Micro Direct don't touch them. (1 Viewer)

[Pie Face]

Any of you considering purchasing PC items from MICRO DIRECT think twice. Over the Christmas Holiday I bought a 17" TFT monitor for £140 from them a bargain? After it had been on for 30 mins' a line of dead pixels appeared on it. After speaking to a customer advisor they suggested that I should send it back - straightforward enough. However they would not send me a replacement until they had examined the faulty one! They suggested that the best thing, to speed things up, was to buy another one and get a refund when the original was received. Foolishly I agreed. The new one arrived the following day and the original was packed and sent straight back. After a week I had not received a refund so phoned them. They admitted that they had received it back but as yet it hadn't been examined. This went on for several weeks until I received an email from their engineer explaining that they had found no fault with the monitor and that I would have to send them £30 for the cost of the examination before they would send it back. At this point I began to get a little suspicious and did a Google search on this company - ouch, seriously bad feedback.
To cut a long story short I got the local trading standards involved and threatened legal action. Even after this it still took them a further two weeks to pay up. All in all it has taken over two months to get a refund and I'm one of the lucky ones.

So AVOID MICRODIRECT AT ALL COSTS

Mark

 

[simon]

Thanks for info Mark, i am trying to persuade /coerce the wife into upgraing from my old CRTand the 17" digimate/hanton was one of the ones i was looking at No hope of Microdirect getting my trade now

 

[Pie Face]

Thanks for info Mark, i am trying to persuade /coerce the wife into upgraing from my old CRTand the 17" digimate/hanton was one of the ones i was looking at No hope of Microdirect getting my trade now

Amazon have it in at £139.99 with free postage. This is the one I have and I'm very happy with it. Incidentally can't recommend Amazon enough I got an instant refund on a PDA that was 2 weeks short of a year old.

Mark

 

[scampo]

Thanks for info Mark, i am trying to persuade /coerce the wife into upgraing from my old CRTand the 17" digimate/hanton was one of the ones i was looking at No hope of Microdirect getting my trade now

EBuyer have a good reputation, too and I have had no problems with Pixmania. I have had problems with Amazon but they were quite quickly resolved, admittedly after a lot of emails and phone calls. Also Dabs are good generally - but any web search will show that problems arise with them, too.

Aldi have some superb Medion monitors (15 - 19") at excellent prices - and if there's a problem, you can just pop it back for a refund or exchange! The Internet can be a very trying place from where to buy goods.

 

[Pie Face]

The Internet can be a very trying place from where to buy goods.

Yes I will be certainly more wary buying electrical items over the internet in future. My biggest problem with Micro Direct was that their customer service line was never answered and once I'd made it clear that I would get trading standards involved, if a refund wasn't almost instant, they stopped responding to emails. It would perhaps be wise to do an Internet search on any supplier - the re-occuring problem with this company is that they don't like giving refunds.
Another point is to always pay by credit card (which I didn't) as it should be much easier to get your money back from them.

Mark

 

[scampo]

Yes I will be certainly more wary buying electrical items over the internet in future. My biggest problem with Micro Direct was that their customer service line was never answered and once I'd made it clear that I would get trading standards involved, if a refund wasn't almost instant, they stopped responding to emails. It would perhaps be wise to do an Internet search on any supplier - the re-occuring problem with this company is that they don't like giving refunds.
Another point is to always pay by credit card (which I didn't) as it should be much easier to get your money back from them.

Mark

Paying by credit card (and now you've mad me think whether debit cards carry the same insurances...) is vital.

I've had problems with eBay, too, even using their so-called "safe" PayPal. The truth is that the local shop is almost always better, I suppose.

 

[rogerscoth]

EBuyer have a good reputation......

Steve,
Not according to the experiences of some who have posted comments on Pricerunner.co.uk.
Some recent examples:-
"Avoid this site like the plague at the moment."
"Like others I have used ebuyer often in the past and even had something I made a mistake in ordering replaced. However recently they have become totally unresponsive to enotes. I purchased 3 items in one order and received 2."
"Absolute nightmare with these."
"Never never never use these people."
"Without doubt the worst customer service in the UK in my experience."

Roger

 

[scampo]

Steve,
Not according to the experiences of some who have posted comments on Pricerunner.co.uk.
Some recent examples:-
"Avoid this site like the plague at the moment."
"Like others I have used ebuyer often in the past and even had something I made a mistake in ordering replaced. However recently they have become totally unresponsive to enotes. I purchased 3 items in one order and received 2."
"Absolute nightmare with these."
"Never never never use these people."
"Without doubt the worst customer service in the UK in my experience."

Roger

Wow. The same with Babs, though. I have had no problems with any sellers except Amazon and eBay myself and even those issues were quite quickly and amicably resolved.

One of the problems of the internet is that anyone can write anything and that can be misleading. As a percentage of their total customers, it's difficult to tell if a place is safe or not. I quite like to % reliability given on eBay - that seems a good idea.

One thing I do check for now is whether a phone number is given. In the case of Dabs it's impossible to phone them, for example - and that leads only to frustration.

Hope you're well, btw, Roger, on this fine morning!

 

[Leif]

Paying by credit card (and now you've mad me think whether debit cards carry the same insurances...) is vital.

I've had problems with eBay, too, even using their so-called "safe" PayPal. The truth is that the local shop is almost always better, I suppose.

Hi Steve, hope you're well. Debit cards do not carry insurance. That is one reason to use a credit card.

I have heard of one or two problems with Pay Pal (beyond the high cost to the user). For example I read that someone sold an item, saw payment in the Pay Pal account, sent the item, and then Pay Pal cancelled the payment, and hence the seller lost money. I'm not sure what happened. Personally I am wary of ebay and would not buy an expensive item (>£100) unless I could pick up the goods in person and pay in cash.

Looks like spring is here at last as I saw loads of Cow Slips today (on a roundabout). Seems a bit early for them?

Leif

 

[scampo]

Hi Steve, hope you're well. Debit cards do not carry insurance. That is one reason to use a credit card.

I have heard of one or two problems with Pay Pal (beyond the high cost to the user). For example I read that someone sold an item, saw payment in the Pay Pal account, sent the item, and then Pay Pal cancelled the payment, and hence the seller lost money. I'm not sure what happened. Personally I am wary of ebay and would not buy an expensive item (>£100) unless I could pick up the goods in person and pay in cash.

Looks like spring is here at last as I saw loads of Cow Slips today (on a roundabout). Seems a bit early for them?

Leif

Thanks for that advice - I never even gave it a thought so that is valuable knowledge.

Cowslips - primula vulgaris (from memory...) in early March? Not up here, for sure. I'll keep a lookout - they were my mother's favourite spring flower (well - any spring flower she liked, in truth). I can remember their being so abundant up here we picked them for an old aunt for her to make into cowslip wine. How things change!

 

[simon]

Yes I will be certainly more wary buying electrical items over the internet in future. My biggest problem with Micro Direct was that their customer service line was never answered and once I'd made it clear that I would get trading standards involved, if a refund wasn't almost instant, they stopped responding to emails. It would perhaps be wise to do an Internet search on any supplier - the re-occuring problem with this company is that they don't like giving refunds.
Another point is to always pay by credit card (which I didn't) as it should be much easier to get your money back from them.

Mark

Is this the curse of the internet? In the years before PC you either shopped at a local store or mail order via a newspaper add, word of mouth etc. Along came the "PC" complete with "Internet shopping, Searches and Forums" alot of good helpful advice about everything, the whole shopping ethos changes, you no longer pop down the local store often paying thro the nose, now you search the internet get all the prices, advice etc then by from a store/ supplier hundreds of miles away, hope that the store is reputable and then give them your creditcard details! then watch the post. Problem occurs in the past walk down to the local store NOW send an email and hope? ring them up and find number unobtainable? End result? nip down the local store to pay thro the nose! find it's closed down and you have to buy it from Tesco's. Now thats what i call progress