Review rated by 2 Ciao members on average: helpful
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This is my experience with NEC when i bought my last computer:
I ordered over the Internet and was rather surprised by the need to fax back the order form. After this was completed and my order confirmed I was given an expected 7 to 10 day delivery date. The first of a series of problems occurred when I was phoned up to say that they were out of stock of the normal 56kbs modems. I was given the option of waiting another 2 weeks for the modem or accepting an inferior non-voice capable modem. I accepted. Unfortunately, the computer has been taken of the production schedule waiting for someone to phone me and the computer was set to be delayed another 3 days.
I phoned up the day before expected delivery to confirm the computer was arriving. I was then informed that it would not because the new GTS Geforce 2 graphics card had not been tested and this would take a week! This is a component that was featured in your reviews so I was rather disappointed to find it was not tested.
5 days later I phoned up to confirm the new delivery date but was now informed that the 22” monitor I ordered
was not available. They gave me the option of waiting about 2 months before the monitors were available or accept a £100 refund and take a lower spec monitor. I opted for the latter and now hopped everything would proceed as I was promised the computer within 3 days.
When the computer did not arrive I phoned up again to see what had happened. It turned out that the monitor that I had been promised was not available and I would have to wait for a few more days. I went on holiday for a few days at this point and was promised that the computer would have been delivered when I got back. After returning, surprisingly enough there was no computer. It turned out that the sales team assumed I was after a 19” monitor as they had also had stocking problems with them. The 22” inch monitor I was promised was still not available and they were not expecting anyway.
In the end the order was cancelled and a new one created without a monitor. The computer successfully arrives about 7 days later and the monitor came from insight within 3 days. As an offer of compensation a 3 year extended warranty was offered.
The computer worked fine for about 2 weeks but then 1 time I tried to turn it on it did not work. I phoned up technical support who tried to work out the problem, could not, and said they would send an engineer the following day. Finally some support I thought. 3 hours later I got a call from Holland to say that no engineer would actually be coming because the graphics card which they assumed was the problem was not available and I would have to wait for them to send one from Holland.
I was re-connected to the British support team and said this was not acceptable. I did not necessary believe it was the graphics card that was at fault as the computer was not powering up at all. When I tried to explain this to the support man he offered the patronizing reply that this was his business and like he would not interfere in mine I should not interfere in his. We requested that he send an engineer out to ensure that the problem with the computer was the graphics card and no other component. It would have been easy enough to check graphics card was at fault by replacing with a different one.
In the end, I took the computer to a local computer shop. They quickly discovered that it was the RAM that was the problem, it has not been installed properly and had come loose hence the computer did not start up. It seems the patronizing support man had been wrong.
In the end I am completely disappointed by the whole process of buying a computer from NEC. A computer should not be available to order when 2 of the components are not available and the other one has not been tested even after is has been offered for review. Despite this the sales team were quite helpful and understanding and I appreciate it was not their fault. This is not however the case of the support man I spoke to who was quite simply rude and extremely unhelpful.
In the end I wasted about 5 days waiting for computers to arrive, have spent hours on the phone chasing the computer and waited about 5 week for the computer to arrive. I was offered compensation in the value of a £60 warranty however the technical support team have showed how useless this is. I would be interested in any response to this you can get from NEC.
