Ever been ripped off or tried to be? (didnt know where to put this tread)

OK, So how many of you guys when you first got into PC,s got ripped off by some computer shop? and if you actually admit it what did you buy,and how much did you pay?

I cant actually ever remember being *ripped off* because my first PC was from "dixons" BOO HISS, yah i know RIP OFF.. so that kinda deletes the purpose of me saying about it, but anyway, and i used that pc for around 6 months getting compuer literate, then when i started buying stuff i always checkeked the net for it first, but anyway apart from "dixons" i havent been ripped off but my brother has...

he spent like £1300 on a new custom built PC, and it was good *high end* around 3 years ago..but then it started going wrong, but every time he took it into the PC shop where he got it to be fixed, I.E. he burnt out his AMD cpu without even overclocking o_0..so he took it in, got a new CPU and HSF and also a 80mm rear fan, so a few weeks later his HDD dies.. he goes in to have it fixed and when he comes back out he has ANOTHER HSF, and no 80 rear fan...along with a 40GB hdd which set him back 60quid... but everytime he goes into that shop, he gets ripped off.. its mainly bacause of how shy he is and he wouldent dare say anything even if he was smart enough to figure it out..

Iuse that shop alot, and they know he,s my brother yet they wouldent even try and rip me off coz i took my PC there coz the sound went all crappy and no matter what i did it wouldent work, so i took in my current PC, which around 3 months ago would have totally batterd ANY pc that came near it, plus the fact i had liquid cooling totally shocked them, they had NEVER seen a PC with liquid cooling before, so naturally i showed it off to them as much as i could while they all crowded round looking at it and asking questions like "whats that?" point to the pump and res..and the fact im only 15 and i built it myself also made them think twice, so they couldent fix my sound either so i took it home and fixxed it myself *was NOT easy* took me 3 days..

OK, sorry about the UBER long post,

P2D

 

The first PC I personally payed for was from an OEM manufacturer (BOO) called Systemax. When the PC first arrived and I had taken it out of its packaging, I heard a rattling noise within the case (never a good sign). I don't remember what happened exactly, but I think the rear exhaust case fan fell off during shipping. Since my parents and I were certain that hardware was damaged, we RMA'd it for another. The replacement has no apparent problems, so we get it hooked up and running. A few months later, though, something in the PSU burns out (oddly enough no loud noise, sparks, or even smoke), so we again took advantage of the warranty and had a repairman come and replace the PSU. Fast forward to next year, and I get a GF4 Ti4200 as a present. The card is installed, no problems. Six months later while playing UT2003, though, the card starts artifacting (without any overclocking). The problem eventually gets to the point where there is artifacting immediately, even in 3D games that are more CPU intensive. I open my case to find, to my dismay, that the only fans in the case are the CPU fan, PSU fan, and the video card's fan. Likely, the card overheated because no heat was being pushed out of the case. It didn't help that my case was in a CPU cabinet in my desk. I had also finally discovered that my XP 1600+ was operating at 1ghz because of a jumper on the motherboard. After this point I pretty much got fed up with OEM machines, and decided to learn more about computers. I know a lot more now than I did a few years ago, and I now have my own (almost) completely custom-built computer.

 

When i didn't know anything much about computers other than installing cards and cdroms, i got ripped off buying a 800mhz Pentium3.
But then being a n00b i discovered overclocking so i soon had that P3 nearing 1.1ghz on the stock heatsink then it finally got fried . all this was within the warrenty. So i went to the shop and told then that my computer wouldn't turn on. not even the fans would come on.. so then they got me on to their manager and he told me that they would have to build me a new pc but my drives and PSU were fine. They said in the circumstances that they were in the mobo manufacturer didn't warrenty the P3 mobos, or even make them, and the shop then only selled P4s and athlons, not P3s anymore. so they would build me an AMD athlon, my PSU wasn't up to the job for a P4 and i was short on cash. i would pay for the CPU and they would give me the Mobo and DDR ram under warrenty (i had non-ddr on the P3)

all went well, other then i fried the sh*tty mobo that was only designed for maximum 140mhzFSB

new case, HDDs, fans and CPU cooler, mobo and ram. and here i am now. if i had more cash i would have never got an AMD and yep i've still got the same amd 1800+ i got back then.

now i get everything for the cheapest i can get, and i've built my own comp by myself, no more shops to deal with

 

I got ripped on the first PC I ever bought back in 1997. It was a Pentium II with 64MB memory a PC Chips 100 board, 8mb integrated graphics and a 20-30Gb HD. It was fine for a few years till I wanted to start playing some of the 3D games, I read around a lot and realised that I'd need a graphics card, a new motherboard, new ram etc so after a lot of research on the web I built my first PC. It was an 1800XP, GA7VRXP board, Leadtek Ti4200 64MB Gfx Card, Creative Audigy an 80GB IBM 'Deathstar' HDD and 256MB Crucial P2700 Ram. It ran like a dream, kicked the ass of my previous PC and worked out cheaper as I sourced all the parts from the net myself. Since then I've bought an extra 80Gb 'Deathstar' (the old 120GXP models, god they howl!) and added another 256MB Ram. This year I started my quest for silence, replacing the stock cooler with a Zalman 7000a and the Ti4200 stock heatsink with a Zalman ZM80a Heatpipe. Moved the guts into a Chenbro Gaming Bomb case and fitted two 92mm Panaflo fans modded to 5v. I cracked open the PSU and took out the stock fan, replacing it with an 80mm Panaflo. The only sound is the deathstars clunking and humming but I'm eyeing up a couple of Samsung Spinpoint 80GB drives.... At present I'm busy modding the case (and building a custom HDD suspension cage)

 

I was ripped off on my PC, I think, it was quite a while back ('97)

I was new to computers, so stupidly I paid over £250 for a second hand Compaq, it was a Pentium 1 75mhz, 16mb RAM and 500mb hdd. At first I thought it was quite good but soon after I realised I had been ripped off!

 

hmm, im selling a PC that has: P4-2.2GHZ, 512MB ram, gf4 MX420 64mb, 80gb hdd, CR-RW, CD ROM, unknown MOBO, 16" screen..im asking £500 for it, do you think thats a good price..it cost me 1k 1.5years ago i think its a good price

 

hmmm be just over year ago I payed £570 for the following

1200 Duron
Geforce 2 MX400 32mb
50 Gig HD
Cruddy PC Chips Mobo
256 Pc 133 ram
cruddy case
17'' Benq Monitor
52x CD rom
cd rw( forgot speeds e.t.c.)

hmmmmmm well I picked the pc up payed them got home booted up first thing I saw was ..... cpu speed, considering I ordered a 2000 Athlon, and I was seeing duron i was thinking wtf ... quick phone call later and all they have to say is " sorry there was none in stock so we thought we would put that in instead but we havnt charged you" .... thanks for telling me sooner . Then only moments later 256mb of ram .... god damn it I ordered 512 ... phone agen to the dodgy bloke at reception ... " well am looking at your order here at it says 512 and you payed for it you sure you havnt got it in there?", I take side of case out and sure enuff the rams in there ... duct taped to the bottom of the case smat idea hmmmm ..... I ring em back and tell them and they said they will " send a replacement the next day" ..... after three months and lots of phoning later I finally get a replacement what I had to pickup in person. .......... apart from that all bin good ... part from cd rom dieing , hd dieng and psu dieing for no reason at all .... built my own machine now

 

lol, i think it was 1996 that my dad had a P1 120mhz with 32mb ram and a 16mb gfx card
dang it was good for its time. We paid over 3000$AUD for that one!

anyone remember the 15" KTX monitors? I've still got one and its better clarity and contrast then my 17"

 

16mb GFX card is more than in this 800mhz system!! dear god...

 

wow, £570 for thaat, i would have taken it back and got either: cash or: the RIGHT stuff!

 

There is noway you had a 20gb hard disk in 97 lol .... the first pc i bought was christmas 98 and that had a 6gb drive which was good for the time..
celeron 300mhz 48mb ram onboard rage pro 8mb graphics, 15" screen and printer for £999 from - yes you guessed it pc world lol.

The pc im using now is 100% custom xp 2400+ and is worth around about £500 i think.

 

ok ok I didnt pay .... parents did .... lol

Newmark or nemark computers near doncaster .... keep away or else !

 

My father got a 'bargain' computer for £400 manufactured by a company called 'PC Science' afew years back (think it was 1998) It was his first PC, (he had never used anything other than BBC Micro up till then, and got this because it finally died) and was for use in his office.

It was supposed to have a Hansol 15" monitor, Celron 400 CPU, 6Gb Hdd, modem, onboard graphics etc.

The system was always lousy. The PC Chips motherboard had no AGP slot for graphics card upgrades, and the onboard card only supported 8Mb of Shared memoy, taken from the main memory. In addition to this, it was supposed to come with 64Mb of RAM, but it only had 32Mb in it. Since the graphics card took 8Mb of this, it isn't supprising that performance in Win98 was terrible.

The only reason we didn't return the machine was that they had put the wrong hard drive in it and didn't charge any extra - the 6Gb that had been ordered was on the invoice, but the hdd in it was 8Gb.

Despite this being 1998 (I think), the computer was found to be old AT format, and so the case would be useless for future upgrades. The PC kept on crashing, and we found out that the BIOS currently installed only supported processors up to a PII 366MHz, and nobody had bothered to update it with the newer BIOS supporting a C400 CPU. Given that this is the CPU the machine came with, this was pretty poor.

The modem died (hardware failure) after about 4 months, and when we tried to contact PC Science to get it mended, (would have done it myself, but that would require breaking the warranty seal) we found out that the company was bankrupt. Warranty no longer relevant, I fixed it myself and upgraded the RAM. (Which turned out to be the old 72 pin stuff!) Whilst inside the PC, I found that the ground wire from the AT PSU to the chassis had been left disconnected That is both very shoddy, and potentially very dangerous.

Never got 3D Mark99 to give more than about 95 points. barely even ran!

The computer was disposed of at a local auction house soon after that. The machine I built to replace it one year later was only £50 more and was infinitley better in almost every way. The experience has left me with lot of caution when it comes to 'bargain PC deals'. The moral? make sure you know exactly what you are getting before handing over the money.

 

The first pc I bought for myself (18 months ago - I'm 18 btw) was from ebay - prebuilt compaq system that I'm still on at the mo. I paid £260 for it - the savings from a horrible job in a newsagents - and have always been very happy. The only real reason I've since bought a new one is for games.. the system's too small to take full AGP cards, and the 5200 I eventually found to work in it wouldn't play HALO. Enter shiny new system with a 9800pro a couple of months ago The laptop I bought second hand about 6 months ago for £200 delivered (off here!) And I'm generally happy. The guy didn't mention there was a line across the screen when you scroll images, which was a little annoying but you barely notice it to be honest. I probably paid a little more than it's worth, but wouldn't call it a rip-off.
There, thats me.

 

First PC of my own was a AMD K62 Acer Aspire that i got from Wal-Mart for $800. Need I say more?

 

I remember paying £10 for pc xpress in middlesbrough, £10 to install a stick of RAM

 

I don't think I've been ripped off terribly bad. The only thing was buying a barebones pc that came with a pcchips motherboard and athlon1.4. The motherboard wasn't all bad, really stable for general use but not so great when i tried to play games. The thing was, the proc was a 1.4 but it wouldn't go higher than 1050mhz.

 

Dude, I bought a Dell...



Before that I had an Amiga, but the Dell was my first venture into Windows, back in the day. Now I accept nothing less than the best components put together by myself.

 

well i was driving and some guys were yelling at me from there van, so i pulled over, they were like "we deliver speakers and we have these extra ones we gotta get rid of before our next delivery" they take them out of there generic white ford van, really nice housing, but i take a look at the actuall speakers and they are something from a 99cent discount store, i walked away laughing, of course holding my bottle of mace in the other hand just incase (yes i carry mace...dont call me a woman! im just a nerd)

 

Mace Windu?