Abe's of Maine Review: The Real Deal

Your order will not be shipped until you have been called with upsells.
I denied all upsells the first time. I declined the memory upsell because I already had memory. Then he offered the warranty. I hadn't planned on purchasing the warranty so I declined. He made me feel bad for declining without finding out the price. I let him tell me the price, but still declined. He ended by saying that my order would be shipped and the tracking number would be sent to me.
The second time, another guy started down the same upsell path, acting like my package was ready to go. I told him I didn't need the memory. Since I was 1) on the fence about the warranty and 2) felt like I might get better service/faster processing if I caved to an upsell, I specifically asked about 3-yr laptop warranty with ADH, and bought it after negotiating down the pricing, which ended up being the same price as if I had bought it on my own from SquareTrade.
I then went to lunch and started second guessing the additional money I spent on the warranty. I have succeeded in mostly justifying it to myself, as the average laptop out-off-warranty hardware repair is usually at least $100-120. It's just that I wasn't prepared to spend that money right now.
I imagine that their low prices are subsidized through these types of upsells. If you intend to decline all upsells, you should expect multiple calls, and for your order to be held up until they give up. A coworker of mine made the observation that such upsell calls are a potential misuse of my personal information. I think they are operating in a gray area in this matter.
All this was on a Friday. On Monday, the order status said "Sent to Warehouse". Tuesday morning, the order status said "Shipped" with Monday's date, but no tracking number. After lunch Tuesday, I received a UPS Quantum Ship notification with the tracking number. The link said that the label was created but UPS hadn't received the package yet. So it was obviously being shipped on Tuesday, not Monday as the order status indicated. Since my package is being tendered to UPS on Tuesday, I wouldn’t receive it until the next Monday. The kicker is that the two upsell calls I received on Friday gave the impression that my order was ready to ship.
In contrast to this, I placed an order for memory on TigerDirect on Friday about 15 minutes prior to placing my order on Abe's, and it was scheduled to show up on Thursday.
Between the time I placed my order and the time it arrived I received NINE advertisement emails trying to get me to buy more stuff.
The sad part about this is that Abe's really failed to build a relationship with me. They were too focused on upselling me to process my order quickly. Then they keep trying to sell me stuff while I wait. I was too uncomfortable with that to use them again.
The package arrived in good shape. The box was reused, and the printing on the box indicated that it was originally used to ship meat. This seemed a bit unprofessional. Inside the box, was the laptop in the manufacturer's box with the manufacturer's seal intact, a packing slip, and the extended warranty paperwork.
If you review Abe's of Maine reviews online, they tend to fall toward extremes... great experience or challenging experience. Given my experience with Abe's matches the negative reviewers, and the fact that the positive reviews mostly are 5-star one-liners, I suspect Abe's of posting their own positive reviews.
For this reason, I am posting my review on my blog, or else it will just lost in an avalanche of positive reviews that result in an overall higher rating that I do not feel appropriately represents the company.