mindfactory de - a cautionary tale (& rant)

ylliad2t6

Word to the wise....

tl;dr pay the extra whatever to Amazon not have to deal with the absolute **** after sales service from mindfactory which I had.

I was building a new PC and ended up spending ~€900 for all components. After time spent lurking here & reddit, I decided to go with mindfactory instead of Amazon and ended up saving ~€100*.
Yip, lots of people buy and have no issues and regard mindfactory as great. Here's the flip side.

Ordered on Jan 4th.
Computer had issues booting up couple of days after I set it up.
Narrowed it down to motherboard, cpu or PSU.
Contacted mindfactory, sent videos of issue/me testing..They advised to send the 3 components back.
Fill in return forms, box up items & send back to Germany.
Great, few more days elapse..they confirm motherboard is faulty but not in stock.
Grand, I mail, asking to confirm the return delivery address. They confirm
Few more days pass, they're returning the CPU & PSU and shipping replacement motherboard...
Weirdly, their returns notice says they're shipping to different address. Get in touch, clarify address. They advise not to worry; the goods are being shipped to the address on the returns form which is same as the one I emailed them to confirm..
Super. On track to have functioning PC..

Few more days, notification from An Post & DHL that they tried to deliver to an address on the other side of the country. I get in touch with mindfactory to ask *wtf like?*
Oh, it's my fault as I'm not at the address they shipped to(which no-one asked them to ship to). Nevermind I say, my folks can collect the package and send it across the country to me. I advise mindfactory they'll be covering the cost. Ya grand. No apologies..Hmmm, ****it,..working PC is nearly here. So, I've spent the bones of €100 covering their fault which they've said they'll reimburse. Great, that's weird, they only refunded €35. Contact them again. Getting to know their customer service reps quite well. Gunther seems surprised by me. No, I'm looking at my a/c. You most definitely have not refunded me the remaining €65. Get passed over to Helga in finance who efficiently transfers the money. Great..

Hmmm, those ****ers left thermal paste on the CPU.. Trip to camera shop in town to buy microfibre cloth. Add some isopropyl alcohol to my cart in Amazon alongside my mech keyboard..Couple more days wont kill me..
Amazon priority comes through the day after..Weekend comes, all psyched to put this bad boy together..Clean off the paste, let it dry..

Lessons learned from last time, test the motherboard, CPU & PSU before assembling it in case. ...
CUP in motherboard, fan attached, power hooked up. Press button. Hmmm, weird. I must have not set the power cables firmly. Nope, still no luck.. Grab a paperclip and run a check I did the first time round. Hmmm, PSU fan not turning on with paperclip. Swear a little.

Nobody could be that incompetent. Try power cable on monitor. Monitor turns on...
Briefly think about reparations..No wait, I know lots of sounds Germans. Don't want to fall to prejudicial behaviour.

Closing in on 2 months since that fateful day I added 7 components to my cart. Email mindfactory. Tell them the story & ask for a full return & refund.
3 ****ups on one order. Advise I'll just buy off Amazon and pay the extra €100 instead of going through the hassle of returning & replacing the PSU.

Gunther is shocked by this. We were such close & frequent email buddies.
Can't be dealing with this Gunther....let's just pretend we never met..start fresh.
Gunther tells me 14 days has elapsed.
I advise Gunther I'm not returning the goods because I changed my mind; I'm returning becuase you keep sending me faulty goods to the wrong address.

Gunther agrees to a full* refund if I pay the €150 shipping costs.. ah no Gunther.. You guys would be on the hook for paying the shipping costs for the faulty return & replacement so maybe you guys should cover it..

So, **** 'em..Send back faulty PSU and request repair/replace.

Email today from their system that they've granted me a credit note..
My German/chrome translation skills are sharp after all this back and forth so I email the system back telling it the return docs had repair/replace ticked..

Still waiting for mindfactory to give me a working set of components..

Never again.

Points to note:
[1] Always claim the shipping costs when goods found faulty... claiming repair under Artikel 3 from eur-lex.europa DOT eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:31999L0044
[2] The names of the incompetent were changed to protect their identity..There is no Gunther. He's a cover for the ~5 CS people I got bounced between.
[3] Yip, I worked in retail stores & head offices, and realise faults can happen. It's how they handle it that pisses me off.

skankles

Amazingly I got a dodge mobo off them as well. The one I got actually had scratches on it. I suspect from the previous owner being a bit careless with screwdriver.

However, they did return a new one and all was good. But if I had a do over I think I'd spend the extra €100 with Amazon for piece of mind.

ylliad2t6

Packaging was fairly dodgy on all the shipments I got. Could be a contributing factor.

grindle

That's fairly shocking tbh, I guess I'm very lucky to have only ever had one dud component out of many builds. CS anywhere besides Amazon seems to be indifferent as a rule.

On the upside, that experience went better than many HWVS sales back when the were considered "good". But still, terrible "Gotcha" style CS.

Raekwondo

Good to know, was strongly thinking of getting my build off them and saving 100 quid or so. Think I will just go with dabs or overclockers now

Cuddlesworth

Raekwondo wrote: »

Good to know, was strongly thinking of getting my build off them and saving 100 quid or so. Think I will just go with dabs or overclockers now

Dabs are not great. Amazons customer service is beyond reproach. I was quite shocked when my motherboard arrived dead and mindfactory both expected me to pay for return and are currently sitting on it for 5 working days without response. I would have ordered from Amazon if they had the ram/cpu I wanted. Regret just not waiting now.

tadcan

For my rebuild, the mobo was faulty and the stock cpu fan didn't work. I had a spare fan, but sent back the mobo. I get an emailed an invoice for a mobo and presume its in the post. Nothing shows up. Get in contact, apparently the the invoice was for a refund to paypal, Check the account, no refund, get back in contact, and it comes later that day. Then I thought f*** this and order a mobo on amazon.

.G.

I got all my parts of mindfactory before Christmas too and it also included a dodgy motherboard. Sent it back, got a full refund, bought replacement off amazon. All happened within a week. So while it seems strange that people get dodgy motherboards off them quite a lot, their CS was pretty good in my experience.

cherryghost

No issues with mindfactory either. Bought a few things off them. Packaging was grand, no damaged goods.

ED E

By the way its standard practice in some outfits to ship to the Payment address not the inputted details. So if Paypal has you in Mayo and you list Dublin they still ship it to Mayo. Anti-fraud measure, common on Ebay.

CS reps should have known this though.

Wright

ylliad2t6 wrote: »

Word to the wise....

tl;dr pay the extra whatever to Amazon not have to deal with the absolute **** after sales service from mindfactory which I had.

Yep.

Sorry you had a bad experience; finally getting that piece you need and it doesn't work must seriously suck; never had it happen to be but I'm always so nervous when building for this reason.

Raekwondo

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Dabs are not great. Amazons customer service is beyond reproach. I was quite shocked when my motherboard arrived dead and mindfactory both expected me to pay for return and are currently sitting on it for 5 working days without response. I would have ordered from Amazon if they had the ram/cpu I wanted. Regret just not waiting now.

Yeah I think I might go with them. Only problem is certain parts dont seem to ship here and they don't count Ireland as eligible for a free copy of The Division with Nvidia cards.

ylliad2t6

ED E wrote: »

By the way its standard practice in some outfits to ship to the Payment address not the inputted details. So if Paypal has you in Mayo and you list Dublin they still ship it to Mayo. Anti-fraud measure, common on Ebay.

CS reps should have known this though.

Yip, got them to replace the part with similar PSU. Saw the address was wrong again. Eventually got a mail back saying it's because I paid through PayPal..
PayPal processed the transaction for them but I paid with card(not paypal a/c) so I wouldn't have been covered by the PayPal Buyers guarantee which they gave as the reason for not changing address.
Followed swiftly by a dispatch mail.
Gave up trying to convince them otherwise.

Deflated