Very, very disappointed

[MikeStroud]

I bought an expensive (£2k ish) AIO from PCS in 2016 and was very pleased with it. Now I accept stuff goes wrong and a small PSU board was found to be a fire risk and PCS asked me if I wanted to return the PC or fit the new PSU board myself. I did the latter and the PC has been great ever since. Stuff goes wrong, I accept that, and in this case PCS dealt with it well so it didn't bother me at all and very pleased with that product and WAS happy to use PCS again

Now last month (Dec 2021) I bought an expensive (to me £2k ish) laptop with lots of fast RAM, fast SSD and fast CPU etc but when I got it it immediately exhibited issues; summarised below:

1 - The laptop wouldn't reliably switch on. At best it would take 6 mins to turn on. Quite embarrassing when people came round to see my new PCS laptop and found it wouldn't even turn on reliably. I assumed the problem was me and that I wasn't holding the power button in long enough or for too long etc. PCS support weren't overly helpful and suggested things like taking the battery out (requires removing back cover etc). Anyway I recalled something from years ago where computers were set up to look at the A:\ drive first before the C:\ drive where the OS was so I thought maybe there is something like that here slowing things down. After some faffing (I am no expert here) I got into the UEFI and found the OS SSD was actually listed as the 6th device to boot from instead of the 1st. So I changed it to the 1st and now the laptop boots much faster, still not as fast as I'd expect with the hardware but nevertheless in say tens of seconds instead of 6mins+ as before. So I can live with that.
Question: Why do PCS ship machines set up like this? See picture attached showing boot order as supplied (red arrows are mine).

2 - I ordered Office 2019 home version with the laptop. I started using it and after a week or so it greyed out all options and stated "unlicensed". It gave an "Update Now" option but pressing that did nothing and kept pushing me towards buying Office365 which I don't want. Anyway I called PCS support about this and they tried various things including connecting remotely and downloading/running "office fix" which didn't fix it despite several gos. This particular engineer couldn't fix the issue so said he'd get 2nd line to authorise Office or something and I asked that someone call me back to say when it was done. Needless to say no one called me back.
In the end I spoke to at least 7 different engineers about this issue. To be fair all seemed knowledgeable but none owned the problem til it was completed successfully. One lied about me getting a call back which I never got. Only one (Sam Davonport) recognised that I needed someone to actually own the problem from beginning to end. You have no idea how frustrating it is to have to explain the issue repeatedly then get the same suggestion on how to fix it, then to have to explain that's already been tried and failed. Extremely frustrating and for weeks the laptop was a useless paper weight. It turns out PCS were having some issue authorising Office which wasn't only affecting my laptop. As I said before I do not mind problems, stuff happens, but PCS's way of dealing with them is hopeless and extremely frustrating for customers. The engineers seem capable but they gave me the problem of having to manage the problem with 8 different engineers none of whom knew what the last had already tried. PCS need to assign an engineer to sort out each ticket until the customer is satisfied, right now I wasted hours on the phone and by email chasing this, waiting for call back that never came, updating multiple engineers on the story so far. All in all a support shambles.
Question: Why can't PCS simply assign one engineer to each ticket? I accept people go on leave or sick or different shifts etc so can't always be achieved but the system I experienced is frustrating.

3 - Now for both of these issues I initially raised tickets via the technical support ticket system at https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/contact-us/ which is now no longer there. I never heard anything back from those tickets at all, so had to report the issues again by email. Why no response to the tickets I raised through the portal? Just added further to the frustration and delays in getting my tickets sorted out.

Anyway attached 3 pictures of my PCS experience so far.

 

[Grombrindal]

Thanks for posting this. I'm thinking of ordering a desktop from PCS. Have you had any response to your post privately? Obviously, noone responded via the forum.

 

[SpyderTracks]

There was a follow up here:

Activating Microsoft Office digital licence

My new PC Specialist desktop arrived and it is fantastic, I just can't see how to activate the Microsoft Office digital licence I ordered! I was expecting a piece of paper with an activation key or something, or maybe that my e-mail address used to purchase the PC had been linked to the licence...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

And here:

Dodgy Switch on (or dodgy user?)

Hi. I cannot work out how to turn my laptop on. It has two buttons: 1 - One that looks like a dial with hand on it. No idea what that does. 2 - A conventional power on/off button. If I press this for a second nothing happens. If I press it for say 5+ seconds a white light on the button lights...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

Both issues were resolved before the user posted this.

 

[MikeStroud]

Thanks for posting this. I'm thinking of ordering a desktop from PCS. Have you had any response to your post privately? Obviously, noone responded via the forum.

Nope. No response from PCS or to this post. My update is as below:

Not true that my issues were resolved fully.

The Office issue as I said before involved me dealing with 7 different engineers over a protracted timescale with one of them lying that I'd get a call back that never came. Each one knew nothing about what the previous one had done and so I had to fill them all in repeatedly. Extremely frustrating. In the end they agreed it was an issue their end. After 3 weeks without a working laptop I got a refund for office and bought my own copy. So yes resolved by me really.

The turning the laptop on issue still exists. Again discussed with many engineers but it was me that decided to look at the boot order and found the OS SSD was 6th in the order. Having changed that I thought it was better, and it is, but still a very erratic startup. What works sometimes doesn't other times. For example one time I will find pressing the power button for precisely 1 second will boot the laptop other times I have to press it for 4 seconds, it takes multiple attempts to start. When it doesn't start up the keyboard lights up then goes off and the screen never lights up so I have to power it fully off and try again. To be frank I've given up. The endless phone calls and different people each time make it frustrating to try and get a resolution. In other words PCS frustrate you to the point you give up. I've given up and now just use the sleep function but I'd rather actually be able to shut down properly.

I mentioned the support system that I was raising tickets via the web site and never got a response after several days so gave up. I did get a response if I emailed or called.

So all in all I have a bitter taste in my mouth and the "resolutions" referred to are more "frustrate the customer enough and they'll go away".

 

[steaky360]

If your experience of the PCS customer support has been as bad as you have stated, this is entirely unacceptable, its certainly not my experience of PCS cs so I'm a bit shocked to be honest.

I can't speak for the tech support you've received thus far but if the laptop can't shut down without having issues booting up there is clearly something still wrong. It may end up needing RMA though and I'm not sure if you'd be up for that given the above (although it could work out to mean a working laptop so I'd urge you to consider it).

 

[moosEh]

I bought an expensive (£2k ish) AIO from PCS in 2016 and was very pleased with it. Now I accept stuff goes wrong and a small PSU board was found to be a fire risk and PCS asked me if I wanted to return the PC or fit the new PSU board myself. I did the latter and the PC has been great ever since. Stuff goes wrong, I accept that, and in this case PCS dealt with it well so it didn't bother me at all and very pleased with that product and WAS happy to use PCS again

Now last month (Dec 2021) I bought an expensive (to me £2k ish) laptop with lots of fast RAM, fast SSD and fast CPU etc but when I got it it immediately exhibited issues; summarised below:

1 - The laptop wouldn't reliably switch on. At best it would take 6 mins to turn on. Quite embarrassing when people came round to see my new PCS laptop and found it wouldn't even turn on reliably. I assumed the problem was me and that I wasn't holding the power button in long enough or for too long etc. PCS support weren't overly helpful and suggested things like taking the battery out (requires removing back cover etc). Anyway I recalled something from years ago where computers were set up to look at the A:\ drive first before the C:\ drive where the OS was so I thought maybe there is something like that here slowing things down. After some faffing (I am no expert here) I got into the UEFI and found the OS SSD was actually listed as the 6th device to boot from instead of the 1st. So I changed it to the 1st and now the laptop boots much faster, still not as fast as I'd expect with the hardware but nevertheless in say tens of seconds instead of 6mins+ as before. So I can live with that.
Question: Why do PCS ship machines set up like this? See picture attached showing boot order as supplied (red arrows are mine).

2 - I ordered Office 2019 home version with the laptop. I started using it and after a week or so it greyed out all options and stated "unlicensed". It gave an "Update Now" option but pressing that did nothing and kept pushing me towards buying Office365 which I don't want. Anyway I called PCS support about this and they tried various things including connecting remotely and downloading/running "office fix" which didn't fix it despite several gos. This particular engineer couldn't fix the issue so said he'd get 2nd line to authorise Office or something and I asked that someone call me back to say when it was done. Needless to say no one called me back.
In the end I spoke to at least 7 different engineers about this issue. To be fair all seemed knowledgeable but none owned the problem til it was completed successfully. One lied about me getting a call back which I never got. Only one (Sam Davonport) recognised that I needed someone to actually own the problem from beginning to end. You have no idea how frustrating it is to have to explain the issue repeatedly then get the same suggestion on how to fix it, then to have to explain that's already been tried and failed. Extremely frustrating and for weeks the laptop was a useless paper weight. It turns out PCS were having some issue authorising Office which wasn't only affecting my laptop. As I said before I do not mind problems, stuff happens, but PCS's way of dealing with them is hopeless and extremely frustrating for customers. The engineers seem capable but they gave me the problem of having to manage the problem with 8 different engineers none of whom knew what the last had already tried. PCS need to assign an engineer to sort out each ticket until the customer is satisfied, right now I wasted hours on the phone and by email chasing this, waiting for call back that never came, updating multiple engineers on the story so far. All in all a support shambles.
Question: Why can't PCS simply assign one engineer to each ticket? I accept people go on leave or sick or different shifts etc so can't always be achieved but the system I experienced is frustrating.

3 - Now for both of these issues I initially raised tickets via the technical support ticket system at https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/contact-us/ which is now no longer there. I never heard anything back from those tickets at all, so had to report the issues again by email. Why no response to the tickets I raised through the portal? Just added further to the frustration and delays in getting my tickets sorted out.

Anyway attached 3 pictures of my PCS experience so far.

First of all my apologies that this thread was missed and again for all the issues you have raised in this post. I have forwarded this thread onto the Customer Care Management team. If possible could you forward me your order number in a PM and I will pass this to them as well to hopefully correct the issues.