So my NeoHE 500W gave out on me today, so I'm going to RMA it. In the mean time I need a power supply capable of running my system, which in all honesty doesn't use much power. So I go to Fry's to pick up a budget power supply capable of running my system at stock, and I find a nice budget Antec for $40 that has 5a more on the +12v then the the other PSU at that price. I go purchase it, take it home and open the box, and to my surprise the PSU in there isn't an Antec, its some fricking Besttec power supply that looks like 3 years old and is full of dust. So now not only did they give me the wrong product, they were advertising the original as new and unopened. This is the sort of **** I would expect from Best Buy, but Fry's had always seemed like a store of more knowledgeable people and better quality products. Last time I buy anything from Fry's without opening it before I get home, and that's assuming I ever actually buy anything from them again. I suppose it will depend on what they do tomorrow when I go back to return it. If they are nice enough about it, then I might consider shopping there again. But at the moment, I'm pretty pissed at them, although not as much as when I first found out about it.
Never bought at Fry's before, though I have driven past and thought about it once or twice. However, I've heard some pretty bad things about them. They don't have the quantity of business that Best Buy gets, so their reputation might not spread quite so far. I'll stick with Newegg, I think. Customer service beats instant gratification any day (though I've been in Tiger Direct a few times, and they've treated me well). I wish you the best of luck getting a refund on that.
Yeah, I have a Micro Center a bit farther distance as Fry's from my house, and about 35 minutes away from my house is a Tiger Direct, I got my video card there and the people there seemed to know what they were doing. I'll probably just go to those from now on, even though they don't have the selection Fry's has, with both being smaller.
If you hit something you really want on sale, then Fry's isn't bad. The customer service sucks, but then it sucks everywhere. I honestly won't miss brick and mortar electronics stores when they finally die.
Well, took it back today and the guy tried to pass the blame on to the manufacturer saying they sometimes get stuff from them like this, which I personally think is a load of bull, but they quite quickly got me another unit, which we then opened in front of them and it was actually want I wanted. As far as brick and mortar stores, they are needed for when you don't want to go the next week without a computer of your own because the online store is shipping your a power supply. It will be nice once I get my laptop and have a secondary computer to use in the mean time while RMA-ing parts.
B&M's have their place... just not very highly among the tech savy. I *love* shopping at Fry's... as long as nobody who works there tries to help me! You can find some insanely good deals there, especially if you scour their Friday ad in the local newspapers (I now affectionately refer to Friday as "Frysday" because of that danged ad!) I have found stuff in there for at or below online pricing. ANd when you need it in a pinch, that is a good thing to know. Granted, I have the state sales tax to add into the total, but usually when you buy on line you have some sort of shipping to pay... so it can sometimes come out nearly even. I have nightmare after nightmare that I have read about that store. And I have contributed to them as well! As long as you are educated in the market that you are looking to purchase in... you can honestly find a good deal there.... just pray it works and you don't have to go through the returns process!!
come to the uk then, best pick belfast, no shop that sells pc components at all... (well, there is one, but its well hidden and very small with smaller selection of components than my room)
I live in the UK and I don't think I have purchased any electrical equipment in store for about 5-6 years. Except from rapid electronics since its down the road and is an awesome store for electronic items, non-pc related.
QFT. We've all seen stereotypically bad salespeople now and then, but at Fry's it seems you can't turn around without bumping into one.
As far as a B&M goes they're often the only ones with a decent selection of computer components around at a reasonable price. You just have to be careful because they like to re-shrinkwrap open things and not advertise the fact to the customer.
I absolutely hate tigerdirect. I used to shop there because they have one of their ware-houses about 5 minutes from my house, so i used to go to just check things out, but they always seemed to follow me around the store (im 16) so i'm assuming they thought i would try and steal. Secondly, whenever i go for a specific thing, they tell me they don't have it in stock, and try to sell me something i don't need. I went to buy an 8800 GT i saw online for 200 bucks, and the clerk told me they only had GTS which were only 100 dollars more but twice as good, which is utter bull****. The other time, i went to buy an ipod dock that had an instant rebate of about 200 dollars, so i spent 100 dollars on my ipod dock thing instead of 300, BUT they had a sign advertising a 50 dollar mail in rebate on top of the 100 dollar price tag already. I asked cashier about it and they said go online. I went into the store the next day because they did not have the rebate, complained about false advertising, and the manager came out, pulled the sign down and put a new one up. They did offer to take the system back but they said i had 1 month to use it all i wanted and it was a damn good system so i did keep it, but that was 2 days of headaches. On top of that all, in store they don't carry many "do it yourself" items or any fancy things. I wanted a blue LED fan, and they did not have ANY in stock. Another thing was I saw a "hiring sign" and went inside to ask, the clerk was all nice and when they asked how old i was and i told them 16, they said you can't work here. I asked for a reason and they just said because, we don't trust young people. Me being 16, i just stormed out of the store swearing, wish i had said something to a manager though, because what that employee had said was very rude. One last thing, tiger is pricy!!! Until i found another pc store to shop at, i used to go to tiger. I switched to a store called Liata, and i got my thermaltake armor case for only 165, while tiger wanted 199.99 plus tax. Also, tiger wanted 170 dollars for a 200 GB laptop sata hard-drive, i went to Liata, got a western digital 250 GB laptop hard-drive and an external hard-drive enclosure for 150 dollars. I've now learned to shop around, and usually going to smaller local shops you can get better deals, especially when your spending money. I went to liata to get an 8800 Gt and i told her i would go back to buy a new mobo, ram and cpu and the owner cut off the tax for me, and she gave me the best price for the card compared to anywhere else.
I suspect your age has quite a lot to do with your problems, to be honest. That doesn't make it correct, but it's probably the reason. However, that's not a TigerDirect thing in general, it's just a poor choice of employees at a single location. Which warehouse was that? I've been in the Naperville, Il store a dozen times and they've always been courteous (though I'm rather older than you).
I've only been to the Naperville, IL store also, and they didn't follow me around at all, although it was moderately busy then and they had exactly what I wanted in stock, along with a couple items I was shocked to see there, as they were sold out on a lot of websites and other area stores(I think it was the x1950pro during the holiday right after its release).
I'm in Canada, so you wouldn't know the location. I just kinda hate how young kids are stereotyped as "thieves" and how they always try to sell you something when they don't have what you went to get in the first place. It's not like i'm going to walk into the store and just put a motherboard under my shirt and run... lol I'll say it again, i've had better experience with smaller stores, the owners go out of their way to help you out and they give you deals when you spend a fair amount of money. The store i go to (Liata) if she doesn't have something in stock she special orders it, and she can usually get it same day or next day, and she doesn't charge extra for the special order. You just need to shop around.
There are no small tech stores around here, and I don't see there being any chance of one surviving. As far as kids being sterotyped as thieves, I've been kicked out of a store because I came in after school with a group of people, so we had backpacks on. They said if we wanted to come in to the store we had to one at a time and leave the backpacks outside. It sucks being stereotyped, but at least most stores don't kick you out and make you come in one at a time if you are a group of teenagers.
hmmm I dont know, I live in manchester and we have quite a few componant shops, we've got 2 aria's, micro direct, a few family owned places and 2 maplins :S man I hate maplin!! Though technically one is on the manchester/salford border.
we have one curry's that sells complete computers, they do have some parts, if you count monitors and speakers as such, but well, that doesnt really make it a computer store, then there's the one place mentioned in my original post, thats it, theres a pc world somewhere far out in the wild across half the island, but thats it.
