View Full Version : Why would a business or consumer buy from aria.co.uk?
[This post concerns RMA233283]
I run a small business repairing electronic equipment and part of our business is computer building and repair. Recently I thought we could try out aria, since their pricing seemed quite aggressive. So in the past month, I ordered two computer builds. So let me describe my experience.
First order
Components arrived quickly, which was excellent. Opened box to discover that all the delicate components were at the bottom of the box (where damage is most likely to occur) and that the top of the box was filled with airbags. Surely, the airbags and packing materials should be around the goods to prevent damage, not on top where they provide no protection whatsoever. Thankfully nothing was damaged, probably due to luck rather than any sort of decent packaging. Part of the order consisted of a power supply that developed a fault - a quite annoying fault that only showed itself after 24hrs of gaming and benchmark usage. The computer became unstable and reset itself. Then after continued usage the PSU would trip out at more and more frequent intervals. So I replaced the PSU and the problem was fixed - QED faulty power pack.
Making a note of my tests I sent the unit back to Aria for refund. Their tests showed that it was fine and so they refused to refund the money and postage costs. Talking to the representative was like talking to a brick wall, and after a long time on the phone the problem was not resolved. Every argument 'in the book' was used by the representative with the aim of misleading and avoiding the refund, no doubt Aria have forgotten about the consumer laws and rights of customers in the UK. I ended the phone call with disappointment and frustration at the horrendous service, my patience absolutely worn out.
Having been in the repair business for some time intermittent component failures can be frustrating for the customer and business dealing with the customer. Often, on the bench the item will be fine but when back with the customer the fault shows. We recognise this and in virtually every case like this the customer is right, there was a fault. With time pressures during testing it is easy to pass a component when it is borderline faulty, I know this from experience. This is particularly relevant with power supplies in equipment as the intermittent component failure is affected by heat, current draw, time switched on etc.
Second order
The second order arrived packed in the same manner. Airbags on top, delicates on the bottom with no protection. The computer case arrived slightly damaged, which luckily was repaired by myself without having to go through another round of RMA.
Now my patience has gone.
So as you can see a pattern of terrible service is emerging. In my Aria test I spent well over £1000 and had plans of spending much more but their stubbornness has lost them a business customer over the mere sum of £30.
Hi there
I am gonna send this to the owner of the company for several reasons:-
1. So he can sort out this packaging issue.
2. To get your money refunded
3. To see if we can do something to get your business back.
Hi Gibbo
I am glad you have taken this seriously as no doubt the problems I have described are affecting many people considering your large customer base.
The two things that are vital to our business are obviously price and quality of service when it comes to returning goods, based on honesty and respect between the two businesses. If Aria refuses to take back faulty goods and provide good service it affects our bottom line as we have to cover our customers problems immediately and mask the delay involved in returning faulty items.
It is unlikely that we will be tempted back, however at least you have some feedback to work on.
Dan
Hi Gibbo
I am glad you have taken this seriously as no doubt the problems I have described are affecting many people considering your large customer base.
The two things that are vital to our business are obviously price and quality of service when it comes to returning goods, based on honesty and respect between the two businesses. If Aria refuses to take back faulty goods and provide good service it affects our bottom line as we have to cover our customers problems immediately and mask the delay involved in returning faulty items.
It is unlikely that we will be tempted back, however at least you have some feedback to work on.
Hi there
I completely agree.
We've not had any other complaints yet regarding packaging so maybe its an isolated incident but the warehouse packers will still be spoken too as its not exactly rocket science when it comes to packing an item well.
The other areas I shall let Mr Aria himself look at.
Sorry about the issues you have suffered PRSLtd. I am looking into it as a matter of urgency communicating this to the packing section of the warehouse.
You will hear from them shortly.
I will also look into your RMA.
Regarding the packaging, it may well be that the air bags start at the bottom and the top and then end up all at the top after the package is shaken in transit, much like you get all the crumbs at the bottom and large pieces at the top of a packet of cereal.
It may well not be carelessness on whoever is doing the packaging, but lack of thought when planning and directing how to package items.
sounds like at some point from being packed the box has been lifted and put down on its side, then the next time its been moved its been place upside down. maybe something as simple as an arrow(or the word top?) on the box after its been packed could stop this from happening in the future?
sounds like at some point from being packed the box has been lifted and put down on its side, then the next time its been moved its been place upside down. maybe something as simple as an arrow(or the word top?) on the box after its been packed could stop this from happening in the future?
Well this is to be expected when you send a parcel via the courier? :)
Anyway, I'm not trying to suggest why and how, clearly there's a problem there and the packaging dept will know what is is and what to do about it.
There's nothing worse than the disappointment when you open a box full of treats to find something damaged inside. In my case, there were two sticks of ram in a anti-static bag rubbing against each other on the floor of the box, with all the other stuff on top. While they worked fine, its not difficult to imagine the scenario that some surface mount component on the RAM gets scraped off and renders the stick useless or unstable.
[This post concerns RMA233283]
I run a small business repairing electronic equipment and part of our business is computer building and repair. Recently I thought we could try out aria, since their pricing seemed quite aggressive. So in the past month, I ordered two computer builds. So let me describe my experience.
First order
Components arrived quickly, which was excellent. Opened box to discover that all the delicate components were at the bottom of the box (where damage is most likely to occur) and that the top of the box was filled with airbags. Surely, the airbags and packing materials should be around the goods to prevent damage, not on top where they provide no protection whatsoever. Thankfully nothing was damaged, probably due to luck rather than any sort of decent packaging. Part of the order consisted of a power supply that developed a fault - a quite annoying fault that only showed itself after 24hrs of gaming and benchmark usage. The computer became unstable and reset itself. Then after continued usage the PSU would trip out at more and more frequent intervals. So I replaced the PSU and the problem was fixed - QED faulty power pack.
Making a note of my tests I sent the unit back to Aria for refund. Their tests showed that it was fine and so they refused to refund the money and postage costs. Talking to the representative was like talking to a brick wall, and after a long time on the phone the problem was not resolved. Every argument 'in the book' was used by the representative with the aim of misleading and avoiding the refund, no doubt Aria have forgotten about the consumer laws and rights of customers in the UK. I ended the phone call with disappointment and frustration at the horrendous service, my patience absolutely worn out.
Having been in the repair business for some time intermittent component failures can be frustrating for the customer and business dealing with the customer. Often, on the bench the item will be fine but when back with the customer the fault shows. We recognise this and in virtually every case like this the customer is right, there was a fault. With time pressures during testing it is easy to pass a component when it is borderline faulty, I know this from experience. This is particularly relevant with power supplies in equipment as the intermittent component failure is affected by heat, current draw, time switched on etc.
Second order
The second order arrived packed in the same manner. Airbags on top, delicates on the bottom with no protection. The computer case arrived slightly damaged, which luckily was repaired by myself without having to go through another round of RMA.
Now my patience has gone.
So as you can see a pattern of terrible service is emerging. In my Aria test I spent well over £1000 and had plans of spending much more but their stubbornness has lost them a business customer over the mere sum of £30.
Typical service from Aria they get your money and the customer service goes out the window,
I am still waiting for a refund of postage after a HD I ordered arrived DOA,
This was for a pc I was building my son for xmas.
Will never use Aria Again.:mad:
lee@cserve
21-01-10, 11:24
If we were to offer you a credit for the item, is there an alternative PSU you would like instead if not I will look in to getting you the refund?
If we were to offer you credit for the item is are alternative PSU you would like instead if not I will look in to getting you the refund?
I have already stated what I need and that is a refund for the faulty psu and its return postage. I do not need credit or an alternative psu since a replacement has already been fitted to the customers PC. So refund of psu and return postage please.
Dan
Why would a business or consumer buy from aria.co.uk?
This is a question i would like to have a stab at answering, please bear in mind the following;
1. I have no affiliation with Aria in anyway.
2. I stopped ordering from Aria due to receiving free postage at other e-tailers.
Firstly i know of only one other e-tailer that has a Daily Specials board where the things are actually on discount.
Secondly after many purchases from Aria i am yet to have a problem with the goods i've ordered or the customer service if i have a query.
Thirdly, how many other e-tailers do you know of where you can personal message the Purchasing Manager to get something that bit cheaper or in stock or to match a price?
Also there is tons and tons of helpful, mostly knowledgeable people on here ready to help at a moments notice.
Lastly, look how well they are responding to your thread? On some other sites your thread would have been deleted.
I think all of the above are very valid reasons why i would purchase from Aria and i'm sure others on here can add alot more. I just had a spare 5 minutes.
Anyone can sell you anything, its how they look after you when things go wrong, i firmly believe that the employees at Aria hold this as one of there core values.
Hello mate; Lee is liaising with technical to find out what happened exactly. I will make sure you get your postage refunded if the drive arrived DOA.
Why would a business or consumer buy from aria.co.uk?
This is a question i would like to have a stab at answering, please bear in mind the following;
1. I have no affiliation with Aria in anyway.
2. I stopped ordering from Aria due to receiving free postage at other e-tailers.
Firstly i know of only one other e-tailer that has a Daily Specials board where the things are actually on discount.
Secondly after many purchases from Aria i am yet to have a problem with the goods i've ordered or the customer service if i have a query.
Thirdly, how many other e-tailers do you know of where you can personal message the Purchasing Manager to get something that bit cheaper or in stock or to match a price?
Also there is tons and tons of helpful, mostly knowledgeable people on here ready to help at a moments notice.
Lastly, look how well they are responding to your thread? On some other sites your thread would have been deleted.
I think all of the above are very valid reasons why i would purchase from Aria and i'm sure others on here can add alot more. I just had a spare 5 minutes.
Anyone can sell you anything, its how they look after you when things go wrong, i firmly believe that the employees at Aria hold this as one of there core values.
Hi there
Well said.
Were not perfect, nobody is.
Plus we are aware we had issues but huge steps are now being made to make a difference and the aim is to get our customer service levels so were one of the best out there.
Plus as already mentioned here you don't just have managers within the company replying out of work hours, the owner is replying as well. You don't see that regarding customer service issues elsewhere.
The fact we have made this forum public also says big things, we don't hide things and are working on improving things all the time. :)
Why would a business or consumer buy from aria.co.uk?
This is a question i would like to have a stab at answering, please bear in mind the following;
1. I have no affiliation with Aria in anyway.
2. I stopped ordering from Aria due to receiving free postage at other e-tailers.
Firstly i know of only one other e-tailer that has a Daily Specials board where the things are actually on discount.
Secondly after many purchases from Aria i am yet to have a problem with the goods i've ordered or the customer service if i have a query.
Thirdly, how many other e-tailers do you know of where you can personal message the Purchasing Manager to get something that bit cheaper or in stock or to match a price?
Also there is tons and tons of helpful, mostly knowledgeable people on here ready to help at a moments notice.
Lastly, look how well they are responding to your thread? On some other sites your thread would have been deleted.
I think all of the above are very valid reasons why i would purchase from Aria and i'm sure others on here can add alot more. I just had a spare 5 minutes.
Anyone can sell you anything, its how they look after you when things go wrong, i firmly believe that the employees at Aria hold this as one of there core values.
Well you are entitled to your opinion and if that is your experience then good for you and Aria. I have accurately described my recent experience with the packaging and RMA. I accept that an issue may occur with the PSU because of the nature of the fault, so my worst case expectation was to have to contact Aria by phone to sort out the refund - which I did not expect to be in any way painful.
I'm sure most people at Aria have good customer service at heart, sadly the rep I dealt with and his colleague/superior he was consulting with with did not. I remained calm throughout the phone call, stated my case, responded to the rep's arguments, said he was crazy to lose a customer over £30 and ended the call when I was completely fed up.
Had the rep and his colleague been reasonable, this forum post would never have happened.
The fact we have made this forum public also says big things, we don't hide things and are working on improving things all the time. :)
This is indeed an excellent decision, problems are always best sorted out in an open and reasonable manner and if customers see a situation resolved in a sensible manner they will buy from you.
This is indeed an excellent decision, problems are always best sorted out in an open and reasonable manner and if customers see a situation resolved in a sensible manner they will buy from you.
HI there
That is what we want, hopefully CS guys will sort you today. :)
lee@cserve
21-01-10, 13:35
I have already stated what I need and that is a refund for the faulty psu and its return postage. I do not need credit or an alternative psu since a replacement has already been fitted to the customers PC. So refund of psu and return postage please.
Dan
I have spoken to our technical team and they have tested the item on one of our test systems on a stress test for 65 hours without a problem.
The test system was a Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard, Athlon46 X2 5000 CPU, 2x2GB PC6400 Memory, Geforce 8800GTX Graphics Card, 300GB SATA HDD and a SATA DVDRW and had Windows XP SP3 on it.
We are willing to give you a full refund on the item where normally we would charge an admin/restocking fee as we cannot sell the item as new.
We now have to sell the item as a used/clearance item at a lower cost.
As for you postage cost we will not be offering a refund on this as the item was tested as working and not faulty but as a gesture of good will we are able to offer you free shipping on your next order that’s placed with our Telesales team.
I will now process the refund of the item for you and get our accounts team to refund it.
Please allow 3 to 4 working days for the refund to should in your bank account.
I have spoken to our technical team and they have tested the item on one of our test systems on a stress test for 65 hours without a problem.
The test system was a Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard, Athlon46 X2 5000 CPU, 2x2GB PC6400 Memory, Geforce 8800GTX Graphics Card, 300GB SATA HDD and a SATA DVDRW and had Windows XP SP3 on it.
We are willing to give you a full refund on the item where normally we would charge an admin/restocking fee as we cannot sell the item as new.
We now have to sell the item as a used/clearance item at a lower cost.
As for you postage cost we will not be offering a refund on this as the item was tested as working and not faulty but as a gesture of good will we are able to offer you free shipping on your next order that’s placed with our Telesales team.
I will now process the refund of the item for you and get our accounts team to refund it.
Please allow 3 to 4 working days for the refund to should in your bank account.
Thank you for the refund.
I would advise you *not* to sell on the PSU. It has an intermittent fault which has shown itself in front of my eyes. You only risk alienating another customer. The PSU in question failed at the customers house. When returned here it ran fine for 24hrs, I was about to return the PC when the fault showed. The PSU will only be RMA'd back to you in time as the faulty component degrades and gets worse. I advise you of this as a skilled and qualified professional, who repairs SMPSUs to component level.
Dr Daniel White MEng EngD
Urgh I read again and discover that you won't refund the postage on an item that has been shown to be faulty by a professional who knows all about the insides of PSUs, their design, the behaviour of borderline faulty components like diodes (likely in this case), the crap capacitors you get in generic *AND BRANDED* power supplies - evident by the stack of psu boards i use for spares here plenty of which are branded high quality units that have expired before their time.
If you could only listen to your customers.
Any sane person presented with a rebooting computer and shutdowns would suspect the PSU. Any sane person who has been told a PSU is intermittently faulty with these symptoms would not sell the PSU to someone else, they would mark it faulty and return it to the seller or throw it in the bin.
Now, I really am lost for words.
Well now I have thought of some more, wasting my time when I should be repairing things here. Another thing to add to the list of why not to use Aria, who has shown its true colours after what could have been described as a good start.
Only last week I had something in to repair that did not show a fault and I put it on for a good test. It went back to the customer and the fault showed. I replaced some parts *without even witnessing* the fault and it was fixed.
Tech department, is it not within the realms of possibility that this has occurred with you. Did you test the PSU on the bench or in a case? On the bench most likely, otherwise you would have had to assemble a computer. In a case, the temperature will be higher, with higher probability that the fault will show. This is *classic behaviour* of a borderline faulty diode, where failure occurs as a function of temperature, current and time and which can only be found by replacement - a particularly annoying fault that often leads me on a wild goose chase through circuitry of equipment I have in for repair.
How do you know its there? You listen to your customer's fault report.
How do you know which one it is - you know where to look, narrowing the problem down to several components instead of hundreds.
So the saga continues... Will I get my postage refund? Will YOU get your postage refund? Will Aria realise that the damage done by this thread is well in excess of the £8 I spent returning a faulty PSU?
Tune in tomorrow, when CS has a flash of inspiration and refunds my £30 in full.
Edit: Ok this is probably not appropriate, I do wish the conversation to continue seriously and merely reflects my annoyance and amusement at the time which I am sure you can understand.
So, when will this be sorted out?
I have spoken to our technical team and they have tested the item on one of our test systems on a stress test for 65 hours without a problem.
The test system was a Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard, Athlon46 X2 5000 CPU, 2x2GB PC6400 Memory, Geforce 8800GTX Graphics Card, 300GB SATA HDD and a SATA DVDRW and had Windows XP SP3 on it.
We are willing to give you a full refund on the item where normally we would charge an admin/restocking fee as we cannot sell the item as new.
We now have to sell the item as a used/clearance item at a lower cost.
As for you postage cost we will not be offering a refund on this as the item was tested as working and not faulty but as a gesture of good will we are able to offer you free shipping on your next order that’s placed with our Telesales team.
I will now process the refund of the item for you and get our accounts team to refund it.
Please allow 3 to 4 working days for the refund to should in your bank account.
Appears to me that its been sorted?
Appears to me that its been sorted?
Almost, all that would make me go away now is an £8 postage refund for returning the faulty PSU. Can't see whats so effin difficult about it to be honest.
Come on Aria, it's not difficult - give me the refund for the return postage that I am entitled to for returning a faulty item.
I don't really want free shipping on the next order, haven't decided whether there will be one.
I just want the refund for the psu and a refund for the return postage. I already know its faulty, if Aria wants to test insufficiently and sell the PSU on to another unsuspecting customer where it WILL fail well thats up to them. They already have the information required to make the sensible decision of marking the PSU faulty, sending me the refunds and getting on with more important work. Why they can't do it I don't know. Perhaps some egos are getting in the way.
chris@cserve
25-01-10, 18:33
The issue will be discussed in tomorrow’s management meeting; we will have a response before close of business tomorrow.
The issue will be discussed in tomorrow’s management meeting; we will have a response before close of business tomorrow.
Ok, thanks for the feedback :)
chris@cserve
26-01-10, 18:26
Hi, the manager has now authorised the return postage can be refunded as requested. This will be processed back to your payment card within the next 5-7 days
Hi, the manager has now authorised the return postage can be refunded as requested. This will be processed back to your payment card within the next 5-7 days
Thank you for the refund.
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