5 years ownership, not a happy customer.

[Imogen]

Hiya.

After a good couple of years of trying to regain access to my account, I finally figured out my password & what email I used to buy my laptop off PCSpecialist back in 2019. And I'm here now with an update, and I'm so mad it took me so long to regain access because I would've complained way more earlier.

I bought a...
Chassis & Display: Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 60Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
RAM: 16GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 9750H (2.6GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo)

Keeping in mind, she's a custom build.

--

I have to say, PCSpecialist. I am completely disappointed in my laptop. When I first received this build, I had issues right out of the gate. Blue screen of death and processing issues causing pixels to be completely green, obviously my laptop was sent back for repair literally 3 days after first arriving and that was then fixed (a bit of a lie, it still crashed to be honest every so often but couldn't be asked again). Went on good for a solid year, and then further issues started happening. My backlight doesn't match the colours properly on the LED keyboard control centre... you click purple... and BAM you get red! I'm assuming some of the LEDs in my backlight are either not showing through enough or are just I dunno. Dead? Either way, I can only get about 4 colours compared to a good 12 or whatever...

Anyway, that's just colour so I just leave it really even though it's something that shouldn't really have broken a year into ownership.

Fast forward, I start having issues with crashing yet again. My hard drive broke, so it was replaced with a better one and then went my SSD... Again replaced with a better one that was far cheaper and faster than before...

I have to say, when I first went into the housing of my laptop, which is when I had to replace the hard-drive. Things were not even properly screwed & just seemed super rushed.

The mousepad right-hand click now failing, it's like it's sunken in and normally you'd expect it to be the left-hand click given you actually use that way more than the right... but nope! Not even that, I hardly even used the mousepad. I use a steelseries gaming mouse! Wireless AEROX...

So SOOOO disappointed given I paid £1000+

OH, and I had to replace the screen which has been updated to OLED...

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hiya.

After a good couple of years of trying to regain access to my account, I finally figured out my password & what email I used to buy my laptop off PCSpecialist back in 2019. And I'm here now with an update, and I'm so mad it took me so long to regain access because I would've complained way more earlier.

I bought a...
Chassis & Display: Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 60Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
RAM: 16GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 9750H (2.6GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo)

Keeping in mind, she's a custom build.

--

I have to say, PCSpecialist. I am completely disappointed in my laptop. When I first received this build, I had issues right out of the gate. Blue screen of death and processing issues causing pixels to be completely green, obviously my laptop was sent back for repair literally 3 days after first arriving and that was then fixed (a bit of a lie, it still crashed to be honest every so often but couldn't be asked again). Went on good for a solid year, and then further issues started happening. My backlight doesn't match the colours properly on the LED keyboard control centre... you click purple... and BAM you get red! I'm assuming some of the LEDs in my backlight are either not showing through enough or are just I dunno. Dead? Either way, I can only get about 4 colours compared to a good 12 or whatever...

Anyway, that's just colour so I just leave it really even though it's something that shouldn't really have broken a year into ownership.

Fast forward, I start having issues with crashing yet again. My hard drive broke, so it was replaced with a better one and then went my SSD... Again replaced with a better one that was far cheaper and faster than before...

I have to say, when I first went into the housing of my laptop, which is when I had to replace the hard-drive. Things were not even properly screwed & just seemed super rushed.

The mousepad right-hand click now failing, it's like it's sunken in and normally you'd expect it to be the left-hand click given you actually use that way more than the right... but nope! Not even that, I hardly even used the mousepad. I use a steelseries gaming mouse! Wireless AEROX...

So SOOOO disappointed given I paid £1000+

OH, and I had to replace the screen which has been updated to OLED...

Have you serviced it since you've had it? ie repasted the CPU and GPU and taken the fans off to remove dust build up from the fans and heatsink?

Did you order with windows or without?

The keyboard colour is likely just a software issue

 

[Scott]

Just a heads up. We aren't PCS per-say. This is a support forum with volunteers mostly residing. The odd admin does pop in from time to time but that's more just to check in and make sure all is well and to deal with any suggestions etc.

You won't be heard by the company unless you message the company directly. As much as it sounds like a poor experience, I don't think you have helped your case by simply solving the problems yourself. You have to give the company a chance to put things right, it's after that when opinions can be gathered on how they handle it.

PCS don't manufacture or produce any of the parts in your laptop. Any failures you have experienced have been down to the manufacturer of that particular part. PCS would replace the parts under warranty and then take up the fight on your behalf on the faulty parts with the manufacturer. They're pretty good at doing this and in most cases will honour the warranty of certain parts past the 1 year guaranteed warranty time. The drives would be a good example. If they were a decent known brand, they would likely have been replaced under warranty.

 

[Monarch]

Hi folks,

Thank you for posting this feedback @Imogen, I am sorry to read that you had had some negative experiences in owning the laptop. This is not typical and something that PCSpecialist would work to resolve. I am not sure if you have been in touch with our support after your return, but I should assure you that in additions to warranties provided or purchased; PCSpecialist have lifetime hardware technical support with every order. I would encourage you to reach our to our support team at any time to discuss technical or troubleshooting matters, our focus would be to have the goods working as they should be.

Based on your description of the time that has passed since the issues began several years ago, I am not sure if they were under warranty at the time they started, from what you describe it is likely they were. This is something you can review from your invoice to see if you had been covered for them to be resolved by us. If you have the option, I would ask you to get in touch with our team on a technical basis, any evidence that you might have will certainly help, if you took any pictures or screenshot of things before you resolved them yourself. Unfortunately based on the time that has passed and your initiatives to set things right by your own means; our ability to investigate or speak to certain elements are limited, something covered by @Scott . As @SpyderTracks mentioned it is possible that the keyboard lighting is requiring some software to correct, this is not a hardware issue known to me from other customers.

I understand when you purchase something not only expensive, but something to invest your time into for many years that it has to be right and I am sorry to hear that your experience was negative for so long before posting about it. We do have a complaints team who may be able to look into your order history with further detail and offer a dedicated agent from our team to work with you, you can find the details of this process at the bottom of this page - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/right-to-cancel/

It does sound as though the laptop is still in a working condition, I do hope we can become a part of this and to keep it running for many more years.

 

[Imogen]

Have you serviced it since you've had it? ie repasted the CPU and GPU and taken the fans off to remove dust build up from the fans and heatsink?

Did you order with windows or without?

The keyboard colour is likely just a software issue

Thermal paste replaced, fans have been properly cleaned which I'm in a schedule of doing on a regular basis to prevent overheating and more work for the pc to keep cool. Windows came with my computer, I have not updated to windows 11 as have heard it's having a few stability issues at the minute and that windows 10 is more friendly for gamers!

I've reset the laptop multiple times, tried figuring out the software issue (control centre 3.0) and nothing has worked!

 

[Imogen]

Hi folks,

Thank you for posting this feedback @Imogen, I am sorry to read that you had had some negative experiences in owning the laptop. This is not typical and something that PCSpecialist would work to resolve. I am not sure if you have been in touch with our support after your return, but I should assure you that in additions to warranties provided or purchased; PCSpecialist have lifetime hardware technical support with every order. I would encourage you to reach our to our support team at any time to discuss technical or troubleshooting matters, our focus would be to have the goods working as they should be.

Based on your description of the time that has passed since the issues began several years ago, I am not sure if they were under warranty at the time they started, from what you describe it is likely they were. This is something you can review from your invoice to see if you had been covered for them to be resolved by us. If you have the option, I would ask you to get in touch with our team on a technical basis, any evidence that you might have will certainly help, if you took any pictures or screenshot of things before you resolved them yourself. Unfortunately based on the time that has passed and your initiatives to set things right by your own means; our ability to investigate or speak to certain elements are limited, something covered by @Scott . As @SpyderTracks mentioned it is possible that the keyboard lighting is requiring some software to correct, this is not a hardware issue known to me from other customers.

I understand when you purchase something not only expensive, but something to invest your time into for many years that it has to be right and I am sorry to hear that your experience was negative for so long before posting about it. We do have a complaints team who may be able to look into your order history with further detail and offer a dedicated agent from our team to work with you, you can find the details of this process at the bottom of this page - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/right-to-cancel/

It does sound as though the laptop is still in a working condition, I do hope we can become a part of this and to keep it running for many more years.

I would like to mention on this reply as well that I do regularly maintain my laptop by replacing thermal paste when needed and cleaning the fans...

I have pictures around somewhere of my blue screen crashes with ERROR codes but it's just a matter of trying to find them. My SSD & Hard drive have completely gone so they've had to be thrown out regardless because there was no fixing them. My fiancé is very knowledgeable about computers and he tried testing them on another laptop and they were completely busted (he builds his own computers from scratch via buying parts separately, he refuses to use any building sites like PCS)... At the time, we wasn't living together and he wasn't able to get down much (as we lived an hour apart) due to his really busy work but since living together he's felt really bad for directing me to PCS because the reviews he read at the time seemed kinda good, lol. I'm not saying PCS isn't good, but in my experience my laptop has been nothing but issues.

I've installed everything that I had before for my computer for drivers and software, my PC uses control centre 3.0 and nothing has fixed the issue.

 

[ubuysa]

I realise you've had disk issues but if you do have any of the dumps from the BSODs you were having then please upload them to the cloud and I'll gladly take a look.

FWIW although none of us work for PCS most of us have also built our own PCs and there is more collective knowledge and experience here than you can shake a stick at. We choose to have PCs built by PCS for many reasons, but the excellent warranty and after sales service is a big one. Don't confuse "can't build" with "choose not to build".

In addition, I analyse BSODs on several fora and you'd be amazed at the number that turn out to be a new build where the builder hasn't read the manuals properly or ensured that the components chosen are fully compatible. With a PCS build you can't select components that aren't compatible....

 

[Monarch]

I would like to mention on this reply as well that I do regularly maintain my laptop by replacing thermal paste when needed and cleaning the fans...

I have pictures around somewhere of my blue screen crashes with ERROR codes but it's just a matter of trying to find them. My SSD & Hard drive have completely gone so they've had to be thrown out regardless because there was no fixing them. My fiancé is very knowledgeable about computers and he tried testing them on another laptop and they were completely busted (he builds his own computers from scratch via buying parts separately, he refuses to use any building sites like PCS)... At the time, we wasn't living together and he wasn't able to get down much (as we lived an hour apart) due to his really busy work but since living together he's felt really bad for directing me to PCS because the reviews he read at the time seemed kinda good, lol. I'm not saying PCS isn't good, but in my experience my laptop has been nothing but issues.

I've installed everything that I had before for my computer for drivers and software, my PC uses control centre 3.0 and nothing has fixed the issue.

Thank you again for this feedback, as a company we will always try to learn from feedback such as this to identify potential gaps in the service and support we can offer.

If you do have any evidence of the bluescreens (the standard practice at the time is to take the files that BSODs create as logs and email / read these, this may be something your fiancé would do given their experience with computers and troubleshooting). If you don't have these then we would understand, as we cover here - I believe we are discussing things that occurred a number of years ago and so at this stage for us it is trying to understand your history, as the opportunity to remedy those past issues has reduced.

In regard to you mentioning the SSD and Hard drive failing, based on my understood timeline - as you mention in your posts, it is likely these would have been under either our warranty or manufacturer warranty and would have been replaced at the time. Unfortunately I cannot help with any certainty in this regard - as I do not know the time of failure, given you did not notify us. I also noticed - the order that I believe to be yours @Imogen was not ordered with a hard drive, your invoice shows only a purchase of SSD with the order. To confirm again, if you contact our support team this may allow us a bit more opportunity to look into this sort of thing. I understand - on the assumption that the order being discussed in this thread is the one I can find on our side - that you did not order Windows with the laptop and mention resetting it, a number of times. It is possible that there may be a driver installation, proprietary or otherwise that may need attention to address an issue you observed.

While I can monitor this thread, I do hope that you can get in touch with our team when the time is right so that we can take a look at any ongoing issues with the original hardware - or evidence you may have kept from previous issues so that the record of this laptop can be taken as a whole. Thank you again.