Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

Aria.co.uk - absolutely bloody useless.

Ordered some RAM from them back in early April, it never arrived. Emailed
them and after a week they said it had been sent via Royal Mail, therefore
I'd have to wait 15 working days until they could accept it had been lost in
the post. Fair enough, though not particularly happy at this point - 15
working days later email them again, no reply. Eventually get an email
saying they will replace the RAM, over two weeks since then and they have
completely stopped responding to my emails, and still no RAM.

They may be cheap, but their customer service is dire - I would not use
these again, no matter how cheap they are. People slag off Ebuyer, but I
have found them to be consistently cheaper and any issues I've had with
parts going missing or needing replacing have all been dealt with quickly
and efficiently, so I think my future custom will be going to them.

Hellraiser.............

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

Hellraiser wrote:

Aria.co.uk - absolutely bloody useless.

Ordered some RAM from them back in early April, it never arrived.
Emailed them and after a week they said it had been sent via Royal
Mail, therefore I'd have to wait 15 working days until they could
accept it had been lost in the post. Fair enough, though not
particularly happy at this point - 15 working days later email them
again, no reply. Eventually get an email saying they will replace the
RAM, over two weeks since then and they have completely stopped
responding to my emails, and still no RAM.

They may be cheap, but their customer service is dire - I would not
use these again, no matter how cheap they are. People slag off
Ebuyer, but I have found them to be consistently cheaper and any
issues I've had with parts going missing or needing replacing have
all been dealt with quickly and efficiently, so I think my future
custom will be going to them.

Hellraiser.............

Well, I have to say that's not been my experience with Aria. Been
dealing with them for 8 plus years now, with very few problems. In all
the cases where I've had to RMA stuff to them it's been either replaced
or the cost plus return carriage charges credited to me pretty quickly.
They're still my main supplier after all this time.

Interestingly I've never, ever had anything from them which they've
sent by post. Every delivery has been Citylink, even small orders.

OK, if they don't respond to your emails have you tried calling their
customer service and if so what was the outcome?

--
Paul-B

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

"Hellraiser" wrote in message
...
Aria.co.uk - absolutely bloody useless.

Ordered some RAM from them back in early April, it never arrived. Emailed
them and after a week they said it had been sent via Royal Mail, therefore
I'd have to wait 15 working days until they could accept it had been lost
in the post. Fair enough, though not particularly happy at this point - 15
working days later email them again, no reply. Eventually get an email
saying they will replace the RAM, over two weeks since then and they have
completely stopped responding to my emails, and still no RAM.

They may be cheap, but their customer service is dire - I would not use
these again, no matter how cheap they are. People slag off Ebuyer, but I
have found them to be consistently cheaper and any issues I've had with
parts going missing or needing replacing have all been dealt with quickly
and efficiently, so I think my future custom will be going to them.

Hellraiser.............

Anyone buying RAM from anybody but Crucial is asking for trouble...

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

JoeJoe wrote:


"Hellraiser" wrote in message
...
Aria.co.uk - absolutely bloody useless.

Ordered some RAM from them back in early April, it never arrived.
Emailed them and after a week they said it had been sent via Royal
Mail, therefore I'd have to wait 15 working days until they could
accept it had been lost in the post. Fair enough, though not
particularly happy at this point - 15 working days later email
them again, no reply. Eventually get an email saying they will
replace the RAM, over two weeks since then and they have
completely stopped responding to my emails, and still no RAM.

They may be cheap, but their customer service is dire - I would not
use these again, no matter how cheap they are. People slag off
Ebuyer, but I have found them to be consistently cheaper and any
issues I've had with parts going missing or needing replacing have
all been dealt with quickly and efficiently, so I think my future
custom will be going to them.

Hellraiser.............

Anyone buying RAM from anybody but Crucial is asking for trouble...

I've used Kingston RAM for many years without a single problem.

--
Paul-B

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

On 2007-05-16, Paul-B wrote:
JoeJoe wrote:

"Hellraiser" wrote in message
...
Aria.co.uk - absolutely bloody useless.

Ordered some RAM from them back in early April, it never arrived.

....

They may be cheap, but their customer service is dire

, so I think my future custom will be going to them.


Anyone buying RAM from anybody but Crucial is asking for trouble...

I've used Kingston RAM for many years without a single problem.

Agreed but I think GP meant combination of product AND vendor, as this
is obviously a vendor issue. AFAIK Kingston do not sell direct to the
public.

And given the choice of Buying Crucial from eBuyer or Crucial, I know
who I'd pick.

Lordy

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

Tx2 wrote:

On 15 May 2007 22:07:07 GMT Paul-B
from the village of
felt we might be interested in the following...

[...]


They're still my main supplier after all this time.

Supplier of what? I'd like to also know which area(s) of the UK you
serve, because if it is round my way, i want to avoid you.

Sorry, I'm not taking any new clients, far too much work. And I only
work for SME's, not for joe public. Oxfordshire, Berkshire and
Buckinghamshire are my main areas.

CCL for computer 'bits', Broadbandbuyer for networking, Crucial for
RAM

CCL are good, too. I use them for quite a lot of components. Depends
what networking components you use, I'm a Draytek reseller so I only
supply and install Vidor routers.

I speak as I find, and I have had no problems with Aria, other than a
hiccup when they updated their system, which they soon sorted out for
me.
--
Paul-B

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

Tx2 wrote:
snip
From one budget, I have £250,000 to spend this financial year, to kit
out a new 6th form college with Macs and media equipment, along with a
few PC's thrown in for good measure.

{pragma

+enter rant mode

Am I alone in thinking that money would be better spent on teaching them
to read and write and do basic arithmetic, rather than, "Macs and media
equipment"?

We interviewed some ex-"6th form college" students for work placement a
week or so ago. Not one could work out what, "Half of a quarter kg of
fruit" would weigh. With or without a calculator. Only one out of the
seven could spell "necessary". None knew the cosine rule. All thought a
kg of lead would be heavier than a kg of flour.

But hey, more provision of Macs and media equipment will fix all that..

end pragma}
--
Sue

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

Paul-B wrote:

JoeJoe wrote:


"Hellraiser" wrote in message
...
Aria.co.uk - absolutely bloody useless.

Ordered some RAM from them back in early April, it never arrived.
Emailed them and after a week they said it had been sent via Royal
Mail, therefore I'd have to wait 15 working days until they could
accept it had been lost in the post. Fair enough, though not
particularly happy at this point - 15 working days later email
them again, no reply. Eventually get an email saying they will
replace the RAM, over two weeks since then and they have
completely stopped responding to my emails, and still no RAM.

They may be cheap, but their customer service is dire - I would not
use these again, no matter how cheap they are. People slag off
Ebuyer, but I have found them to be consistently cheaper and any
issues I've had with parts going missing or needing replacing have
all been dealt with quickly and efficiently, so I think my future
custom will be going to them.

Hellraiser.............

Anyone buying RAM from anybody but Crucial is asking for trouble...

I've used Kingston RAM for many years without a single problem.

Me too. It is true that Crucial's service is second to none. However, I
was tempted by cheaper Kingston memory (same spec) from ebuyer, and took
the plunge. Never had any problem with that memory.

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

Tx2 wrote:

On 16 May 2007 16:41:21 GMT Paul-B
from the village of
felt we might be interested in the following...


Sorry, I'm not taking any new clients, far too much work.

Too much work?

You can never have too much work. You can have enough work, but not
too much. "Too much" sounds like you can't cope with what you are
doing, and are finding it hard to keep clients happy. Not a good
advert really.

No, too much means I have to turn people away. So I don't advertise,,
just word of mouth. If I have a temporary overload I just work longer
hours. Not exactly rocket science, is it?

Our current supplier/reseller is in Shropshire, and we are in Sussex,
so distance doesn't matter AFAIC.

And I only work for SME's, not for joe public.

From one budget, I have £250,000 to spend this financial year, to kit
out a new 6th form college with Macs and media equipment, along with
a few PC's thrown in for good measure.

And thus far since April 6th on another budget, I've secured over 50
new PC's, 2 x servers, a UPS, 2 x tape drives, and numerous other
odds and ends totalling the best part of £100,000.

i'm not quite Joe Public...

Agreed. You're far larger than me, but the personal service I give my
clients is just exactly what they need. And it doesn't matter to them
where I buy my components, so your comment about avoiding me because I
buy my Asus motherboards and my Kingston memory and my AMD cpu's from
Aria and my network hardware from Draytek and my software from Blue
Solutions doesn't actually make much sense, does it? Well, certainly my
clients, most of whom have been with me since 1998 or later are more
than happy with the service I provide and the hardware I build. So that
doesn't really equate with your snide comment that I am "finding it
hard to keep clients happy", does it? There are quite a few businesses
competing with me in this neck of the woods, if my clients were
unsatisfied I would not have been in business for as long as I have.

I understand that you have had problems with Aria? That's your problem,
I have had no such problems, with Aria or any other of my suppliers,
and the healthy state of my business would seem to back me up.

--
Paul-B

Aria - avoid like the plague!
 

I was just thinking how wonderful life was, when Palindrome
opened his gob and said:

Am I alone in thinking that money would be better spent on teaching them
to read and write and do basic arithmetic, rather than, "Macs and media
equipment"?

No you are not. Don't get me started...

We interviewed some ex-"6th form college" students for work placement a
week or so ago. Not one could work out what, "Half of a quarter kg of
fruit" would weigh.

Ahhh, the problem was with 'fruit'. I don't do fruit either.

Only one out of the seven could spell "necessary".

Sigh.

None knew the cosine rule.

Oh FFS!

All thought a kg of lead would be heavier than a kg of flour.

Cripes, sounds like they need much more hardware.


--
Cheers,

Guy

** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
** out of someone who richly deserves it.