I require some advice

Hello, this is my first post here and I hope someone will be able to help me out. I require some advice regarding Consumer Rights on a PC I purchased just to make sure I am clear on where I stand on a matter regarding its repair. I'm going to go through everything that happened now.

Okay, so I purchased a custom built PC from a company called Computer Planet. They are UK based, as I am and the purchase was made online on 28/02/2016. As a custom build however it started production on 01/03/2016 and I was then invoiced upon completion on 11/03/2016 with delivery coming on 14/03/2016. Payment for the PC was by credit card for the total amount of £1,018.84. There were a number of factors to my choosing this company to build my new PC over similar companies such as the range of options they offered and the ease of use of their website, but also their website stating that under their warranty the repair time if something did go wrong was five working days, which sounded reasonable.

At first everything was okay with the PC although there were some issues in the early days such as discovering that Computer Planet had not updated the BIOS on my chosen Motherboard despite their website clearly stating that it should have been the first step in their testing process. This issue was resolved however, though I had to fix it myself with their instruction, which wasn't as helpful as it could have been.

Around late August/early September (I forget the actual date I'm afraid) the system developed a fault. The USB ports would suddenly switch themselves off, even when they had been working earlier in the same session. When this happened my PC would also refuse to shut down. The first time it happened everything was fine after cutting the power and rebooting, so I wrote the incident off as a one off, which I acknowledge was foolish in hindsight. After it happened again I reported the fault to Computer Planet's support on 05/09/2016.

Support was timely at first. A Computer Planet technician remotely connected to my PC the next day and tried to resolve the issue. However he was unable to. In point of fact it was made worse, with USB related software continually trying to reinstall install at every log-on, though the original fault did not happen again in this time. The technician suggested to me that I reinstall Windows and provided me with documentation to do it with. This is where support hit the first snag, as I didn't have my Windows install disc. It was supposed to have been shipped with the PC but was missing, a fact that I unfortunately did not pick up on until I needed it. The Computer Planet tech was able to provide me with an ISO file to download and then instructed me to make a bootable USB for it. This is where the process slowed as I did not have a suitable one to use and had to buy one online as the only place that sold them locally was sold out. This took longer to arrive than I had hoped and due to other commitments I was unable to go through with the reinstall straight away. I tried this on 18/09/2016 only to find that the USB would not work. I double checked the instructions I had been given and did not find that I could have done anything wrong. I was however able to do the reinstall with a DVD-R, which again I had to buy.

However this did not go exactly according to plan either as for some reason the reinstall made some of my hard drive space become something known as 'Unallocated Space' and was unusable when I got back into my PC. The same technician remotely connected to me again, on 19/09/2016, and tried to fix it. Again, he was unable to. He asked me to reinstall Windows again. I got the impression that he thought I had done something wrong. Perhaps I had, I don't know, I'm not a computer technician myself. I will point out as I did to him that the instructions he gave me at this point were exactly the same as they were the first time and were exactly what I had already done, which I informed him. However I reluctantly agreed to reinstall again. However this time the reinstall would not work at all. I ended up with a PC with no operating system on it, completely unusable.

At this point he authorised an RMA which I was relieved about, as those two days sitting there trying to follow his instructions, something I wasn't fully confident to do and weren't working anyway, proved very stressful for me. The technician arranged a collection via Parcelforce who picked the PC up from me the next day, with Computer Planet receiving it back on 21/09/2016.

To date, they still have it. I draw attention back to the fact that their website advertises a five day repair time. Right off the bat this increased to seven working days. Okay, I thought, every repair must be different and five days is probably an average. The thing is, counting only working days, not including the day they got it back even though their status page immediately update to suggest that they had started work on, they've now had it twelve working days. I have either been informed directly or had it alluded to three times now that it will be dispatched back to me soon but three times it hasn't been. The first time was on 29/09/2016 when I received an email that the PC was now in Quality Control and that I would receive a dispatch confirmation within the next 24 hours. It didn't come. It was the weekend by that point so I got in touch with the company on the following Monday, 03/10/2016 and politely requested an update. They, meaning the same technician, informed me that the hard drive had failed and was being replaced and that if everything was okay with their tests I would receive my PC back that week. No exact date was promised that time and again, my PC was not sent back. I chased the company up for a third time on Thursday, 06/10/2016, one week after they first said it was in Quality Control, and received a response yesterday morning, 07/10/2016, that it was going to be dispatched that day. The technician's precise words were:

"Your PC is in Quality Control now and will be dispatched today at 7PM.

Please wait for confirmation on shipping."

Once again though, it was not shipped, despite the pretty definite sounding assurance that it would be this time. According to the status page it never left Quality Control. I contacted the company again however even though their website states that email support is available at weekends they did not respond to me yet. That brings us up to today. I am still hoping to hear from them tomorrow, as they do state that weekend emails will take 24 hours to respond to.

As I'm sure you can understand I am not pleased by the way this repair has gone. I rely on this PC for many things, not all of them recreational and have been inconvenienced by the fault and delayed repair for over a month now. The company has not been very forthcoming about exactly what has taken so long (the PC was built from scratch faster than this), why I was incorrectly informed that it was ready once or anything else. In fact they tell me nothing unless I push for information, and they've continually failed to dispatch the PC back when they say they will.

I am not well versed in laws and legislations so I would appreciation some help in understanding where I stand on this if I still don't get my PC sent back to me this coming Monday, or when I do get it back that I find it still has the same fault. Obviously that's worst case scenario and I'm hoping that everything will be in order when it is returned. I read up on the Consumer rights act on Which?'s website but there are a few things I'm not clear on.

I understand that there is a difference during the first six months and after. I just do not know for certain when that six months starts in my case. Is it the order date, the invoice date, or the date the PC actually arrived? If it's the first I was outside of the six month window when I reported the fault, but in it for the other two dates. I was also like to know if I will still be covered in the worst case scenario because of making that report when I did even though it is now well outside of the first six months.

Regarding the actual repair I also read that:

"You're entitled to a full or partial refund instead of a repair or replacement if any of the following are true:

a repair or replacement would cause you significant inconvenience

the repair would take an unreasonably long amount of time"

I'd like to know if this would have any bearing on my case. My PC has been as good as out of action now for over a month and while I certainly feel inconvenienced by that I do not use it for any work purposes, so I can't say its absence is hurting me financially, though I do have some voluntary commitments to a website I provide content for that I have got behind on. However for the second point the repair has taken longer than stated, over double the time Computer Planet stated on their website and still five days more than I was originally quoted. I find that unacceptable but does the law? What exactly would be considered an unreasonable amount of time?

I'd like to know because my faith in the company has been greatly diminished by the way this has been handled and if the worst happens I'd seriously consider taking my business elsewhere, so long as I can get all my money back.

Thank you for any help and advice you can offer me. I hope the post wasn't too long.