Viable Small Claims Action vs PC Repair shop?

Gavin83

How much are you hoping to receive in compensation via a legal route?

Searcaigh

I would have asked for original price minus depreciation and minus the faulty part - £500.

Which is now no longer relevant. It turns out that they did not, in fact, destroy the PC and I have just returned from with the store with it and it is definetly mine. I asked why I was told it had been destroyed, they said they re-checked after our telephone conversation and found it.

I asked no further questions, but recommended they put some T&C's on their website at least and left. I highly suspect their answer that the PC was merely lost in the store room to be deceitful and so will follow this up with a complaint as I now believe they are refurbishing any worthwhile PCs that
they can convince the owner to surrender any interest in with this 90 day disposal rubbish.

Thanks to everyone who gave their opinions/advice on this, even if I disagreed it was always food for thought.

EDIT: Openned up the PC, everything's there except for the RAM, they've put in 2 inferior versions. Emailing them to get to the bottom of it.

CoolHotCold

Searcaigh wrote: »

I would have asked for original price minus depreciation and minus the faulty part - £500.

Which is now no longer relevant. It turns out that they did not, in fact, destroy the PC and I have just returned from with the store with it and it is definetly mine. I asked why I was told it had been destroyed, they said they re-checked after our telephone conversation and found it.

I asked no further questions, but recommended they put some T&C's on their website at least and left. I highly suspect their answer that the PC was merely lost in the store room to be deceitful and so will follow this up with a complaint as I now believe they are refurbishing any worthwhile PCs that
they can convince the owner to surrender any interest in with this 90 day disposal rubbish.

Thanks to everyone who gave their opinions/advice on this, even if I disagreed it was always food for thought.

EDIT: Openned up the PC, everything's there except for the RAM, they've put in 2 inferior versions. Emailing them to get to the bottom of it.

Ahhhh, they don't have to do anything regarding the RAM.
You should of checked at the repair shop and chances are you signed to say you are picking up the item, shoulda checked it over before signing.

Equaliser123

CoolHotCold wrote: »

Ahhhh, they don't have to do anything regarding the RAM.
You should of checked at the repair shop and chances are you signed to say you are picking up the item, shoulda checked it over before signing.

If it can be established that they have switched the RAM, then there is plenty that can be done.

shaun_from_Africa

You should of checked at the repair shop

Checked it over by giving it a look for signs of physical damage maybe, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect someone to strip down a PC and examine every single component inside to make sure that it hadn't been swopped.

pendulum

You could never prove they switched the RAM though. It could have been done at any time since purchase.

It's not relevant now, but the £500 valuation made me laugh. The original purchase price less depreciation (huge!) and less the cost of a new motherboard = £500? What kind of supercomputer is this? (Don't forget this is just the tower we're talking about, not a complete system with monitor etc). Post the spec and I bet I can find loads of similar specced used PCs for sale for 1/3 of that price or cheaper that actually work (ie, no motherboard problem). I doubt your computers' worth more than £100 - £150 tops in its current state but could be wrong (doubt it).

Did they charge you for the pick up and diagnostic service? If not then you're lucky as they probably forgot considering the time that's gone by. I'd call it quits on the RAM.

Searcaigh

When I emailed them regarding the RAM, I gave them all necessary information to make an informed judgement. I supplied them with:

• The original invoice for the PC (all parts listed)
• The RAM I found installed within the PC (not a matched pair either)
• A copy of my original email to them wherein I explicitly list the current equipment within the PC (all the same as original invoice, but with a newer GPU).

I was expecting to have to fight for the RAM back, besides this, given my very recent dealings with them. I wasn't going to leave it as I gave it to them with double the RAM they returned, and the quality of their sticks was suspect at best.

The reason I gave them this info was so that they could decide that it was probably a losing battle to argue the point with me as they had agreed the state of the PC they received and I had got back something different.

Good news though, I phoned later to chase up my email and they are promising to deliver me out new RAM of the type I had by Thursday next week. I guess this thread isn't going the way I thought it might as litigation seems to be no longer necessary, but I will update here once it's hopefully all done and dusted.

There's some good advice in here - don't be intimidated by shops pulling "Our policy". It's gotta be lawful - check that it is. And if you do hand in a PC to a repair shop, list everything that was in it when you gave it to them and give them a copy. Remember your property is protected by law and any business will do what it can to hold onto every penny and sometimes every asset whether it's theirs rightfully or not!

Searcaigh

pendulum wrote: »

It's not relevant now, but the £500 valuation made me laugh.

If you shop for the original parts new, not part of an auction or refurbishment, they cost £720 in total minus the motherboard. The equivalent is not what I would sue for and I am entitled to the original equipment back or the value of it by law. Minus depreciation it'd be £500. The original PC cost thousands of pounds when it was new.

And I could prove, as in the post above, that the RAM was inaccurate as while I could change it from any point, downgrading the system was unlikely and I also supplied them with exactly all the parts they had received at the outset before any problems with them. If you're ever in the same boat, I'd recommend doing the same.

If you're being shafted it definetly helps to have taken precautionary steps, but never lie down and take it without at least establishing if your consumer rights or the law can back you up. I too was worried that I wouldn't be able to do anything in the face of "reasonableness" or it being hard to prove what was inside a PC when - but while you should have doubts and think about it from all sides, find something that can back you up and if you do be bold and get what's yours by right.

wealdroam

Searcaigh wrote: »

...any business will do what it can to hold onto every penny and sometimes every asset whether it's theirs rightfully or not!

Searcaigh, rather a sweeping generalisation there, don't you think?