Give the local guy a chance - at your own risk! (Evesham)

Member Name: DrJarmin

Product:	Evesham
Date:	09/05/01 (779 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Desktop PC

Disadvantages: Poor Quality Control, Rebadged Machines, Rude PA

I was looking to buy a high end laptop, a desktop and a printer (for around £4000). I emailed the usual suppliers and received replies from Gateway and Evesham. A number of other suppliers did not bother to reply.

The Evesham sales were very helpful in recommending machines to suit my budget and requirements. I also thought it might be an idea to support a local company and went ahead and made the purchases.

All arrived in good time and I was pleased with the desktop and printer.

The laptop was not quite so good (Evesham Voyager 5000). I found the laptop would 'hang' every so often. Sometimes it would come back to life after waiting a few minutes, but mostly the only solution was to restart the machine, losing any unsaved work.

This was very frustrating, especially playing the waiting game before accepting the loss of work and rebooting.

I soon realised that this only occured when I was using the external mouse. The problem being that the touch pad was not disabled when the external mouse was plugged in, contrary to the instruction manual, and each time it was touched, it would cause the laptop to hang.

I contacted Evesham support. After a number of different solutions, none of which worked, the engineer told me that he had the same problem with his machine and the solution was to 'cut out a small piece of cardboard and tape it over the touchpad'.

I was taken aback by this Blue Peterish solution! It was, however, confirmed by an email from their technical support.

Also, the laptop had the facility to enter a 'boot up' password, although this also did not work.

I forwarded the email to the Technical Editor of PC Magazine. He was amazed and forwarded it to the head of PR at Evesham, who is also the PA to the Chairman.

I received a very courteous reply from Evesham saying that this was a mistake and they would now try to resolve the problem, whic
h was passed to a Mitac engineer. It turned out the machine was a rebadged Mitac.

The machine had been shipped with out of date keyboard and BIOS drivers. I spent a good while trying to get the correct drivers from Mitac.

After 4 months the machine was still not operating and the Mitac engineer said I should ask for a refund or get a new machine.

Dealing with the Chairman's PA I expected at least half decent treatment, but was told if I had a problem with losing my work due to the machine hanging I should save my work more often!

Again, I involved the technical editor from PC Magazine to get things moving.

They sent me another machine. Luckily they forgot to pick up the old one as the new machine lasted 10 minutes! Their quality control department was clearly having the year off. This left me with 1 dead laptop and one that didn't work properly.

As this had been dragging on for a few months I asked for a refund, which was flatly refused. I contacted the Trading Standards and had a solicitor write a letter to them, yet they still maintained they did not have to offer any further support or a refund.

I had bought the machines on a credit card and contacted the credit card company. They instantly refunded the purchase price on the understanding I would return both machines to Evesham, which I did.

I then received a very nasty email from the PA of the Chairman. I replied asking how, as a customer, I had been unreasonable, but have yet to receive a response.

To sum up, no problems with the desktop machine, but if you want a laptop, go direct to Mitac, as they can support them. And if you deal with Evesham, PAY BY CREDIT CARD!

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