Check before you buy!

Check before you buy!

Back in January this year I needed a new DVD player as my old one was on its way out. A friend of mine recommended Denon as a good make and so I read a few reviews and decided on the Denon 1940. The 2 questions were what colour I wanted? and where would I buy it from?

The colour was simple, it had to be a silver unit, I thought it looked more elegant than the black and so that was the one that I went with. The second question about where to buy it from was a little more difficult. I wanted new rather than second hand so Amazon Marketplace was out of the question, I personally would not buy something like that via that method and I think Amazon didn’t have any silver ones in stock at the time. I rang a local AV supplier and found out the RRP was £250 (way above my budget) although he did say that he may be able to match a price if I found another from a bricks and mortar store.

Anyway I found one for £120 from Forum Hi-Fi in Nottingham, the price seemed a little too good to be true but the website looked pretty good, there was a telephone number and I called them, they were very helpful and informative and so I went ahead and ordered it. A few days later the player turned up at my place and everything was hunky dory, this was on 28th January 2009.

The first time the player went wrong I didn’t really take much notice. The problem was that when pressing the power button the unit wouldn’t power on, I powered the unit off (from the mains) and waited a few seconds and powered back on, it worked perfectly.

Then in March it happened to me again, and I was informed by my kids that the same problem had happened a couple of times to them too, so now this was a regular fault, I called Forum Hi-Fi and told them what had happened they explained that they had no Silver ones in stock, and that this was a known issue with some of the units and the way to fix it was power off by pulling the power lead out and waiting 5 minutes and connecting again, although I had done this before I tried again and low and behold it worked.

A few days ago as I write this on April 11th it happened again and finally got around to calling the shop today in order to find out what we can do and after this call I realised the issues of buying electrical equipment online. The guy I spoke to today was fairly helpful, Sure they would replace or fix my unit but I had to get it back to them at my expense… yes MY expense, even though this is a faulty unit I have to sent it back to them, and pay for it out of my own pocket, so that is what… £15 a pop via courier. Not good enough.

I enquired about a refund, because I didn’t want to risk another faulty unit and have to shell out another £15, no to the refund as I’ve had it for a few months, ok I don’t know what the actual law says on this, but let’s say for 1 second that I am not entitled to a refund, and a repair or replacement is all I’m entitled to. If it goes wrong again I have to fork out money to get it back to them, I think even as a good will gesture they should at least offer the refund even if I do send it back as my own expense after all ive only had the player for 2.5 months. Not good enough.

I think I am just going to keep my Denon, I can live with the fault as long as it doesn’t happen too often and the reset feature works ok then I’ll live with it, but it has taught me a few valuable lessons.

1. Getting it a few quid cheaper online is not necessarily the better deal.
2. I will never ever buy from Forum Hi-Fi in Nottingham again.
3. Even Microsoft, the company we love to hate, will provide you free returns to them for items under warranty.

So beware, when you are looking to buy something that would cost a fair bit to return see if your local shop will match the price that you see online, even if it is £10 or £20 more, it maybe better getting it from them to save hassle if you have problems with it. If no-one will match the online price that you find then ask the shop about their returns policy and if it will cost you money to return something to them.

Last thoughts are this. I was told a long time ago that the true test of a company is when you come to use it’s customer services.