Great prices, poor service (Scan)

Member Name: DoctorDee

Product:	Scan
Date:	25/05/01 (130 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Prices

Disadvantages: Poor customer service, Don't answer phones

Scan prices are excellent, amongst the best in the industry. They also answer their sales phone-line promptly and take your order quickly, and with acceptable courtesy.

Goods normally arrive next day if you order before 15:00, and are well packed.

So far, so good! The problem is if you ever need to return something due to it not working. Scan regularly fail to answer their customer service phone line. We have had experience on several occasions of hanging on for over 15 minutes, for several times a day, and still failing to get through. It used to be possible to call their sales line, and ask to be put through to Customer Service, but they got wise to that, and now they just connect you as if you'd rung the Customer Service line directly... and they don't reply.

Scans excellent prices are presumably achieved by cutting costs throughout the business, and after-sales service seems to have suffered worst.

You can certainly save yourself money by shopping at Scan, and if the goods work, you're quids in. But the first time you have to try and return something, you can find the experience takes so long that the cost in time is greater then any savings you have made.

We still regularly use them for items like hard drives and memory, where we have a high degree of confidence that the goods will arrive working. But for anything else, we shop elsewhere.

UPDATE -- 10/07/01
OK, so today I was bitten once more. I bought 2 Gb of RAm from Scan, and NONE of it works in the machines I planned and hoped to use it in. I *suspect* that they are 100MHz DIMMs labelled as133. I've rung, and rung and rung Scan, and they are ALWAYS engaged. I have filled out the form on their web pager and they have not responded. From now on, no matter how great their prices, I'm not shopping there. www.bluepoint.net's prices are just as good for trade customers...

Summary: