Competitor apparently going bump

Shame was one of my first stores to go to when they had the little place in Sheffield before moving to that huge unit in Howden.
 
awh, that's a shame, their prices were pretty competitive back in the day and i bought some parts from them for my very first pc (2012)
more recently i bought a biostar b450 board they were flogging for £25-ish
 
Last thing I bought from them was a 9070. Got an email alert for the 9070XT being in stock, clicked the link in the email and ended up buying the non xt version without noticing. Was going to send it back but it just seemed a ball ache so decided to build a new pc with it instead.

Did notice stuff we were buying at work from them was being drop shipped from another supplier who if you went direct to would charge more which was a bit strange
 
This was the store that had a monthly competition to see who could reject the most RMA's, very scummy behaviour!! However, less competition is not good for us and that leaves just two major players, OCUK and the Bolton lot as well as a few small time stores that most never bother with. I suppose there's Amazon as well but they sell everything. How long before prices start to creep upwards?
 
pastymuncher said:
This was the store that had a monthly competition to see who could reject the most RMA's, very scummy behaviour!! However, less competition is not good for us and that leaves just two major players, OCUK and the Bolton lot as well as a few small time stores that most never bother with. I suppose there's Amazon as well but they sell everything. How long before prices start to creep upwards?
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I was aware of that RMA debacle, and stopped buying stuff from them as a direct consequence.

However, they had the exclusive on the Antec Core in this country, so had no option* than to buy from them.

Similar to the company that has the exclusive on the Nvidia FE's. If you want one then you have no option* than to buy from them.

*I'm excluding buying from eBay and the like.
 
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Last two GPUs I have bought was from them via eBay during a sale, so made a small saving due to the "price" rising as the voucher goes live.
 
Wow. 2 years since I ordered anything of significance from them, which was my old 32GB Corsair DDR5 memory. Only thing more recently was a 256GB Samsung Pro Endurance SD card for my dash cam. :D But even that was 4 months ago. Shame as sometimes their pricing was good. OCUK do have higher prices on most things, but sometimes you don't mind paying the extra given the service they offer. Free forum use, free next day delivery, FREE HARIBO, etc. But without competition what is to stop the price creep now going unchecked. Sad times. Please don't remove my free next day delivery OCUK. I love my OCUK overlords if you are listening. :p
 
Shame, but I can think of at least 3 other places I've bought from that have been more competitive than both OCUK and the main other place people refer to not including amazon or ebay. I'm just saying we still have choice and competition...but it's not ideal to lose them for consumers no.
 
Used to buy a lot from the company started by David Atherton and Bruce Smith back in the day. They sold up in 2006 and I continued to use them until about 2008.
 
To be honest, RMA was a nightmare, I brought an ASUS B650i ITX motherboard from them early last year, for a build for my Mrs and it basically died, no life at all, the only signs of life were the audio jack LEDs in the back, so I arranged an RMA with them to return it, they wanted pictures of the board and the socket which I did for them, and they approved the RMA, sent the board back in a heavily bubble wrapped box, then a few days later I got a message saying the board is on the way back to me, theres a bent pin, low and behold when I got it back there was an obvious bent pin, so I rang them and told them that pin wasnt there like that when I sent you the board, look at the pictures you asked me for, so they asked me to return the board back to them (at my cost), they had no replacements in stock, so gave me a credit note and I brought a Gigabye B850I ITX board off them, as soon as I got it, I took pictures, listed it and sold it on a well known auction site, I didnt want to have to deal with them again, with the proceeds I brought my Mrs an ASUS B850i from OCuk instead :D

That was only 3 or 4 months ago, I had no idea they were on the brink of destruction at that point, but now it kind of makes sense getting messed around and maybe RMA staff not caring how they handle returns, especially if they knew the future of the company at the time.
 
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Well, I heard from them today, and they've approved the RMA, and have refunded me in full.

Then I woke up.
 
I bought my A770 from them. As for competition, the Bolton lot were a 'favourite' of my colleagues in Trading Standards (they came under the County Council and I worked in the council's IT department) in the 1990s so I won't buy from them if at all possible.
 
I used to use Aria a lot, I never had a problem with them although I did once buy a 1440p IPS monitor when they were new, so still quite expensive, and it had clearly been opened.

They turned out to be a bunch of crooks, well the owner anyway.

I heard some horror stories after though, and they broke their forum, trying to upgrade it, then denied they broke it, blaming end users connections, which if I'm honest was pretty pathetic they wouldn't even own up to it.

Apparently the boss was exactly like that though.
 
I haven't bought anything from them for donkey's years. I used to be a member of their forums for a short time as well before that folded.
IIRC Last thing I bought there was a Apevia M-atx case with their own brand PSU which was an odd size and non ATX standard. It made a hell of a racket then went pop. RMA'd and not bought anything since from them. Prices just weren't that good.
 
Bought a few cheap laptops from them over the years, the sort of entry level stuff OCUK doesn't sell, so would be a shame to see them go from that perspective.
 
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