Update: This post is getting around 3-4 visits per day or over 100 per month via search engines against the query ‘pc specialist’ or similar. If a small proportion of these have decided not to use PCS as a result, it just goes to shows how short-sighted they have been: they’d rather lose thousands of pounds worth of business than pay out a few pounds under warranty - I’m sure that’s a sensible business strategy on some planet!

Update 2: PC Specialist.co.uk have responded in the comments section (comments were closed due to spam-prevention so we posted an email they sent us). Please read their comments to get their side of the story.

This post is aimed at those considering a purchase from custom PC retailer PCSpecialist.co.uk and should serve as a warning.

A couple years ago we were looking for a high end PC and our natural instinct was to look at Dell and other well known brands/retailers. It quickly became clear that while these brands were very competitive at packaged systems, customization attracted a hefty premium.

We happened to mention this at a client meeting and this immediately triggered a recommendation. You guessed it, PCSpecialist.co.uk.

The recommendation was from someone who could be trusted - he had bought two systems from there himself. And sure enough their pricing was competitive against the better known brands. They even compared favourably to the cost of the underlying components so there didn’t seem to be any real financial benefit in self-building.

The next couple of months were spent deciding on the configuration (in which PCSpecialist.co.uk were helpful) and waiting for the ‘best’ time to buy. We then took the leap and ordered.

That’s when the PCSpecialist.co.uk nightmare started.
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A reminder that caveat emptor also applies when consuming media, via Ernie Schenck

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