PC Direct

So far, so good. They may lose a star or two after the last gadget they sold me, as it’s broken twice now. But they’ve been fairly reasonable with their warranty plan. We’ll see how that goes.

My experiences with PC Direct are decidedly mix. In ended up going with PC Direct at the insistence of my father who wanted me to have someone local for better support. Personally I wanted to go with an online retailer CyberPower, but was willing to sacrifice immediate parts for local support. Sadly I ended up sacrificing both as their initial support was horrible. Here’s what happened.
When I purchased my PC from PC Direct over online I ended up sacrificing much along the lines of power to get cheaper components. I made this trade off in order to have decent local support and the insistence of my father as I previously stated. In the end my computer didn’t even last a day and it was then I discovered that while I was told on 4 separate occasions (the forth being right in front of the manager when we returned the computer) that I had a 30 day money back guarantee, it even said so on the receipt. The end problem turned out to be the refurbished hard drive (which was not described as refurbished at any point in time) turned out to be broken.
Their policy is in fact not 30 money back guarantee and while we eventually got them to expedite my repairs at no costs (initially I was going to have to pay to have the thing fixed) it involved a great deal of hassle and if would have taken 5 days and cost money to have fixed what I had dropped nearly $ 1600 on. A key issue that shoppers should be aware of is the fact that it is a corporate controlled store and the managers are not empowered to make decisions. The manager we dealt with was very pleasant (in person), but was unable to issue the refund and stated that he had tried to get Corporate to change that for over a year.
In the end the computer has hiccups and the whole experience left me with zero confidence of any decent assistance if the computer ever were to break again. Their selection in the store was interesting, but I found it to be ultimately sub par as their prices were way higher than what one could get them for online.
The employees were friendly for the most part (in person), but straight up lied to my face about their capacity to match prices online (which one employee admitted they couldn’t). When the issue of the fact that I went with them for local support came up I was told by the manager that they indeed could match Cypberpower’s price (the same model with better parts is a couple hundred dollars cheaper on Cyberpower and comes with a better warranty), I was forced to call the manager out on that.
The computer was repaired and their repair staff knew what they were doing, and even comped an installation on a new fan (I still had to buy the fan) for the CPU. I can definitely recommend their repair staff, but for the rest buyer beware.
Summary
The Good
*Competent Repair Staff
*Polite Staff (in person)
The Bad
*Return policy is a lie
*Managers have little power
*Poor Selection at high prices

Don’t listen to the negatives here. If you know what you’re doing, this place is an absolute godsend. The sales reps DO know what they’re talking about and they have a fantastic selection of parts you will never find in a big-​box store.
To Josh H and others complaining about the computer selection: This store sells machines refurbished and warranted by THEM. That is the reason you pay what you pay and that is the reason the machines are lower-​specced — they’re old! They’re supposed to be!

Agreeing with the other reviews, BUYER BEWARE
This is truly the greasy-​slick-​back-​hair-​salesman shop of computers.
Having many years of experience as a technical analyst, I had a look at the computers they are trying to sell and was shocked. Here is what I saw:
— Low RPM Hard Drives (~4500−5200rpm)
— Low quality Hard Drives (not WD or Seagate)
— Not enough RAM to support the OS (512mb to run win 7? — are you kidding?)
— Keyboards missing keys
— Integrated graphics, low end graphics
— Salespeople don’t answer questions directly, push products on you (I don’t blame them, because they are selling crap)
If you think you got a good deal, sorry you got hosed.

It’s kind of like a homegrown best buy: computers and parts, repair service, and cellphones minus the ridiculous high prices of those geek squad dorks. Better advice from more knowledgeable people.