Fan turned up day after purchasing, no hastle at all. Thanks tak :)

Sit back lads, this is gonna be a long one.... Purchased a refurbished BenQ DW-1650 (listed as "Demo product/replacement from supplier" with no faults) (£19.34) and 100m of Cat-5 cable (£22.50) on 31st August 2006. Total came to £41.84 plus a £6.76 delivery charge. Package was listed as shipped on 1st Septermber, and arrived by Parcelforce on 5th September. Parcelforce were great, no damage and good tracking utility. Komplett had packaged the stuff very well in a much larger box than needed and lots of big air bags. It took me a week to even install the drive, and another til around 22nd-ish of September when I noticed that, intermitently, the drive would refuse to read DVDs. Took a while to notice as a) I hadn't used many DVDs and b) the fault only occured after the drive had been in use for a while. I spent the next week testing every single thing that could possibly be causing the problem, bar anything that would void the warrenty. Believe me, I made certain it was the drive with the problem and not my PC(s). At first I contacted BenQ support to see if they knew of a solution or would offer to RMA it, clearly stating the problem had occured under every situation I had tried and with any DVD. Surprisingly, they then suggested to use a DVD on their list of around 10 tried & tested compatible DVD media IDs. After emailing them again to point out I had tried numerous DVD-ROMS / +Rs / -Rs / +RWs... their only advice was to phone them. Not wanting to waste any money on more stupid advice, I moved on to Komplett... On 2nd October 2006 I emailed Komplett the full details of the problem and was told almost instantly to fill out their RMA form online. A couple of hours later the RMA was approved, and all that was needed was to print out the attached PDF with RMA form (complete with the original info I sent) and address label. So far, so good, and after writing in big red pen over the RMA form that the fault was INTERMITTENT (in the hope that they would spend longer testing it, if they ever didn't) I hopped off to the post office to pay £2.12 for second class delivery. That's when things started to go downhill. It was the 10th October before I heard anything back, just a simple auto mail to say they had "recieved my RMA". Ok, this was probably the RM being slow, but it wasn't going to get any better. By 19th October, after not hearing anything, I took matters into my own hands and emailed Komplett again to ask what was happening. I recieved a reply the next day, which I guess I should be happy about because Komplett have stated elsewhere that they take up to 3 weeks to test returned items. Unfortunately the reply wasn't good news. The first email recieved was to tell me that a replacement item had been shipped to me. An NEW AD-5170 DVD-RW. This was without even being asked if I wanted this, or would prefer a refund. I'd made sure not to cound out a (legally required if asked for) refund in the first place, as I would've accepted an identical replacement drive. (A second was then emailed saying the same thing, but the drive had a white bezel instead of black (the original DW-1650 was white), and another email from a real person informing me to ignore the black drive email. Props for the inteligence shown there, but overall I wasn't too happy as...) If I was your run-of-the-mill computer user who just wanted any old DVD-RW drive, I might not care. But having spend weeks of research to find out what the best DVD-RW available was (why do you think I waited until mid-2006 to buy one?) I wasn't too please at the non-DVD+R-overburning, non-bitsetting, nowhere-near-as-highly-rated NEC replacement, and got straight back in touch to inform Komplett that they were legally obliged to replace my drive with one of equal functionality, and that clearly the NEC drive was not. This time I didn't count my luck and flat-out requested a refund. Now, I had already noticed that they had no DW-1650's listed on their site, though they did have some DW-1655 drives listed (same drive bar one *additional* feature). That said, DW-1655's weren't in stock. Whether they would've replaced with one of those if they were, who knows. But in my case, I'm sure either a refund or at least an email to ask if I'd accept an XYZ model drive as a replacement could've saved a lot of time. Alas, an hour or so later I was told that returning the replacement NEC drive for a refund would be fine, and that they "appologised for the inconvenience". If only they'd have thought of that first... So, on 25th October the NEC drive turns up (to the same address as the original purchase was sent to, which I actually wasn't living at anymore, but I guess I picking at straws now). On 27th October I finally manage to email Komplett about this again (as they asked me to do), and was quickly emailed back to say an RMA had been created for me and, without me having to do anything else, another pre-filled RMA Form / Address Label PDF was sent to me. I just printed it out and, without even opening the NEC drive's package, shipped it right back to Komplett for another £2.12. On 3rd of November I got another "RMA Recieved" notice, and on 9th October was told a refund of £21,46 had been issued to the card I originally paid with. This clearly includes the £19.34 originally paid for the BenQ drive, and the £2.12 that will have been listed on the Royal Mail sticker on the returned NEC drive. So, had I only had to return the one drive, I would only have lost the original delivery postage cost. This is a small plus for Komplett, as they state on their site that they do not refund return postage. I guess someone took pitty on me... So, 2 months and 10 days down the line, I've basically lost £2.12 in returning one of the drives, and an average of £3.38 in delivery. I would also have lost around 2 months in DVD burning time, had I not decided after the NEC drive was posted to buy a DW-1650 from elsewhere. Lucky as every shop online bar one had sold out of them by that time. So,to roundup, pricing was good (for what should've been a fully functioning drive), packaging and shippign was OK bar the price (and consequently time), customer service was good enough (quick replies to emails, they usually knew what they were doing, and clearly helped make things easy). The RMA as a whole could've gone better, though the individual parts were pretty good (simple web-based, updates when recieved, no need to phone anyone...) but having to return something twice when a simple email could've avoided it isn't on. The rest? Well, the website's ok. Looks a bit dull and is slightly hard to navigate, but everything needed is there... And frankly, I'd only purchase from there again if I *really* needed a product they had and no one else did. As for the Cat-5, well, if anyone wants to purchase some rather long lengths (fully crimped), let me know eh? ;)

Can't comment on the online store (never used it - postage is a set price & too expensive with a store only a couple miles away), but... The Maplin store (in leeds, anyway) is pretty good. Great range of small electrical components and various other computing / electronic related stuff. I just spent 10 minutes yesterday with a sales rep going back and forth to a store room trying to find a small heatsink I could use to attach to a small computer chip (any bigger/wider/taller ones? without the gap in the middle?...). Eventually found the right one, the guy was pretty helpful and they were only 49p each. Same thing with capacitors / resistors etc, 0.0Xp each. Also got a soldering iron for a couple of quid. Can't beat the price. That said, actually finding what you want is pretty hard. They've got catalogues in store like argos, but the majority of stuff you actually have to find yourself on the shop floor, unless it's small electrical stuff in which case you can get it at a counter (and hopefully you don't spend half an hour trying to find something on the shop floor just to find it's actually only available at the counter :blush: ). Also, there's no guarantee that they actually have what you want in stock, or the amount you want. There's usually an alternative but virtually everytime i've been i've had to compromise on something (different heatsink size, different capacitor type, different solder tip make, different sized battery box...). I think twice i've almost bought all their stock of a single component. And there doesn't seem to be enough staff on the electronics counter, there was only one last time with 6 people queing (and because she was helpful everyone had 5 minutes of questions...) and the rest of the staff wondering around the store floor seemingly doing nothing. Obviously, you won't have to deal with that kinda thing online. So yeah, great for cheap little electronic things (range & price) but probably a lil expensive for bigger stuff or retail packaged things (£5 for some ShinEtsu thermal pads? noooo... 90p on ebay ;) ) Just to explain ratings - i've no experience with shipping & packaging (but it's too spensive), never returned anything, and the website has some detail but pics are lacking and a bit klunky to use.

I've ordered stuff from Overclock a number of times, including fans, a wireless mouse, a hard drive and posibly some stuff I've forgotten. I've never had any problems, everything's still working anyways. You'll probably find most things cheaper somewhere else, but overall they're pretty well priced, not overly expensive. Shipping can be expensive if you're using a courier but they have an option for Royal Mail postage which is much cheaper. But it'll be sent ASAP and usually get there next day, and blimey do they ever package their stuff :D I've never seen bubble wrap so big. Infact, it's not so much bubble wrap as huge mutant bags of inflated air. And that was only for a hard drive! I also got an OEM mouse once, which was unboxed but came well wrapped in plenty of bubble wrap too (regular sized, this time ;) ). The website's pretty good. Usual order status stuff, quick browsing, but I would prefer them to have an actual list of products instead of putting everything in big bordered sections and having some stuff bigger than other stuff... makes me think I'm missing something, and it's hard to get a grip on exactly what's there and what isn't. Either way, the range of stuff they have is pretty good, they've always been an option when I've been looking for something, I usually just shop elsewhere due to price. Can't comment on RMA/customer service stuff as I've never used it, so I've just rated it good (which it most likely is). Overall, they're actually my favourite and most reguarly used PC retailer online.