Disappointing Currys [Updated]

Disappointing Currys sounds like I’m about to go on about the national dish of the UK, but no, the national retailer who appeared to have sold me something that wasn’t exactly brand new.

So, we decided to get Kid A a decent laptop which should manage games like The Sims at a good level of detail and so after a couple of days of research, I found the ideal spec for the price.

Intel Core i5 8300H (2.3GHz Quad Core)
8GB DDR4 RAM (2133MHz which is slightly disappointing)
Nvidia GTX 1050 4GB (or 1050Ti to normal people, unless it’s different somehow)

It arrived and I was excited to get it set up, ready for her to use… Until I saw the condition of the box.

A big crease down the front of it with a dent, the security tape had been opened and the laptop had clearly been out of the box as it wasn’t put back in very tidy.

Then there was the power supply which had obviously been used and not put back properly. As I removed the laptop from the protective sleeve, a couple of bugs fell out (a moth and one of those small black hard things) and then when I opened the box containing the power leads, there was … something .. dead(?) stuck to it.

To Currys credit, I was contacted by the Team KnowHow on Twitter after Tweeting about it, nicely with no bad language while expressing my disappointment (if you rant and hurl abuse, it gets you nowhere, never do that) while mentioning both Currys and Team KnowHow and worked it out via Direct Messages.

Not sure what was discovered when I gave them the reference number of the order, but they offered a 10% discount (which I’m guessing would have been refunded) or to have the obviously ex-display unit picked up, returned and a replacement sent out.

After a little while of mulling it over with the wife, we decided upon a replacement due to not knowing the actual condition of the laptop and whether there could be more bugs inside.

[Update]
Not an update on the above info as such, just that since I had this problem with Currys and this particular laptop, a new message has popped up on the page.

Take a look at the images above in the main post, that is the state the first one arrived in. The replacement wasn’t packed much better and their excuse is that, “Some boxes are unsealed as supplied by the manufacturer,” what? Why? The “Manufacturer” wouldn’t supply brand new stock unsealed, that’s just bullshit.

“these are still brand new, pristine, and listed as “New”.” And there’s the problem, they shouldn’t be listed as “New”, they should be listed as open box items, because that’s what they are and the price should reflect that.

So where is this information box? In an iframed web page for some reason and not on the main eBay listing page. Isn’t that something like misinformation? False advertising? Basically, it’s not right.

Admittedly, £499 for the listed laptop of a Ryzen 5 2500U, 8GB DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD (you wouldn’t fit many games on that as well as Windows) and a Radeon RX 560X 4GB (about on par with a Nvidia GTX 1050) is actually not bad and very reasonable.

If you want to take the risk and get one (stick more storage and another stick of RAM in there and you have a fairly decent gaming laptop), check out the eBay listing and to be honest, it really isn’t that bad at that price, just the fact you only get a 256GB SSD…