Computer Liquidators - Rip Off Artists?
20/08/11 03:41 Filed in: Computers & Tech
I recently went into Computer Liquidators located at 229 Horton Street London, Ontario N6B 1L1. I was looking for hard drives to put into a 4 drive external hard drive assembly for the express purpose of recording audio. I asked them about the Western Digital 1 terabyte hard drives they had for sale. Upon further inspection I noticed that the drives they had on offer were “Green” drives. I told the salesperson that I wanted the drives specifically for multi track audio use, I even mentioned that I would be working with 24 tracks or more of audio and that I was concerned that these “Green” drives inherent nature of spinning at slower speeds and shutting themselves off depending on what is required by the user at any given time might cause me problems. So I asked them if they had any of the regular “Non-Green” drives, and was told they were a special order item only. He even went so far as to tell me that all drives he had these power saving features.
The salesperson then told me, three different times in three different ways, siting examples of why these “Green” drives would be fine for what I needed. He told me that the “Non-Green” or “Black” drives were only required for intense video editing or auto cad applications. He said that the black drives ran very hot and were noisy as well. He really did sound like he knew exactly what he was talking about, so thoroughly convinced I purchased 4 1Terabyte drives, with every confidence that they would work just fine.
When I got them home, this was not the case. These drives were painfully slow. Slower than my Samsung USB 2.0 Pocket drive, HALF as fast as my 1TB Lacie Rikiki drive, HALF as fast as my 1TB Seagate Free Agent drive. These “Green’ drives were installed in a firewire 800 drive enclosure, so this combo should have yielded much better results. I ran X bench on all the drives. The internal drive scored 140 (which was to be expected). The USB 3.0 drives scored around 50. The Samsung 500Gb pocket drive scored 27. These supposedly almost as fast as Western Digital Caviar Black drives scored 24. I did some research and found there were settings I could change to yield better performance. After some tweaking I got the score up to 27 the same as the Samsung Pocket drive un-tweaked.
The next test I did blew my mind. I had a 6 or 7 year old Western Digital Caviar Se drive that had been in my old Mac G5. When I placed it in the enclosure it scored well over 50! It was then that I formed the opinion that I had been sold a line of bullshit by the Computer Liquidators sales person. So I brought the drives back to the store THE VERY NEXT DAY! I was then told that despite the fact that I’d been sold the wrong product, and had several hours of my time wasted, I would not receive a full refund. They wanted to charge me a 20% restocking fee which amounted to $70. They wanted me to pay for their salesperson’s mistake. I protested to no avail. They fed me a line of bullshit about not being able to sell the drives for full price having been opened!
Call me crazy but they have a warehouse full of used and refurbished computers for sale. Any moron would realize that at some point you’re going to have an off lease machine come in that needs a new drive. They SAY they are going to sell the drives at a reduced rate but It’s my opinion based on the attitude and mannerisms of the manager who insisted I be ripped off, they are going to sell those drives at full pop. I wasn’t born yesterday, but I simply didn’t have time to argue with these assholes all day. I took my refund and left the store.
I don’t expect them to contact me and offer the money back, and I know that $70 is going to cost them hundreds of dollars that I won’t be spending there. Then I thought to myself, I wonder if all small businesses such as these realize that in the long run they are really ripping themselves off. I mean ARE YOU going to buy anything from a place that charges a 20% restocking fee when they sell you the WRONG product? I mean they never mentioned this restocking fee BEFORE I purchased the items. I was only aware of a possible restocking fee when I read the receipt which was handed to me AFTER my money had been taken. Seems to me I should have been told about this policy prior to completion of the transaction.
In my experience only a fly-by-night operation is this short sited, so my guess is that any sort of in store warranty is going to be meaningless. Still it’s my own fault, I should have gone to Tiger Direct or one of the big chains, but I wanted to support the little guy. I learned a hard lesson, but perhaps I can prevent those of you who live and work in London Ontario from wasting your hard earned dollars shopping at Computer Liquidators which is(in my opinion) a shady operation, whose unofficial motto is “we got your money, now go fuck yourself”!
The salesperson then told me, three different times in three different ways, siting examples of why these “Green” drives would be fine for what I needed. He told me that the “Non-Green” or “Black” drives were only required for intense video editing or auto cad applications. He said that the black drives ran very hot and were noisy as well. He really did sound like he knew exactly what he was talking about, so thoroughly convinced I purchased 4 1Terabyte drives, with every confidence that they would work just fine.
When I got them home, this was not the case. These drives were painfully slow. Slower than my Samsung USB 2.0 Pocket drive, HALF as fast as my 1TB Lacie Rikiki drive, HALF as fast as my 1TB Seagate Free Agent drive. These “Green’ drives were installed in a firewire 800 drive enclosure, so this combo should have yielded much better results. I ran X bench on all the drives. The internal drive scored 140 (which was to be expected). The USB 3.0 drives scored around 50. The Samsung 500Gb pocket drive scored 27. These supposedly almost as fast as Western Digital Caviar Black drives scored 24. I did some research and found there were settings I could change to yield better performance. After some tweaking I got the score up to 27 the same as the Samsung Pocket drive un-tweaked.
The next test I did blew my mind. I had a 6 or 7 year old Western Digital Caviar Se drive that had been in my old Mac G5. When I placed it in the enclosure it scored well over 50! It was then that I formed the opinion that I had been sold a line of bullshit by the Computer Liquidators sales person. So I brought the drives back to the store THE VERY NEXT DAY! I was then told that despite the fact that I’d been sold the wrong product, and had several hours of my time wasted, I would not receive a full refund. They wanted to charge me a 20% restocking fee which amounted to $70. They wanted me to pay for their salesperson’s mistake. I protested to no avail. They fed me a line of bullshit about not being able to sell the drives for full price having been opened!
Call me crazy but they have a warehouse full of used and refurbished computers for sale. Any moron would realize that at some point you’re going to have an off lease machine come in that needs a new drive. They SAY they are going to sell the drives at a reduced rate but It’s my opinion based on the attitude and mannerisms of the manager who insisted I be ripped off, they are going to sell those drives at full pop. I wasn’t born yesterday, but I simply didn’t have time to argue with these assholes all day. I took my refund and left the store.
I don’t expect them to contact me and offer the money back, and I know that $70 is going to cost them hundreds of dollars that I won’t be spending there. Then I thought to myself, I wonder if all small businesses such as these realize that in the long run they are really ripping themselves off. I mean ARE YOU going to buy anything from a place that charges a 20% restocking fee when they sell you the WRONG product? I mean they never mentioned this restocking fee BEFORE I purchased the items. I was only aware of a possible restocking fee when I read the receipt which was handed to me AFTER my money had been taken. Seems to me I should have been told about this policy prior to completion of the transaction.
In my experience only a fly-by-night operation is this short sited, so my guess is that any sort of in store warranty is going to be meaningless. Still it’s my own fault, I should have gone to Tiger Direct or one of the big chains, but I wanted to support the little guy. I learned a hard lesson, but perhaps I can prevent those of you who live and work in London Ontario from wasting your hard earned dollars shopping at Computer Liquidators which is(in my opinion) a shady operation, whose unofficial motto is “we got your money, now go fuck yourself”!
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