The TPU UK Clubhouse

[tigger]

I've heard they can be......... difficult lets say.

[Bo$$]

Im guessing MSI is the best route then

[FreedomEclipse]

Probably. but If OCuK still stock that particular card or have a similar model it stock, It could cut down turn around times by almost a whole month (i have no idea how long MSI take to send a working card back - Sapphire tends to take 1 month sometimes longer)

When Tattys old Asus 5850 Direct CU needed RMA'n, they accepted it back for RMA then they missplaced it.

Tatty got in touch directly with Asus and he asked them if they recieved the card and Asus denied ever recieving the card from OCuK. By this time OCuK already had the faulty card for 3weeks or around a month and had already cleared the card for replacement after testing it weeks ago.

Nobody there knows what happened to it, after they finished testing. and i think Asus was putting OCuK under pressure because they started communicating more on what was going on after Tatty spoke to Asus - before that Tatty was lucky to get any responses to E-notes at all.

Still no idea if they ever found the card, Asus couldnt give OCuK another 5850 Direct CU because OCuK never sent one out to them in the first place. and 5850 Xtreme's were just starting to appear on the market and it came bundled Crysis 2 game so i took that option instead of going for an MSI 5850 Twin FrozR II.

got the 5850 in, overclocked it, benched it. Sold it on for the RRP and kept the game.

-----

On the rare occasion OCuK decides to be professional they can be very professional, Not everyone has had a bad experience with them. but at the same time so many people have been shafted and messed around by them almost all of UK clubhouse members here recommend people to stay away from them.

Its not just on TPU either. if you google OCuK some, theres quite a lot of bad press on them floating around on other forums.

If you havent had a hassle with OCuk. count yourself lucky and pray will never need to, they are nothing but trouble

[tigger]

I use aria now instead, they seem a bit better than ocuk at least.

[FreedomEclipse]

Aria are a lot lot better, I havent used them much myself but one of the great things about them is their customer service. They run a forum and there are always company reps and staff that are there to help sort out any problems. they always have competitions where you can win some really good stuff - stuff that you can actually use and want rather then crap like mouse mats Aria branded mugs and Tshirts and other useless merchandise.

I only hear great things about Aria. I will definitely buy more stuff from them in the future but i tend to check out ebuyer first

[Bo$$]

i bought from Ebuyer and Aria both are good, Aria are a little worse in terms of RMA process. I have never returned anything i have bought from OCUK and i really dont want to find out how bad they are, i will call MSI tomorrow

[Tatty_One]

I find Novatech to be the best for any RMA issues, twice they have sent couriers to my door and I have handed over the faulty item and the courier has handed me the replacement at the same time

There are other good ones, I have never had a problem with Aria, Scan or E Buyer but they cannot match that kind of service!

I almost always have problems with OCUK but I always eventually get it sorted, it's kind of expected now unless you can pop in and do a face to face, my work sometimes takes me to Stoke so I have picked up replacement items, they seem less reluctant to mess when they see the customer in front of them with a Vinny Jones type scowl and a baseball bat

[FreedomEclipse]

Coincidently - Ebuyer have just started the whole courier pickup service thing for RMAs. I had to RMA a hard drive for a client i built a system for. Problem is, Hes all the way in Macclesfield. booked the courier to pick up from his address and everything went fine.

strange thing though.... they made me call up ebuyer support just to authorise the RMA when i already added in the description that the drive was running really really slow, refused to boot until you cleared the issue because the hard drive was suffering from smart errors.

I called the number they gave me and a guy picked up and I literally said (word for word) "err -- its not booting" and the guy on the end said it was fine and he would authorise the RMA then hung up.

I was genuinely miffed why they made me call them up to be on the phone to them for less then 5 seconds. Ive RMA'd stuff through them before but this is the first time they made me call up.

Everything that was wrong with drive I put in the description anyway so what more could i tell the support rep????

If it was a chick on the other end of the line i wouldnt have minded though, but it wasnt.

[cheesy999]

Originally Posted by FreedomEclipse

Coincidently - Ebuyer have just started the whole courier pickup service thing for RMAs. I had to RMA a hard drive for a client i built a system for. Problem is, Hes all the way in Macclesfield. booked the courier to pick up from his address and everything went fine.

strange thing though.... they made me call up ebuyer support just to authorise the RMA when i already added in the description that the drive was running really really slow, refused to boot until you cleared the issue because the hard drive was suffering from smart errors.

I called the number they gave me and a guy picked up and I literally said (word for word) "err -- its not booting" and the guy on the end said it was fine and he would authorise the RMA then hung up.

I was genuinely miffed why they made me call them up to be on the phone to them for less then 5 seconds. Ive RMA'd stuff through them before but this is the first time they made me call up.

Everything that was wrong with drive I put in the description anyway so what more could i tell the support rep????

If it was a chick on the other end of the line i wouldnt have minded though, but it wasnt.

Same thing happened to me, 2 months ago with my motherboard, i filled in the entire description of my motherboards problems, and even how i had arrived to that conclusion, they then made me phone them, and i said something along the line of 'The usb socket doesn't work', and then they arranged a courier to pick it up

[KieranD]

Scan.co.uk had really good communications when i had to RMA my PSU. I heard Corsair make you ship to the Netherlands for an RMA but Corsair tell you to deal with the seller directly on their website.

I heard Ebuyer are good to deal with luckily ive never had too.

Mostly i use Ebuyer and Scan because of the free delivery but i do check Aria and Novatech, actually i got this 6850 from Novatech last November. Someone called ocuk overgangsters once and that stuck in my head.

[FreedomEclipse]

Few of us here have had problems with SCAN when it comes to RMA.

SCAN are a great company. but most of the time. if you need to RMA something through them. it depends whose dealing with your claim.

I dont like to name names. but theres a guy in their RMA dept. called Micheal.W who is a bit of a c*nt. He will be the first one to try and stonewall you or shaft you any way he can.

When i wasnt happy with my 6970s due to not being able to mount an aftermarket cooler or at least take the cooler off to apply better TIM cuz it would void XFX's warranty. I decided to go for a refund and go with a different AMD partner as i wasnt satisfied with the so restrictive warranty policy. I owned the cards for less then 2 weeks. Contacted them for RMA, and no suprise - MichealW shot me down saying the cards had been taken out of their box and used so he wouldnt accept them.

Didnt bother with him anymore and took the issue straight to a the RMA dept manager who represents SCAN on bit-tech forums. And he cleared me for RMA.

I know theres a few people working on the RMA dept. but if MichealW is processing your claim, then dont expect it to go smoothly.


:EDIT:

anyway

time to part out my beast while i wait for my new case to arrive

[KieranD]

Well i had a real problem with my PSU and it went fine, you had the cards for 2 weeks which im guessing is just past the return date. Maybe that person is just a general cunt whoever they where. Who else are you saying had problems with them?

Anyway today is boring, which is a bad reflection on myself.

I like how you said you where not mentioning names and just did it anyway.

[FreedomEclipse]

edited

anyway. my case is here!!!

all 17Kgs of it.

[Millennium]

I have had no problems with both Scan and Ebuyer RMA. Well, to be honest, neither refunded my return postage but I think that's still not a bad deal.

Haven't tried anyone else. Well, creative labs were great, but that was about 14 years ago lol

[Bo$$]

Originally Posted by FreedomEclipse

edited

anyway. my case is here!!!

all 17Kgs of it.

I need teh pics!



I called MSI, they told me to go ahead with the OCUK RMA and if I have any trouble just Fwd them the RMA number and some pics of the issues occuring and they will kick some ass....

[KieranD]

Originally Posted by Bo$$

I need teh pics!



I called MSI, they told me to go ahead with the OCUK RMA and if I have any trouble just Fwd them the RMA number and some pics of the issues occuring and they will kick some ass....

Nice to have the backup of the manufacturer as then it puts real pressure on the retailer so they dont f'k up.

@Freedom - Stick up some pics of that nice case when its done.

[FreedomEclipse]

Originally Posted by Millennium

I have had no problems with both Scan and Ebuyer RMA. Well, to be honest, neither refunded my return postage but I think that's still not a bad deal.

Haven't tried anyone else. Well, creative labs were great, but that was about 14 years ago lol

I made more then 10 long phone calls to their HQ/showroom near manchester somewhere, Micheal.W PROMISED to at least refund me money for postage for the inconvience as they fucked up with their stock levels and it wasnt just the 1 item i was sending back for RMA. all the items i sent back amounted to about £20-25 recorded delivery. He asked me to scan and attach the reciept to an email and i did it. then he started bullshitting and saying he never recieved no emails. he asked me to email them to different email accounts, and then he claimed to recieved it after about 5 or 6 attemps, after that he wiped the email logs and did nothing but ignore me.

When i took the issue to the RMA dept manager at bit-tech, he was not aware of what happend but looked into it. but he too claimed that there were no emails logged and I forwarded him proof of the sent emails/attachments and also Micheal.W's emails promising to refund me.

I got my refund anyway.

Originally Posted by Bo$$

I need teh pics!



I called MSI, they told me to go ahead with the OCUK RMA and if I have any trouble just Fwd them the RMA number and some pics of the issues occuring and they will kick some ass....

LOL even MSI know how bad OCuK are... thats sad


still stripping out my old pc i'll put up pics step by step

[Bo$$]

Originally Posted by FreedomEclipse

LOL even MSI know how bad OCuK are... thats sad


still stripping out my old pc i'll put up pics step by step

Excellent

[KieranD]

What a total arse up you went through with ocuk. How come you wanted to send back the xfx's but have xfx 6970 in your specs?
No wait i meant Scan.co.uk not ocuk. No wonder i got mixed up.

[FreedomEclipse]

It wasnt OCuK -- it was SCAN

bleh. XFX are running a very restrictive warranty. I wanted to replace the stock cooling with some after market coolers. but aparently, theyve put a stop to people doing that by putting void stickers on the top of screws.

I contacted XFX and they just said it voids my warranty if i do anything to card. and i wasnt happy with that at all so i wanted to RMA it. THEN i found that that almost EVERY other partner was runnng with the same restrictive warranty except for 3 of them - Asus, MSI and i think EVGA, but they are not a AMD partner.

I googled into the warranty thing and a lot of people werent happy about it.

A guy in Xtreme forums opened a ticket with XFX and asked them what if the cooler gets packed with dust - they cant take the cooler off and clean it.

XFX's reply was to RMA the card to them (or the store if its still under shop warranty)

but you can already see how stupid the warranty is

[Fourstaff]

Stupid for us, since that we know what to do, but its not so stupid for them, they probably received loads of people unscrewing the heatsink, then fucks up by not apply TIM etc.

[FreedomEclipse]

their lack of faith in the enthusiast is disturbing.

(needless to say)

[cheesy999]

Originally Posted by FreedomEclipse

their lack of faith in the enthusiast is disturbing.

(needless to say)

it's not the enthusiast it's someone completely new to technology who thinks the thermal paste is a type of mould

[FreedomEclipse]

Originally Posted by cheesy999

it's not the enthusiast it's someone completely new to technology who thinks the thermal paste is a type of mould

The thing is. Most people who are new to tech or at least less versed in the dark arts of parting out ones PC and laying its guts out over the bedroom floor like trophies. Most of them wouldnt know what TIM is let alone know that it aint fairys and rainbows inside their pc case that makes their system run.

a noob doesnt know where to start. and many more tech minded people would rather help their friends out and do it for them then rather they damage anything (or at least thats what i do) aftermarket coolers are easy to mount. but to a noob its like countdown with carol vorderman or Mastermind.

XFX have a history on supporting enthusiasts, but theyve turned their back on them

[Bo$$]

thats why i bought MSI, the only other card they have in stock is a gainward so i might get that