Mesh Computers PLCs (Poor, Limited Customer Service) (Mesh Computers)

Member Name: aldohead

Product:	Mesh Computers
Date:	12/08/01 (377 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great PC's

Disadvantages: Terrible Support Staff, Forget trying to use technical support's national rate line, it's jsut a way of getting you to call the 50p-a-minute software line!

Okay, I am pretty good at PC’s. In fact I’m fairly amazing at PC’s. If anything goes wrong with my friends or families PC, I know who will be driving out into the lovely English gridlock at the crack of dawn with some anxious auntie trying to fix a problem. Anyway, I ordered my first home PC way back in 1995 (or was it 1994? I can’t remember!)

Anyway, my old Gateway had served me well. The only problem I had with them was that the printer lead that was supplied was faulty, and there was a slight dent (!) In the machine, but nothing serious. Anyway, the old machine had to go, and we set off in November looking for a suitable PC make. We looked high and low for a good make, and one stuck out from them all. Mesh Computers PLC had put together a top class PC with all of the trimmings, and I wanted one!

We phoned the Leeds office up, and asked for a Mesh Matrix 700 with a 800mhz Athlon Processor upgrade, and a 30gb Hard Drive. The man at the other end sounded like he had been there, for 60 hours non-stop with nothing apart from coffee to keep him awake. He was the most unhelpful person I had ever encountered. I thought no more of it and wanted to pay by cheque, because this was a present off my good father and he doesn’t like using plastic… Anyway, the man said that it would take another 7 days for the cheque to clear before they could even start the order. What a pain in the ass. That was going to add on to the current delivery time of 14 days, to make it a whopping great 21 days, or 3 weeks.

I then waited, and waited for the 3 weeks to pass by. The expected delivery time came and gone, and every time we rang up to enquire, we were told ‘That there has been some problems ordering the parts’. I take that was a lie. The courier van came and I signed for it out of the blue, at about 6pm. I think it was my eternal winging that got them off their backsides, but it had still been 5 weeks late. Boo 
211;Hoo.

That was the start of our problems, as the PC arrived and we set it up. Everything worked fine, until I changed the graphics cards settings. The PC was dead as a very, very dead thing. I called the technical support department up and at 8p/minute, was not amused being in a queue for half a hour with a women saying ‘Your call is important to us. Please hold the line’. I eventually got through, to be told that the problem that I was experiencing was a software problem and would need to dial the [premium, 50p a minute] Windows support line. No thanks is all I can say to that. I managed to get my problems sorted out on an Internet newsgroup.

So to this day the PC is very nice when it works, but dreadful when it packs in (which it does very often).

Martin’s thought of the day:

Mesh computers are brilliant offers, but I’m afraid there customer support is terrible. You must buy somewhere else, because how good the magazines may call it, the support is terrible. Only buy if you are interested in trying to sort out problems yourself.

Summary: