SWMBO had a similar problem with JL but for a much cheaper item, sent customer services a strongly worded email...received an apology and replacement item within days.

They may not get the best publicity but the very best customer service of recent times online has been Amazon, and long may it continue.

Very unusual in my experience for bad customer relations from John Lewis. I've bought a lot of stuff from JL over the years (largely because of their good record in this direction) and on the odd occasion that things have gone wrong they have been absolutely first class – either an immediate and unquestioned refund or a replacement item.

I had a similar experience with Ebuyer about a year or so ago. They refered me to Zoostorm who was most rude and said "tough your outside the 28day returns policy and there is nothing you can do".

The retailer is almost always responsible for faulty goods upto 12months from purchase so I went back to Ebuyer and gave them the facts and got refunded pretty quickly.

As far as customer service (in-shop only [my only experience]) with JL, mine has always been very good, and have noticed several times that they (without quibbling) offer an alternative product (often higher spec) or a full refund if a faulty product is returned.

Recently I have begun to look for a replacement for my old (and now on-the-blink) Humax freeview PVR, and have found that JL are far better on both answering my technical queries about potential replacements (possibly a Samsung or Panasonic PVR/Blu-Ray combi) and helping customers with problems - I have had better luck getting the correct info out of them than the manufacturers themselves. Customer service agents seem to quickly respond to customer complaints on their product reviews, again, offering refunds/alternative products.

As regards buying a PC, it still seems to be quite a lottery across the board these days - my own experience with a fault with my custom-built PC from Computer Planet (3.5 yo at the time, well out of warranty except [fortunately for me] the memory modules [which were diagnosed as faulty and relaced FOC] and the PSU which had lifetime and 7 year warranties respectively). They charged me £40 for diagnosis/repair [including a complete reformat of the 2 HDDs and reinstall of all the software, part of the diagnostics proceedures], cost of the replacement packaging [sent to me] and all postage [courier]. All very polite after the initial over-the phone checks to see if the problem could be diagnosed with it being sent back.

Effectively I only paid for the packaging and transportation. All dealings very polite, PC now working fine again. I could've taken it to a local independent (and not the best, by some accounts) PC shop for a diagnostic/repair, which probably would've cost at least the same and might not have got the same good final outcome (I was expecting at one point to have to replace the motherboard, processor [one of the major suspects at the time] and possibly memory modules at a cost of £200 plus the cost of the diagnostic/repair), so £40 all-in was good in my view. Other than this problem, the PC has been [touch wood] fault-free before and since. Note that my own [basic] diagnostics indicated that the memory modules were OK - just goes to show you do need proper expertise to ensure your get it right.

I've had pre-built name-brand PCs before, my original Dell (slow, not bad for the time [nice monitor], but little upgrading potential [I had no PC knowledge as this was my first PC at college in the mid-90s]), a MESH-built PC (excellent PC until the HDD failed after 6 good years of service [this was before they had customer service/quality issues in the mid-2000s]), and an HP (bought via MISCO) cheap PC bought in 2006 (v. poor and needing upgrading within 1 year, unreliable).

I will never go back to buying brand-name PCs - they are, in my view, too much about the marketing and not enough about using good quality, reliable components that work well together for a long time. Even though my current PC is probably about 30% more expensive than a pre-built name one, I have as yet (apart from that one issue) to notice any appreciable drop in performance or component issues, requiring costly upgrades and reagular intervals as I did with the Dell and HP ones (only an extra HDD for the MESH PC to extend its life for extra storage). As such, I will (assuming it lasts at least as long as the others, hopefully longer) probably end paying significantly less over its ownership than the other brand-PCs. I suppose the main thing you get for buying a 'brand name' (like Lenovo, HP or Dell) is the much higher certainty that they will be around in a few years to assist you if required (small independents are more prone to going out-of-business). Still...

I agree that a firm, but polite letter or email explaining the situation should do the trick, and hopefully be a wake-up call to JL's PC customer service dept. If going to customer services doesn't work, write to Andy Streets himself (send via recorded delivery to ensure HE gets it) to ensure an acceptable result, as if not, mention he'll be appearing on BBC's 'Watchdog' (one of the few things the Beeb does well). MDs hate bad publicity, especially when they are getting it in the neck on prime-time TV.

Leif

Yeah the PC turning it's self on was not relating too updates. It always turned itself back on 20 mins after being completely shut down.

The PC was a nightmare to switch on which was relating to a download fix for the bios which is where jL got stuck! They found the download but to run it was not straight forward and handed it over too lenovo but they were never getting back to me.

The IM controller was failing to start with error 10 and they couldnt fix that iether so I couldn't run my cctv through my PC and they couldnt fix that iether!

The whole escapade was a joke from start to finish for such a high spec PC quad core i7 3.4 hz proccessor and 2tb HD with 12g mem. Loads of additional features.

Won't buy from JL again. Customer service appalling.