I am having immense trouble with ebuyer.com.I have been a valued
customer of theirs since early last year,in September I decided
that it was about time I gave my primitive PC system an overhaul
and buy a completely new PC setup.I plumped to buy an ECS 7S5A
motherboard,Athlon 1.4Ghz processor,case and processor fan from
ebuyer.They were selling them for a good price,and as I had dealt
with them before,I thought it would be a smooth process.
All went well with my new spangly PC setup,and I was very impressed
with the prompt delivery and even more impressed with how it performed.
Unfortunately my PC suddenly went completely on the blink a few
weeks ago,and refused to boot up at all.The BIOS no longer beeped
at me,nothing was displayed on the screen,and it basically was
a dead duck.I checked the battery,replaced it with another,tried
all the leads,but to no avail.
Suddenly I was left without a PC to my name.I managed to get
hold of ebuyers phone number,and so decided to give them a ring
regarding what to do about returning my motherboard.I also decided
to return the CPU cooler,as the built in coolant agent on the
heat sink would now be rendered useless,and I didn't want my processor
to go wrong too!
Upon phoning their helpline,I was told to fill in an online returns
form!As I didn't have access to a PC to go on the internet with,I
could forsee a few communication problems!I managed to rig up
a temporary system (albeit a s-l-o-w one) to try and sort my problem
out.I managed to get onto their site and submitted a returns form,which
was promptly accepted by their technical support department."Great",I
thought,"this'll be sorted out in no time".I received
an email back saying that the process of returning the motherboard
and cooler would take about 7-10 days or "sooner in exceptional
circumstances".
I am a student with the OU,and also do some work for my company,so
a fast computer is essential to me for both graphic work and also
application speeds.It didn't seem to matter that much that I would
have to wait a week or so,so I waited and checked the site and
email for news of any updates.They acknowledged receipt of the
motherboard and cooler on the 5th of March.Nine days after this
(14th March) but I became increasingly concerned that on the status
page nothing seemed to be happening.
I thought I'd email my concern about this to them,and that I
needed my computer for work.I received a prompt email back from
them apologising for the delay and that they'd have the motherboard
back to me w/c 18/03.
The next day I checked the status page and saw that they couldn't
locate the fault in the motherboard and that it'd take up to 28
days to send it back to the manufacturers for repair or replacement.7-10
days?more like 30-40 days!In terms of the cooler,I had told them
of my reasoning for returning it,which earlier they said were
a valid reason for replacement.They reported that they had not
found that there was a reason for it being faulty and that it
would be returned.Obviously I became angry at this and decided
to email them a stern email,saying that this was not good enough,and
should they carry on with this course of action I would have to
complain to good minded souls such as yourselves.
This email was ignored,so I decided to phone them today.After
waiting in a queue for 20 minutes,I was told there was nothing
they could do about it (despite the fact that when I last looked
they had over 500 of the motherboards in stock!All I wanted was
a quick replacement...could you help?This is beginning to drive
me mad!
Links to Other Ebuyer stories: Link1|
Link2 |Link3|Link4|Link5
A Right of Reply letter (and an email) has been issued.
update on 25 March 2002
Following the Right of Reply response from
ebuyer.com (see Column above right), the consumer has written to
me:
"Dear Jon, Regarding this complaint,the funny
thing about this was that when I spoke to ebuyer on the phone just
before the right of reply letter,they had a totally different attitude
to me.They hadn't replied to my emails that I had sent,and when
I spoke to the manager,he said that they always reply to emails
within "a couple of days",I told him that it had been
almost a week and "hallelujah" just after I spoke to him,the
email I had sent had been replied to within ten minutes!
The same thing had happened when I commented on the original status
of the motherboard after nine days when nothing had been reported,the
next day the fault was investigated!The right to reply was polite,but
it didn't say anything new. Thanks a lot for doing the right to
reply,and helping me out.It's nice to have polite and correspondance
from them for a change. Thanks for all your help"
