NEVER do business again with SimplyNAS. This thread shows your true colors - always blaming the customer and never taking responsibility for your mistakes.

I ordered from SimplyNAS a QNAP 469L populated with 3 tb WD red drives. After ordering on line, I got confirmation and a day later a note saying there was a delay due to weather. There was no lie on their part as there was indeed real weather problem in their location.

The NAS arrived a few days later than anticipated and was set up as ex4 RAID 5 as instructed. The packaging was satisfactory and the unit worked as expected.

Whether you go with SimplyNAS or a few other NAS product distributors, as mentioned, there is always a risk given that electronics can arrive DOA. I am lucky and all worked as planned and they (SimplyNAS) did indeed notify me of a short delay.

In short, there can be exceptions to the rule on good service and misconstrued poor service. SimplyNAS for me did reasonable on line business and provided all the information a buy would want - acknowledgement via email, notice of reasonable delay, and information on tracking.

This was my first time purchasing from them. I have purchased previously a NAS unit (QNAP 559 pro) from another company and had a similar experience so I can say that SimplyNAS did okay by me.


Update - I notice over time a somewhat whirling oscillating sound that would happen every day but not consistently. I expected that it would be the fan or even the WD Red dreives but decided before calling SimplyNas to explore. At this time I had opted to install 2g of RAM. It turns out that there was minor tension in the case and when returning the cover after the memory install, the noise went away entirely. So again some issues have nothing to do with the distributor/seller but with some minor effort, can be handled directly.
Edited by Phrehdd - 3/18/13 at 8:29pm