Overclockers.co.uk, I want my money back !!!!

arrrgh,
I'm so angry I could scream:mad: , Overclockers owe me £305 and have done for 3 months !!!

I returned a graphics card (Gigabyte 6800GT) to them in March after it went faulty (just fell over half way through a BF2 game) and they confirmed it was knackered and tried to offer me a bog standard 6800GS as an alernative, as the model I'd bought was the double heat-sink heatpipe verison (and one of the best cards I've ever owned) and over £300 I said no way was that an alternative - but I was willing to give them some more money to buy a better card. They said they couldn't do that and they would have to refund me and then I could buy another, OK says I, a pain in the butt but I could deal with that.
Soooo, they they offred to refund me refund me £190 - wow I said, I paid £305 for this card !!! They said as I'd been using the card for a while they had the right to refund me a lower amount (and this in fact true...) so I rang Gigabyte and asked them if they would be giving a full refund to Overclockers (don't ask how I got the number for the UK Country Manager of Gigabyte - but it involved some persistence & blagging) and he said that overclockers would get a FULL refund from Gigabyte !!!!
I couldn't believe it - they were skanking me for £115 even though they were getting a full refund from the manufacturer. Fed up I said I would accept the refund but I wasn't happy and can they process the refund ASAP so I could buy a new card...... (little did I know)

Well that was in March, and despite a call every couple of weeks they have never processed the refund, I've had every excuse in the world for this:

- the accounts manager wasn't available and he was the only person who can process refunds (yeah - like I believe that rubbish)
- my card details were incorrect (they were bloody fine when they took the money !!)

so I thought no problem, escalate the issue with the manager (a now almost mythical figure - apprently called Andy Mclane) who was NEVER and I mean NEVER available - with some of the worst excuses I have ever heard (yes - even worse than the ones I got for not processing the refund)

- He's on lunch (at 4pm?)
- He's not in today (got this several times - is he part time ?)
- He doesn't have a phone (really, how does he arrange his days out and lunches then ?)
and I've saved the best till last
- He's not taking calls today because he's too busy !!! (not busy processing my refund - that's for sure)

So here I am, going through the complaints procedure with Trading Standards and hoping my credit card company can help me recover the money, a word to the wise - if you buy something from overclocker's - pray to what ever god you worship it doesn't break.....

FYI - I'm not one of these whining gits that complainst about anything - I've talked to them frequently, provided them with all the information they required and even presented my issues in writing, never once have they called me or made any attempt to be pro-active in resolving this issue - just so you know.


PS. I'll keep you guys updated as to what happens - even if it's only for the humour value.....:rolleyes:

PPS. I don't know how Gibbo spouts the rubbish he does on their forum, how does he sleep at night knowing the way they treat their customers....???

I can vouch for the fact that Overclockers.co.uk support is absolutely s*!t, hence why I have defected to the omnipotent Scan I <3 Scan, anyway I hope that you get this problem sorted! I'm sure after threat of a court order they will get this processed for you, btw you should hvae gone straight to gigabyte for the RMA.

I have two methods of dealing with overclockers customer service -

1 - I drive down the road to the store and stand in the shop and make a bloody great fuss (about 12-1pm theyre normally quite busy) - they dont like a scene in front of local business customers.

2 - when I lived futher away I faxed them my rma request over, and over, and over again... in white writing on a black background - fax machine toner is expensive - someone quickly rang me back.

Their customer service is the worst ever.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by directhex

this thread will likely be removed, Esnet have something of a reputation for being sue-happy towards anyone who would suggest anything but stellar service

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sue ME, I really hope they try - I've documented this whole farce and would love a chance to shove it where the sun don't shine with them........

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vrykyl

I have two methods of dealing with overclockers customer service -

1 - I drive down the road to the store and stand in the shop and make a bloody great fuss (about 12-1pm theyre normally quite busy) - they dont like a scene in front of local business customers.

2 - when I lived futher away I faxed them my rma request over, and over, and over again... in white writing on a black background - fax machine toner is expensive - someone quickly rang me back.

Their customer service is the worst ever.

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:D Great methods vrykyl!! :D

No Comment :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Steve A

No Comment :P

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Hi Steve, that was a very "restrained" reply.... lol

:lol: ^-^

im sat on the fence with a picket up my arrr is that you derek .....

:)

Can't you RMA the card directly with the manufacturer?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChrisP

Just involve Trading Standards...

If they have admitted the card is faulty and have accepted it back they should give you a full refund.

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Trading Standards have made me jump through a couple of hoops (written complaints not e-mail etc etc) but they have taken it on as a complaint today.
If this experience has taught me anything, it's not to be patient or understanding - you'll just get screwed.....

I dont believe you can go direct with Gigabyte tbh ... iirc

tut tut, another overclockers.co.uk customer bites the dust, many of us have been there... maybe not quite as badly as you mind :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Can't you RMA the card directly with the manufacturer?

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Gigabyte did offer to do this when I spoke to them - but by this time OC already had the card, so I didn't have the option.
In my experience manufacturer's rarely want to deal directly with RMA's apart from a few exceptions (Maxtor were very good when I had a hard drive fail on me)

What do we lean from this, Just dont buy from these companys and the market will iradicate them for us. You have been warned.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DaBigDog

Gigabyte did offer to do this when I spoke to them - but by this time OC already had the card, so I didn't have the option.
In my experience manufacturer's rarely want to deal directly with RMA's apart from a few exceptions (Maxtor were very good when I had a hard drive fail on me)

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Oh ok, my impression was generally the other way around :p I read an article on a site whose name I've forgotten about the 7900GT I think, that said something about card manufacturers preferring direct RMAs (as stated by the manufacturers themselves). But I think that was eVGA/BFG/XFX they were talking about.

Found it here:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hardOCP

If you have a card to RMA, return it to the card builder, not the retailer.

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Just for your information- this is at the bottom of every page of the forum:

Quote:

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Any representations/statements made on the HEXUS.community discussion forums are the representations/statements of the author i.e. the person/organisation making them.
If any such representations/statements are disputed they are a matter between the parties concerned.
HEXUS Limited accepts no responsibility for any misrepresentations, inaccurate or false statements made by any person/organisation other than HEXUS Limited employees.

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hear hear

well in that case...my mother in law...she's a right C...

Wow, I can't believe they won't give you a full refund. I would of thought that's what they have to do since they can't send you a replacement card that is the same as the one you purchased originally.

My personal exprerience with Overclockers has been ok, I've returned 3 different items and had the RMA dealt with, within a week with a full refund including postage but admittedly they were all dead on arrival. Sounds like its a different story when you return something that has developed a fault later down the line!

Well...I'm glad I'm not in a bad mood atm otherwise I would give a huge detailed description of what I think of OCUK's tech support.

I'll just leave you all with a psycho smile :)

The thing that pisses me off is thier forum.

We can happily show competitors and even reccomend them on most other forums but not on OCuk?

Also, we cannot have freedom of speech, if I made a thread about my experience it would be deleted in a flash.

Just makes you appriciate scan. I actually reccomended a mate to buy from scan, even though the product he was buying was much cheaper somewhere else, just for the service.

Thanks.

Overclockers.co.uk did me over too, buggered me about with RMA'ing a board, impossible to get in contact with them via phone or that stupid bloody non-email contact thing they have.

TBH though, their cockup is what brought me to Scan.co.uk so I really can't moan.. in the long run, they helped me out!

what have we learned from this buy from scan

or dabs or kustompcs or cclonline or any number of decent retailers.

They sent me a graphics card which was lying on top of the anti-static bag. No, that's not how it works.

I have had mixed expieriences with OC's
I returned a faulty IC7MAX3 MB after 1 year 11months at first they said they could not give me the full value because of the time i had used it
so they said they would send it to Abit but after a month it had not come back from Abit so they gave me a replacement to the same full value:)
But then again i ordered a motherboard bundle and in the picture it showed XMS2 memory but when it arrived it was value select.
Because one of the items was on sale and if i had ordered everything seperate with the XMS memory it would have been the same price but the answer i got was you should have read the description and they could not be expected to update every bundle in acordance with every offer:lol:
So i sent it all back and bought it from Scan :)
I lost £20 in postage from that balls up

i say take em to small claim court no doubt they probadly wouldnt even turn up

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noni

The thing that pisses me off is thier forum.

We can happily show competitors and even reccomend them on most other forums but not on OCuk?

Also, we cannot have freedom of speech, if I made a thread about my experience it would be deleted in a flash.

Just makes you appriciate scan. I actually reccomended a mate to buy from scan, even though the product he was buying was much cheaper somewhere else, just for the service.

Thanks.

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I did just that actually and your right freedom of speech does not exist on the other side. I made an enquiry to my situation and with in a minute of posting it deleted and I was banned for life and I didn’t even have a bad record there either, it was like they were covering it up.

Their just a horrible company to deal with imo. I'll never ever ever buy from them again. Needless to say I had an horrendous time with them. If anyone threatens to report them to trading standards or a some TV program then do it, because saying you'll report them will do NOTHING to kick them into action, they couldn't give a sheet.

Did you use a credit card to buy the item?

Call your credit card company.

Even though I haven't actually had any bad experiences with OCUK, I stopped buying there after hearing about the escalating number of customer horror stories and also they are no longer very competitive when it comes to price.

In other news, Scan have been simply diamond, I bought an XFX 7800GT it became faulty after a month, so I notified XFX first then I contacted Scan.

Scan told me they ran out of 7800GTs so they'd send me an XFX 7900GT, this shortly got a fault as well and was sent back to Scan.

And I'm now with a BFG Tech 7900GT OC.

Scan are the best!

<licks Scan on the cheek cos they know they love it, you slags! :D>

Avoid OCUK like a particularly virulent form of the plauge, scan FTW!!!

I agree, don't go near OcUK as thier customer support is terrible. Worst thing i had was when i ordered a new Graphics card from them and it came in just a jiffy bag!! No bubble wrap, etc etc. It was all bent and twisted when i took it out of the bag!!Also, thier prices are way too high. Another thing, thier forums are run by Hitler youth.

Scan are 'The Best' as far as i am concerned. Very good prices and awesome customer support.

We do try, and it isnt just a blag, ofc we want to make money, but the bosses genuinely care about how customers get treated, and if its not right then they/we will do our best to make it right, i mean the way we work with products and the way the web design is, mostly comes about from feedback from you guys, and the way that you want it, which is good and the feedback whether it be good or bad is important, some examples are the Antec cases you wanted them in we got them in, you wanted sort by price feature we did it, those are to name a few, so this is why you input is essensial, and im saying this more as a hexus user than a Scan employee,

I dont want to comment to much on how other companies do business, but the whole team here from Sales to CS to Returns and tech do there best to help you guys out and treat you the way we would expect to be treated.


Any way back on topic :: I'll be honest as i have had a word with the returns manager and supervisor to confirm this. If that was us that you bought it off and we could not get hold of the card that became faulty , we would upgrade you to the next model up free of charge, if you didnt want that then you would have the option of a FULL refund minus the carriage, and in all fairness the afor mentioned company should do the same end of story, if the card went faulty 10-12 months into the warranty then i could maybe understand the reason for them doing this, but 3 months is very unreasonable.

Regards

Well said Steve. I honestly believe that Scan are genuine in how thet feel about thier customers. Having bought quite a bit from Scan i have had to send back items and only once did i have problems, but, Scan did bend over backwards to sort it out for me and i was well impressed with thier customer service.

Firstly - I dont think this thread belongs here, thats what hexus trust is for as we have been told every other time someone starts a thread about OCUK? but anyway not for me to say :)

Personally I have never had any problems with OCUK. I have spent thousands of pounds with them - both in person at their store and over the internet. Each time I have had quick delivery with a choice of delivery options, great prices and reasonable service.

I have had two products from them go faulty - a motherboard which decided to wipe its own bios ( an asus board, was a common problem at the time ), and later on a graphics card that broke 14 months into owning it.

The motherboard problem was simple, I phoned up OCUK, only had to wait around 10 mins, and got through to a person who listened to my problem took my details and gave me an RMA number. Was as easy as that. I sent back the motherboard and was issued a full refund within 2 weeks..that was great service. The second problem with my graphics card I phoned them up, and they advised me to contact sapphire directly - so this went straight back to the manufacturer (actualy went to EQS technologies who deal with sapphire RMAs), and within 2 weeks I had a shiny new replacement. (I am currently going through this again with sapphire/EQS..think this will be my last sapphire card lol)

So my experience with them has been fine, and this is what you never hear about...They will have thousands of customers each month, and you hear from one or two a week that have problems. In the grand scheme of things thats pretty good really, you just only hear about the bad stories.

Scan are great yes, but they are far from perfect (sorry guys). The website is good enough but it is over-complex for buying things - and the worst bit is putting in your address/delivery details. I can't, for example, find a way to remove my name from the delivery address - making it useless if I want to order something delivered to my parents work etc..granted I could order over the phone but I shouldn't have to :)

Of course with scan the biggest problem is shipping - the fact that I am given zero choice of how it is shipped. It's sh..CityLink or nothing?? At least with OCUK I can choose Royal Mail if I want, who are far from perfect but still much better than CityLink :) Customer support though I have to say has been excellent from scan, I phoned up to sort out a double order problem yesterday and it was sorted within a few mins, so that was great :)

My point is that no company is perfect, and you almost never hear the good stories...each have their good and bad points.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spud1

Firstly - I dont think this thread belongs here, thats what hexus trust is for as we have been told every other time someone starts a thread about OCUK? but anyway not for me to say :).

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Its here so people can discuss it, and that is what we are doing . :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spud1

I have had two products from them go faulty - a motherboard which decided to wipe its own bios ( an asus board, was a common problem at the time ), and later on a graphics card that broke 14 months into owning it.

The motherboard problem was simple, I phoned up OCUK, only had to wait around 10 mins, and got through to a person who listened to my problem took my details and gave me an RMA number. Was as easy as that. I sent back the motherboard and was issued a full refund within 2 weeks..that was great service. So my experience with them has been fine, .

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So how in god kitchen can you justify getting full refund 14 months into owning something and not get the same treatment when only being 3 months into it ???

Seems a little hypicritical to me, and very unfair ...

:(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spud1

My point is that no company is perfect, and you almost never hear the good stories...each have their good and bad points..

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Agreed, we are not perfect, but we are fair ..

No sorry maybe I was a little unclear:

My motherboard broke within a few days, the graphics card was the one 14 months old and I got a replacement, not a refund :)

Even so, and lesser graphics card isn't what i would class as a replacement.

Look at it this way, would you be happy with a graphics card that wasnt as good as the one you bought, or a refund &#163;100+ less than what you paid in the space of three months ??

hey I am not defending OCUK about this case, I am not saying that they are correct and justified - just that this is not always the case with them.. They are *not* always this bad, and do offer good customer service at times. They shouldn't be written off as a bad/terrible company just because of a few bad incidents out of the thousands of transactions they go through each month.

:)

Im in no way attacking you buddy far from it, i know what you are saying, we get bad press from time to time everyone does as you cant please everyone, im only picking up on this because it seem very unreasonable. and is a problem that is easily solved .

Thankfully I have not had a problem with Overclockers, hope I never do. However I also give the thumbs up for Scan's service, they are one of the best.

Quote:

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The website is good enough but it is over-complex for buying things - and the worst bit is putting in your address/delivery details. I can't, for example, find a way to remove my name from the delivery address - making it useless if I want to order something delivered to my parents work etc..granted I could order over the phone but I shouldn't have to.

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I wouldnt really say our web site is over complex? However your point regarding changing the name on the delivery address is valid. I will forward this feedback onto the relevant dept and see if we can get this changed.

Quote:

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Of course with scan the biggest problem is shipping - the fact that I am given zero choice of how it is shipped. It's sh..CityLink or nothing?? At least with OCUK I can choose Royal Mail

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We dont use Royal mail for valid reasons, I can PM a full explanation regarding this if you would like.

Regards :)

Thanks for replying to those points ChrisP :)

You, as a company obviously have your own reasons for using citylink, and obviosly thats fine :) I won't get into the lack of courier choice, it is well known how bad CityLink are in comparison to others so there is no point in repeating the argument here. Having a lack of choice though really does cause issues for other reasons.

What if, for example, I want to order a low cost item from scan? say some cables, a network card or some LEDs? I would then have to pay the full 7 quid for shipping!

If I were to do the same from almost every other online store, I could choose something like Royal Mail signed for or similar, and pay only a quid or so shipping.

That's my biggest gripe I guess, and since you offered I wouldn't mind an explanation of why you dont offer royal mail or similar for at least low priced, low value items?

Why we do not use Royal Mail:

The issues with Royal mail are deliveries are not properly tracked; this causes issues when trying to track an order and find out exactly where it is. Because of this issues are created with lost/delayed deliveries and as getting a confirmed POD is time consuming and not always easy to receive meaning these issues cannot be effectively resolved.

Citylink have an exceptionally and consistently high success rate for our deliveries and problems are very rare. In recognition of this, we have great deal of faith in their ability to ensure our customers orders arrive on time and in excellent condition. Over the past few years our despatch systems have become more and more integrated with theirs, which now means that the whole process from the point of ordering to the point of delivery is streamlined and informative.

The carriage charge may cost a few pounds more; however you are assured of a fast hastle free delivery. Isolated problems here and there are an unavoidable consequence for any company dealing with such high volumes of deliveries as we do. By having such accurate and detailed information available to base any investigations on, we are able to quickly and effectively resolve any queries.

PTO

This isnt the place for company bashing to be honest.

Take it to HEXUS.trust and trading standards if your not happy with the service you have recieved.

Butuz

Carriage Charge Queries / Further reasons for City Link use

Regarding delivery charges there are many factors that we must bear in mind as a company. Firstly, for our distance sales, our merchant banks impose that we send goods using an insured, traceable delivery service through a dedicated courier. This is the reason that all our UK mainland deliveries are next working day. The minimum charge for these deliveries has always been £7, regardless of content.

What must also be considered is the difference between weight and value. As many of our deliveries are extremely small and light consignments but of high value (CPU's and memory) and some are large consignment of low value (DVD media cases), there are many parameters to consider when trying to implement a tiered value delivery service. Instead, we use a courier that insures all goods (at a minimum value of £7) at a price dependent upon weight, rather than value. This means that you can for example order a single cable at 50p and the carriage is £7 + vat...but if you were to order a cable at 50p + a CPU at £300, the carriage will still be £7 + vat, due to the weight and volume. If you were to order a 50p cable + £300 CPU + £200 monitor + £100 case, the carriage would calculate at £10 or £15 + vat. As you can see, the cost effectiveness of ordering is greater for customers who spend higher amounts but this is something which is a reflection of the charges Citylink impose to us, and certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t value customers who spend smaller amounts on their orders. We have given a lot of consideration to this issue over the last few years and we even considered using alternative couriers for those smaller value orders, which have a smaller minimum carriage cost. The only other method which would do this for us would be Royal Mail recorded delivery, but this has considerable down sides.

With recorded delivery any item over the value of £27 would not be insured and if we were to offer this service and parts went astray then we would not be able to offer replacements to customers. The service we offer is a standard service for Next Day delivery and takes into account full insurance value of any shipment. If we were to use a similar service from Royal Mail which meant orders were insured the basic price would be £12 and work its way up dependant on weight. Given that we ship every parcel through City Link (and that's a lot!) they allow us a much greater threshold on weight than is normal and offer full insurance of the goods being sent. We also have a very effective link to their systems which gives us and our customers a full traceability of all consignments and a very efficient service through their head office in the event of any issues. This is the reason we use this service and the reason why we only offer the one service it's all round value and meets all of our required factors.

All that said, I am pleased to say that we are currently in the process of negotiating a more cost effective delivery service with Citylink on those smaller item orders, and we are testing out this new system in our telephone sales department. Indeed, this service now means that on small and single item orders, we can select a minimum carriage of £5.98 + vat, but this is only available if you ring your order through to sales. As I say, this whole idea is still a work in progress, which is why our sales people are testing it out first, before we look to integrate these new rates into our online carriage calculator system. We are aiming to have these new revised carriage rates online within the next few months so watch this space for developments! ?

Our main priority is not just to ensure excellent prices and quality products through a nice looking and easy to use website, but we feel the real integrity of a company is shown if they can provide the support to back everything up. At this stage, I would like to take a moment out to give you an idea of where we are coming from and where we are heading, as a company. Over the past few years our business has increased enormosly,and we have recognised the importance of increased organisation and communication internally. There have been massive improvements in our support structure, the focus being on enhancing communication internally and increasing the productivity of our systems. We have automated email services which send real-time confirmation emails to our customers as each stage of their order completes, and also in the event of any delays/problems. We have found these emails have enabled us to keep a high level of awareness and communication, and represent a more proactive service. Our online order and returns tracking services are all real-time and linked with our internal database, and the online query page enables customers to contact us quickly and easily with any type of issue. We invested in a massive new onsite call centre, which involved a huge extension of our building. Along with the many new staff we have also taken on, this has enabled us to greatly expand our resources in line with increased business. We have just completed a massive restructuring and extension project within our warehouse, which will double the size and greatly increase the efficiency of all operational departments; including picking, despatch, returns and testing. All of these investments are intended to push the business forward and enable us to process orders and after sales issues much more efficiently than before. Basically, we are trying to make the whole process more streamlined and customer-friendly.

It is incredibly important for us to maintain excellent long-term relationships with our customers. We've been established for over 16 years and grown from a small family run shop to an industry recognised computer retailer and ISP. Our growth and development has been largely due to return business from long-standing customers, who are all greatly valued. Despite the fact that many of our support systems are automated, we do try to put the "personal touch" into our service wherever we can, and hope that all of our customers find us friendly, helpful and accessible at all times.

/deep breath

And yes these are template E-mails I have saved :)

theyre not called Royal Fail for nothing ;)

Just glad scan dont use dhl - now theres a useless company!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChrisP

We dont use Royal mail for valid reasons, I can PM a full explanation regarding this if you would like.

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I am interested in that one too ;)

^^^

Its all there .. Read above ...

This isn't the right forum for retailer bashing folks :)

*sweeps the scan folk back 'oop north*

We've all had positive and negative experiances with different retailers and doubtless will have epxressed our views in Hexus trust , or in certain cases the Retailers own support forum ( where applicable - Scan , MESH etc are lucky enough to have theirs with us )

I think its best left at that :)