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Never Knowing when to shut up!
Well the demands of having so many people in this house clammouring to get on the one computer proved too much for my Dad so he decided to get a new PC, but all didn’t go to plan. He’s after writing up a little bit on his experiences with Medion who were the manufacturer of the PC, and I’m going to put it up here so people Googling for ‘Medion tech support’ will know what to expect!
Medion - What a Company!
Definitely it proved a memorable experience when having spotted an
excellent spec for a machine going on sale in Aldi last April I
decided that it was too good an offer at €1100 to pass up.
I wasn’t alone, as all the machines that went on sale were snapped up
early the very day they went on sale and I didn’t manage to secure
one. But thanks to a thread on Boards I discovered that Aldi would
take orders for those disappointed at not being able to acquire one of
these machines.
Great pleasure when I then went to collect it on May 5th last but
little did I know what treats were in store for me!
Tried setting it up but monitor simply wasn’t recognising my new
acquisition. After running a number of tests I then rang the Medion
technical support desk who concluded that it was a graphics card
problem and they would arrange to have it replaced. Impression given
that it would be done within 48 hours.
Needless to say no such luck so having rung their customer service
desk a few more times I kept being reassured that it was in the hands
of Synstar (the company that Medion give their maintenance & repair
work to).
I then rang Synstar only to discover that the part was out of stock
and that they were in the process of ordering new graphic cards from
Germany. Downside was that there would be a 6 week delivery lead in!
Off I went on my holidays etc and after allowing a further 6 weeks to
elapse it was back to my daily phone calls to Medion. Was assured by
Medion that part had arrived but on checking with Synstar they were
still claiming it was out of stock. Experience totally frustrating but
it ran on for around 2 weeks with at least 2 calls per day at the end
of which I had a long list of all the names of staff I had dealt with.
Eventually it was confirmed that Synstar actually had the part BUT
unfortunately it was Synstar in the UK and not their Irish operation.
Took a lot of detective work to get a phone number for Synstar Ireland
as neither Medion nor Synstar UK were prepared to give it to me so
that I could contact them myself. When I contacted them they claimed
the part hadn’t arrived so a second one was being shipped to them.
It was now mid July more than 2 months after I parted with my money
and I still had a box of equipment sitting in a corner. But resolution
was in hand ………….. or was it?
Synstar technician arranged with me to meet at my home and he set
about inserting the graphics card but surprise, surprise it wasn’t the
graphics card after all the delays etc!!. His prognosis was that it
was the motherboard was the problem.
Enough was enough so I phoned Medion probably for around the 40th time
to tell them what they could do with their machine, service etc. They
agreed to take back the machine and to give me a full refund.
In true Medion fashion even this didn’t go to plan. The UPS courier
called to collect it even before they had given me a shipping address
but it eventually headed back to the UK 2 days later.
Would that be the end of it? Oh no!
The very next day I got a phone call from Synstar to say that they now
had the replacement motherboard. Seeing that the machine wasn’t in
Ireland by that stage I just informed them that their services would
not be required.
So the cheque for the refund was dispatched to me once they received
the machine back in Medion HQ? Some chance!
Three or 4 calls later it seems that they are incapable of refunding
me the correct amount of money in Euro. I offered to take it in
sterling provided they included sufficient funds to cover the
conversion and that I ended up with €1100 in my pocket.
But a solution was in hand. Obviously the intelligentsia of Medion had
held a high powered meeting and between them had come to a brilliant
solution.
Yes it was a real beauty! The solution is that the machine I shipped
back to them 2 weeks ago is now being shipped back to me. I’m to then
bring it back to Aldi where I first purchased it, and they will refund
my debit card.
Well that’s the theory and I’m now waiting for the machine to come
back to me. Next week it will be a full 3 months since the saga
started.
Others might have been more fortunate than I was and got machines that
worked but if you encounter a problem the facts of the matter are that
they are a totally inept company that are incapable of delivering a
reasonable service standard. The only thing going for them is that
they run a free phone number so at least I have had the pleasure of
costing them a lot of money with so many cross channel calls over the
past few months.
As for a replacement we have decided to build our own and reckon we
will have a superior machine for much the same money
As Dad said, we’re building our own machine now, and I’ll update you on that next weekend, when I should have that all finished!
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You’ll be Doom 3 ready I trust?
Without doubt! That’s one of the main aims of the new system
I hope I don’t have to go down the support route, but I just said I’d post for the record that I have on of those PC’s, and it’s serving me well so far. Only problem I have with it is that Windows stops recognising the card reader intermittently, but since I only use it intermittently I don’t care. Fingers crossed it stays working!
Yeah I’ve heard a lot of good things about those PCs, it looks like we were just unreasonably unlucky!!
My external card reader on my machine isn’t always recognised so perhaps it’s a fault with Windows!
I got an email earlier today with a link to a site with an even worse experience than ours.
I bought a Medion tower from Aldi last November during a promotion. Early on it crashed, and I had to hard reboot using the single on/off button (first PC I’ve ever seen w/out a reboot button.) Since that incident, it became more and more difficult to start, most of the time producing only the “Intel Inside” logo on a black screen. Usually I would be able to start it after several reboots. The Medion is my secondary tower so I fortunately use it only occaisionally and don’t keep critical files on it (for the most part.) On the down-side, I use all my computers for video production, so when I did call on the service of the Medion, I taxed its resources and the projects were indeed highly valuable. Tonight, after spending 25-30 hours over the course of the last week working on a single project, the Medion has died. Only the “Intel” screen or a black screen when I turn it on. I am heart-broken to read of your experience and the experiences of so many others with this company. I did a lot of research before buying this machine and read nothing but good things about the company. Guess I got suckered. I will probably attempt to resolve the situation w/Aldi, rather than Medion, unless you can make a more productive suggestion.
Thanks for the opportunity to vent a little…
–Cliffhanger
Oh god theres lots of us lol.
I bought a Medion PC in Nov 2004. (MD8383)
It was high spec, and a lot cheaper than anything similar or self building.
So, we get to April of 2005, the motherboard fries. Check around the web, it seems pretty common for Motherboards and Graphics cards on Medion PC’s to break.
It took a few weeks for them to get out to fix it, gladly i know a fair bit about PC’s and diagnosed it as the Motherboard when i called them. Otherwise god knows what would happen, theyd need to check all the parts and i’m betting there would be a delivery delay. They come and fix it, happy enough even though it took them a while. (see why down the page)
My Graphics card then failed and i called Medion on the 10th April for a repair.
The engineer finally arrived on the 10th May (yesterday) after 2 no shows and a week i was unavailable since i cant take a day off work every week for this. The engineers are only able to come out on one day of the week apparently, as if a date is unsuitable, its shifted to the later week.
The engineer came out, and basically broke the PC more than we started off like.
The PC was functioning, but would overheat due to the fan that had fallen off, if i did anyhing graphics intensive.
Now, it wont even start up. I personally think he’s fried the motherboard or the memory when he’s taken the card out.
He now needs to get other parts and check the whole system for what he’s broken.
Called Medion to complain and find out when it would be fixed. They are useless.
The customer service representatives are idiots, they dont know anything at all and just serve to pass you to tech support. ie i asked if fixing it myself would void the warranty? call center said it would most likely void it, in a seperate call, the tech support guy asked if i could remove and replace the card myself. Saving me waiting on engineers. I could easily do it but, surprise, no stock, and the engineer had the only one, so i was stuck waiting on them.
God knows when i’m going to get this sorted.
Took a month to get him out with a graphics card, so i’m not holding out much hope on them doing the new reapir caused by them at any sort of speedy pace.
my god… and here i thought it was just me
last year i bought a medion laptop in “toys r us”.. i was blinded by their incredible specification and not at all that expensive price. it took 1 year for that laptop to run well until i mistakenly deleted the recovery drive.. i phoned the customer service right away and they’ve asked me to pay £105 to “reghosted it” and like what happened to everyone else, i was subjected to wait for nearly 3months before i got some feedbacks.. in the end they couldnt fixed it so they gave me a credit worth of my laptop ( toys r us credit ) to buy a new computer (which obviously need to be use in toys r us shop and at that time they were only selling medion products).. so here i am, thinking, hmmmm i’ll get a pc instead. maybe this time i’ll be lucky not to have any problems at all… wham!! 6 months passed and here i am again with the same problem!!! a mere installation of a tiny webcam and the screen just frozed!!! next thing i knew, the recovery drive was gone as well as all my back up drives!!! so.. i phoned the customer service again and he accused me of deleting the recovery drive! what a cheek!!! and they’re asking me to pay for the “re-ghosting” as it wasnt included in the warranty.. but i only had my pc for 6 months!
please..please.. if anyone would like to advice me on what to do next, i would very much appreciated it. im at my wits end!!!
Great and sad to hear that I’m not alone. Bought a MD42200 at Aldi in Oct 2004. In the first year the CD Drive needed to be repaired and soon after the battery didn’t work and now, with only a two year old computer, the moniter has lines on it. Probably the graphic card, and since it is attached to the motherboard the entire thing needs to be replaced. NEVER AGAIN WILL PURCHASE A MEDION PRODUCT.
Hi there.
I got a Medion PC in Dublin from Aldi. Last August it suddenly stopped working. I thought it might be something obvious like a fuse or a loose connection and wasted a few days looking for that sort of problem.
On 3rd September I phoned the helpdesk for the first time, and 61 calls later, plus two visits by the engineer, it is still not working, and they are now going to send a courier to collect it from my house in Ireland and bring it to the repair place in England. It is realistic that it is unlikely that I will have the PC before mid December.
The moral of the story is to realise that you should not buy a Medion PC if you plan to do important stuff with it. Sure, use it for games and other non-essential things. My three kids are in college and all have important stuff stored on the inaccessible hard drive. They have had to repeat a lot of tedious and time consuming research before they could hand in assignments and sit exams.
The people at the helpdesk are polite and courteous, but they make it clear they will not consider any claims for reimbursements for expenses and general bother. Aldi have taken a similar line.
I am being forced to take the whole issue to court, and gave them a deadline of next Friday 24th November 2006 to offer me a full refund or a brand new sealed PC plus €400 towards the costs of downloaded stuff like Norton which are inaccessable. I would not consider buying a PC from Aldi in future under any circumstances.
When it works it is good, but when something goes wrong, it is an expensive mistake.
I am living in Luxembourg, and here is only one solution in case of MEDION-failure:
1. If there is a problem during the guarantee-period: go right away to Aldi and ask for an exchange of the computer.
2. After guarantee period: the number to call is an 0800-number in Belgium. You can not call them from Luxembourg.
In that case you are stuck.
Good advise for all computer-operators: always use an external disk to back-up everything that is important and notimportant,and now and then burn your important files on a CD. At least, you can use the computer of your neighbour (or his wife’s) in case of urgency.
Regards,
Humphrey.
Nice to see I’m not the only one. Bought the Aldi special in Nov 2004. Initially it seemed to work okay. After a few months I bought a wireless router so that I could use the Medion’s in-built wireless card instead of cables. Firstly it didn’t “see” the router but when I set it up manually it worked. At least for a short while. Then it started to disconnect at increasing intervals until eventually it stopped working at all.
When I contacted Medion support (by email as the phone number didn’t seem to work) they told me it was a Windows Networking problem which they didn’t support and to contact Microsoft. When I explained that the wireless network worked fine on my laptop and that the Medion worked fine when it was wired they suggested that it may be a hardware problem but to try the factory reset first.
As the factory reset wiped the disk clean it meant I needed to back up everything on the disk before I did it. That was when I started having more problems and the failure to boot in, as described by others above, started to happen.
After many repeated attempts to get the computer working so that it could be backed up I eventually gave up and decided to try the factory reset. Neadless to say the factory reset wouldn’t work!
In the end I formatted the hard disk and reinstalled Windows. For a little while the computer worked but as I tried to install the various driver software from the Medion website it started hanging on reboots once again.
Today, I tried it again and it again hangs on reboots. When I do manage to get into it the wireless connection doesn’t work, nor does the card reader. Probably other things don’t work either but I just haven’t discovered them yet.
I reckon the amount of time wasted on this heap of junk is far more than what I might have saved by buying Medion. Lesson learned, the hard way.