hello all, Recently my brother, bless his soul bought a componant from a certain retailer (i cant name them as they might be a competitor) hes had nothing but greif from them. Here goes... Componant number 1 The component they sent my brother was initially faulty. DOA if you will. an email was sent to the company in question "what should i do" it read in reply the company said "test it with this 'cool' 'nifty' program in dos" The component was tested. but the dos program woudnt even run in dos. Thus comfirming our worst fears. it was truley dead. The item was returned to the company via special deliver at the cost of £5.20 -expensive stuff eh. Later we took delivery of a replacement (this took 1 week) Componant number 2 The componant they sent my brother was initially faulty. DOA again! an email was sent to the company in question "what should i do" it read in reply the company said "test it with this 'cool' 'nifty' program in dos" The component was tested. but the dos program woudnt even run in dos. Thus comfirming our worst fears. it was truley dead. AGAIN The item was returned to the company via special deliver at the cost of £5.20. Now the cost so far was the componant 'X' + 2X £5.20. = £10.40 more than it should have cost...the plot continues Later we took delivery of a replacement (this took 1 week also) again... Componant number 3 The component they sent my brother was initially faulty. DOA. yet again. We tested this baby on 3 machines...(one of which im using now, and have been for 12 mths !) an email was sent to the company in question "what should i do" it said. in reply the company said "test it with the program, in dos" (AGAIN) The component was tested. but the dos program woudnt even run in dos. Thus comfirming our worst fears. it was truley dead. emails were sent here and there. my brother was told by persons in the company: "he didnt know what he was doing". "you cant be doing this right" "we do not belive you have another one" "this scenario is IMPOSSIBLE" We asked the manager to phone us back. as we were obviously unhappy. The day passed. he did not return the call. (must have been very busy) I phoned the company to express my concern, and finnaly got through to the 'big cheese'. After talking to the manager of this company. We agreed, bitterly on my brothers behalf, to return the componant to the company AGAIN for testing.] The item was returned to the company via special deliver at the cost of £5.20 -expensive stuff eh. 5 days later. the componant was tested. but comfirmed WORKING - WE KNOW IT WAS DEAD. WE TESTED IT. heres the cunning bit. The company in question took it upon themselves to charge charge my brothers card £20 for their 'testing services'. and postage. Now lets SEE Initial Postage of the item (from initial order) £5.00 £5.20+£5.20+£5.20+£20.00=£40.60 + the cost of the componant initially,so bargain a or what ! The point of this post is, what do you guys and girls think i should do ? my brothers only 16 ! thats alot of his money wasted
I swear a similar company close to me did a similar thing, on not quite such a grand scale. I took a motherboard back to them for him, they testing it, charging him a £10 testing fee, although, they waived that as he bought some more ram. And said there was nothin wroing with the motherboard, but i'm sure, certain in fact, that the motherboard i got back was different, at least, the scratch i put on it next to the cpu socket wasn't there (scratch made when removing hsf after i realsied it wasn't working) philth
Why don't you tell us the name of the company and the product your brother ordered. We have a right to know which company has the cheek to charge their customers £40 for something that doesn't work. Did it work in the end? If you told use what it was we might notice something which could cause the problem. Anyway it's amazing how much of that post is copied and pasted! Also you say that the testing program didn't run yet you also say that you knew the component was dead even though you hadn't been able to test it.
Don't worry about em being a competitor, just post the name! (didn't c+p from ocuk, did you? )We all like to hear about experiences like this so we can avoid the shady retailers. But, anyway. What to do next. I've contacted trading standards about things in the past. Admittedly, they're not lightning quick, but they do give you solid advice about your position. Another option is give your local Citizens advice bureau a call. Also a very solid source of advice. Finally, you may just want to skip both and write to the company (write, don't email) and ask for a refund for the item and all your expenses. Say if you don't get that, then you'll be forced to seek legal counsel. btw, contacting either trading standards or the CAB constitute 'legal counsel' You don't necessarily have to involve a paid solicitor. Hope that helps
twas an 80 gig hdd. i think it was a WD i forget now (brothers order) the WD test failed in dos on all of the hdds... sept teh 4th thats now in his machine
I had a problem with a Western Digital Caviar about 3-4 years ago, went through 3 drives until they fixed the problem. Needless to say, I have never bought another WD drive again WD did handle it nicely. They sent me a new drive with prepayed shipping for the bad drive. I could then test the drive, and send the bad one back. Needless to say, I ended up calling and they said "send them both back in the same box, and we'll send you a new one. I think that they endedup giving me one with a better cashe, for no extra charge!
ewww im staying away from WD drives as much as i can. I had a 40gb die with 1k mp3's on it with NO back up. I own all of the CD's so I spent endless hours ripping and encoding those mp3's. needless to say its was over a year old so i am totally hosed. no more WD drives for me. anyway did they send you a drive back to see if it worked. if they did take it to a local computer store you trust. $20 diag from the store will tell you if it is DOA or not. Im not saying your an idiot but you need the credencials to be "right" in the eyes of the law. If the drive is hosed, take it to small claims court.
OCUK used to be a good company but just lately they have gone down the tubes. I ordered my dad a new system, part of which was a PC-chips motherboard (eew i know). This board has no AGP slot. It arrived in an unsealed box which was missing a drivers CD, the USB 2.0 plate and contained 2 AMD CPU warrenty booklets and a manual for an ASUS PCI USB 2.0 card. I must point out that the anti-static bag wasn't sealed and the manuals were covered in grubby fingerprints. The board wouldn't accept any PCI graphics card and the display corrupted on the windows loading screen. After a month of being ignored via E-mail (forwarding the old mail each time adding to the list of ignored E-mails) I got some time to phone them. After 4 transfers and hours of being put on hold, I was given several excuses. "your card is faulty" (I tried 2 cards which I tested in 2 other machines). "you are doing something wrong" (yea right). The final excuse I was given after they seemed to have exhausted all their other ideas was "that board wasn't designed to take a PCI graphics card and has no option to disable the onboard adapter". I actually laughed at him down the phone and explained there was an option in the Integrated Peripherals section. By this time I think he had found out that I knew he was bull****ing me. He asked me if I had a working board, and although he didn't say it he was making the point that the board is supposedly fine because the onboard adapter works. After much swearing at him, he agreed to uplift it but still wouldn't pay for it. Hmm, fair enough. Three months have passed since the uplift and no money has been refunded. Three E-mails have been ignored including a threat of court action. Time to get on the phone again A piece of advise.... DO NOT BUY FROM OCUK I just hope none of my hardware that I have purchased from them in the past goes faulty, I won't see it for 6 months and by that time it'll be obsolete.
its funny cuz i had an old wd caviar 10 gig and it lasted 3 years and hasnt failed on me yet. i use it as the back up drive in my main pc, and it rules. and OCUK suk ass edit: i also have an 80gig wd caviar SE with 8mb cache on the day it came out, and it also pwnz j00
My 3rd or 4th attempt on a WD caviar still runs today, as a reliable drive on a fileserver system. It is a secondary drive, though, as it keept "loosing" system files (I think that it has way too many bad sectors), so I bought a quantum to use as the C: drive. I don't think that it has lost any of my other files, though... If I ever window a Hard Drive, that ******* WD will be the first one my dremel seeks out
I've used WD's for at least 5 years now, have about 7 of them. I've only had a 1GB go out after 2 years of use, but WD replaced it within the week and it's worked fine ever since. The 3 year warranty is wonderful and their tech support people were nice and actually seemed to know what the were talking about. What was even more suprising was that the lady on the other end was speaking ENGLISH! Can you believe it? Even after that drive failed I've only been impressed with their drives and service.
I've had a similar experience with dabs over a £350 CTX TFT not too long ago. A couple of days after I bought it they stopped stocking the model completely too. It ended up costing me quite a lot in P&P and time (about 10 emailings to dabs). I think 90% of stores will have a few people with bad experiences. Certainly does suck though, especially as I'm lazy when it comes to returns as it is. I've got £100s in knackered hardware just because I hate the hassle of RMAing it. OCUK did lose one of my orders last year, but after a week or two (and much waiting around all day for couriers) they did ship it with about £30 worth of upgraded components for my trouble. My dad works about 1 minutes drive from tekheads though and I tend to be there frequently, so that at least saves on the hassle of couriers.
ocuk do indeed suck i'm banned from the forums, no one will tell me why, spie ignored my emails and refused to speak to me when i rang, and when i mailed other mods, most of them ignored me except for the 2 who reported me to my ISP. charming people. thankfully i know enough that i wouldn't shop there if they were the last shop on earth.
