PC Specialist.co.uk

I think that you might have been able to purchase that little lot for under £200 from ebuyer, but the trick is putting it all together, so not too bad a price

Do not purchase a PC from PC Specialist if you expect them to provide anything other than very poor support or even to fulfil your order for you.

AVOID! AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

You should read the small print on their website as you don't really know what components will go into your PC. They only guarantee to provide components within a range so you don't know what you will get. Clearly they only use what they are getting the best deal on at any given time. I placed an order with them in May and they were very helpful - until they had my money!

PROBLEM 1
I ordered a specific type of processor. After a few days they contacted me to tell me that it was out of stock and that I could wait for it to arrive (they had no delivery date). As an alternative they offered me a "higher spec" processor for an additional £20 or a lower spec one with no price adjustment. Thank you very much I thought!

Not having much choice I opted to give them another £20.

PROBLEM 2
I had ordered a TV card that was advertised as dual tuner with analogue aerial input. There was even a picture of it showing where to plug in the analogue aerial. When the PC arrived I saw that they had supplied a different card from the one that was pictured that did not offer any analogue option. I cannot receive digital TV so the card was no use to me. I contacted them to ask them why and I was treated as though I was some sort of halfwit.

I pointed out that their description of the card said "Watch DVB-T and analog TV Worldwide on PC". They responded tersely and unsympathetically at first then over a period of a month they ignored most of my emails.

After kicking up a fuss I got a reply from a manager who told me that if I returned the original card I could have a refund. I am now faced with removing the card from the PC. Taking the time to package it and send it back to them then trying to find a suitable card and fitting this myself. The reason I went to them in the first place was that I was very busy and I thought they were going to build the PC I specified. I don't want the hassle of looking for components and fitting them myself.

PROBLEM 3
The PC was a replacement for one that I had purchased from ALDI just over three years ago. On paper the new one appeared to have a much higher spec but their is no apparent performance improvement. In fact I am now getting warning messages telling me to close applications down as I am running out of memory, etc.

I would never recommend PC Specialist to anyone after this experience. Please avoid.

My comments about PC Specialist Limited are far from good... basically I advise everyone to stay well clear of this company. I myself work in customer relations and this company treats is customers dreadfully.

I bought a high spec PC in early July 2008, it was delivered weeks later, and immediately had faults, after hours on the phone attempting to rectify the situation, they eventually agreed to have the item shipped back to them to be repaired (even though I had paid extra for such a service, they wanted me to sort the problem out). It was returned back to me two weeks later and to my dismay the report said that no fault was found... this was despite hours of technical diagnostics and reformatting the hard drive...

I booted the repaired PC back up and it went into a Windows Ultra Stress Test, with the final result being; it failed! The PC then died, no hard drive, nothing. The IT manager at my work looked at the PC and declared it was faulty; looking in the BIOS no HDD was visible.

I complained again to PC Specialist Limited, whom did not really want to help, implying I had done something to it. Eventually I got to speak with the Marketing & Sales Manager (Paul Crookes), he offered to repair the PC again and upgrade it with additional software, we decline and requested our money back. He said he would call us and arrange collection of the PC, this was the last we heard from PC Specialist until after we had written two recorded delivery letters, stating the Sale of Goods Act 1979, that all items supplied should be free from minor defect, not of satisfactory quality or fit for purpose. We reported them to Consumer Direct, and Trading Standards (who now have a file on this company) and we even started legal proceedings to recover the money they owed us through the court.

We sent a further recorded delivery letter to Danny Williams (Director), stating all the problems we had experience, he simply passed it all back to Paul Crookes, whom again done nothing. We then advised them that legal proceedings would be started.

Then we received an email stating "order cancelled", then a few days later we received a partial refund - at least we got the majority of our money back.

If I can sum up... this company offers high spec PC's at very good prices, though the quality, service and back-up are terrible. Do not waste your money, they are sharks. I only wish I had read the online reviews on this company, rather than believe their own testimonials. The online reviews all read similar to my experience, so be warned. Don't waste your time or money, pay a little more to gain piece of mind. Buying from PC Specialist Limited was the worst consumer experience I have even had to endure.

PLEASE, BE WARNED !!!

Well they worked for me!

Having had extremely poor after-sales support in the past I approached these guys as a potential supplier of future machines. I found the advice willingly offered was extremely helpful & eventually confirmed my specifications for a high performance machine. This was delivered slightly ahead of the projected date - well packed and in excellent condition. On each of the two or three occasions I needed advice when setting up the new machine this was immediately available and knowledgeable staff patiently listened to (and sorted out), my queries.

It seems these days that people are too quick to post negative comments about companies - as a business owner myself I know how quick people are to complain when things don't go to plan, but often it's the silent majority that make up the true picture of a company!