Title: The Wall

Dear Mr. Glassborow

Here is a brief resume of my experiences with three large computer companies, and my efforts to buy from 'reputable' manufacturers.

My story began with an ad in the Daily Mail newspaper for Pentium computers from a company called PCS direct. I purchased three, with extended on site warranty, with my company credit card. I requested an engineer with the first month because they all "blue screened' several times an hour. After several weeks of excuses I approached trading standards and was told because I hadn't demanded my money back within thirty days I had deemed to have accepted them as working. Using a company credit card meant I had no help from the card company. Within the first twelve months the machines had become unusable and had to be replaced.

I rang Dell computers and was assigned to a nice lady who listened to the specifications I requested and gave me a price. She then asked that since I was a business, if I planned to network them. I said yes and she said I needed to change my order to one of their "business' machines of a very similar spec but several hundred pounds dearer. The reason she gave was that they could not honour the warranty for networking of a personal computer if I used it at work, and had to buy the more expensive model for their warranty to be honoured. I tried to complain, but Dell had firmly assigned me to this lady, and no matter which department I called, as soon as I gave my name would re-direct me back to this lady. I gave up.

I then called Gateway, from whom I had bought several computers in the past. I ordered three Pentium 500 computers and was quite pleased with their usual prompt delivery. After several months however I found that one of the three would not read any CDR disk, from our own writers or from my customers. The other two machines had no trouble with any of the CD's. I called Gateway to request a replacement CD drive and was told since it read commercial CD's it was okay, and they wouldn't offer a replacement. It seems I should count myself lucky the other two will read them. It made no difference that a CD written in one of their own writers couldn't be read - they still won't budge. For the last two days I've been going through the usual "our technical head will call in the morning' phone calls with the usual zero response.

I know I'll end up replacing the CD drive myself, though this does not seem right.

The above is from our printers, the one that gave us excellent service for a decade, rather than the one that Centaur uses. For the record, I am very happy that ACCU is now one of their customers again.