(Mis)Adventures in Wholesale

The idea was simple: Find a reputable place to buy laptops in bulk or wholesale (tor a client). This is something I’m doing all the time, and to be honest I’m batting .000¹ in finding an outfit that maintains a decent standard. It seems so difficult to find a wholesaler that will do basic quality control and sell devices in reasonable condition. Procuring hardware and software at competitive prices is part of CWL’s core mission. Looking for these deals is a daily routine, trying to find sales in bulk or warehouse type offerings of devices that are in good enough quality to be useful.

This time I found Blueneck Technologies. They’re located out on Satellite Drive in Mississauga. Varun appears to be the main guy involved and possibly the owner. When I contacted them on Facebook Messenger, they were identifying themselves as “Deep.” When I asked them where they were, they offered an address but would not offer a unit name until I’d arrived. Yes, there was definitely a shady feel to all of this, but I pressed on. Deep was selling a boatload of devices. His price list clearly indicated that he had more than 500 computers as his warehouse. Deep was careful send me a cropped image of a spreadsheet that only showed model numbers and stock level, not pricing. Still, while I was readying to visit these folks and the “bro” salutations continued² to ring in my head, I’d wondered if the price he gave me was really that great. Could I further bargain with this fellow when I got there? Were these guys legit?

Deep, to his credit, started in on the quality of the devices, and began sending me pictures. After all, He was watching a sale slip away. His last request was simply “come bro, you will see quality.” Not sold on this, but not too sure this guy would move much on his prices, this could go in any direction if I went to the location for 11 AM. What I did have was curiosity. That was driving me forward to meet with this fellow and see what he was selling. It was crunch time and I needed to make the call, go or stay.

I decided to make the trip. Deep’s location was way out near the airport in some vanilla strip mall. As planes flew above me, the road and buildings were bare because I’d come on a holiday. Deep made a point that he wouldn’t work the day before; a Sunday - but on one of Canada’s biggest holidays, he was at the office. I arrived and the location smelled like death. That seems odd in retrospect, but it smelled like embalmers were working in the back. The office was clean and polished though, with a nice logo on the wall opposite the main door. There were three guys working this small office and warehouse: a receptionist who answered the door, a tech in the back and the main guy - the one I presumed that I was talking to online because he also made a point to call me “bro” and “brother” every few sentences. I learned his name was Varun.

Varun was right, the devices looked like they were cosmetically in good shape. The first odd thing I noticed was his lies about stock level. He said there twelve available and his stock spreadsheet indicated stock of 37 units when we chatted earlier. Yet, I get there the minute he opened at 11 AM and he didn’t have more than eight computers. He says “Bro, we’re selling fast,” and I said “Wait a second, this is a holiday, you were closed yesterday, you didn’t have a chance to sell anything since you opened five minutes ago. This doesn’t add up.” He deflected and I left the point alone. My inclination was to get less of these laptops anyway, so I left it alone. It’s likely he was just saying anything to get me out here.

The next step was to test the laptops. They gave me a power cable and I did what I could to rip through these eight computers. Taking a drive I brought with me, I took apart a machine and installed Windows on one of the computers. That seemed fine. The second one I turned on, the screen was flickering intensely. Varun came to look and passed the computer off to his tech. They seemed to have stopped the flickering and returned passing it off as an artifact. I let it go and continued testing. They all turned on and loaded the BIOS. Okay. If I wanted to go further, I’d have to spend a few more hours taking apart and setting up the rest of these and I didn’t have time.

Returning to my office, I could take the time to look further and setup all the computers. As I was testing, one was completely trashed with the drive slot screw completely stripped and the NVME port broken. It looked like someone ripped the previous drive off this motherboard. This in addition to the flickering screen, and it left me with two dead out of 8 - 25% had failed³. as I was communicating this with Deep, I didn’t have the time to fully check all of them by the next morning. I’d been thinking about what he would do, last on the list of making this right would be just refunding the amount of the two computers.

Even the most cursory “test” would have picked this up.

Earlier in the day I confirmed two of the devices were DOA. I said “Alright.. so after testing them all - there is just the two here that are DOA and unusable. Two of 8, what 25% - Now, I know you not going to waste my time by making me drive all the way back there - please tell me how you’re going to make this right?” He was mostly noncommittal instead taking the tactic of saying he had to talk to someone else, he said, “give me some time will text back i will talk with other ..” I still didn’t know who I was talking to here, was it the boss-guy I met at the office or the lowly technician?

He wasn’t Varun, so I was forced to call him at his 514 phone number. He seemed to be overlay focused on Whatsapp. I told him I didn’t care about Whatsapp, and I asked what he would do to make this right. He said “come bro and I’ll refund the money.” So, at 4 PM on a Tuesday, I was going have to spend the entire rush hour driving to get a refund for these dead computers that should never have passed even a basic inspection. The drive up there took about two hours and total and I spent about three minutes in the storefront. He said “sit down bro,” and I refused. Asking for the refund, Varun pulled out the cash and I gave him the computers and left. I still had one computer that was questionable, but I let it be.

Sadly, I still haven’t found a wholesaler that can execute on basic checks before selling. If you buy from BlueNeck, plan to thoroughly test everything, take it apart, and look at them all⁴. Expect a 25% failure rate and don’t walk away with any broken computers like I did.