Apologies in advance for the long read. just needed to rant somewhere. - And if this isnt allowed here, feel free to remove it. 19th of june: I bought a Gainward 4870X2 Golden sample graphics card from Overclockers UK. I read the description on the OcUK website and thought it was a better buy than the other cards they had. About half an hour later i realised that the card may not follow the reference design and as i wanted to put a waterblock on the card i would have trouble. I sent a webnote requesting that the order be changed to the XFX 4870 model that they stock. A couple of hours passed, and i got an email saying my order was complete and had been sent. About half an hour after that, i got an email saying they couldnt handle my request because the card was already sent. Fair enough, i thought. its my own fault. I'll have to make do with what i have. I decided to do a little more research on the card to see if anybody had success getting a block to fit. i posted on CPC asking if anybody knew, and it was suggested that it didnt follow the reference design. oh bugger. I did some googling to confirm this and then i realised the card had a TRI-Slot cooler. I was somewhat surprised because i have never even heard of a tri-slot card before. This posed an even greater problem, in that the card simply wasn't going to fit! - It was mentioned nowhere in the description that the card has a tri slot cooler. And the picture on the website was a simple top down view of the card. again, not showing the triple slot cooler. See. top down. you cant really see any detail in the picture at all. The card arrived saturday (i paid £11 for special delivery) and i immediately emailed OcUK to confirm i would be returning the card for an exchange with the XFX version. This is when things get interesting. Monday morning i wake up to the following email: Nice. So they're assuming that i have opened the card without even asking. The attitude that comes across in that email is awful. Mr Eaton could have saved himself some time by writing "its your fault. we dont care. f* off" I figured there was a mistake. i've never had a problem using a company card in the past. i've exchanged things with scan on the very same card. And i've never seen a company just instantly give a reply like that. no offer of help at all. Just a straight up "no". We attempted to call them monday to ask for a proper explanation, and to explain that we dont want to get a refund (yet) and that it wasn't opened. After sitting on hold for 20 minutes (position #1) we gave up. 10p per minute for 20 minutes - it just cost us £2 to be told we're first in line to get ignored. This means that either their "support team" consists of one person, or they just took the phone off the hook. Either way, terrible service. moreso on an 0871 number. I emailed OcUK again saying we want this sorted. And that if it wasn't, we would get the card company to cancel the payment and send the card back that way. I got another email this morning saying they still wont return it. We called again. and were told they couldnt return it due to Tax fraud issues. and because distance selling regulations didnt apply business to business, they wouldnt do anything. Tax fraud? thats a new one! After some arguing on the phone, we asked for the managing directors name, so we could contact him direct. The guy on the phone said no. Eventually we managed to tease a name out of him. However it wasnt the Mark Proudfoot i had heard ran the place. it was somebody completely different. When we asked for the name of the person we were speaking with. he gave his first name and quickly ended the conversation. Well. This is the story to date. we're now going to try getting the transaction cancelled by the bank. When thats done the card will be returned to them and they can stick it where the sun don't shine. i'll be deleting my OcUK account and never buying from them again. I kept hearing of people having trouble like this. but never really believed it. until now. This was a bit of an eye opener to be honest. I didnt think a company could have an attitude like that and still continue to do business. Today i've read several other cases just like this. where Overc*ckers have made excuses to avoid having to deal with returns. Google revealed one example where the guy was sent the wrong hard drive, and they still refused to exchange it! Absolutely sodding terrible. Still, OcUK's loss is scans gain, i guess :01_rolleyes: btw. i am aware of Overclockers legal "right" to refuse the return (although i think that is bull in itself). but thats not what i'm ranting about. this is purely about the shocking customer service, and the fact that they just refused it straight off. No good-will or anything.
OCUK up to their usual tricks again. They've had a really bad reputation for years now (in terms of customer service) and so I haven't bought anything from them for years. Avoid like the plague. eBuyer.com, scan.co.uk and Tekheads.co.uk are all much better alternatives. Good luck with your argument, might be worth trying to get trading standards involved. At least mention them to OCUK anyway.
Welcome to the forums... Good luck... I went though a similar ordeal when using a different supplier where by i tried to get the bank to stop the transaction, where it was explained to me that due to the fact that I had given the store permission to deduct funds from my account for the product, there was nothing the bank could do... if however it was a fraudulent claim by such store and you did not give your permission, then it would get investigated by the bank, otherwise they wont touch it. Best of luck with your argument mind.
Urgh, Microdirect...The person they assigned to our business account didn't have a clue about IT. Imo, Scan is where it's at.
Overclockers.co.uk? as long as you don't have to talk to them and everything works they are perfect, but once something goes wrong they turn into one of the worst companies ever. I'd recommend Tekheads, no trouble in years of being a customer (except for the still pathetic selection of ram they stock just like scan, but there is always memoryc for that).
All about Scan and Aria tbh. Had major problems with overclockers over 5 years ago now - can't believe they are still upto their same old tricks. infantile lot, all of them!
Ahh.... OcUK... Orderd 3 things from them over the years, and everysingle one has had an issue... But they were the only place that had what i was after... Best of luck in resolving the issue
+1 ive been telling people to avoid overclockers for ages for 2 reasons. 1) expensive compared with other e-tailers 2) WORST customer service and RMAs ever followed closely by CConline
its stories like these that have stopped me ordering from ocuk for the last few years... Its idiotic on their part, as any money they might have saved by not exchanging it for you will be more than offset by the damage to their future business from you...
Yep, had to RMA a graphics card about 2 years ago, took after waiting 6 - 8 weeks without response i politely enquired where my refund or new card was, still didn't hear anything for another 2 weeks. Finally lost my rag and sent off an e-mail threatening a chargeback on my card as i'd paid for a service that i'd not received, less than a week later I received a better replacement card. tools.
I have worked around a returns department for 12 years amongst other things, and yes we do call you names I find it quite interesting to read your story. For a start I feel that since you contacted them within 30minutes of your order that was a "fair" amount of time for an online store to assist a customer, the fact that they are unable to respond to a customer that contacts them with in a "fair" amount of time of the original order and resolve that customers complaint, it’s not good, that indicates internal problems at OC. That maybe emails technical problems, system problems, staff problems, or just flat out staff incompetency. YOU made the mistake not them, which bears repeating because YOU should have done "a little bit of Google researching" before you confirmed in what is a written contract order. Once you buy online at their advertised quoted price, I believe the option to change or alter your product is at their digression. You should have waited until you got through on the phone and "SPOKE" to a human that day and basically laid it out that you need that card changed even if it includes a "fair" restocking fee. THAT DAY ON THE PHONE.. I think it’s totally unbeneficial for you to start talking about other stories of failed customer support and in fact I think that’s out of line and does not help you, but this whole problem started from you not picking the right item remember that. People are busy, this is the real world and why should someone else go out of their way to resolve an issue that no one else is responsible for. That said they should have changed the card for you and should still order some option as long as the card is unopened. Does it state on their website anything to do with the tri port aspect of the card because if you have purchased a standard graphics card for your computer and this card is incorrectly labelled so that your purchasing it could be taken as a incorrectly advertised product then you might have some kind of legal recourse?? I think if you send the card back to them without some form of written agreed prior arrangement, which could be bad for you in the long run. This is all totally unnecessary, there gaining bad advertisement on a massive web forum, you unhappy there, it’s just silly. My opinion is that they should have dealt with your situation more carefully and with a bit of care, it does not bode well. There should be some rules in place there to defend not only your interests, but overclockers long term better interests as well. So that customers of today and customers of tomorrow know where they stand. I’m not so confident that your order did complete and ship in less than 2 hours; I think that’s a lie! I believe overclockers need to change something maybe so they even start generating some revenue from their returns department because it is quite clear the current returns manager is easily costing over clockers a lot of future business, and these are not certain times any more for either personal employment or company survival. Overclockers should commit to an internal change and advertise the fact, they could start by doing a bit tech interview and admit that some things need changing and how they accept that and welcome new ideas so that 99.9% of their customer feedback is "good". There is always one idiot customer, we all know that but you got to improve or your dead inmo. Any one work at overclockers post on bit tech, I’m sure they do they are techs their doing a best a job as they can right?? Right guys.. What’s the story you haven’t got an original idea in your whole building... They have a decent web forum, did you try posting there to get some input in your situation? Rainbow.
my money is on 7 minutes Rainbow, please use a spell-checker. I couldn't bring myself to read any more of your post after "disgression"
Agreed on the OCUK thing (blew their chance with me LONG ago, well before I joined Bit) and also on the spellchecker thing. It's not hard to spell properly.
Do we have a supplier thread of "Buy From" or "Avoid under penalty of Lost Coinage" some where? I have a couple glowing recommendations for really good sites in the US and a couple you would want to feed an Ex- Mother-In-Law to! john
