I bought a refurbished acer laptop from acerdirect.co.uk last year. From day one, it ran very hot and shut itself off occasionally. A few months ago, it started shutting itself off every 10 or 15 minutes, and it melted a laptop tray it was sitting on.

I contacted buyitdirect.co.uk as instructed via their e-messageing system with my order number and a description of the problem. I was advised to contact Acer directly. I rang Acer, gave a description of the problem and they tried to arrange collection and repair, but when I gave them the serial number, they told me the machine was registered to someone else so they couldn’t help me. I figured this was to do with the ‘refurb’ part of the laptop description, so I sent buyitdirect.co.uk another emessage. The reply stated that they would deal with the issue, and they arranged collection of the laptop last month.

A couple of weeks later, I get a message that my laptop is being processed, then that it is being returned. I ask if it was replaced or repaired, the reply was “this is being returned, you should have confirmation of dispatch within 48 hours”. Informative. So I wait, now today, a week later, I send them a message asking for the tracking number and for a description of what was wrong and repaired on the laptop (I’m an IT manager by trade, I know my way around a laptop). The idiot on the other end tells me it’ll be with me in a few days (not what I asked) and that it was being returned because they couldn’t find a fault with it. Seriously, they must not have switched the damned thing on for more than 2 minutes. I’m so angry. I called the support number for Ireland, customer service just tells you to use the emessaging system. So I rang the UK number (imagine the cost), customer services aren’t taking calls because of the snow. How convenient that their sales department were able to brave the bad weather and make it in, but customer services couldn’t? That should tell you a lot about their priorities right there. I’m angry and I feel like I can’t speak to a human being to find out what is happening. Sending it straight back again (which I will be doing) will only use up more time, and my warranty expires in a month, which I’m sure is what they are banking on.

Folks, avoid Laptops Direct / Appliances Direct / Direct TVs / Servers Direct / Acer Direct / AirCon Direct / Shop Targus and anything else this crowd of imbeciles run. They are a joke.

I was on your website in the process of purchasing a laptop, but had a problem with the promotional code I was using. So I called laptop direct and a sales person answered.
I explained the problem I was facing when adding the promotional code, I was getting the following message (Microsoft VBScript runtime error ‘800a0006′).

He was asking me something, I could not understand as his voice was not clear, I think it was so early at 10.15 that he was mumbling and hasn’t woken up properly.
So I assumed he was asking a different question and so I was giving him an answer based on his question.
He asked me twice, and I still didn’t understand properly and I gave him an answer on what I thought he was asking. Then the third time, he said “I’m not going to ask this question again, what error you are seeing”. At that point I was really annoyed at his response and put the phone down.

If this sales person really wanted to do his job properly, he wouldn’t talk to me like that and he would have listened to my problem at the beginning of this call (which I told him what was the error I’m getting) and instead of asking me to tell him what error I’m getting he would have replicated the same error I’m getting by testing it online.
I’m an application developer and been programming for 10 years, when our customers face problems, we ask for the problem and try to replicate what the customer is doing to bring back the problem on our screen.
Your sales man, clearly didn’t want to be at work and in turn has lost out on me as a customer.
I have been purchasing laptops from you for myself and for my business and have been informing friends and colleagues of this website.
This is the second time this happened to me, and on both occasions the service response could have been handled with a little bit of respect and professionalism (after all you are trading in the UK).
I’m so unhappy of your services and will never recommend you again. I know I’m one of 100’s of potential customers to you, but the more this continues, the sooner you will be out of business.

I googled your company through Google, and boy I found so many bad complains:

http://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2008/08/27/dont-shop-with-laptops-direct-unless-you-enjoy-marketing-email-and-a-hard-sell/

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=229570

http://www.ciao.co.uk/www_laptopsdirect_co_uk__Review_5580360

I hope one day, you can employ staff that can provide the level of service customers deserve in the UK, we are not in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Arabia that we should accept this type of service. Thank god we have proper ‘UK’ companies that provide the same products as you but with a service that has respect and professionalism that any customer should expect.

However, I suspect that if you try to use your rights to your advantage, they will continue stonewalling you to waste time. Contacting the manufacturer isn’t such a bad thing. At least their own engineers will take care of the problem for you.

so stop whinging and moaning. accept you’re cheapskate and put up with it.

Introduction

We aim to offer something many e-tailers fail to offer – excellent prices and a decent service. We promise to keep you informed by both email and SMS throughout the ordering and dispatch process. And if there are any problems, we aim to respond to your problem within 2 hours but guarantee to answer within 1 working day. We pride ourselves on our quality of service. We believe that the best form of marketing is through word of mouth and that those companies who succeed do so as a result of listening to their customers. We process over 1,000 orders a day and the majority of these are now from repeat customers and recommendations. We have won many industry awards for our Customer Service so unlike smaller, less well known e-tailers, we have a good reputation to keep and so we have invested in our Customer Services operations. Whilst we always aim to achieve a superb standard in customer care, we also believe in setting out customer’s expectations. For those new to buying goods on the web, there are areas unique to e-tailing which can cause problem – payment and delivery:

They don’t keep customers informed, they don’t respond within 2 hours to e-mails or emessaging, they don’t deliver quality of service in my experience (it is a relative term so I can’t outright disprove this comment unlike the previous points where they have failed outright me first person), they don’t rely on word of mouth they spam their clients with marketing which is not even double consent which is legislation in most countries (not sure in the UK but I will ask trading standards).

I’m so angry that they spent all this time convincing me to give them another try and then had no intention of actually supplying the order. And when i rang up to check (I had to ring them, they’ll never ring you) – the guy at the end couldn’t have cared less.

Anyone reading this, there is a reason they are cheap, and its not because of what it says on their website. Lets hope the credit crunch gets them their just desserts!