pcspecialist.co.uk

I bought a laptop from pcspecialist.co.uk in December 2007 and it hasn't worked properly EVER! It is now January 2009!!!

They have the worst customer service and after sales service I have ever come across. They're incompetence is surpassed by none.

This may seem like a lot to read, but if you're contemplating buying anything from pcspecialist.co.uk, you'd be very wise to read on…

Shortly after I got the laptop it began to freeze up over and over and over. When I contacted pcspecialist.co.uk they told me it must be a hard drive problem because I was also having a lot of latency problems (slow running programs and delays in events happening etc). They said they'd send me out a new hard drive, which they did several weeks later but it was desktop hard drive, not a laptop hard drive. Another week later the correct hard drive arrived but the problems were still the same.

I contacted pcspecialist.co.uk again and they told me that the problems must be caused by an item of software that I had installed. I know my way around a PC so I began all sorts of diagnostics on my software but I couldn't find anything wrong.

I contacted them again (it was February 2008 by this time) and they agreed to take the laptop back for 'examination'. I truly believe that they just sent it straight back to me without evening switching it on because when I got it back it was exactly as it was before. I switched it on and it froze up again within about 5mins of powering it up.

I contacted pcspecialist.co.uk yet again and complained but they told me they could find nothing wrong with my machine and told me again that it must be the software I had installed.

I stupidly believed them and wiped my hard drive and re-installed my Operating System. Even with just the OS installed the machine still froze up.

I contacted pcspecialist.co.uk yet again and complained yet again and they decided to take the machine back to 'examine' it again. This time they claimed they found a fault. As mentioned in some of the other complaints on other websites about this company; they said it was the graphics card.

It was now around March 2008 and they sent the laptop back to me after quite some time and at great inconvenience to me, but without much of an apology.

I opened the box and turned the laptop on. As soon as I plugged a USB cable into it, it shut itself down instantly. I powered it up and tried plugging the power adapter into it because I thought it might be low in power. When I did that, it shut itself down instantly again. I tried again to power it up and on the 3rd attempt it finally stayed on... for a while.

I contacted pcspecialist.co.uk yet again and complained yet again. They said they would send me out a replacement laptop that I could test and make sure it was OK before sending the other one back. It took a few weeks and dozens of phone calls before they actually sent the replacement out. When it arrived, it was obviously a second hand laptop. It was an older model to the one I paid £800+ for and the keys were worn. The replacement worked to a point in that it didn't freeze up but I still had all the latency problems I had with the other laptop. Programs ran slowly and performance overall was very poor. It was so bad that I borrowed a laptop from work to do my work on whilst waiting for pcspecialist.co.uk to fix mine. The laptop I borrowed from work was a very low spec when compared to the Core 2 Duo model I bought from pcspecialist.co.uk but it performed much better and faster than either of the laptops pcspecialist.co.uk had sent me. I informed them of this but they just kept fobbing me off again and again and again.

By around June/July 2008 I was loosing all hope of getting any satisfaction from them but I kept complaining to them. I ran several of my own tests; processor tests and performance tests and e-mailed them the poor results. The processors in both laptops overheated in the tests after about 1.5 seconds! The latency was so bad that the testing software's diagnosis was that the pcspecialist.co.uk laptops were completely unsuitable for audio or video, which is what they were advertised as being great for and the reason I bought one in the first place.

I received no reply after e-mailing pcspecialist.co.uk the results of these tests so I phoned them and spoke to the sales manager, Paul who said he had responded to my e-mail, which he never did. I know he didn't because for the rest of the year I had sent him several e-mails which he said he'd replied to but he never did either.

Anyway, when I got Paul on the phone, which is not easy at all, he said he looked at the tests and said he was going to speak to the manufacturers and get back to me.

Yet again I had to phone and phone and phone before getting any response. When I finally got through to him he said that the manufacturers were going to send him a BIOS update and he would get back to me. Yet again he never got back to me. I phoned and phoned and eventually got hold of Paul again. He said he had tried the BIOS update on a laptop in the shop and it made no difference.

He then told me that he was getting a new model of laptop in and he would run the same tests that I did and let me know the results. Surprise, surprise I never heard from him. I phoned and phoned and eventually got hold of him and he said he had done some performance tests and would e-mail me the results for my review. Surprise, surprise I never heard from him.

I phoned and phoned again and when I got Paul he told me that the tests were done on a 'high end' machine and they were not satisfactory, but that he would do them again on a more similar model to the one I purchased. (As if they were going to be any better on a lower spec model of laptop).

I phoned and phoned again and again but I can no longer reach Paul at pcspecialist.co.uk. Every time I phone I either don't get an answer or someone tells me that he is out of the office. It is now January 2009, one year after I bought my laptop and it still isn't working!!!

The people at pcspecialist.co.uk do not have a clue about computers. I realised this from speaking to them on the phone. I would pretty much have to suggest a course of action to take and then they would agree. Take my advice and stay well away from them. They cannot be trusted to deliver the empty promises they make on their website.

BEWARE!