I brought a cheap case from ebuyer….. returns advice please

[Jimmy Little]

I brought a cheapo case from ebuyer for around £15 it tuned up with a duff 350w power supply, I have not RMA’ed it as I will have to cough postage I guess? I luckly enough had a spare PSU so not to much of an issue, but shall I ring up and try and get some sort of compensation or get them to send me a new PSU?

How do you reckon my chances stand ?

[Flibb]

I had a case from komplett with a psu I thought was duff, they arranged to pickup the psu on its own. Luckilly I found out it was ok before returning it.

[Jimmy Little]

its such a cheap case i dunno how they will handle it.... shall i call and spend the hour on the phone!!

[malfunction]

Bobby - don't take this as a personal attack but to be honest for £15 you can't expect much. I have bought cases that cheap before but never a PSU - and have heard of many horror stories of cheap PSUs blowing up and taking the rest of the PC with them. Pair that with the fact that cheap cases tend to be very flimsy and have at least a few sharp edges and I reckon it's an area you should try and spend more money on if you can.

Out of all the cheapo cases I've worked with I find these are actually quite good:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=44512

The metal is fairly thin but not as bad as the JNC cases and the case is braced / re-inforced where needed to stop the whole thing feeling like it's made out of tin foil. There aren't two many sharp bits either and the whole thing feels well made - well made but out of cheap materials if you see what I mean.

(In my present job I 'inherited' a network of super cheap PCs to maintain - so I've had a fair few cuts and issued a fair few curses at super cheap cases. Thankfully these have all been replaced / upgraded with something half decent as I spat my dummy out one day after cutting myself - over an existing cut - and through a plaster - while working on the PoS cases and told the boss I wasn't going to bloody work on them anymore unless we upgraded to something less lethal)

(rant over)




I find it helps if you (or whomever you're building a PC for) views the case and power supply as components that they can keep when they upgrade - for example I have had a Lian Li PC61 for 3-4 years now and in that time it's seen a fair few different bits and bobs inside it - so even though it was expensive (and they still are relatively speaking) I haven't either needed or wanted to upgrade that part of my PC.

[Jimmy Little]

cheers mate, yeah i'm a shuttle man myself! can't beat them

but i had a few bits and bobs so i thought i would make a pc for a mate up...

nevermind

[malfunction]

cheers mate, yeah i'm a shuttle man myself! can't beat them

but i had a few bits and bobs so i thought i would make a pc for a mate up...

nevermind

Ah.... It's a charity case is it? (literally?)

What else have you got in it? And erm... You have checked you've switched on the PSU and that the power switch (the one in the case that is) is working (could be a dodgy connection on the power switch or you've put it on the wrong pins on the mobo)... Probably not but worth checking (use the reset switch to power it up or just a plain jumper - but you've got to take a jumper off as soon as it powers up or it will switch off again - same thing as holding in the power button)... And you're sure the mobo is OK? And the clear CMOS jumper is on normal not on clear? (Some boards power up with the jumper on clear but most don't in my experience).

[Jimmy Little]

yeah it's dead for sure, have had it tested by my geeky mate! everything else works fine and a diff psu working in there now, just thought it might be worth a moan, maybe get free shipping or something on my next order

[malfunction]

yeah it's dead for sure, have had it tested by my geeky mate! everything else works fine and a diff psu working in there now, just thought it might be worth a moan, maybe get free shipping or something on my next order

Deffo worth a go - but if you have to pay postage back not worth it as you said. What were you intending to put in the case? Does it need 350W?

[BUFF]

iirc legally you have to make the case available for pickup rather than actually send it back

"You're not legally obliged to return faulty goods to the seller at your own expense, unless you agreed this in advance. If a bulky item is difficult or expensive to return, ask the seller to collect it. This does not apply when you complain about faults after having 'accepted' the goods – or if the goods were a present."
http://www.oft.gov.uk/Consumer/Your+...oods.htm#wrong

At the very least I think that you will get some kind of gesture from them - they may even tell you to keep the existing case (as uplifting would be an extra cost to them) & send you a new 1.