Unrepresentative reviewing of OcUK on review sites

Maybe I've got lucky. I've had to return a couple of items that broke before warranty. Called up, explained situation, sent back item, received new item, good stuff. Delivery is amazing. Price isn't always the best but willing to put up with that for the reliability I've received from OcUK.

They gave me a free burger DVD wallet too so automatically win.
 
Spawn has just provided a perfect example. He's posted a "review" that's entirely due to religion and is therefore a lie (because the site requires reviews to be about the vendor and requires information about purchases).

Spawn is claiming (on review centre) to have recently bought something costing £200 from OcUK and that it has not been delivered.

Anyone care to bet on whether or not that's true?

I wonder if that constitues libel. Publishing false statements in order to do harm is the essence of what libel is.
 
Wiki said:
English law allows actions for libel to be brought in the High Court for any published statements alleged to defame a named or identifiable individual or individuals in a manner that causes them loss in their trade or profession, or causes a reasonable person to think worse of them. Allowable defenses are justification (the truth of the statement), fair comment (whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), and privilege (whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest).
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I guess the High Court wouldn't deal with relatively petty cases? Bit silly if not as multiple petty cases against one party seems to build up...

Anyone knowledgeable on the subject care to comment?
 
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I've ordered plenty from OcUK, OcUK is my main place I look first, I only order from other places if the price is cheaper. I remember when I ordered my X800XTPE in summer 2005, I think it was from here, I had to cancel an order with another online retailer when the product went out of stock and they kept saying it would be here the next day, then the next, then the next.

So I ordered from OcUK and 18 hours later the card was on my door, I never knew stuff could be delivered that fast :p


Surely it was abit OTT for BrandyShot above to be banned though just for saying he'd never shop here again, surely not a troll?? He had 118 posts :confused:
 
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sniffy said:
I guess the High Court wouldn't deal with relatively petty cases? Bit silly if not as multiple petty cases against one party seems to build up...

Anyone knowledgeable on the subject care to comment?
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The law doesn't care how petty the issue is, if the lawyers can make some money. And therein lies the problem: suing for libel is enormously expensive, and the outcome is little more than a gamble (go ask Simon Singh). Even if you win, unless you get fees paid - which is not guaranteed - you will be bankrupt. There have been cases of people being awarded 1p in damages. This is why such cases are nearly always settled out of court: no one wants to take the risk of getting on the wrong on of the lawyers' bill, which will be in six figures or more.


As to the original question, I've generally had little trouble in the ten years I've dealt with OcUK. I've known people who say they have, but in one case they had such a short fuse they probably brought it on themselves. I've RMA'd about six things, and had no trouble with any. I even got a swap for a similar product that OcUK was under no obligation to do. The last non-standard dealings I had were a couple of years ago when problems with stock control were noticeable, but they may well be dealt with by now. Web notes are answered quickly, and I'm generally able to get a reasonable outcome.


M
 
I don't read reviews of online companies anyway. I just place an order, and see what happens. If I get good service they get my custom again. If not, then they don't. Simples.

No complaints about OcUK from me - webnotes are answered quickly, any problems always sorted to my complete satisfaction.

If I did have a small complaint it's that they seem to pick up and drop certain manufacturers willy-nilly, forcing me to go elsewhere for products they don't stock. But i'm sure there's a valid reason for this, and it's hardly something that's a deal breaker.
 
vaultingSlinky said:
I may be walking a thin line here, but customer service etc has improved a lot over the last 5 years. I would have written a bad review in 2004/5 based on my dealings over the phone and with an RMA.
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This is me also, except I never got resolution at all and lost a couple of hundred pounds, I love the forum etc etc etc. I do have a friend though that's banned from using the shop because he asked why something that was advertised as included wasn't included.
 
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Never ever had a problem here, had an issue where something needed to be delivered to an army-camp which they couldn't deliver to and it was sorted out quickly.
 
LOAM said:
I also have a friend that's banned from using the shop because he asked why something that was advertised as included wasn't included.
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I suspect his manner may be a factor: when I asked the same question I was told that the manufacturer had changed the description between batches and the website hadn't been updated yet; and that OcUk would send the part concerned (a DVI lead in the days when they were expensive) as a goodwill gesture.


M
 
some of the neg reviews are really stupid.
0 stars because they would not refund the difference between what some guy paid one week to the next!
 
All my computer stuff custom goes to the company with what I believe is the best customer service, even if it's a few quid extra in some cases. That few quid pays dividends when things inevitably go wrong! Can't see myself moving away from them unless they somehow end up FUBAR. :p
 
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Whilst these sites are always biased it can be helpful reading negative reviews as it does at least give an idea of how things are handled when things go wrong.
Can't say I have had the best of experiences with OCUK, but then again some other 'suppliers' are not that good either.
Often find the small, random company found through Google are by far the best to deal with.

Andrew
 
Nymins said:
I do agree that it is unfair since the majority of places, not just OcUK, get pulled down in ratings because people only review when something bad happens.
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I don't quite follow - surely if something bad happens then a particular site should get pulled down in the ratings and if people only review when something bad happens then the sites where bad stuff happens less frequently will be higher in the ratings.

I'm wondering however if perhaps bigger sites have a harder time in these things though due to having greater potential to mess things up. Some guy re-selling stuff from his garden shed might only have a relatively small number of orders to deal with and probably doesn't screw up as much so is probably less likely to get bad reviews than a large established company which has to deal with a large number of orders (inevitably some % of goods will be faulty and some orders will get messed up).
 
dowie said:
I don't quite follow - surely if something bad happens then a particular site should get pulled down in the ratings and if people only review when something bad happens then the sites where bad stuff happens less frequently will be higher in the ratings.
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Er - no. If only negative transactions are rated then the rating will depend mostly on volume of sales. There will always be problems. Let's say I mess up one transaction in a thousand. If I ship 50k orders and only the mistakes etc are rated, then I'll get fifty bad reviews. If Joe Bloggs makes a mess of one transaction in a hundred, but only ships a thousand orders, he's got ten bits of bad feedback to my fifty. You can only make a valid comparison of companies shipping a similar number of orders: information that is generally pretty hard to get accurately.



M
 
I normally but from whoever is cheapest at the time including postage and topcashback and quidco.

If there is a couple of quid in it I would now buy from here instead of other places purely because since they used the new courier my deliveries have been incredibly fast.

To be fair I've never yet had an issue with any of the pc based sites I've used, with quality price or RMAs so I tend to use price first until one of them screws me over.
 
I've not had the greatest of experiences shopping from here, its not the mistakes that frustrated me it was the way they were dealt with. I am thinking about ordering some new bits soon so it will be good to see how things have improved.
 
ive just done a review, a fair one though, it was my first purchase from OCUK.
not full marks as they took longer than I would have liked to refund the money when I ordered 2 items instead of one, and I had no option to alter the order myself, I had to raise a webnote - fine if this was an in-stock item but it was pre-order.
In my view, money shouldn't be debited straight away if an item is out of stock or pre-order, frankly its a bit rude.
 
Kenai said:
But it's not only negative ones that are rated, which renders most of that irrelevant. There are stores on that site with a high number of reviews and high scores too.
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The point being made, which I illustrated, is that people are much more likely to report bad dealings than good. As such, that skews the figures. I chose an extreme example to make things easy to understand, but apparently not easy enough.


M
 
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