Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Why NEVER to buy a cheap PC, let alone Medion PC

glossywhite

glossywhite

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 28, 2008
1,120
3
Hi. I have a friend who bought a Medion X7311D at Christmas, and to say he has had "issues" is an understatement. First off, I unpack said piece of junk for him (NOTE: IT COST £900 - I EXPECT MORE THAN THIS CRAP), open the side panel in order to install a slave (render) drive... and what should happen... the gaudy blue neon lamp that is held onto the back of the interior of the case *WITH DOUBLE SIDED TAPE!!!* :lol: fell off, without me even touching it!.

Okay, so we got the machine up and running finally, after having to deal with some stupidly claustophobic interior wrangling of SATA cables (which idiots "design" this junk?). Five months down the line, the Medion "engineer" (yes, I use that term VERY loosely indeed) had to be called out because the machine won't boot. Here is where the stupidity starts:



I get a call from my friend's girlfriend (he's at work):

"Hi Matt - the Medion engineer is here, but he is having trouble replacing the drive (the boot drive [supposedly] is faulty) but he can't work out how to remove it..."

Hang on a sec - THE MEDION ENGINEER - *FROM* Medion (or the local Zoo more like it) can't work out how to remove a drive FROM A MEDION PRODUCT?... :lol: I started to chuckle very loudly, a mixture of dis-belief and also amusement. I asked her to ask the "engineer" where he was from; was he working AT Medion, or sub-contracted out by them; "He doesn't know" was the response... R__O__F__L__!__! what?!?!?!

Okay, so about 20 mins she calls back to report that said "engineer" has managed to remove the drive, after lengthy head scratching and calling of his service centre (who, by the way, ALSO DIDN'T KNOW), and has now replaced it. That should be it then I assume - he will just close the panel and leave her with the issue resolved...

NOPE!

Twenty minutes later (again, YES) she calls back: "Uhmm Matt - the ("engineer") man has put the new drive in, but the screen is black with white text on it... something about loading files - what has gone wrong?"


:roll: :lol: :?

Okayyy... I put it to her that maybe the "engineer" may have a drive with a pre-load of Vista for another Medion model, and also suggest (when she says that's unlikely) that if they can't train their "engineers" how to release a HDD from its bay and replace it, HOW can they be trusted with higher level stuff like sending out the right pre-load replacement drive... to which she says "Oh you WOULD say that; you love Macs".... (uhmm YES I am a Mac user, unashamedly, but let's think for a second WHO IT WAS THAT SHE CALLED, TO ASK FOR HELP; ME.)

Anyhow, I suggest that he takes the support discs and does a factory restore from DVD, back to Vista. This was not done, and the machine, complete with "new"(?!) drive was left by the Medion Monkey, in it's (still) unworking state.


So to recap for a second; Medion "engineer" :lol: asks customer to call her friend, to ask for advice about a problem HE WAS SENT TO FIX?!.

L_________O_________L


Now people wonder why I PERSISTENTLY and faithfully buy Macs... can you see why, now?.


Incompetent company, selling JUNK to gullible members of the public with too little experience of computers to differentiate between REAL quality, and the imitation of it by cheap-*ss vendors. What a joke. I would hope and pray that your Medion NEVER goes wrong, guys and girls.

Get a Mac ;)
 
Your experience is interesting to me because my brother has a Medion PC and it has been flawless since he bought it several years ago from ALDI. We've opened it to add a new graphics card and I thought the interior was actually quite well laid out - cables were held back well, there was a good heat "pipe" on the top of the fan to direct the air out of the case and the drives and cards were all very secure.

And just to add to your last point: "Get a Mac", well if you buy a Mac and it goes wrong they won't send an engineer to help you. You'll have to take the computer back to the shop yourself and wait a while for them to repair it. The longest I went without my MacBook was three weeks while they corrected a horrible issue with discolouration of the plastic.

I guess with all products, YMMV.
 
neiltc13 said:
Your experience is interesting to me because my brother has a Medion PC and it has been flawless since he bought it several years ago from ALDI. We've opened it to add a new graphics card and I thought the interior was actually quite well laid out - cables were held back well, there was a good heat "pipe" on the top of the fan to direct the air out of the case and the drives and cards were all very secure.

And just to add to your last point: "Get a Mac", well if you buy a Mac and it goes wrong they won't send an engineer to help you. You'll have to take the computer back to the shop yourself and wait a while for them to repair it. The longest I went without my MacBook was three weeks while they corrected a horrible issue with discolouration of the plastic.

I guess with all products, YMMV.
Click to expand...

The impeccable service and competence of Apple FAR outweighs the minor inconvenience of having to travel to them. At least they CAN fix it, normally.
 
Now people wonder why I PERSISTENTLY and faithfully buy Macs... can you see why, now?
Click to expand...
Until you have a problem with a mac and find out that there arent any companies that hire college educated tech support.
 
J&JPolangin said:
...quality control stinks as more companies outsource to the cheapest labor markets possible to try and stay profitable, thats world wide...
Click to expand...

Yep - so true.

Stupidest phrases used in response to/in defence of problematic companies:

"We've never had any problems"

"As far as I know" (the scope of which is... ONE man's experience! :rolleyes: )

"I've never heard anything bad about X company"

Oh, well as long as YOU have never heard anything bad, oh great all-seeing Oracle, then that's fine then; I retract my complaints HAHA!
 
Nah, it's not a PC vs Mac thing here. It's a Medion vs. everyone else here.

Everyone knows that European PC manufacturers suck.

*ducks and runs away*
 
glossywhite said:
The impeccable service and competence of Apple FAR outweighs the minor inconvenience of having to travel to them. At least they CAN fix it, normally.
Click to expand...

Minor inconvenience? Maybe if you live right next to an Apple Store. The nearest Apple Store is 4-5 hours away from me. I can only imagine what it would be like if I didn't live in the United States.
 
roger6106 said:
Minor inconvenience? Maybe if you live right next to an Apple Store. The nearest Apple Store is 4-5 hours away from me. I can only imagine what it would be like if I didn't live in the United States.
Click to expand...

We have these amazing people... they are called "couriers".
 
glossywhite said:
We have these amazing people... they are called "couriers".
Click to expand...

Actually, Apple's warranties have changed. I believe they no longer allow customers to return their computers by courier to them.

I have AppleCare on my MacBook and the two service options I'm given on the Apple site are:

Apple Authorised Service Provider
or
Apple Retail Store

Yep, it's you that has to do the running.
 
Apple, one of the few companies that can get away with having to send PC yourself!

*Note: Can't even do that nowadays!
 
dsnort said:
Wait a minute, a £900 laptop is considered cheap? Isn't that around $1500 US?



And still provide a better user experience! :D

Sorry, couldn't resist! Should have, but didn't!
Click to expand...


That's his point. It wasn't even cheap. Admittedly, his title is sort of contradictory, though.
 
glossywhite said:
The impeccable service and competence of Apple FAR outweighs the minor inconvenience of having to travel to them. At least they CAN fix it, normally.
Click to expand...

Yep, a lot of it is to do with engineer training. Medion obviously haven't bothered.

Many years ago, we had a Dixons warranty on a Performa 450 (LC III). The motherboard went, and the Dixons engineer NEARLY managed to fit an LC motherboard instead. He only came unstuck as the RAM wouldn't fit (72-pin vs 30-pin). He wasn't trying to rip us off (or so he said), and did seem genuinely surprised that there were different models of Macintosh as he thought they only sold one that was that shape...
 
neiltc13 said:
Actually, Apple's warranties have changed. I believe they no longer allow customers to return their computers by courier to them.

I have AppleCare on my MacBook and the two service options I'm given on the Apple site are:

Apple Authorised Service Provider
or
Apple Retail Store

Yep, it's you that has to do the running.
Click to expand...

Not quite 100% there. For desktops (or at least the mac pro), they do offer courier collection and re-delivery, although from my personal experience, lugging a mac pro back to a store would be a lot less hassle. (*shocking story below*)

When I first bought my mac pro early 2008 in spring last year, it had a dodgy psu which was replaced twice with other dodgy psu's. Furthermore, every time the mac pro came back it looked more and more battered.

The third time I sent it in took the biscuit though:

1. I got a call from apple saying that they had left it on the doorstep of my house (in what if conservatively mentioned be described as a not-so-desireable neighbourhood), after I had specificallly told them (and being assured that everything was ok) that I would be away visiting my girlfriends parents in another city.

From this call I immediately got a train in the hope that in the 4 hours travel no one would 'lift it for me' from my doorstep!

When I arrived home there was nothing there, and after calling apple, they told me that they had made a mistake and it had not actually been shipped yet.

2. When the unit finally did arrive it had lots of sawdust (WTF) inside the case, the case itself was uneven (they had managed to significantly dent one of the bottom handles), and they still hadn't fixed the PSU!

Oh and by the way, this process lasted for months, and left me without a machine to work on.

In the end, I got a bucket load of compensation (of goods and cash totalling over £800) however when my time and other expenses were taken out of this, it really doesn't leave much to be desired.
 
Oh my the OP's "engineer" sounds like a friend of mine. (Although he lives in the US not UK).

For all my friends I set up wireless networks, wireless printing, file sharing, etc. He comes over, cant connect his laptop to friend X's network (because he doesnt have the wpa key) so he says I set up the network wrong and ruins friend X's whole network setup and resets everything and leaves friend X without any internet until I come back home to fix it all. I then get calls from friend X boohooing about how my friend screwed all their **** up. He's done this to about 5 different people now.

OP I know how you feel lol.
 
I know, Medion has horrible pc's. Purchased mine around 2003 and got fixed 9 times!!! Every time it was the graphic card or the motherboard.

Medion gives 1y manufacturing warrentee for new parts so until last year my warrentee practically did not expired!!....

Replaced the mobo with an atom 330 board. Works perfectly and no problems at all.
 
ravenvii said:
Nah, it's not a PC vs Mac thing here. It's a Medion vs. everyone else here.

Everyone knows that European PC manufacturers suck.

*ducks and runs away*
Click to expand...

You can get Medion here in the US - at Aldi Food Stores... :eek:

I think their desktop model is $249... :eek:

dsnort said:
Wait a minute, a £900 laptop is considered cheap? Isn't that around $1500 US?
Click to expand...

According to this:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=17350

It's a gaming PC (correct me if it's not the right model).

Core i7 HP's start at $949...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back