Maplin Electronics Recommendation

sweetie

Perhaps not the best place for this thread but having bought some equipment from them recently I would strongly recommend their prices and service. When an account is opened on the website there are discounts available. One of my items was damaged in transit. I rang them and also mentioned that one of my other items hadn't arrived. They proceeded to send replacements without any returns needed.

iisollie

i hope you're getting paid for this - it is hardly possible that you believe what you wrote

ollie

carbsy

Can't understand either of ye. ;P

drdre

whats going on:D

johnnyrotten

Wtf?

garred

Actually went into Maplins (Blanch) last weekend to spend about 900 quid (GPS and a metal detector) and walked out after 15 mins. Service was disgraceful. Passed onto 3 different people and left standing for 10 mins. Just wanted one simple question answered. Was'nt even that busy.

air

Jaysus, wouldnt buy any big items like that there (gps / metal detector).
Eg the basic Garmin Etrex Navigator (NZ16S) is 99 sterling on the maplin site. You can get them for about 85 euro delivered from Ebay, brand new - almost half price.

garred

Air, if you don't mind me asking can you point me somewhere I can get a GPS system for the car ( doing taxi) and what one to get. I hav'nt a clue about them but that seems very cheap, would it include everything I need? In fact the question I was asking them in Maplins was "why are they different prices?". I thought it was a simple enough question as some were 200 quid and some over a grand.

Capt'n Midnight

Put it this way, the other retail centre for electronic components in Dublin would be

Peats , "the pirates of Parnell Street."

and some of the staff in Peats know quite a bit about electronics, as to which is better value doesn't really matter for electronic components it's a case of who actually has it in stock.

TempestSabre

They are both dire. Only use in emergencies. Expensive and poor service. If you had a difference experience, I can only assume you got them on a bad day. You do get a few guys in there that know their stuff. But the majorty have a tiny bit of knowledge and think they know everything. However they do deal with a lot of muppets in there, so who I guess it wears them down.

Was in Peats earlier and was told they definately didn't do the item I was looking for and I'd have to order it specially from Japan. I was only price checking, but I felt embrassed for the guy when I pointed it out on the display behind him. Was 40% dearer than the web so didn't buy it, obviously.

subway

maplins?
asked a lad in there where i could find a set of cables for my dvd player.
told me i needed to bring the dvd player and the amp in before he could suggest cables.
told him i knew which cables i wanted, could he just show me were they were.
his answer was no, bring in the dvd player and amp.
left the shop and bought the cables in dixons :rolleyes:
useless, cant imagine what theyed tell you if you actually didnt know what you were looking for.

go in there to buy if you know what youre buying and find it yourself,
avoid the staff,
theyll just piss you off

center15

Maplins in Cork has the worst customer service I've ever seen, when ever I've had to use it can be about 5-10 mins wait at the till never mind waiting in the queue they're just so slow in there and the prices seem expensive

Irishpimpdude

I went into maplins to buy a case for my pc lol and they had 3 on display and i asked is that all they have and he told me to look in the magazine and i picked one out and he checked was it in stock over the comp and he told me he would go get it and guess what? hadn't got the fecking thing! :mad:

BaZmO*

I've only ever used them once and the guy that I was dealing with seemed nice enough and quite helpful, but I did know exactly what I wanted.

However, I thought the way that some other members of staff dealt with other customers was a bit of a disgrace. One foreign guy came in and asked for something while I was at the counter and they guy behind the counter picked up a catalogue and literally just threw it at him saying, "If we have it, it's in there". I remember thinking at the time, cheeky fcuk!! If a shop assistant done that to me I'd have a right go.

There was also a woman there that was trying to exchange something and I found the guy dealing with her to be extremely rude. He kept telling her that the item was used for a long period of time. Huh? It was a TV Booster, she would've had to have used it to see if it worked.

I suppose it really depends on who you get and also if you know what you're talking about so that they can't búllsh1t to you.

B.

sweetie

Well maybe my post wasn't very clear (apologies)? But I found the website
and customer service (over the phone) to be very good. Not having to prove
that an item was damaged or that another hadn't been delivered was very
handy for my stress levels. Although it does make them open to all sorts of
piss taking.

bk

BaZmO* wrote:

There was also a woman there that was trying to exchange something and I found the guy dealing with her to be extremely rude. He kept telling her that the item was used for a long period of time. Huh? It was a TV Booster, she would've had to have used it to see if it worked.

I don't know why they sell the TV boosters here in Ireland, they don't support VHF frequency band that is used here in Ireland, so they don't work here properly, they only work in the UK :rolleyes:

Nala

I dunno about Maplins but Peats seem OK to me.
Whether Dixons are OK or not is the question, I bought an MP3 player in there on Tuesday and the screen is ****ed, need to get an exchange.

OFDM

bk wrote:

I don't know why they sell the TV boosters here in Ireland, they don't support VHF frequency band that is used here in Ireland, so they don't work here properly, they only work in the UK :rolleyes:

All signals that can be received in Dublin are UHF not VHF.

commited

I get irritated everytime I go in there, and I've heard them give incorrect advice several times when I've been in there.

psicic

I've not had problems - because I expect them to be crappy customer service wise. Never expect them to know anything, do not rely on their advice. The only deciding factor between the two is the price, since they don't (and can't possibly) know answers to the eccentric question of ever customer who walks in.

o/t Anybody remember when Maplins first opened in Jervis - how Peats immediately started actually trying have competitive prices - until both of them realised they could still gouge prices.:(

How many shops does it take to make a cartel????

kadman

garred wrote:

Actually went into Maplins (Blanch) last weekend to spend about 900 quid (GPS and a metal detector) and walked out after 15 mins. Service was disgraceful. Passed onto 3 different people and left standing for 10 mins. Just wanted one simple question answered. Was'nt even that busy.

I had considered buying a new metal detector my self at the moment, to rekindle my interest in the hobby.
But the ambiguous legalities of owning one have put me on hold, at the moment. I was thinking of Maplins, but looks like I will have to rethink that as well.

kadman

darkmaster2

center15 wrote:

Maplins in Cork has the worst customer service I've ever seen, when ever I've had to use it can be about 5-10 mins wait at the till never mind waiting in the queue they're just so slow in there and the prices seem expensive

I second that, I cant believe how rubbish the customer service is. Every time I go in there its a guaranteed nightmare. whether its being charged too much for stuff, staff that don`t know the difference between an LED and a resistor, or being totally ignored, their service is always crap. there seems to be only a couple of lads in there who have any knowledge of electronics, the rest either havent a clue, or don`t care. Most of em spend the day hoovering the floor anyways. TERRIBLE!

rabbitinlights

bk wrote:

I don't know why they sell the TV boosters here in Ireland, they don't support VHF frequency band that is used here in Ireland, so they don't work here properly, they only work in the UK :rolleyes:

You can buy UHF/VHF boosters.

Both Freq are used in Ireland.

center15

Rang up the Cork Store today to check if they had a fibreglass cleaning pencil, they have it listed on their site. Guy on the phone said we don't do them and hungup. Decided to drive down and check it out myself as I knew they should have them, they had about 8 of them out on the shelf. I'm considering emailing their head office but I doubt it would do much good. The shop is a joke, anytime I'm forced to use it there's always issues if it's not queueing for about 20mins coz there's 1 person on the till while the rest are hoovering and doing f*** all it's something else.

Random

rabbitinlights wrote:

You can buy UHF/VHF boosters.

Both Freq are used in Ireland.

He's refering to the ones Maplin sell. They are UK-only type boosters.

5500

From dealing with there blanch store the staff seem to lack knowledge on somethings and cant be arsed helping you out.Eg Do you have this fuse block in stock(checks computer) "we have one in,you'l have to root thru the drawer yourself there for it"

There cheap for car audio bits,power cable/fuses/connectors ect are less than half the price of halfrauds ect

johnnyboy4711

what is this person smoking?

Endurance Man

The staff in Maplin are as helpfull as a 5yr old child. I have asked them about various products and never recieved the correct answer, they have no idea what half the stuff in that shop even does!! Go to Peats rather .

^whitey^

ciaranfo wrote:

He's refering to the ones Maplin sell. They are UK-only type boosters.

Bought a VHF/UHF booster in maplins Cork to receive the extra UK channels we can get here in the south. I have two aerials on the roof a UHF & VHF plugged them in to booster/distributer and it worked like a charm. I now have improved reception on RTE 1,2 TV3 & TG4 and an extra 4 channels BBC1,2 UTV & C4.

I was told I can bring it back no problems if it doesn't work the way I wanted.

However If your going in there looking for advice its pot luck as to whether he or she knows what they're talking about or are just spouting bull****.

TempestSabre

Theres seem to ok for returns. Pity you have to return so much stuff though.

Julesie

Both Maplin and Peats are horribly overpriced when you consider what you can get online. Maybe if you needed something right away and couldnt wait for postage but it certainly wouldnt be my first port of call.

kadman

^whitey^ wrote:

Bought a VHF/UHF booster in maplins Cork to receive the extra UK channels we can get here in the south. I have two aerials on the roof a UHF & VHF plugged them in to booster/distributer and it worked like a charm. I now have improved reception on RTE 1,2 TV3 & TG4 and an extra 4 channels BBC1,2 UTV & C4.

I was told I can bring it back no problems if it doesn't work the way I wanted.

However If your going in there looking for advice its pot luck as to whether he or she knows what they're talking about or are just spouting bull****.

Hi Whitey,

If you get a chance could you post the details/spec of the unit you bought. I need the same.

Thanks

kadman

Doodlebug

Yeah, Whitey,
I wonder would that work for me in the mid-wesht? Can you give some details of the aerials/booster-distributer you are using? Is one a standard RTE one (have one unused in attic) - If I could get those channels, I'd cancel Chorus Analogue (can't get their digital & don't want to give up CH4 for Murdoch's crowd)!

Thanks!

^whitey^

kadman wrote:

Hi Whitey,

If you get a chance could you post the details/spec of the unit you bought. I need the same.

Thanks

kadman

Hows it going,

The setup I have is a good UHF aerial on the chimney for Irish signals installed by a professional. I also have a second aerial that can receive VHF/UHF. The reason I have two aerials is that the reception of Irish channels is bad off the Southcoast mast in my area.

I have the aerials plugged into the UHF input of the booster, using a Y splitter/combiner. I didn't think it would work that way but it did and it improved the reception on the Irish channels.

If you have long runs of co-ax or old co-ax you might need to use a mast head amp on the UHF aerial or a plug in booster might do next to the distributor. This of course all depends on your location.

When I had the TV plugged in the distributor with 1M co-ax reception was great but in some rooms it could be better so im going to try and improve it with a second booster before the distributor.

Heres the link to the distributor Maplin

This whole setup will have cost me €60 in total after I buy another booster. Better than paying €300 for someone else to install it. If it were half that price I might have considered getting a professional to install it.

Doodlebug I dont think South Coast boost the signal to the West Coast. Here's a link to their website it hasn't been updated in a while though.
SCTV

Sparky

anytime i went into Maplins, you may aswell be talking to the wall, if you askfor an item, you are thrown the catalog, "find it in there and give me the ref number".
Best yet is my mam, how long is this scart lead (without noticing the 2m on the bottom.
We only sell 5M scart leads so its 5m, i cant make it any bigger.

He assumed that she was going to ask for a bigger lead, which in my case is not the way you deal with a customer.

Only decent thing i ever got out of Maplins was the exit door opening by itself.

Sam Vimes

darkmaster2 wrote:

I second that, I cant believe how rubbish the customer service is. Every time I go in there its a guaranteed nightmare. whether its being charged too much for stuff, staff that don`t know the difference between an LED and a resistor, or being totally ignored, their service is always crap. there seems to be only a couple of lads in there who have any knowledge of electronics, the rest either havent a clue, or don`t care. Most of em spend the day hoovering the floor anyways. TERRIBLE!

i used to work there. ah the hoovering, ah the polishing, ah the being told to do anything other than help customers. we can't be expected to know the catalog off by heart but the manager wouldn't let us use his computer to check the net or even let one of us bring in his own when he offered.

eireal wrote:

"we have one in,you'l have to root thru the drawer yourself there for it"

to be fair, we can't spend the whole day rooting through drawers for people. a better idea would have been to get rid of the chaotic drawers but that would be efficient and therefore not maplin

TempestSabre wrote:

Theres seem to ok for returns. Pity you have to return so much stuff though.

ah the returns, the many, many returns. "eh, i bought this here last week/month/decade and..." every ten minutes. great fun.

Sparky-s wrote:

Best yet is my mam, how long is this scart lead (without noticing the 2m on the bottom.
We only sell 5M scart leads so its 5m, i cant make it any bigger.

the biggest they sell is 5m but its not the only size. that guy was an idiot. i never told someone anything i wasn't sure of.

Sparky-s wrote:

Only decent thing i ever got out of Maplins was the exit door opening by itself.

and the funny thing is, it quite often didn't it kept on breaking



the problem with maplin is this: the staff can't possibly know the whole catalog off by order code (although you learn a lot of common order codes off) and there's no way to find something in the back room without the code. because of this, they spend most of their day looking through the out of date catalog. if its a product they don't know, which is likely, its easier for the customer to find it than them. It would be very easy to spend an entire day either looking through the index of the catalog or rooting through drawers for something that probably isn't even there and doing nothing else.
so when you're waiting 20 mins to be seen by a staff member, it's because it takes 5 mins to find something in the old catalog (or 10 to realise the thing has been discontinued), then another 5-10 mins to realise its out of stock, especially if its really small and in a drawer with 7000 almost identical items and. that's 20 mins per customer so if you're only waiting 20 mins total think yourself lucky

90% of the problems could have been solved by having a computer with internet access but that was refused because the manager is insane. this is also why we spent most of the day hoovering and polishing, just to keep us busy/piss us off. he hated us "standing around". we had to muck out the toilets every week too, despite the fact that they were rarely used and didn't need half the amount of cleaning. also, i used to get in trouble for "spending too long with customers" making sure they got the right thing.

another 5% of problems would have been solved by a complete reorganisation of that shambles they called a stocking system

and the last 5% of problems were caused by the insane manager. an example to show his pettiness and pointless spitefulness:
in april a staff member asked for four days off in august (4 months notice for those too lazy to count) and was outright refused, told it was completely impossible, and she would have to quit if she wanted to go on her holiday. after she left, she wasn't replaced. one must wonder, if he can't manage without her for four days with four months notice, how can he manage for the forseeable future without her?

that is by far not the only example. if someone's in the back asking permission for a refund for a long time, its because the manager is telling them some amusing anecdote because he loves the sound of his own voice. he also used to unplug the phones so he could sleep.


sorry, im gone off on a rant now cos that place pissed me off so much. im in a place now that does some technology but not the range maplin does. we have the net in my place so i'm a much more efficient maplin employee now i don't work there anymore. if we don't do something but maplin does, i just go to the website, get the order code and send them off. 20 seconds compared to 10 mins all because of a stupid manager

Sam Vimes

ah i remembered another good insane manager story. two polish people worked there and he barred them from speaking polish to each other, even on their break. he once phoned in on his day off to remind the assistant manager to stop them speaking polish in the break room

Sparky

some people need a right kick in the hole sometimes, in the case of that manager......all the time.

Scruff

hmm....i dont see any bargin alerts anywhere in this thread....
oh, i did get a good deal ( as in it was about the same price as Komplett etc ) on a external 3.5" Hd case with usb and firewire connections for about €35 a couple of months back in Peats.
Other than that wouldnt buy anything from either.