Computer Upgrade King?

Have you heard of them?

I was browsing pricing info for some laptops and found this reseller that offers a few laptops quite cheap (they have 1 Clevo and some ASUS options that interest me). Some of the upgrade options are also suspiciously cheap (Samsung 470 256Gb SSD for around $200, which is around $100 cheaper than anywhere else). Their manufacturer warranty policy is not very impressive though - they "honor [only] the remainder of the manufacturer warranty". I am tempted by some of the pricing of their products, but do you think I should stay away? Do you have any experience with them?

 

By the sound of "remainder of the manufacturer warranty" it sounds like they sell used hardware. Is that what it is?If so, then be careful to know how much use the items have, and what the SMART info is on the SSD. I look them up and see what they are, since I have not heard of them before..

They seem to have some very good reviews on several sites, and seem to offer new lappys, so maybe they say remainder just because they also have either refurbished and used. But they have some loyal customers and some nice notebooks. Looks legit to me.

 

^^ Nice try Computer Upgrade King representative...


Jk Computer Upgrade King Reviews - computerupgradeking.com Ratings at ResellerRatings few decent reviews so far..

 

You got me with the nice try, and I didn't see the smiley. But yeah, I have never heard of them until now, but as I said, I am always wary of buying any hardware online, because you never know how or how long it was used. With the "remainder of manufacturer warranty" deal, it sounds like either used or refurbished. For a $100 saving an a SSD, I would rather just buy new. I can't imagine saving a $100 and then finding out the SSD is at something like 60% life. Arrgh.

 

Their warranty info is quite confusing. They offer:

3 Year Warranty on all modified components from the original purchase date.
3 Year Free Diagnostic Support via Phone or E-Mail.
Up to 1 Year Free Manufacturer Warranty on the original manufacturer components.

But then the manufacturer warranty is:

Per our policy of honoring up to 1 year on OEM components, we can only honor the remainder of the manufacturer warranty (as high as 1 year). Although we sell items rather quickly, we cannot guarantee the full manufacturer warranty. Items can take up to a month to sell, so as a result, if you were to purchase a computer with a standard 1 year manufacturer warranty, it may in fact have 11 months warranty

It sounds like an individual who is buying new laptops and then modifying them, in which case they are counted as used by the manufacturer...The reviews seem decent, but you are right that there's a certain risk involved even if it's saving me $100-200.

 

I work at Computer Upgrade King and someone had pointed me to this thread, and I thought I would address some of your concerns.

Current pricing on SSD's are going down fast, we try to reflect that in our pricing. Our drives are not used, the particular one you are referencing we purchased brand new as OEM drives made for a laptop manufacturer, so the warranty is done directly through us. We have a 3 year warranty on all parts that we upgrade in the laptops. Unfortunately the manufacture warranty starts the day we purchase the laptop in most cases. This is why we have to state up to one year, as opposed to a full year. In most cases this won't be too much of an issue, as we have a pretty good turn around time. Another thing we offer is free shipping when there is a defect within the warranty time frame, something not offered by most resellers. We have a 99.9% positive feedback rating on eBay and over 5000 positive feedbacks.

The only time we sell used hardware is if it actually states used in the title. All of our SSD's are either new from a reseller, OEM from a reseller, or brand new pulls from brand new laptops. Again the warranty starts when we purchase the laptop for reselling. Think of it this way, when I purchase a Seagate hard drive or a Gigabyte motherboard, my warranty time is dependent on the serial and date of manufacturing, not when I purchased the product. This is usually the case unless the product is registered upon purchase. In addition, certain models are not available directly from the manufacturer and can be cheaper if purchased from different sources. We primarily state for up to 1 year to be honest to the customers that they will not be getting exactly 1 year, but it may be 11 months and 2 weeks or so.

As I stated earlier all of our SSD's are new and not used or refurbished. The only usage the SSD's should see is the time it takes to install Windows and any testing we do before shipping the laptop out to the customer. Usually the minimum life (tested with SSD life) is 98%, so you still have quite a lot of writes and the speed is the same as advertised with the drive.

We do buy new laptops and modify them, primarily because many of these models are not available with these configurations. We still honor the manufacturers warranty, up to a year as stated before. We also have a 3 year warranty on all parts upgraded by us. Generally that would be CPU, HDD, and RAM. We are no different than any other custom laptop reseller on the net, in this respect, it does not make the laptop used. Most customers appreciate the fact we check out the systems prior to shipping as it reduces the number of defects immensely. Imagine if you got a new laptop that you wanted to play with before the weekend, the chance of that laptop having defects is close to none as a result of our testing and inspections. We handle all warranty support including the OEM support. The only time we do not handle OEM warranty support is if the product needs OEM warranty support after 30 days and we did not upgrade or modify the product, at that point you would contact the manufacturer directly.

If you have any more questions feel free to contact us direct through email.

[email protected]

Thanks,
T.

 

On thing I would like to point out about computer upgrade king. Some of their items, such as the Dell Alienware items, they are promoting and selling as NEW items. But if you look in the terms, they are not new. They say they are NEW OPEN BOX, but Dell does not sell NEW OPEN BOX. There are no special deals from resellers for NEW OPEN BOX. This is a trick to manipulate the listings and seem like they are offering more value then they are.

Basically, what they are selling, is items which they purchases as refurbished, make sure have no scratches or blemishes, and sell as new open box. Some of their old feedback shows to this. They also have 20 revised feedback in one year, you just cant see the comments.

Im sure there reply would be, well... dell sells "PRE ORDER NEW" and that's what we sell. Well that may be true, but if you look at their listings, every single alienware is NEW condition. Dell does not sell all that many PRE ORDER NEW laptops. Usually 1 in 20-40 is Pre-order new, the rest are refurbished or scratch and dent. They are also not an actual certified reseller, which you can confirm with Dell. If they were actually buying NEW IN BOX, there would be no reason to put open box. And Dell does not allow other to sell NEW IN BOX at the prices these laptops are online for by this seller.

Just trying to put the facts out there so everyone knows what they are buying. A few years back, this used to be the trick. Sellers would list as new but actually they would be refurbished. Ebay caught on to this little trick and banned those sellers way back. This is not to say that they are not offering a good product. But the product they are offering is what it is.

 

They probably have a bot that trolls the Dell Outlet, and when Dell releases a good coupon, they buy up a bunch of systems to resell at the original price (or greater) Dell was charging.

 

I believe in the world of Ebay if you open a brand new box (say to upgrade a laptop)
that item has to be sold as an
"open box" item.

 

Regarding the outlandish claims make on this forum about my company, I am 100% appalled that such unfounded claims can be made without a shred of any actual evidence. My company's eBay feedback exceeds 5,300 with 99.9% rating. We have A- rating on Better Business Bureau which only downgrade is due to the few years (4) that we have been in business. We average more than 25 computers shipped each day and you will be hard pressed to find an actual customer of ours that actually has anything negative to say about us. That is because we are a customer focused quality driven notebook customization store. Computer Upgrade King is one of the few select actual Dell authorized Alienware resellers with authorization granted by Dell for access to Alienware retail models (i.e. AM14XR2-6667BK, AM17xR4-7263BK, AM18xR2-8728BK) from their distributor SED International. Computer Upgrade King sources their laptops from Dell directly as well as distribution in order to provide customers with full range of Alienware configuration options. All new Alienware laptops shipped are in the new black box and not the brown Dell Outlet recertified box. Computer Upgrade King does not violate Dell's policy of exporting unlike many Alienware resellers of which Dell has had to terminate from the channel.

Computer Upgrade King keeps regular stock on hand of all different Alienware models and configurations so customers can place an order and receive delivery in a very short time frame. Also, Computer Upgrade King can be counted on not to ship a single computer with dead pixel, scratch, paint chipped spot, or noticeably defect since Computer Upgrade King makes it an emphasis to test all computers when they arrive in inventory and again before they are shipped and our QA procedures are very thorough in checking for any and all blemishes as well as a wide variety of different functional defects. Computer Upgrade King is permitted by eBay to sell as New and not New Other since Computer Upgrade King maintains Top Rated Seller status with low DSR and open case rates all below the 1/2 level that eBay deems acceptable for more than 18 months consecutive now. Computer Upgrade King remains one of eBay's most recognized and trustworthy merchants. Computer Upgrade King provides their own King's Seal of Quality which is an actual seal custom designed with Computer Upgrade King's logo much like the Microsoft Signature or the Geek Squad Seal. Computer Upgrade King's seal guarantees a much higher level of quality assurance and customer satisfaction than a typical manufacturer's seal since Computer Upgrade King does not tolerate any blemishes and tests for every conceivable defect prior to shipping which well exceed the QA checks conducted by the manufacturers.

To every unfounded claim made by persons of this forum, please provide your order number and serial number as well as the computer you purchased from us. I bet you do not have any of this information to provide as we don't have any customers unhappy with our computers. We only have misinformed people speculating how we source our computers as well as the completely false accusations made by a former disgruntled employee.

P.S. Does anyone in this forum actually think we could get away with shipping recertified Alienware in the brown Dell Outlet boxes to customers in attempt to pass them off as new while still maintaining 99.9% and almost 5,400 reviews on eBay? How would we even maintain adequate sourcing if our supply was Dell Outlet. Dell comes out with those Outlet coupons for Alienware about once or twice a month at the most and they limit purchases to 5. We have purchased Dell Outlet recertified laptops in the past and when we sold them we listed them as manufacturer refurbished category on eBay. We also listed Outlet Recertified Previously Ordered New before and our selling practice on eBay for this type of Dell laptops is to include the word Recert in the title, to list under New Other category and then to write in bold letters in the description that it is a Dell Outlet Recertified Previously Ordered New laptop. You will see feedbacks on eBay if you google "Recert computerupgradeking" since we do in fact tell customers what they are buying.

 

Hey Rob, do you sell components too? Or do you require my laptop to do the install yourself (your company)? Where are you located?
Also, I respect you standing up for your company, a bad rep in one place can cause problems in others I'm sure. I am sure that if you bounce around the forums here, you will find many ways to help us with our problems, and more than likely, new customers. I dont think most of the people in this community will take anything as fact unless proof is given, well I hope so anyways...

So Rob, what laptops do you deal with? exclusively AW or Asus, Clevo, and MSI too? Just gaming rigs, or workstations too?
What type of upgrades do you do? Have a website? How do you feel about Canada?
BTW, I am Steve. Welcome to NBR

 

I was actually pretty dissapointed in my dealing with you guys. The laptop and everything came fast and was working great but the post purchase service was poor. I was trying to change my 7970m gpu to the 680m nvidia one and you guys pretty much just told me nothing you can do and to rma the laptop. thought you would at least be able to redirect me to someone who could help.

 

Samsung 470 256GB @ $200 doesn't impress me when it is the last gen SSD Samsung offers.

 

Hi Victor, I read your previous "Ask the Resellers" thread on 8/16 in which you wrote "I obviously chose the wrong reseller to purchase my laptop from". I'm aware of your situation and what you are asking for is not reasonable. You informed us within a month of purchase that you rather switch to the GTX 680M instead of AMD 7970M so we told you could return the laptop back to us for refund and we provided you an RMA form which you never decided to complete. You contacted Sager and asked if they would switch the GPU and they informed you it was Clevo laptop and that all warranty would be provided by us and not them. Had you ordered from Sager directly or any reseller such as us, XoticPC, PowerNotebooks, or BTO Tech, you would have been told the exact same thing. You can return the laptop if you are having buyer remorse. However, you cannot return it and have GPUs swapped. You might wonder why no company will do this for you. I will tell you. For starters, the laptop has warranty with the original GPU for which it shipped from factory and when you swap GPUs that factory warranty for the GPU component is voided. Secondly, the GPU requires custom heatsink which is neither easy or affordable to source as part. Last of all, buyer remorse returns are always treated as refund regardless of what company you deal with.

Your computer works properly so you do not have any defect for which to be disappointed. Also, you were provided option of return for refund when you asked. I understand we did not provide you exactly what you asked for but I hope you understand that what you asked for was not possible for us to provide you. Even if we had the same Clevo laptop in stock with 680M which at the time we didn't, your request would have required that we swap GPU and heatsink between your laptop and another in our stock thus invalidating the warranty on both GPUs. If you check with any other Clevo reseller and you run this situation past them, I am sure you will consistently be told the same. Buyer remorse returns are treated as refund and there is no way you would be allowed to return the computer to have the GPU changed as there are so many inherent difficulties and issues that would result for a reseller to have to deal with in an attempt to accommodate such a request. That being said, I am sorry we couldn't assist you further. If you should ever have any issue with the computer, then feel free to contact us for support.

 

Hi Steve,

Thank you for being so kind. Its very nice to be greeted kindly in the forum. Regarding your questions, we do have website ComputerUpgradeKing | The Pursuit of Performance and we provide our physical address in Midlothian, VA and toll free number in the Company page. Depending on the model, components we upgrade include CPU, RAM, hard disk drive, PCI-e mSATA SSD, optical drive, wifi, LCD, and graphics card. We will be rolling out a completely new website with new shopping cart soon. I believe we are a few months away right now. We sell components but they are normally surplus CPU, RAM, HDD, SSD, and GPUs that we have on hand. We used to advertise upgrade services but the customers were so few and far between that we stopped. We can certainly assist you if your desired upgrades are CPU, RAM, HDD, ODD, or Wifi. GPU and LCD are more unlikely potential upgrades as we have identified only a few models for which GPU or LCD can be upgraded easily.

We do not have one niche market. What we do have is a unique selling practice of taking any and all makes and models of computers and selling them in many different configurations. We do not sell only the 4 gaming laptop brands. We sell every brand and we pick and choose the most popular and upgradeable of their models to sell. You'll find us selling Lenovo ThinkPad Edge with mSATA SSD + 1TB with Ivy Bridge quad core CPU. You'll also find us selling the ThinkPad W530 with Quadro K2000M or the EliteBook 8760W with NVidia Quadro FX 5010M. We are just as much into business class notebooks as we are gaming and we are just as much into home as business. We have been growing at about 80% annually since 2009 due to the fact that we have not come close to tapping out our market which is everything computer. We sold servers in the past and it was successful so you will be seeing us getting into desktops and servers quite a bit as well in the near future.

Regarding where we sell and ship to, that depends on the computer brand. Some manufacturers i.e. Alienware do not permit exporting so therefore we do not allow anyone outside the USA to order. However, there are some manufacturers we can ship outside the USA since there are no terms of sale prohibiting exports. As we wish to maintain good relationships with the manufactures and not be added to a block list or be terminated from the distribution channel, we try our very best to adhere to any and all rules they have set forth. As for Canada, we have sold many laptops. One piece of advice if you are from Canada ordering from the USA is to make sure your seller does not ship Ground Fedex or UPS as then it will carry an expensive entry prep broker fee. Instead, require that they ship air for which those shipping methods do not have the broker fee but only duty/tax.

As far as supporting users in the forums, that is something I intend to have us do more. During the summer we had more staffing and we had a very bright notebook enthusiast from college writing for us in the forums. He had to go back though. When we get some people back for the breaks I'm sure we'll be more active then. Thank you again for the welcome. It is much appreciated.

 

I have just bought a Eurocom Scorpius (Clevo P370EM) and it will be delivered tomorrow, so the only upgrade I may do right now is repaste.
I just took a spin around your site, customized a few lappies. I must say I am impressed. Also, ordering Barebone kits is an option nice If a customer wanted a laptop you do not have on your site, but from one of the many brands, would you be able to special order? And I have to ask, do you offer any discounts for education/military?

 

The Clevo P370EM is priced very well. I know our cost compared to Alienware M18x R2 with same exact specs would be around $300 less (maybe more). We'll certainly be selling this model soon. I always tell our customer service to send me any emails with requests for models we don't sell since customer feedback has inspired us to sell some of our most successful models in the past. Certainly, we can take a look at it and determine for you what upgrades it can support and the approximate cost. We are familiar with just about every single brand of computer having sold the lesser known brands like Compal, Gateway, Fujitsu, and Acer as well as the more known brands like Sony, Toshiba, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Regarding pricing, we adhere to a strict floor price so as long as we don't go below it we can do a special order for a laptop we don't already have listing for. Our markup is very low and we avoid all of the standard marketing gimmicks employed by other resellers. You won't find us advertising a dead pixel warranty that costs money as this is something we provide freely. You won't see us charging extra for 2-way international shipping DOA warranty as that is already provided freely as well. You also won't find us offering special pricing to certain groups of people as opposed to others. We set our prices very low and if we had any margin to work with we'd consider offering special price but for most models we don't have anything to work with hardly. There was certain models though where we can do discounted pricing although normally we only entertain providing lower price if someone wants us to beat price they have already elsewhere, they are ordering in bulk, or they are asking for a laptop we don't normally sell in which case special pricing is required.

 

When I am ready to add the second 7970m to my 370EM I will ask for a quote for sure

 

I ordered from them, shipped quick too. I got my laptop and it seemed really well packaged and 0 dead pixels or scratches. I was able to call before they were to ship and have the 7970 switched to a GTX 680M. Only thing was they had to redo the order and I guess they missed the free upgrade to 16GB but other then that it works great. Just can't find my CD key anyway for the windows activation.

Talk to them on the phone, great help. So far so good guys.

 

Did you order a laptop with 16GB of RAM? Feel free to contact me at [email protected] so that I can look over your invoice and order information, and make sure we didn't make any mistakes.

Thanks,
Todd

 

Hey TCUK, I just received my GT60-0NE today from you guys (after a delayed shipping by UPS - another problem), and it was broken.

The screen was destroyed and the quick-access panel looked like it was scratched by a tool or something. Everything else was in order, including the box, although there were some corner buffs.

I'm not the one that ordered/purchased the laptop but I'm wondering what can be done to return, and hopefully replace, this laptop. The person who bought the laptop (my uncle), just emailed you guys about an RMA. I was wondering what you guys could do about it, since I'm not getting any information directly at the moment.

I'm a noob at this ordering stuff, so I just want to know what's going to happen to my laptop.

 

We are out of the office for the day, but I happened to be checking this thread from home. From what I can tell by briefly looking at the emails there has been a damage claim made with UPS from our end and a package inspection scheduled. We should be able to have more information tomorrow once we are back at the office. Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Todd
[email protected]

 

Alright thanks, Todd.

I'm just completely furious that (even though I only waited about three days for shipping), that this beautiful work of art is sitting behind me in it's box because I can't use it probably thanks to poor handling. Is there something that could be done about using a different company for shipping, like Fedex?

P.S I've also noticed that this box went through customs (I'm Canadian), so the package was actually opened I'm guessing. "Something" could have happened during the inspection process at customs. Damn, I'm still mad, and get even more so, every time I look at the package just sitting there.

 

I stand corrected then, wasn't aware of how the process worked. Sorry about that then, in the end I guess my frustration towards AMD kind of came out towards you guys. Going to stick with the 7970m and hope the next driver updates helps the situation. Overall, pleasure doing business with you guys, will do so again if prices stay lowers than other resellers.

 

When you open the back cover on your P370EM, do you see that the second heatsink is already there so you can add the second GPU without issue? My only concern is if it doesn't have the second GPU, ordering the second heatsink as part may be difficult.

 

Real quick.

Noticed TCUK you are behind on 2 posts, which will make you qualified to send a PM (threshold at 5 posts) which you can use to send a PM to a MOD to give you RESELLER status.

rob@cuk noticed you have 6 posts! contact a MOD they'll give you the glorified status of the RESELLER's

nice to see yet another reseller onboard the NBR forums

 

Its empty. So the upgrade would include the GPU, heatsink, CF cable, and possibly a good TIM.

 

Hello, I sent an email to you and have not heard a reply. So I sent another yesterday regarding my issue.
Please let me know if you got it, thanks.

 

What is a keyword (ebay or amazon user id, etc...) in the email so we can find it easily. I want to make sure we get to yours. When each weekday concludes for our customer service team at about 5-5:30pm, we don't have any unanswered emails but that is not to say potentially it ended up in spam or someone started a reply and never finished.

 

I shot you a PM.

 

Just want to say thanks for all your help guys.
I ended not worrying about my keyboard I was able to set it in.
Thanks again.

 

I wanted to leave some very positive feedback for this company. I am writing this from the custom laptop I bought from them. Their customer service is excellent and they do what it takes to get the customer satisfied! I purchased a laptop from them last month and it arrived damaged due to rough handling by UPS. They provided me a return label right away and shipped out a replacement as soon as they were able to inspect and put a new custom laptop together. I also want to add they upgraded my shipping at no additional cost to help insure the package would arrive on the one day of the week UPS delivers that I have off. They did this for both the original shipment as well as the replacement. It would have been more covenient if I could have had it shipped to my workplace instead, but I understand that there is a lot of fraud going on when dealing with high dollar items such as laptops and they are only protecting themselves.

Turn around time seems to be about a couple business days from when they receive the order plus shipping time. Very reasonable. I did a lot of searching online and no one does custom laptops as fast or as affordably as this company does.

Bottomline, a very classy company! I would do business with them again!

 

Hi,

I just wanted to post my feedback about ComputerUpgradeKing .

I purchased a Clevo P170EM with 7970M from their Amazon Store.
I selected the one day shipping, and received the laptop the next business day.

I am really happy with ther service, including their customer care, which cleared all my queries.

Also the Windows7 HP that came with this was a bare bones install with no bloatware.

Overall, have had a very positve experience with them, and will definitely recommend them to those looking for good prices and quick delivery. :thumbsup:

 

Very trust worthy site typing on my macbook pro that i got from them very very fast shipping and great prices.

 

Since this forum was helpful to me in making my decision to purchase from Computer Upgrade King, I want to post my experience. I heard about them from Amazon.com, but was sceptical at first. They do have a good website and a fair description on what they do, but still I had some doubts. I wanted to get ASUS Zenbook UX32VD, but with RAM upgraded from 4GB to 10GB and with 250 SSD GB harddrive instead of the default 500 GB HDD. I could have done the upgrades myself, but I didn't feel like browsing around in hardware, and besides I needed it in the next 3 days because I was leaving for vacation. Also their price was just a little above to what it would have cost me, so I decided to try.

I ordered the laptop on their website, and since I was sceptical in giving them my credit card #, I paid through paypal. I must say that everything was done the way I wanted. The laptop came in a new package, wrapped as if it was un-opened. The upgrades were done well. Now I have a very light but powerful laptop, with NVIDIA Geforce 620M, 10GB RAM, and 250 GB SSD, along with 32 GB built in memory. Good battery life, lasts 4-5 hours, depending on what you do. I placed my order on Tuesday evening with 2 day delivery. UPS notified me with a tracking number on Wednesday, and I got it on Friday. I've used the laptop for a few weeks and so far so good. I must say I'm very satisfied with this company and will definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a manually upgraded machine. Want to thank the folks at CUK for their good work!

PS: There was some strange program called Windows 8 installed on the 250GB SSD harddrive. The safest way to get rid of it is to install Ubuntu.

 

I'm really disappointed about this company. I've bought two laptops from them. The first one is a HP Dv6, it cames with a defected screen. Then i returned it for refund, but it took about a month for me to receive the refund. So I ordered another laptop this time, it's a asus g55vw. now is the fourth day sinds the purchase, still no info about tracking. Although mine is UPS ground, but four days is a little bit long. Just hope the laptop doesn't comes with any kind of problem this time.

 

I ordered an Asus G75 from Computer Upgrade Kings via Amazon on March 6 with UPS ground. It is March 14th and I still have not received the laptop. Instead, I received an email from "Alex" telling me that there was an "error" in the listing of this laptop and they sent a "return to sender" request to UPS. So now, I have to wait for the package to go back to Computer Upgrade Kings before I can receive a refund which from others' experience may take up to a month. Their pricing policy is terrible and their customer service is horrendous. Please be aware when you order from these people. Saving a few bucks is not worth wasting more an a month's time before you get your computer.

 

I looked for feedback too, which was mostly positive. I expect if you are lucky and don'e have any hardware problems, ok, but you are rolling the dice.
I bought from them, found the bluetooth did not work, and tried to use my blu-ray writer I paid them to upgrade, and it just was not there. They charged me for an upgrade they did not do. My order asked for no substitutions, and they substituted anyway. So I get a computer I did not order, with two broken items and after just being scammed on the upgrade I returned it. Got the RMA and all that. So They sit on it for a week, wont return emails, and when i finally file a complaint with paypal, (a week later) they respond with I "scuffed it up, so it cant be sold as new". Now I'm 56, and very careful. returned even the packing materials. Total bull. So they offer me $1000 of $1500 back.

But think about their response. Even if it was scuffed, it is BROKEN. It cannot be sold as anything but broken, till its refurbished, then it can be sold as refurbished. It can never be sold as new. It was HP laptop. HP would never sell a repaired return as new, because it isn't.

So this is a small business without the resources to make it right when they send out bad hardware. And they "fix" bad hardware by selling it to someone else as new. Their words. So you might get a new computer, more likely you are buying refurbished computers they resell from HP, hence the prices. If all goes right, ignorance is blis, but if you get bad hardware, kiss your money goodby.

And Paypal's buyer guarantee? Short version, they lie. There is no buyers guarantee, they wont even contact you about a claim for $1500.

So they are crooks when they think they have to be.
Choose wisely.

 

That's why I never buy customised laptop even they offer me 3 year guarantee. void the manufacturer warranty just for upgrade? nope, if you do an upgrade, they only give you the warranty on the upgrade part! Besides, for the upgrade part,you don't receive the replaced one. that's been said, you paid 200 bucks for a ssd. after upgrade ,they keep the hhd that it comes with. the upgrade ssd cost 250 on Amazon. for 50 bucks you go for a upgrade one, meanwhile your hhd cost 150. So,you lost 100 bucks

 

Hi Bill,

I am just following up, as I am the owner of Computer Upgrade King. I am taking the time to respond to your issue personally and I would like to clarify our side of the story as we feel there is information lacking in this thread. Firstly, I apologize for the issues you have had with our company. We do our best to make sure all possible laptop issues are tested prior to laptops leaving our location, unfortunately, we cannot guarantee 100% working condition as things can happen in transit or problems with hardware can appear after a while of usage.

Our returns department did determine your Bluetooth was defective as you have described, but we did not charge you the restocking fee for the defective Bluetooth and rather for the physical damaged condition of the item. By default we will try and give customers a full refund if items are defective and we even provide prepaid shipping, however that does not waive a restocking fee if items are returned physically damaged or missing components, accessories, or packaging. The restocking fee, which was $354 and not $400, was charged because you had returned the laptop with physical damages such as many heavy scratches on the lid and more notably a large crack in the casing. Pictures of both are provided in the links below. We made you an original offer of a $320.81 for the restocking fee and you denied our offer. After the evidence was provided to PayPal they decided a restocking fee of $354 was in order based on the damage reports that were provided. I am also attaching blacked out information that reinforces this claim (see below). So in summary, we did not charge you for any defect, you were charged a restocking fee for the damage on the return.

In terms of the Bluetooth, We cannot discredit your claim that you received Bluetooth that was damaged and not working. However, we did determine that the motherboard slot was damaged when the item was returned and thus Bluetooth did not work properly. A cause of the faulty Bluetooth connection could be as a result of the damage on the laptop. The damage was determined that it was either blunt force to the back of the machine or a drop that caused the damage, during which the Bluetooth could have been faulty.

PayPal did not close the case immediately as you have stated and allotted both our company and yourself, a week and a half, to provide them with more information in regards to your return. We provided sufficient enough evidence such as pictures, your original claim on the issues, and more than one damage report. I am attaching all the evidence for review for any Amazon buyers. I will obviously hide any sensitive information from the evidence to protect your privacy, however I feel it is necessary to defend ourselves, since you have also provided several variations of the same claim on various sites that change the story.

Below are the pictures of the damage uploaded to an image host:
- http://i45.tinypic.com/2jbqobd.jpg
- http://i48.tinypic.com/2w1uut2.jpg
- http://i48.tinypic.com/yj95k.jpg
- http://i47.tinypic.com/1znpeoj.jpg

Below is evidence of the PayPal claim that shows the exact amounts as I have previously described
- http://i48.tinypic.com/2moz12c.jpg

Finally, attached is your RMA form minus any personal information showing that physical damage was not on your list of issues with the machine.
- http://i47.tinypic.com/dafc8.jpg

I will make a quick note that the RMA form also states "wrong SSD" and Blu-Ray not being able to write to disks. The SSD was upgraded to a faster, newer and more reliable drive that was more expensive for free because we were out of stock and wished to get the laptop delivered on time. Also we have determined that the Blu-Ray worked fine and was tested by burning a Blu-ray movie trailer to a Blu-ray disc with no issue and we played Blu-ray movies without an issue.

Please understand that we can only deal with factual evidence and there is not enough evidence for us to have provided you a full refund based on the information provided.

Thanks,
Rob

 

Hi Gotakuf1,

During a price revision, 2 of our 6,000+ listings on Amazon had incorrect price entered. On this transaction, we were selling for $300 below the cost of the laptop and parts so our loss was $300 plus labor.We lost $10K before the issue was discovered and we canceled all orders which spared us additional $6K in losses. We are responsible for the well being of our employees. We cannot afford for our small business to lose enormous sums of money as we have people counting on us. We are sorry we had to cancel your order. As courtesy we did offer $25 check or $50 store credit. I have placed orders with many major online retailers and had those orders canceled due to pricing error. Those retailers never offered any check for free money in the mail or a store credit. We look after our company so we are all secure in our jobs. However, we also look after the customer.

Thanks,
Rob

 

Hi Weitang Chen (narmaster),

You bought the laptop brand new sealed in box without upgrades and as such there was never any way we could have prevented your issue since HP sealed the laptop in the box with the screen defect. It was so very difficult to assist you because you purchased through a forwarder named JAIME C SANCHEZ who purchased from us on Amazon and only by comparing the dates and the green dots on screen could we finally make the connection. When you contacted us we didn't know who you were and you didn't know the order number so we couldn't get started in assisting you.

Now that I finally tracked down the order I see you bought DV6-7214nr-3630-8GB-750GB-BDROM HP ENVY DV6-7214nr i7-3630QM 2.4GHz 15.6" Gaming Laptop which is how the laptop comes from HP. Since you bought it without upgrades we never opened the box and ran the computer through our QA. It just so happened you bought the most unreliable computer possible. We have found that brand new HP Envy DV6 and DV7 actually have a rate of blemishes or defects that is almost 50% of all computer pulled out of the sealed HP box.

The only reason we can afford to keep selling this model despite the high rate of issues is because our team of technicians are so incredible at salvaging parts. Every time one of our techs does an order he has to pull 2 or 3 with issues and part out the component with blemish or defect with one from another laptop with a different issue. One time we ended up with a DV7 that had screen issue, keyboard issue, no boot up, and then of course every single exterior piece had a blemish just like it came from the factory. About 7 or so defective and blemished computers were salvaged as new because of this host Frankenstein computer. When we would ship DV6 and DV7 brand new to Amazon fulfillment the return rate was over 10% which meant a good third of the customers had issues but decided to keep the computer anyway. Some computers are just not good for quality and DV6 and DV7 are 2 of them. Of course if you buy from us with upgrades, then the quality will be very good since

This particular case goes to show that shipped sealed by the manufacturer you are at risk of major issues. At least by us opening the box and running our QA checklist (tech runs set of tests and our QA person runs long list of checks), we can identify and pull aside most every computer that has defects or blemishes.

As for your second purchase, how did you like the ASUS G55VW-DH71? We have not heard from you on email or on this thread and you have had the computer about a week now.

Thanks,
Rob

 

Hi Narmaster,

From my conversations with the owners of some of the other custom computer resellers, our prices are too low and we hurt the market. That being said, I feel compelled to provide disclosure of actual markups of our pricing to you as well as the actual amounts Authorized Service Provider (ASP) contracts pay out, and also provide you actual cost of drives, since the analogy you provided throws many random numbers around without providing any context like GB and RPM of original hard drive and GB of destination SSD.

We set our base prices as low as minimum advertised price set by manufacturer in many cases or the lowest online. Our margin on the computer without upgrades can vary from -15% to 60% depending on the situation but most of the time it is set to floor which is only 3% above our cost. Our upgrade prices are set as follows. We make 13% on the parts and we warranty them for 3 years while also providing the remainder of the manufacturer warranty. We make $75 on CPU labor which is consistent with what Lenovo Authorized Service Provider (ASP) pays (which is $70 flat and up to 75% bonus for reaching performance targets). We make $35 on primary hard drive upgrades and $15 on secondary drives. Primary drive upgrades require more work since the contents of the original drive must be copied to the new drive. Also, many issues find their origin with the hard drive and as such we must charge some labor to help offset those losses. Lenovo and ASUS recovery partition breaks when cloning causing us additional work so we charge $50 instead of $35 for that. Lenovo ASP pays about $40 for hard drive upgrade plus up to 75% extra for reaching certain incentive levels so once again our pricing is consistent with what we would earn as an ASP. As you can see, we might markup part cost difference by 13% but we provide a 3 year warranty. Also, our labor costs are consistent with the ASP contract pay outs.

We also increase our prices 4% for selling on eBay and Amazon to account for fees. We charge shipping freight without insurance or signature so it is usually less than actual cost. Our company has some of the best costs on components which we pass on to the customer. For a 500GB Samsung 840 SSD our cost is about $281 so even with the markup the customer is not being charged a lot. A 750GB 7200rpm drive has part cost of only $62 at SED Int'l (distributor Amazon and MA Labs buy from). A 1TB 7200rpm HDD has part cost of $74. Hard drive just don't have much value anymore. In your estimate, you overestimated hard drive cost as $150 which is why you arrived at a conclusion that you lost $100. Most laptops do not have a hard drive any better than a 750GB 7200rpm and it is pulled OEM without warranty and surely worth less than the 3 year warrantied bulk 50 packs we buy in authorized distribution which are in fact only $62 each. On our website because we have a 2% credit card or Paypal fee plus the 13% markup, our price for a 750GB 7200rpm HDD to 500GB Samsung 840 SSD on a laptop that is not ASUS or Lenovo would be =CEILING((281-62)/0.85+35, 5) which is basically the difference in part cost with 15% added plus $35 for labor and rounded to the nearest $5. If you compare our upgrade prices to those of other custom notebook online store, you will find on average our prices are lower.

We are already an HP ASP. We have received invites from Fujitsu, Sony, Acer and Lenovo as well. We are currently in a very small office with no room to expand. We are moving into a 5 times larger facility within 2-3 months time and when that happens we will staff up our productions staff and enter into ASP contracts with most every manufacturer. None of our customers have any problems with warranty because we take care of them. We can usually fix most problems in our office since our stock of 1000+ computers plus parts is normally enough for us to be able to part out what is needed from our inventory to get a customer's computer repaired. In event we do have to facilitate a service request with the manufacturer, we do change the configuration back to factory stock specs so as to make sure the manufacturer doesn't confiscate any of the parts we installed or try to blame the issue on one of our parts. We have had absolutely no issues warrantying customer computers with the manufacturers, we can avoid it more than half the time since we have the parts and stock of the same computer on hand many times to get the part needed for repair. In the next year I expect we will have most every ASP contract, so these discussions about our upgrades voiding the warranty will finally become mute once and for all.

Regarding our warranty being lacking since its not a full year, that is true of any reseller you purchase from since the warranty period begins as soon as the computer ships from the manufacturer or the distributor who is submitting Point of Sale (POS) reports (which doesn't happen every time). We turn over our inventory of computers within 3-4 weeks on average and therefore on average the computers we sell will have just a little over 11 months of warranty time remaining. As our company gets larger such that we have more persuasion with the manufacturers we will be sure to address this issue with them by proposing that they allow us to submit POS reports and in return they start the warranty from the date sold in the POS report.

Thanks,
Rob

 

@rob,

kudos! to your efforts, It's very rare resellers would give this much detail of insights to public forums. gives the rest of us a better understanding of how unpredictable your line of business can be.

More power and again welcome to NBR!

 

i second that. very stand up replies. keep it up, rob @ computer upgrade king.

 

I just wanted to provide some additional information in this claim as well. We did follow up further and there was clear evidence that mrbi11 was attempting to defraud our company by providing pictures of a completely different laptop in order to provide evidence that the laptop was not damaged. Anyone can see the full case on Amazon's forums here. I would just like to make sure NotebookReview.com members do not get mislead in a false claim. Here is a quote to summarize my latest reply.

Thanks for the welcome!

 

Hello Rob, I'm interested to order a Lenovo T530 from CUK with the following upgrades -

1. CPU - i7 3820QM
2. RAM - 16GB
3. Display - 1920x1080 FHD
4. HDD - 1T 7200rpm

I know all upgrades by CUK are backed by 3 years warranty. But I'd appreciate if you could me help me a bit further providing the following information -

1. Although I'll order, purchase & receive the machine from US, it will eventually be at the other end of the planet, in Bangladesh. How does CUK's warranty/replacement services works in that case? Putting it simply, what do I have to do if I need to claim a warranty/replacement? And how exactly does the process proceed then?

2. Since 3rd gen Ivy Bridge CPUs have upgraded memory controller than the Sandy Bridge ones, I'd really like to know if the memory module in the upgrade is 3rd gen Ivy Bridge compatible.

3. What is difference between the FHD LED panel offered by Lenovo and the one that in the CUK upgrade? I'm a bit confused here because the difference between the extra charge is $200 vs $80.

4. For the memory module, LED panel and the HDD, which manufacturer's product will CUK be using?

Posting here because I just sent my 3rd mail to [email protected] on this matter.

 

Unfortunately your first two emails got marked as read it appears. We did receive your last email and have addressed your questions. Sorry we didn't
see the first two the first time around.

Thanks,
TCUK

 

Hello Rob.

First of all, I would like to thank you for sharing such a valuable info within the forum. For me it's great that a Company owner give us all these answers and valuable information in order to maintain your great online reputation that precedes your company.

Yesterday, I found this thread because I'm looking forward to buy a computer from your website. I was between 2 laptops: HP Envy dv6 or the Asus N56DVZ-RH71.

I read, in your previous answers in this thread, that the HP it's not a good computer if you're looking forward to have a laptop for many years (5 or more years) and that it's very defective from factory in most cases. This help me out in my decision and I'll be buying the ASUS.

I have some questions that I would like to ask regarding my future purchase. First of all: Is this a good computer (It's not as defective from factor as the HP or other ones that you sell)?

2) Have you had or heard of any problems because of the usage? (heat problems, video card issues in the first year of usage, bad keyboard, etc).

Regarding my second question: I know it depends of how the owner uses the computer. My mainly usage will be: Photo editing, web surfing (but with many tabs opened), programming and casual gaming. I'm trying to make this purchase before going to study abroad my PHD, and I'll be preparing classes in the laptop constantly.

3) The configuration that I'll be getting in this laptop is:

intel i7 3820qm (instead of the 3630qm from factor)

8 gigs of ram (and here comes a question: I really want to upgrade to 16 gb of ram. I know you're offering this upgrade but the only thing holding me back from getting this upgrade from your company or doing it myself is that I don't know what brand you use for this upgrade. For example: Personally, if I don't do the upgrade with you I'll be buying the corsair vengeance 8gb x 2 pack. But if you use this brand or another one that have similar quality or it's better, then I'll gladly do the upgrade with you).

750gb 7200 rpm hdd (I really want to install a 1tb hybrid disc drive that I saw on amazon a few days back, but you're not offering it. But I'll be buying this laptop around June or august because I'll go to the US by these months. It'll be great if you can offer this upgrade. If not, well, I'll be doing it myself)

Blu-ray writer (instead of the Blu ray reader from factor)

Nvidia gt650

4) And final question: Do you offer any hot deals for black Friday/cyber Monday?


Thanks in advance for your response.

 

Hi lordofra,

Rob is actually gone for part of the week to meet with our Lenovo partners. I was checking up on this thread so I figured I would answer your question for you, I am not the owner, but the operations officer for the company.

Overall both the DV6 and N56VZ-RH71 are good models, the biggest issues with the DV6 is that HP's quality assurance is not up to our standards. Several of the DV6 models have had blemishes straight out of the box. I actually instructed our employees to open the remaining of our last batch because it was quite bad. I believe they function correctly, but the condition would not be something I would classify as new. I did a check for you through our return history and we have not had many, if not any, returns for either model in the past month so if you are worried about defective units I can comfortably say that should not be an issue. I would also like to add that as of my post right now we only have 30 in stock of the ASUS N56VZ-RH71 and it will be discontinued after those have sold.

In the past we had some problems for the N56VZ-RH71, but I believe those issues have been resolved in the recent batches of this model. The issues with those has been broken displays (green spots on the monitor, etc.) and overheating (customers report random shut downs after usage). In the past month or two I can tell you that I do not have any recorded cases of those issues.

I think the N56VZ-RH71 will be perfectly fine for your usage. The 650M is pretty good for casual gaming without draining the battery and the Full HD screen will be good for web surfing and programming.

We do use Corsair Vengeance, but more than likely you will get one of our other brands such as Patriot, TeamElite, and Kingston which we have in greater quantity. The reason I cannot promise you a brand specifically is because it has caused us problems with fulfilling orders if we are out of stock on one brand in particular and depending on when you purchase that brand may not be an option at the given time. I am almost positive you will not see any real world performance difference between the brands if you are worried about performance and we always use two of the same brand and speed stick when we upgrade orders. If you do decide to get the RAM from us, I would like to remind you that RAM prices are currently increasing, so if you get the RAM upgrade to get it soon, or wait some time when the prices start going down. I have only recently instructed to increase prices for RAM and I have no doubt I will have to do it again at a later date.

Take a look at the 1TB 7200rpm HDD. They are new and should only cost a small amount more than the 750GB 7200rpm. They should be faster than the 1TB 5400rpm Hybrid. You can always contact our support staff and have them create a custom listing for you on Amazon.

We may do Black Friday/Cyber Monday, but honestly we keep our prices low from the beginning and most things on our store are already priced pretty low for the cost we paid. In the past we have not participated in Black Friday/Cyber Monday, but we will see this year . If you have any more questions, either shoot our customer service team an email or reply here.

Thanks,
Alex, CUK