customer service

[jackdaniels4me]

I recently bought a Coolermaster PSU from Scan. One of the main selling points was the "Super Silent operation" that was advertised on Scans website. When I received the PSU I tried it in my machine for the evening but found that it was extremely noisy. It was nothing like the advertised “Super Silent operation” I was expecting. Thinking that this must be a fault with the PSU I arranged a RMA and the item was sent back to Scan.

Amazingly a few days later I checked the Scan website and they said that they had found no fault and that they would be taking £10 +vat off the original price I paid before they refunded me. This they said was a carriage collection fee.

Obviously I was annoyed by this and I challenged Scan by saying that if there was no fault then there website description must be wrong as there is no way that the item could be described as silent. Since then I have been banging my head against a brick wall trying to get them to refund the full amount. I have even got advice from trading standards who back me fully and say I should expect a full refund.

This is a warning to everybody that Scans so called perfect customer service is anything but, in fact their returns manager can be extremely rude and patronising.
I would advise people to think twice about buying from Scan in the future. Their prices may be good but their customer service and grasp of UK consumer law leave a lot to be desired.

[wesleyaldred]

jackdaniels4me

Here is a copy of the email i have just sent to you:

I understand the point you are raising however, as you are aware our Technicians found your returned item to contain no fault and to operate quietly, we offered a re-test for you for further investigations however you proceeded with a rejection.

We accepted your rejection and processed this correctly and within our legal obligation.

You then sent an email with a link on the OFT which confirmed that we had indeed processed your rejection correctly.

Wesley

[SHare]

All the 'silent' coolermasters are very noisy. I had two, one died, the other had awful coil whine but both had noisy fans. Its not satisfactory, but its coolermaster that is lying, not scan.

[jackdaniels4me]

You fail to grasp the point (yet again). I have said from day one that I believed that either the PSU was faulty or the description on your website was not accurate. Both of these constitute a breach of contract and is covered under section 3.57 of the Distant Selling Regulations.

Why do you not grasp what trading standards are saying?? they know better than either of us, yet you fail to take their comments on board.

[wesleyaldred]

I grasp it, we dispute it is faulty, our Technician states the psu is quiet and is not faulty nor mis-described, we offered to look into this particular issue for you with further testing, however, you decided to action a distant selling rejection, we accepted this and actioned it accordingly.

Wesley

[jackdaniels4me]

All the 'silent' coolermasters are very noisy. I had two, one died, the other had awful coil whine but both had noisy fans. Its not satisfactory, but its coolermaster that is lying, not scan.

The retailer must take responsibilty for the description of the product on their website. If they dont they are leaving themselves open to unhappy customers and potential legal action. In my case I went purely on Scans website description which says "supersilent". As this wasnt the case they have failed to provide part of the contract that I formed with them and I am by law entitled to a full refund.
Can i get Scan to see that, no?? perhaps a court of law will.

[jackdaniels4me]

I grasp it, we dispute it is faulty, our Technician states the psu is quiet and is not faulty nor mis-described, we offered to look into this particular issue for you with further testing, however, you decided to action a distant selling rejection, we accepted this and actioned it accordingly.

Wesley

Like he was going to report any different. Stop treating me like a fool.

[wesleyaldred]

I am not treating you like a fool, you rejected the item we actioned the rejection, what else can i possibly say in this matter.

The link you sent even confirmed we have acted correctly in relation to your rejection.

I will paste it here openly for everyone to see:

Thank you for your post and link to the OFT, if you read this link you will see the following section:

Who pays for returning the goods if the consumer cancels
an order?

3.55 If you want the consumer to return the goods and to pay for that return, you must make it clear in the contract and as part of the
required written information – see paragraph 3.10. If the consumer
then fails to return the goods, or sends them at your expense, you
can charge them the direct cost to you of the return, even if you
have already refunded the consumer’s money. You are not allowed
to make any further charges, such as a restocking charge or an
administration charge.

Here is our Terms & Conditions which form the contract:

• If you cancel the agreement :

7. we will charge you the direct costs to us of recovering any goods supplied by us if you fail to return the goods to us.

[jackdaniels4me]

you are quoting the wrong section of the DSR for this case

The actual section is

3.57 If the goods are faulty or do not comply with the contract, you (the retailer) will
have to pay for their return whatever the circumstances."

I know im going to get nowwhere with you, so I will just leave it to the law to decide.

[wesleyaldred]

Yes but the goods are NOT faulty, hence they were tested NOT FAULTY, we processed your RMA as a standard 7 day unwanted goods rejection as per your request.

[jackdaniels4me]

Yes but the goods are NOT faulty, hence they were tested NOT FAULTY, we processed your RMA as a standard 7 day unwanted goods rejection as per your request.

I understand that the PSU may not be described as 'faulty' in the conventional sense (ie it did work). BUT it is misdescribed on your website which in turn breaks part of the contract that we agreed when I purchased the item. Therefore whichever way you look at it DSR 3.57 applies.

May I also add that I purchased a different (and more expensive) PSU from you after requesting the RMA on the coolermaster because I was concerned that the Coolermaster was in fact mis-described.
The comment above from SHare confirms this. This is all evidence that points towards the fact that website description is misleading.

I am happy with my new PSU(the Xclio 700W) as it is as advertised, silent.

[SHare]

I had this discussion with coolermaster. The end result is that 'silence' is subjective, silent to me, isn't the same as silent to someone else. Its really an arguement that your never going to win and trading standards will take nothing to do with it so I'd give it up.

Its the same as the 'unlimited' ISP's.

[pepsi_max2k]

This purely seems to be down to the wording of the product description more than anything else. I'm presuming it was something like this you bought:
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
Cooler Master

Therefore, "Ultra silent cooling" is used in both the scan and coolermaster descriptions of the product. This is subjective, as is "extremely noisy", but i guess they imply a certain degree of noise level. Indeed, the "ultra silent cooling" is followed by an actual guidance rating for the noise level of the PSU, "<16dB", which is indeed quite enough for most people to accept a labling of "ultra silent".

The manual also states "Super silent operation with intelligent fan speed control (<16dBA)". Now as it elaborates no further in the basic description (as on the scan site), one could probably assume this was under a general average operating status, which going by the stats would be up to 50C and 850 watts continuous output capacity. This tells me two things, 1) being that ain't gonna happen, and 2) scan don't say it won't. Being a variable speed fan, it's likely to spin faster at times causing more noise. Then again, 850w and 50C probably isn't average either, so you can't assume it'll always be running at full speed.

There's also the problem of what distance the 16dBA reading was taken from, though again you can probably assume it's at least from a normal distance, say, next to someone's desk (about 1m away).

And that's all you're getting from the scan site, though they just copied CM's marketing info, so if any of it was wrong I don't know where the blame would lie.


And then there's this...




That's taken directly from the product sheet for the psu off coolermaster's site. It shows that 16dBA will only be achieved from a load of under 450w on the psu. In fact, it is the quietest dBA rating for the PSU (implying that there is no "<" less than 16dB at all) and rises up to ~27dBA at full load. This is still quite quiet, and given that the noise should be under 24 dBA up to about 75&#37; load on the PSU, and products +20dBA are regularly marketed as silent, if the PSU (and fan specifically) was running to spec then you wouldn't really have much to somplain about, other than marketing and slightly mis leading/lack of figures on Scan's website.



And back to your original problem... If you could actually record the dBA level emited by the PSU from a suitable distance (again, i guess you could assume it'll be in a case beside a desk...), and if this exceeded by a non-trivial amount the given dBA ratings in the chart above then you may have claim for the PSU to be faulty or at least not as advertised. Or if it was recording a dBA louder than it should be for the current load on the PSU (possibly by a faulty voltage limiter for the fan, or something causing the PSU to heat up more than it should). You could go to the trouble of taking Scan and/or cooler master (if it turned out all psu's from the same range were emiting more dBA than stated) to court due to misleading marketing of products, and indeed at least one of CM's current Real Power PSUs marketed as "super silent" and rated at <23dBA, when reviewed by silent pc review gave a minimum of 29dBA rising to a maximum of 47dBA from 1m away. But if there was a problem with this, you'd hope CM's legal department would have noticed by now.


Alternatively, you could purchase for around &#163;5 a replacement 135mm fan that produced a noise level that was more acceptable to you. This would be my choice. That and reading some other's thoughts on the thing beforehand to avoid any disapointment. And in the future, maybe Scan will put this much effort in to individual item descriptions, though given the fact the above has taken me about half an hour to write, I don't think it's too likely. C&P ftw


And my final thoughts? The only information on Scan's site regarding noise levels states that it will be "< 16dBA", in otherwords, "less that" 16dBA, and this is contradicted by the full dBA stats given by CM (even though CM themselves also state <16dBA on marketing material).

Information required prior to the conclusion of the contract
7. - (1) Subject to paragraph (4), in good time prior to the conclusion of the contract the supplier shall -
(a) provide to the consumer the following information -
(ii) a description of the main characteristics of the goods or services;

Given that the dBA level is actually listed as a main selling point, you could assume that it is a main characteristic, and quite likely wrong, it would appear to me that Scan are in breach of 7.A.2 of the distance selling regulations, which if true would breach the contract for sale of the goods. Unless of course "main characteristic" needs only be the name/model of the goods, in which case they'd be fine. I'm no lawyer, so... anyone know any better?

[Giraffe]

Why are decibel ratings given for 'silent' equipment?

[pepsi_max2k]

because silent is also only a speculative value.

Silence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Silence is a relative or total lack of sound. An environment with sound below 20 decibels is considered quiet or silent."

[rabbid]

i had to send u a thanks for that interesting post about noise level of PSU