Computer Shops – 1 blacklisted and 1 whitelisted
For many years I have been a loyal customer of The Disc Shop. From when they were a single warehouse which sold blank CD media from a bare warehouse floor till recently now they have six shops selling everything.
I tollerated their long queues as their products were good and well priced. Over the years I spent many a peny of my own and of my work’s, purchasing HDD’s, DVD players, Ram, and several complete systems. My first dealings with their tech support were fair, they kindly fast tracked the building of a system I needed urgently.
Not anymore. The Disc Shop is now blacklisted as far as I am concerned. Jet black in fact – I will not shop there and will recommend that others avoid it. Here’s why:
The tale begins a year ago, we purchased a new computer. Six months later, I received an electrical (not static) shock from the case. Our electrition tested it and found that the power supply had a earth leakage problem and I was lucky the computer was plugged into a power board (which stopped the surge when I touched it). So we sent it in and got a replacement power supply.
The computer was never the same after that. Sparratic, spontainous reboots plagued it. Sometimes two in a day, sometimes only two in a month. I returned it once for testing. After two weeks of not hearing anything, I rang to check up on it. Nobody knew what had happened to the system, the guy working on it had “left”. They then tested the hardware and found no problems (big surprise).
After several more months of rebooting (and after me trying everything except the kitchen sink) – I returned it again, complete with a log of the reboots. Not learning my lesson, two weeks later I contacted them to ask them about the progress. “We don’t have your computer” they said, “are you sure you gave it to us?”. A quick call to our couriers and I had the name of the bloke who signed for it. Sure enough the next day they found it – and started working on it after wasting two weeks.
Today I call them, and big surprise they have found nothing. What’s more the manager wants to charge $60 for that. We would expect them to replace this faulty computer that is under warrenty or, if they insist then just handing it back – but no, they want $60. We are supposidly lucky they are only charging $60 as they have been testing it (read leaving it turned on) for 6 days.
As they say, you can shear a sheep many times but you can skin it only once. They’ve skinned us – and we’re not going back. Dr Hirst will no doubt give the manager a peice of his mind when he returns, but regardless.
The company sells value products which most of the time work – but be warned when they don’t work, you may have to deal with the nasty culture of their support, a culture which starts right at the top.
In other news – UMart Online enters my whitelist for their excellent service over the last week. They have kindly built a computer for me in the space of a day when I told them it was urgent – and will repair another of the comptuers we have from The Disc Shop for only $30 per hour. Their prices are very compeditive and their staff are friendly. They’ve got my business. I just hope they don’t grow to big and go the way of the disk shop.
Will.
isn’t that a bit like saying Hitler was an alright guy, he never did anything bad to me?
Just be warned if you ever need after sales support, you may find it lacking :)
I’ll update this story when it’s over.
Will.
Yet isn’t it better to judge a place on consistent good service rather than one report of bad service?
I second the spell checker remark.
Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions of people, whereas the staff at The Disc Shop occasionally take a few extra days to service computers. I don’t know about you, but I think The Disc Shop is the lesser of two evils here.
However, there can be no doubting that the greatest atrocity here is your awful spelling. If you’re in need of a good spell checked, might I recommend Microsoft Word.
Here is a link for your information:
http://office.microsoft.com
Is there consistant good service? If there was I would agree with you anonymous coward ;-P
My work has 4 computers from them. Only 1 has not had problems.
That’s a pretty poor track record.
One had a HDD failure – forgivable.
One gave me an electric shock! And then has been plagued with spontanous instantanous reboots. Now they won’t accept there is a problem and want to chanrge us $$$ for nothing.
The fourth one has basically melted. Had to replace the power supply, now I don’t know what is wrong with it but basically it couldn’t last a week without entering a state where it was rebooting every two seconds (can’t be good for the equipment!). After giving it a rest for 20min or so it would show some life only to die again the next day. I can’t diagnose the problem – I tried the power supply which improvd it slightly but still nothing. That’s at umart getting fixed (and a reasnoble rate of $30/h). Fixing computers isn’t rocket science – hardly worth $90/h IMHO.
Two times I have returned computers and rang back two weeks later expecting a finished repairs but getting told that there was some admin stuff up and no work was done.
Their sales is shonky (very slow queues) their support is down right bad. They have the range of products which is good – but you can get those elsewhere.
Even if MS Office ran on my operating system I’d still rather use a OpenOffice than pay an exorbitant fee.
As for spelling – this isn’t an English competition, but I’m sure there are plenty at your High School.
While they may be ok for the occasional emergency HDD or DVD Burner – because those are unlikely to go wrong. If you get a System from them, then don’t come crying to me.
Will.
I have given up on their support – so I am giving a computer which is still under warranty at the disc shop to Umart to fix for a fee. That’s got to tell you something.
hmm lotsa people here..
well the first one was by me (peter) seriously the rest were not by me
and i would post under my name if it remembered my login :P
oh, yes, I’m *sure* it wasn’t you *wink*.
Your login is: paludis@hotmail.com (if you want your password email me).
While you’re at it mate, catch the clue train – get your hands on a expert password program like this one
Will.
shuttup it wasnt.. check their stupid IPs if u want :P
and i didnt say i couldnt remember my password i said the site couldnt. but it seems to have now ;)
well i’m still going to shop there, they’ve never done anything bad to me..
and for god’s sake put your posts through a spell checker