Do Not Purchase Laptops from Currys PCWorld

2ewy5p8tn9lvh1 · 20-01-2019 06:36PM

Hi everyone, thank you all for your comments and support. I can't answer everyone directly but I will say that today I went into the store and received a full refund from one of the staff, I had dealt with him on several occasions and was very helpful and apologetic.
To those saying about it being my fault, let it be power supply, static clothes etc. I have several other pieces of electrical equipment, let it be monitors, chromebook, raspberry pie etc and have had no such issue. I never messed with the machines, let that be opening them or doing a fresh install of Windows. I live beside a farm but the house is relatively modern.
To those asking why I shop at currys was because I was working beside their store back in May and decided to for convenience and hoping for a discount (yeah that never happened).
I currently don't have any access to a laptop for the time being so I can't respond to all quires as I can't see them all as I am responding. I hope I have answered and other questions people have had and once again thanks for all the support.

Eric Cartman · 20-01-2019 06:44PM

Dufflecoat Fanny wrote: »

I reckon it's power spikes causing all the problems. Farms are notorious for issues with spikes and shoddy wiring. My cousin lived in an old house and every other week a laptop, hard drive, router, graphics card would die or act up. Every appliance died before the warranty. Expensive surge protection didn't work either. When the house was finally rewired and we saw the old cables we were amazed how a fire hadn't started. The cables weren't coloured, all black and crumbling away with copper exposed.

If you think your house has old wiring get an electrician to inspect.

+1 Id go as far to say that theres an issue with a neutral over ground or no ground issue. The funny thing about this is normally cheap equipment handles it better, cheap chinese phone chargers laptop chargers etc... all grand. A name brand decent one and a month in the capacitors are squealing or theres a burning smell.

I would have the electrical work in the house tested OP.

TerrorFirmer · 20-01-2019 07:20PM

5 brand new laptops and all faulty within a relatively small window of time? I'm not surprised management started to become slightly wary, anyone would under those fantastical circumstances, and you're warning people to avoid them? Curry's don't make the laptops, yet you're trying to stress that they're at fault for these hardware failings and not the manufacturer.

I would say there is something likely up with the wiring of your home, an adaptor you're using, something. The odds of 5 brand new laptops all becoming faulty in such a short timeframe would be statistically nil.

From your post it sounds like Curry's have been incredibly understanding, more so than most retailers would be given the situation, yet you're continuing to try and stick the knife into them on here.

Imagine you worked in Carphone Warehouse and someone came back with an iPhone, then a Samsung Galaxy, then a Huawei P20, then another iPhone, and then a Galaxy Note, claiming all were faulty within a few months. I doubt any other retailer would've been so understanding at all.

duridian · 20-01-2019 08:39PM

Is there any possibility that someone in your vicinity has been running an electric welder? By vicinity I mean even if it’s in an outhouse of a farm or something like that, while you run the laptop in the dwelling house. Or, if there is more than one house running from a shared transformer up on a nearby ESB pole, could a neighbour be welding?

I know a bloke who had a couple of computers frazzled and upon investigation by the PC manufacturer’s technician of their electrical supply, it turned out that it was caused by the welding they were doing in an outhouse while the PC was plugged in at the house. Some kind of ripple or spikes caused by the welders was going all over their domestic wiring as well.

Mind you this was 18 or 19 years ago, and it was affecting desktop computers, so I don’t know if it is something remedied by advances in both computers and the big upgrade of the electricity network carried out in the mid noughties around the country. But your story brought this back to mind for me.

tomoliver · 20-01-2019 08:53PM

The snip - do not attempt to bypass site filters I bought a pc and it arrived DOA

They gave some 1800 helpline to deal with it, I drove it straight back and demanded a replacement

Anytime I bought a tv they tried to upsell me brackets ,super duper hdmi leads, extended warranties, insurance in case the TV fell off the wall,payment protection insurance,you name it they tried to flog it

DubInTheWest · 20-01-2019 09:11PM

Sounds like the OP is paranoid and is looking for faults with every laptop he gets and possibly damaging them himself by fiddling with them. Computer Science means nothing when it comes to laptops and the internals of a laptop/computer. It's more coding and stuff like that, so my best friend tells me and he's in his fourth year in CS right now in Tallaght IT.

I'm not saying pc world are great at all. I don't buy anything from them these days but back in the day all those Indian guys didn't have much knowledge at all. They were more interested in trying to make the sale.

OldMrBrennan83 · 20-01-2019 09:14PM

DubInTheWest wrote: »

Sounds like the OP is paranoid and is looking for faults with every laptop he gets and possibly damaging them himself by fiddling with them. Computer Science means nothing when it comes to laptops and the internals of a laptop/computer. It's more coding and stuff like that, so my best friend tells me and he's in his fourth year in CS right now in Tallaght IT.

I'm not saying pc world are great at all. I don't buy anything from them these days but back in the day all those Indian guys didn't have much knowledge at all. They were more interested in trying to make the sale.

If there's issues from use before going near anything (as the OP has stated) then it doesn't matter if you're a computer scientist, electronic engineer, bricklayer, or a stripper; there's something wrong with the item.

tomoliver · 20-01-2019 09:15PM

DubInTheWest wrote: »

Sounds like the OP is paranoid and is looking for faults with every laptop he gets and possibly damaging them himself by fiddling with them. Computer Science means nothing when it comes to laptops and the internals of a laptop/computer. It's more coding and stuff like that, so my best friend tells me and he's in his fourth year in CS right now in Tallaght IT.

I'm not saying pc world are great at all. I don't buy anything from them these days but back in the day all those Indian guys didn't have much knowledge at all. They were more interested in trying to make the sale.

You mean like Munchausens by proxy ?

Maybe that's what The op has lol

DubInTheWest · 21-01-2019 01:21AM

Patww79 wrote: »

If there's issues from use before going near anything (as the OP has stated) then it doesn't matter if you're a computer scientist, electronic engineer, bricklayer, or a stripper; there's something wrong with the item.

It doesn't matter what the OP 'stated.' The fact of the matter is do you believe the OP ? If it was one laptop, yes 100%. If it was 2, yes you'd still believe him. 3 and you'd start to think somethings' a bit fishy, 4 and would ya stop, 5 and you' have to get him committed somewhere.

What do you think, honestly ? Do you think it's possible 5 laptops in a row could have issues, seriously ?

I'd love to see a 'yes, no' poll results on whether 5 in a row could be faulty lol I'm not buying it anyway that's for sure.

I agree that if there are issues with an item you should get a refund or the item replaced, I've been down that road before.

tomoliver wrote: »

You mean like Munchausens by proxy ?

Maybe that's what The op has lol

I had to google that, but yest maybe lol

OldMrBrennan83 · 21-01-2019 06:42AM

DubInTheWest wrote: »

It doesn't matter what the OP 'stated.' The fact of the matter is do you believe the OP ? If it was one laptop, yes 100%. If it was 2, yes you'd still believe him. 3 and you'd start to think somethings' a bit fishy, 4 and would ya stop, 5 and you' have to get him committed somewhere.

What do you think, honestly ? Do you think it's possible 5 laptops in a row could have issues, seriously ?

I'd love to see a 'yes, no' poll results on whether 5 in a row could be faulty lol I'm not buying it anyway that's for sure.

I agree that if there are issues with an item you should get a refund or the item replaced, I've been down that road before.

I had to google that, but yest maybe lol

From the way I've personally seen them store items and from other anecdotes in this thread about how they handle items, then yes I would believe it.

DubInTheWest · 21-01-2019 08:45AM

We'll have to agree to disagree. I've worked on and still do on certain statistics and for me it's just too much. To me it's possible, but highly unlikely.

banana_bear · 21-01-2019 08:59AM

DubInTheWest wrote:

Sounds like the OP is paranoid and is looking for faults with every laptop he gets and possibly damaging them himself by fiddling with them. Computer Science means nothing when it comes to laptops and the internals of a laptop/computer. It's more coding and stuff like that, so my best friend tells me and he's in his fourth year in CS right now in Tallaght IT.

Unless he opened the laptops there is no way you can damage a laptop that is fit for purpose. Even the bullsh1t they fed him regarding "running intensive applications" is completely insane. Any laptop can handle being pushed to its limits for hours, that's what the fan (and other things like cpu/gpu throtteling) is there for. If a laptop changes its behaviour in a way that's not caused and can't be fixed by the software side, without dropping it or opening it up (and excluding electricity issues like spikes), then that's a warranty case.

Ardent · 21-01-2019 09:39AM

banana_bear wrote: »

Unless he opened the laptops there is no way you can damage a laptop that is fit for purpose. Even the bullsh1t they fed him regarding "running intensive applications" is completely insane. Any laptop can handle being pushed to its limits for hours, that's what the fan (and other things like cpu/gpu throtteling) is there for. If a laptop changes its behaviour in a way that's not caused and can't be fixed by the software side, without dropping it or opening it up (and excluding electricity issues like spikes), then that's a warranty case.

OP mentioned testing temperatures on these laptops. Lots of software to help you specifically with that. Theoretically you could do damage running such software for long periods of time- such as baking the thermal paste on CPU, GPU etc.

RossieMan · 21-01-2019 09:56AM

5 laptops going wrong for 1 person in such a short space of time is a bit crazy being honest. All different brands and models, something not quite right.

banana_bear · 21-01-2019 10:04AM

Ardent wrote:

OP mentioned testing temperatures on these laptops. Lots of software to help you specifically with that. Theoretically you could do damage running such software for long periods of time- such as baking the thermal paste on CPU, GPU etc.

No, you can't, that's my point.

First of all, "testing the temperature" just reads a sensor. It doesn't stress any part of the computer whatsoever to find out the current temoerature. Looking at the thermometer in your house doesn't damage anything either.

Second, if the OP wanted to test whether the laptop performed adequately, he'd be running a benchmark software that would rate the various components. These programs stress the hardware and run a few minutes, nothing exciting at all.

Thirdly, computers nowadays don't terminally overheat anymore. They have safety features built in. Computers are there to do work, when they get too warm the active cooling (= the fans) kicks in, and if that's not enough they throttle down and compute slower. If that happens all the time it's a sign of bad (cheap) design. The idea that it's the users job to make sure the device doesn't overheat is bizarre. If you can't use a computer to its full extent it becomes an expensive paperweight. We could debate whether running a cryptominer 24/7 is still within the range of things the laptop is designed for, but anything that puts a moderate to heavy load on it for a couple hours a day definitely is.

DubInTheWest · 21-01-2019 11:01AM

banana_bear wrote: »

Unless he opened the laptops there is no way you can damage a laptop that is fit for purpose. Even the bullsh1t they fed him regarding "running intensive applications" is completely insane. Any laptop can handle being pushed to its limits for hours, that's what the fan (and other things like cpu/gpu throtteling) is there for. If a laptop changes its behaviour in a way that's not caused and can't be fixed by the software side, without dropping it or opening it up (and excluding electricity issues like spikes), then that's a warranty case.

He probably is opening the cases for all we know. You don't get 5 laptops and they all have hardware issues, you just don't. I agree that laptops can run for hours, mine is on sometimes 15 or 16 hours running mediocre intensive programs. When techie people get a new laptop, it's like a toy, I include myself in that. I always re-format my new laptop/pc to get rid of bloatware, and then when I have the time I open it up so I can see where everything is eg fans, cpu, gpu. I know this voids warranty but it's hard to resist. I got a brand new i7 from Dell less than a year ago, have it opened up multiple times and cleaned out etc...
The OP might be doing the same and breaking things. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't but 5 laptops, the law of average is really hating this thread lol

tedpan · 21-01-2019 11:05AM

What surface are you using the laptops on OP, hopefully not a lap or bed etc..

ED E · 22-01-2019 01:21AM

Abril Unimportant Ware wrote: »

Not literally but you know what I mean. It had idle temperatures (running nothing and all proceeds turned off) of 50 degrees Celsius. Which is around 15-20 over what a normal laptop should be. So back to Currys it was!

Pffft.

50*C Idle is totally normal for the last 5yrs or so since ultrabooks/compacts have become the norm. Its a slim 13". Nothing wrong there. No point ramping the fans to try and reach ambient when anything below 70 is beyond safe.

I'm really really glad Im not a member of staff in that store.

Do Not Purchase Laptops from Currys PCWorld

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