[MERGED] Retailer Discussion Thread

MysticalRain

MysticalRain wrote: »

I placed an order from overclockers.co.uk last month which was sent out to the wrong address. I made the mistake of asking them to re-dispatch it, and the re-dispatch was apparently never placed. Their sales/support staff appeared to be really confused when I spoke with them, and ignored the messages I sent to them via their website. Odd how a previous order I placed two months ago arrived without a hitch. I don't think I could trust them with another order when they gave the impression of being a bunch of muppets who didn't know what they were doing.

It gets better. It took another 3 phone calls to get them to refund my money. Each time I rang them up, they told me the money would be refunded ASAP. Yet when I checked my bank account, no refund occurred. Eventually after three attempts, I managed to get them to successfully refund the money. They had no explanation as to why the money had not been refunded when I asked him to.

a_patch

Similar story but bit longer.

12.08.09 - Order placed
20.08.09 - Paid received
26.08.09 - Order delivered

I was really happy at this point. But... I bought special service from them to check dead pixels on LCD. It was €20, but I thought it's worth because I hate bad pixels But there was a bad pixel. One only (?) but still. So for what i paid these €20? One quick mail, and very quick response, that I should send it back. Courier was arranged by them, so no problems at all.
To make long story - short: after 20 mails, and three phone calls, at 20.10.09 I got money back but only for screen. €20 less than use to be. So, NEVER BUY FROM hardwareversand.de. Maybe they have good price, brilliant website and wunderbar pc configurator, but they are thief's.


p.s. I bought more expensive screen here in Elara.ie.

phlegms

Very annoyed with ebuyer at the moment!
Placed an order with them last week and my card was charged for the full amount but the order was never sent apparently. After numerous emails over the course of the week asking for a status request regarding my order they finally got onto me today saying my order had been canceled and no reason was given as to why!

Lets just say, I'm not impressed with them so far.

Krieg

I use overclockers-uk. Nice selection, quick delivery. But I have had some minor problems over the 3 years ive used them

The rig I bought from them worked perfectly, though the RAM went fecked after a month and I got it RMA'd with no hassle.
Last january my sister wanted a cheap gaming PC so I pointed her to OC. The PS blew when it was plugged in, took a week and a half for it to be RMA'd and they charged her for the delivery (though it was something like €12, still bs though).
I bought more RAM last week and it fried when I put it in, time for another RMA

Spear wrote: »

Don't forget that if you raise too RMA's, regardless of how legit they are, or complain about them screwing you around, they'll then refuse to sell to you claiming you've raised too many RMA's.

This worries me.
Theoretically, couldnt you just setup a different account?


Its no secret that they love censorship, no product on their website has less than 4 stars. I believe they even had/have a forum, which stopped allowing new members as it was full of customers sharing their negative experiences about the company.

Leman_Russ

I don't trust Commercial Website reviews anyway, because shills are far too common and there is no way of knowing if they moderate poor reviews.

Nehaxak

Another bad one for overclockers. Placed an order for a bunch of peripherals, cpu, MB, case, mouse, RAM, HD, DVD and some other bits and pieces.
Placed order on 7th October, everything was "in Stock" with 10+ items available when I ordered. Waited, waited... 1 week passed I emailed them through their webnote system online and asked what the holdup was - they told me the CPU was out of stock (fairly basic quad core intel 2.6).
So gave them until the second week, no sign of the order, again back to their webnote system and they told me this time the cpu and now also the motherboard were out of stock. Waited until yesterday when I just lost patience with their messing about and asked for a full refund as I was sick of waiting for an order that when I ordered everything was in stock and available yet has taken a few days short of a full month to be delivered.
They said they have refunded me but I'm still waiting for those funds to appear back on my credit card, I'll give it a few days before I contact the bank to find out wtf is going on.
Terrible company to deal with, horrible support and they impose censorship on any negative reviews of products for sale on their site.
I will never ever deal with them again now, never again.

Anti

Yup they are horrible to deal with, ever since a gpu of mine died 3 years ago and i asked them to reund a certain account as the account i used to purchase with was now closed... they went ahead and refunded to the wrong account and refused to sort it out. Never ever again would i touch them if they were the last hardware retailer in the world.

ScumLord

phlegms wrote: »

Very annoyed with ebuyer at the moment!
Placed an order with them last week and my card was charged for the full amount but the order was never sent apparently. After numerous emails over the course of the week asking for a status request regarding my order they finally got onto me today saying my order had been canceled and no reason was given as to why!

Lets just say, I'm not impressed with them so far.

This happened to me too recently with ebuyer. It was unusual because their usually so prompt, I had to email them before I found out the package was sent back to their factory (supposedly) and they would resend it.

Sometimes stuff I've ordered from them arrives the next day from the UK. Most the time it's within 5 days. I'll forgive them that transgression though because sometimes it works in your favour and they send you some free stuff.

I do most of my shopping between Ebuyer and komplett both are fairly reliable and cheap.

Leman_Russ

Yeah, you have to admit that one wasn't ebuyers fault, it was the delivery companies.
I've once had items arive on friday after ordering wednesday morning, and the one time it was late (it came after 6 days le gasp!) they refunded my shipping and gave me it back as store credit, which was nice of them

ScumLord

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Yeah, you have to admit that one wasn't ebuyers fault, it was the delivery companies.
I've once had items arive on friday after ordering wednesday morning, and the one time it was late (it came after 6 days le gasp!) they refunded my shipping and gave me it back as store credit, which was nice of them

:eek: They never did this for me the swines.

leninbenjamin

my own experiences are that any onine retailer are sh*te if for any reason you have to contact their customer service. They simply aren't geared for it, and staff tend to rely on the automated systems as much as possible.

It's impossible to contact HWS, even a friend who is a native German couldn't get in touch with guys when I needed it. I eventually got through to their sister company, yet not a single employee gave me the same answer to my query so i'm not going to use them anymore. I think a month later i got what appeared to be an automated response to the original query with HWS though.

Overclockers on the other hand are full of staff who don't give a sh*t. I ordered my HAF and i7 from there and it came fairly prompt, but they never put my email in the system so i never got a proper confirmation, or order number or way of tracking it should things go wrong. And then they wouldn't do anything about it when i rang them up over it.

Komplett: all my orders have been ok so far, touch wood.

Solitaire

Threads merged as a temporary measure while I look around to see if there's any hope for sticking in a chart-type applet thingy into the new-and-upcoming Retailer Discussion sticky...

farna_boy

Hey all,

I'm looking to buy a monitor at the moment and I have pretty much picked it out. The thing is I can get it on ebuyer for €136 or elara for €148 (both delivered prices). I have seen a lot of problems with regards using ebuyer, especially when it comes to returns, so I was wondering if it would be better to send the extra €12 to deal with elara or are they equally bad?

Cheers for any help!

roberthurley14

farna_boy wrote: »

Hey all,

I'm looking to buy a monitor at the moment and I have pretty much picked it out. The thing is I can get it on ebuyer for €136 or elara for €148 (both delivered prices). I have seen a lot of problems with regards using ebuyer, especially when it comes to returns, so I was wondering if it would be better to send the extra €12 to deal with elara or are they equally bad?

Cheers for any help!

never had any problems with elara, u check komplett and pixmania
for the monitor too?

farna_boy

roberthurley14 wrote: »

never had any problems with elara, u check komplett and pixmania
for the monitor too?

Yeah kompletts monitors just seem to be way overpriced and I can't really see anything on pixmania either. Btw, the monitor I'm looking at is the BENQ G2220HD which ticks all the boxes as far as I'm concerned: 1920 x 1080, Full HD, 22" and DVI connector.

game4it70

farna_boy wrote: »

Yeah kompletts monitors just seem to be way overpriced and I can't really see anything on pixmania either. Btw, the monitor I'm looking at is the BENQ G2220HD which ticks all the boxes as far as I'm concerned: 1920 x 1080, Full HD, 22" and DVI connector.

I recently got this and i'm very happy with it.
Very vibrant colours and no dead pixels.
http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=MMEM351687&productID=S6641842

ttm

Just a quick komplett suck type whinge.

Don't you just love it when you check with a company that your address will be printed correctly on your order and they reply that all is well and of course it will, only to track your stuff to the WRONG sorting office because they printed the address incorrectly. At best that adds 2 days to the delivery time, but why should An Post have to guess the correct address just because komplett can't get it right, at worst and who can blame An Post at this time of year it will get returned to sender.

All I can say is I knew I was dealing with jobs worth box shifters so should have known better to believe.....

"Apologies for the confusion, but we have registered the full address - the order confirmation omits the 2nd line of the address for some reason, but you can rest assured that the full details have been passed onto the courier."

.... as it wasn't the 2nd line I asked about but the inclusion of the County information, if its not there my mail goes straight to the WRONG sorting office and supprise thats exactly where track and trace puts it.

Leman_Russ

Some praise for eBuyer here.

Ordered a ASUS 5770 (yes I am a Bad Man™ but my 8600 GTS died and the Oven failed to bring it back to life ) on Wednesday and had 5 day delivery (as thou must when buying in Ireland). GLS came this morning (Friday) with my smexy new card

samih

Watch out for overclockers.co.uk

I placed an order on Monday by credit card, it was put on hold, and on Tuesday morning they wanted pretty much full shebang of paperwork to actually ship to the credit card billing address (bank statement, credit card statement, utility bill, copy of photo id).

I promptly canceled the order but the 'tards had still charged my card while the order was on hold.

Well done OCUK!

ScumLord

How come komplett are charging more for the 64bit version of some versions of Windows7? I didn't even know you could chose between the two I thought you just got both in the box. I bought 7pro on Ebuyer and it came with both versions in the box.

Gadgetman496

ScumLord wrote: »

How come komplett are charging more for the 64bit version of some versions of Windows7? I didn't even know you could chose between the two I thought you just got both in the box. I bought 7pro on Ebuyer and it came with both versions in the box.

One of the reviewers comments on eBuyer regarding Windows 7 Ultimate Complete Package states the following,

This is a full 1 license / 1 PC copy !

But being Retail and not OEM as long as you uninstall from your previous PC you can install on another unlike oem which is only allowed 1 machine.

Is this correct?

-

Solitaire

Looks like it. Pretty cheap too!

Strange to think that the Ultimate version of Microsoft's last OS was closer to the €600 mark for a retail copy, back in the day! :eek:

ttm

ScumLord wrote: »

How come komplett are charging more for the 64bit version of some versions of Windows7? I didn't even know you could chose between the two I thought you just got both in the box. I bought 7pro on Ebuyer and it came with both versions in the box.

It might depend on where they get the stock from in the first place. I know from pricing OEM licences for XP in quantities of 100+ from various wholesalers that some of them (if not all?) get them from the US and the price varied according to the dollar/euro exchange rate from week to week.

swirlser

Praise for Pixmania!

Ordered the bulk of a full i5 build from them a few weeks ago.

Items were delivered in a few days.

The wireless card didnt work >.< After reading posts on here about their shocking customer service I was dreading having to sort this out, but to my surprise the process was as simple as can be! I didnt have to argue with anyone or phone anyone. Everything was done online, took 2 minutes, they sent DHL to collect the item from me (2 hours after requesting it!) and gave a full refund no questions - perfect.

Icing on the cake, they were the cheapest around, even beating HWS by 100 quid on a €1500 machine.

Sasquatch76

Only noticing this thread this morning, but as I've bought from a few different outfits over the past few years, I'll add my experiences, good and bad. I won't talk about prices etc, but rather customer care issues.

Elara

+ Questions via their feedback thingy always answered promptly in my experience. Once, I even got a response within the hour - after 10 PM :eek:
+ Orders always delivered PDQ.
+ Dublin pick-up is an absolute boon, used this often.
+ Had to cancel an order before, and it was no problem at all. CC was refunded promptly.

- A few times, I've asked to be notified when an item comes back into stock but the email arrived too late for me to purchase (sold out again before even receiving the notification mail).

Verdict - no real complaints, and wouldn't hesitate to shop with them again.


OCUK

+ Placed a few orders before with no problem whatsoever.

- Last year however, two seperate orders were stuck in their warehouse queue for days. Upon querying, I eventually found out the items were out of stock, despite saying "available" on the website. But my card had already been charged.
- I received conflicting information from seperate support team members over the same issue, one telling me it was out of stock, the other that it was being packaged as he/she typed :rolleyes:. Was a bit of a nightmare to be honest.

Verdict - after a promising start to dealing with them three years ago, I will never shop with them again. Their forums played a part in this decision also, but that's a different thread.


Dabs

- Gave up on them immediately after having to jump through innumerous hoops to place my first order.

Verdict - the above was about three years ago. If they've made it a less painful experience to order, I'll reconsider.


Pixmania

+ Only ordered the one time from them, and it went flawlessly, believe it or not.

Verdict - Personal experience was grand, would probably use again, but would always be cautious after reading other's feedback.


Kustom PCs

+ Again, only the one order, which went flawlessly.

Verdict - if they had a bigger range on offer, I'd shop there far more often. But if they have the item I'm looking for, I'd always consider them. Get a good "family-run" vibe from them.


Hardware Versand

+ Paying by bank transfer went fine.
+ Large order placed, but everything arrived promptly and in the one delivery.
- Carton was damaged upon arrival, and while this probably happened in transit, I was annoyed that the entire order was packed "loose" inside the carton. Fine for items well secured in their own individual packaging, but there were a couple of OEM items slipping around in nothing more than an anti-static bag, so potentially easily damaged, or with the hole in the outer carton, easily stolen.
- Dropped them an email to tell them about the way my parcel arrived, but never got a reply.

Verdict - Purchase went well enough, but will probably look for other etailers in future. Dunno, just felt that I was lucky last time.


Quiet PC

+ Had a Scythe fan controller arrive DOA. When I emailed Quiet PC, they sent a replacement immediately, without me having to return the original first for examination/testing etc.
+ Very friendly and prompt customer service

Verdict - Love these guys! Very niche product range of course, but if they have what I want, I'd not hesitate from buying from them again.


PC-Cooling

+ One of the few German etailers to accept credit cards.
+ Only one transaction with them, but no problems at all.
+ They sent me a bag of Gummi Bears with my case. Win!

Verdict - Dealt with them as they were the only peeps carrying Lancool cases at the time, but I'd use them again if other etailers closer to home didn't have what I was after.

TomasH

Having waited 2 weeks for komplett to get back on their feet only to find out that they'd no longer accept my type of Mastercard I took what I thought was a gamble and ordered a 'needed yesterday' PSU from dabs.ie with the same Mastercard I might add. This was Wednesday afternoon at 4:30. Woke this morning by a phonecall from UPS asking how to get to my house. PSU (CIT Gold 750W @€;51.48 incl. del btw.) in my hands at 9:00am. This was standard UPS delivery.

I'd read many bad reviews about dabs before I 'took the leap' and wasn't too daunted by the latest delivery time given to me when I ordered being next Tuesday.

Has anyone else had it this good from dabs?

Mope

Hi all, new here :] That's great forum you have. Sorry for my english, I will try my best :]

Have complain about Komplett too. First of all my account gone completely from their system after all that "update stuff" they were/are doing. Secondly, their customer service is worthless. No reply for more than 2 weeks.
My order (through my new account) went good. I received confirmation, went to pick-up it.

When I took the package (i7-920 and x58-ud7) back home and opened it, I discovered that the box of the product was damaged. It seems that the outer box has been already opened as the seal was ripped off and some parts of the box were folded.

Processor package was damaged as well. The seal was not ripped off, it was ok, but the box itself looked like it was used for several processor previously or someone was trying to open it and tore the corners of the box.

I am sorry, but I think if I buy something new it should come as something new, not as something used?

P.S. I also experienced problems with printing their invoices – they didn't attach anything to the emails they're sending (although in the email they state that there's an invoice attached) and I couldn't print them from the webpage as only a blank page opens when I try to open an existing invoice.

Didn't try my item yet, coz I am waiting for my case, psu n ram from Elara.

Conclusion - I am not sure I would by something again from Komplett. Not in a near future, anyhow...

FrankGrimes

Anyone buy from www.scan.co.uk? Am about to buy components for a HTPC and am considering them but can't remember if they're one of the etailers I've heard bad (or even good) things about on different forums.

Also looking at ebuyer.com and elara.ie and dabs.ie. I've bought plenty of bits and pieces from elara and dabs and they've been grand. Stopped using Komplett a couple of years ago as they seemed to be getting pricey, though it's pretty poor form for them to have wiped my account altogether given the significant purchasing history I had with them before then.

TheDoc

Sorry for not wading through the pages here, at some point I will I promise :P

I'm updating my rig in the coming weeks to include the following.

Saphire radeon vaporx 5770 1gb
Corsair 400 psu ( if i need more please tell me)
Antec 300 case ( or something similar)

I try avoiding to buy irish as much as possible because usually its high prices for low to mid quality.

I usually99.9% of the time buy of ebay.

Just wanted to ask if there was any worth of looking at any online sotres you recommend?

I've heard of pixmania and although their graphics cards have some nice range and price, they dont do much else im interested in.

Overlockers seem decent, but very pricey : /

Any input would be delish. I kinda wanna get everything boxed off so when the first paycheck lands, im straight in purchasing.

david p

TheDoc wrote: »

stuff

hardwareversand.de are pretty good, as far as I know, although they do charge 30 euro shipping (not sure if it's still 30, you'll have to check). Seems like a lot of people around here are buying of ebuyer too. I bought a laptop off them recently, shipping was cheap and it arrived when they said it would, although I did have to order it again since they kinda screwed up my first order. Otherwise though, they seem grand.

edit: Pixmania is cheap, but from what I hear, their customer service is sort of non-existant and you'll probably have to nag them if they send you a part that's DOA. Overclockers do charge a lot for shipping, and there are probably better places to order your stuff. On a side note, I've heard that they get rid of negative customer feedback on their products, and they seem to run their forums like a dictatorship (NO mentioning other computer hardware websites!!! :rolleyes:). I'm sure ordering off them would be fine, but take anything else said on that website with a grain of salt.