I thought i would share with you my experience the other day when i took back a faulty external hard drive. I arrived at the store, i shall not name the store because despite the fact that i disgrace the shop im not into naming and shaming online. Anyway I explained my problems to the man behind the desk who happened to be the manager of the store. I explained that the Drive just stopped powering on and the light etc would not come on and it wouldnt spin. The man explained that i coudl exchange the item for another one. I said i wanted a refund as I did not want to risk buying another faulty one.

This is where it got intresting, the guy told me that it was not company policy to refund me the money for this item (bear in mind this was only 3weeks old) He said i could send it away and have it looked at but that was as far as he was willing to help me. Well I went mad, I told him that it was my right to have a refund and therefore I would not leave the store until this had been provided. He then said that i was threataning him and that he was calling the police. He did this and eventually the policeman asked to speak to me on the phone. I explained my situation to him and he was sympathetic and said that i was indeed in the right.

About 45mins had passed and we still werent getting anywhere so i asked him to call their call centre or head office where i could speak to someone higher up than this numpty that i was dealing with. The guy called the office who in turn told me that i was entitled to a refund and they could not see what all the fuss had been about. When i cam off the phone the guy said okay ill refund it this time but im not supposed too (WTF!??) but before hand i want to plug it in and test it. Okay i said. Another 30mins passed until he found a laptop. What do u want that for i said? to test it he replied. I explained to him that even if he just plugs it into the mains he will see its broken. He did this and said looks like it could be faulty, but to be sure i wanna rig it up to the laptop???? i couldnt beleive this guy not only was he rude and arrogant he didnt have a clue what he was doing either. Quite what purpose plugging into the usb port would solve anyway he did this and said well the laptop doesnt detect it either. Well it wouldnt would it. After a lot more stalling and ping about i eventually left the store with my refund.

Just thought id share this with you, has anyone else ever met somebody this ridiculous?

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Feel free to name and shame.... I wouldn't be suprised if this store could be described as a "world of PC's" though...

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you would think so, but on this occasion it was MAPLINS ELECTRONICS LTD

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Hmm... that's quite bad for Maplins who generally have a good name [although my nearest store is 25 miles from here]

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woahh.. thats kinda bad!
I hate it when you go into a computer store, and the person serving you hasn't got the faintest.

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yeah, especially when they are manager of the whole shop. I used to buy so many pc bits from them because its quite cheap and alot nearer to me than pc world LOL

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ive had this happen to me at bestbuy where the guy behind the customer support desk was a total assface. isnt it called "Customer Support?" I bought an mp3 player from them and it wasnt allowing me to download mp3s onto my player, even with all the drivers, all the correct CDs and manuals on how to do it. (its called a zune if anybody knows it) but ya it was really messed up and it was "defected" he said i wasnt doing it right, so he plugged it into one of thier PCs to show me how, and ofcourse, it didnt work. even though he wasnt that rude, he still didnt help much. people are really mean sometimes.

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Sounds like every time I call Geek Squad. (in Indian accent) "Hello, what is your problem? I see...is the machine plugged in? It is...Well then I don't see a problem. Have a nice day." -my impression of a telephone help line

....rofl!!! that is always wut happens!! all the time!! you call the freakin american hotline and ofcourse it says redirecting to different services. unbelevable

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What is a physical body. The body is merely an object. It is a form of existence far too impure to store the gods within us called souls. Now you will remember. The bloodstained history. Material desire. Hunger. Sexual Drive. Desire to dominate. Desire for fame. Humanity. As long as there is a body, desires will be born. The human ego will never disappear as long as desire remains present. Humans will continue to fight to fulfill their bodies desires and it will never end. At this rate there is no future.

LOL! oh yeah the help lines are always like that, thats why I never call them as there so annoying and most of the time unhelpful.

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Why would you want to call the Geek Squad anyway? They'll more likely break than fix your machine.

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Last time I called Gateway: Long story short, the heat sink fell off my graphics card (NVidia only used 2 pins to hold it on) and it overheated. It was still under warranty, but it took me 2 hours to get them to agree to replace it...very, very frustrating.

Nextbuy in Mt. PLeasant, MI: Really knowledgeable, friendly staff. I took my computer there mostly because I was lazy and didn't want to deal with it myself. Unfortunately, as much as they know about computers, they are really disorganized and kinda half-assed as a business. It took me a couple trips to get ALL of my computer back.

I have good experiance story.
A couple of years ago I purchased motherboard, hdd, case and tv card from my local shop GSoft Computers at Smithfield. The ram I got at another due to the cost being about half price of local store.
Having built my computer, after a few weeks started having an intermittent restart problem. It would go ok for a few weeks or a few days. I was thinking cheap ram problem.
As the shop was a fair distance away I kept putting it off.
One day I went to my local shop to buy something else, can't remember what and the manager happened to be in, so I explained the problem to him, he asked me to bring it in and he would take a look.
Twenty minutes later I was back with computer in hand, he checked the bios settings and 2 in minutes problem solved at no charge.
It turned out the sata hdd needed a slight delay setting in bios, havn't had problem since. The old computer still works, but doesn't get much use now.
So now I get most things there, if I happen to have a problem I don't have far to go.
But in 5 years I have not needed to return anything.