Radio Shack

[tony duell]

> 
> 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