ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
Personally I think that @oldhobber has been incredibly objective throughout this thread, many others would have simply ranted. After the massive disappointment he's just had I think we can cut him some slack.
Bad experience
- Thread starter oldhobber
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It is and was meant to be.
The posts it replies to were suggesting I was being unreasonable by wishing or expecting that PCS would meet their obligation as quickly as they could.
If someone is going to be condescending to me, I will have no compunction in returning the favour.
Just to play devil's advocate here. If I was an employee of PCS and someone gave me an obviously badly damaged pc to package there would be absolutely no reason for me not to flag it. After all I didn't cause the damage.
If on the other hand I'm due to pack it and I drop the thing, causing the damage, and assuming I didn't want my employer to know, I would package it in such a way that the buyer would think the damage occurred during transit. What possible reason would there be for me to take such care in packaging what is now effectively a pile of junk?
This leads me to think the damage most likely occurred in transit. If it was repackaged by the delivery company that could also explain the cable being missing as well.
If on the other hand I'm due to pack it and I drop the thing, causing the damage, and assuming I didn't want my employer to know, I would package it in such a way that the buyer would think the damage occurred during transit. What possible reason would there be for me to take such care in packaging what is now effectively a pile of junk?
This leads me to think the damage most likely occurred in transit. If it was repackaged by the delivery company that could also explain the cable being missing as well.
Thanks for your reply. It is, I am afraid, falling on deaf ears.
Just to say that I received the PC on Saturday 18 July and was on the phone to PCS within half an hour of receiving it. It was received back at PCS on Wednesday 22 July.
I have not heard a word from Customer services yet, only from the tech team to say it arrived back, with a form letter sent at 06:30 on Saturday morning to say sorry it had been three days since they got it back.
I am being treated as a job number and not as a customer. Fair enough if that is how PCS deal with these sort of situations. The problem is that it is not how I expect a business to deal with it, and so I have to accept that PCS's policies and my expectations are incompatible.
Yesterday, I was asked if I was willing to receive the PC before a final decision on the refund, with no apology or explanation of what had gone on since the PC had been returned. I chose instead to switch the matter round and ask PCS to prove that they wanted to supply me with the PC that I ordered, given that their best efforts so far had resulted in the order not being fulfilled. My one stipulation being that it be delivered by this Saturday, 1 August, two weeks after I informed them of the defective computer they provided me with and eleven days after they received it back.
As they have chosen not to reply to me today, I have asked them to confirm their decision not to fulfil the order and to confirm when I may expect the refund to be paid.
Up until today, I would have dealt with PCS again in future. I have no wish to deal with them ever again now. They have shown me where their priorities lie and they have shown me that their processes are more important than their customers.
I realise that saying this is not going to make me popular on this forum. But I think that it is important that what has happened is pointed out here.
Make no mistake. I want the PC. But if they don't want to provide me with it in a way that reflects the promises they make at the front end, then they can keep it.
As I have said before, this was my original thought as well. The following is to explain why I currently believe that this was not the case...
DPD is probably the most dependable delivery company I have experience of. I received the PC from them in a pristine PCS logo'd box with all the address and return info you find on all their boxes. To me, it is not credible that a DPD employee would have dropped the box, seen that the PC was busted, found an identical and pristine (including the tape) PCS box that exactly fitted the packaged full size case PC (suspended in foam webbing with around three inches clearance to the box shell) to fit it in, and that they managed to do this under DPD's own security cameras.
So, until PCS come back and say their surveillance cameras show the PC being safely packed and sent out (the call centre guy told me they record all of this), the more natural assumption is that the damage was done before dispatch. As yet, they have done little more than acknowledge that it has been received back.
As the kettle lead should have been inside the welcome pack, which was intact and closed with the flaps tucked in, I see no reason why it should have gone missing as a result of the PC being re-packaged.
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
You will have seen that I have been extremely sympathetic and supportive over your sad experience. I have also been appreciative of the calm and reasonable way in which you have handled the matter on here so far. I completely understand why you are 'anti-PCS' following your experience, but this is not the place to be floating theories or making accusations.
It's clear that an investigation into exactly what went wrong, where it went wrong, and why it wasn't caught before the PC arrived at your home, is going to take some time. It's also an incredibly rare event - I've never heard of a situation like this in all the years I've been on these fora - and so it's understandable why it may take a while for PCS to establish what happened and where it happened. I am sure that you appreciate that PCS will want to be in possession of all the facts before they come back to you with an explanation or a way forward.
I realise too that in your own mind you have already exonerated DPD and blamed PCS, and you might be correct, but at the moment your theories are just guesswork. I urge you to keep your powder dry until it's clear what happened and where. I could, for example, suggest that you dropped it as you took it out of the box and demand video evidence of you unboxing it to prove otherwise. At the moment all things are possible and we have to wait for PCS to discover what went wrong before we start throwing stones.
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You are absolutely right about the need to know more. But I have not exonerated DPD; I just, on the weight of evidence available to me, consider the possibility that the scenarios put forward are improbable. I would be very happy for PCS to present me with evidence that supports the DPD scenario.
I am not anti PCS, and believe I have, otherwise, always been complimentary about them. But I have reached a point where their lack of any human communication in the near two weeks since this happened leads me to consider that the service they provide, particularly when their primary service has failed, is incompatible with my expectations.
To me, the issue is not that something has gone wrong, but how they deal with the fact that it has gone wrong. Their current silence on the matter suggests to me that they do not wish to show any urgency in putting this matter right. And I find that unacceptable.
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
Fair enough. Can I please ask everyone to leave the discussion of what might have happened there for now, until we know the facts.
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This is one of the weirder aspects of modern hardware. DDR4 is all manufactured with a base speed of something like 2133 mhz, the advertised speed of e.g. 3600mhz is a factory rated overclock that requires XMP to be enabled to achieve. The memory controller itself is actually located on the CPU, and so applying XMP is technically overclocking your CPU too which will void your warranty with Intel if you tell them you have applied the setting. As a result, motherboards can't apply the advertised speeds by default. So if you don't apply XMP, your RAM will run at a much lower speed than what you paid for annoyingly.
I wonder how many thousands of people are sitting with fancy RAM kits that are running well below their advertised speed!
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Pretty sure if I had the kit, I'd have been one of them. I had no idea about that.
I am much the same! Over the past couple of years I've found myself spending untold hours watching a number of PC hardware-related Youtube channels over the past couple of years. While a lot of the content can be more focused on entertainment, the sheer amount of knowledge I've picked up from Linus Tech Tips / Gamers Nexus / Hardware Unboxed is hard to quantify.
As they say, the more you know, the more you realise you don't know!
After reading this thread in full, i do side partially with OP. If i had spent upwards of £5,500 on a brand new system (especially one meant for some serious work by the looks of it), i too would expect a certain level of cautious-ness to be applied. Perhaps, slightly more than the already extreme level of cautious-ness i'd expect the builders to take with any "regular" system.
Although, having said that, i do also side with PCS. They are incredibly busy (as a result of our dear aunt corona). They are probably doing their best, but with the higher than normal number of orders coming in, i'm not surprised.
Although, having said that, i do also side with PCS. They are incredibly busy (as a result of our dear aunt corona). They are probably doing their best, but with the higher than normal number of orders coming in, i'm not surprised.
barlew
Godlike
So i have a long sordid history with PCS laptops and RMA's since 2012. I have had three separate models each have been sent back at least two times for repair under warranty (the latest one is currently on its third RMA) to total 7 RMA's.
One of the laptops was sent to me in the wrong chassis and two were returned from RMA supposedly fixed after a quality inspection to either have the same fault still present or new faults on the system. Unfortunately i am not surprised that you have received your PC in the state you did with the caveat that the PC could have mysteriously been damaged in transit without damaging the transportation packaging.
From this entire drama i have found that PCS customer service is extremely good if you submit an official complaint. You need to be objective and detailed in your complaint and tell them what you feel they need to do to fix the situation and restore your trust in the company.
To submit an official complaint you need to email [email protected] with "Official Complaint" in the subject bar. They should then contact you within i believe 7 working days. This contact may not be a resolution but an acknowledgement of your complaint and steps of how they are going to investigate.
*edit* to put in the correct procedure for submitting a complaint
One of the laptops was sent to me in the wrong chassis and two were returned from RMA supposedly fixed after a quality inspection to either have the same fault still present or new faults on the system. Unfortunately i am not surprised that you have received your PC in the state you did with the caveat that the PC could have mysteriously been damaged in transit without damaging the transportation packaging.
From this entire drama i have found that PCS customer service is extremely good if you submit an official complaint. You need to be objective and detailed in your complaint and tell them what you feel they need to do to fix the situation and restore your trust in the company.
To submit an official complaint you need to email [email protected] with "Official Complaint" in the subject bar. They should then contact you within i believe 7 working days. This contact may not be a resolution but an acknowledgement of your complaint and steps of how they are going to investigate.
*edit* to put in the correct procedure for submitting a complaint
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I don't think that anyone is actually saying that they don't have the right to feel aggrieved but to suggest that a machine was boxed up damaged to that extent is a very serious accusation.
And to suggest that everyone else is lowering their standards by buying a PCS machine is just rude.
My PC was dispatched yesterday and on my order I was able to see who built my machine, who tested it, who QC'd it and who packed it. I can't understand why/how someone would think they could get away with what sounds like significant damage when the whole process seems well marshalled. Hopefully this gets resolved soon.
It is not an accusation. It is a fact. I understand that people have to take me at face value on that, though I am asking no-one to believe me. I am hoping that at least they will consider the issue from my point of view because it is impossible for me to consider it any other way.
Even now I have received no attempt from PCS to discuss what has happened here, only that a technical issue has occurred. They have expressed no urgency and they have expressed no concern for my situation. So I feel, in my limited experience, that my trust and my money are better placed elsewhere. They are happy to give me a refund without any attempt to settle the matter other than to treat it as a returned PC that broke down. It is not. It is a broken PC that was never capable of booting and PCS have not yet fulfilled the order I made with them, despite having been in receipt of my money for nearly two months.
The PC has taken a very serious bash, and I believe they will see it happened prior to dispatch if they review their QA/security footage. I have not claimed any malice on anyone's part, and have accepted that people have bad days and sometimes make poor decisions. Yes I was angry at the time, but the help desk dealt with it well, though they made promises that were neither fulfilled nor attempted to be fulfilled, and decided not to engage with me to discuss the matter.
So I want my money back.
Even now I have no general criticism of PCS. I am merely saying that their after sale standards of care, in the face of a rarely occurring problem, are below that which I find acceptible. I fully understand that on another day I would have been fully satisfied and singing their praises.
PS, I could still have done that had they acted with haste to put things right and invest a little time engaging with me!
I've just replaced a few fence panels in my garden... Want to come and sit on them?
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