6 Feb
2015
6 Feb
'15
12:51 p.m.
I won't do business with Maplin any more. Not ever.
This is one reason we called them Craplin. Even for simple components they
seemed to have a ridiculously high failure rate. We learnt to test everything
from there.
And getting a refund was a hassle. The couple of times I had defective
components from RS or Farnell they would send replacements next
day with no problems (OK, a couple of ICs is peanuts to them, but it is
still good customer service). With Maplin I once had to say simply
'Are you going to honour my statutory rights or am I going to walk
out of this shop and go straight to Trading Standards?'
They are cretins. I've had really bad experiences
with the video cards
they sell, in particular. They tend to fail in days or weeks, and then
Maplin will refuse to accept them back unless they are completely dead.
They insist on "testing" them, which means you have to wait *weeks* for
them to turn around and tell you that the card is "fine" because they can
plug it into a bench machine and get video.
I shouldn't say this, but a friend of mine (not me, seriously) had this sort of
problem with a (modern) hard drive. His solution was to stick it in a
microwave oven for a few minutes, then send it back...
-tony