Banana IT do not refund/replace faulty equipment

[SuperTonic]

The other day I bought a graphics card. I plugged it in and my computer beeped at me. Emailed the manufacturer, and it looks like the card is faulty, but back to that in a bit.

Now the card needs a 400W or more power supply, so I upgraded that and have a nice toasty 550, so plenty of room to spare.

Anyway, one non-working PC, lots of checks on techy forums, emailing manufacturer, etc and the conclusion is that the equipment is faulty.

Off to Banana IT. I just want a swap, don't need a refund, just a swap to a non-faulty part. They can return to manufacturer easily enough, so no problem. However, this is where it all gets a bit PC World.

Anyone British here will know what I mean. PC World will generally make it as impossible as they can for you to return faulty goods, often insisting beyond all reason that they work. My approach to this when I had a faulty camera from them was to stand outside their store for 2 days with placards. It worked by the way. I figured I wouldn't get away with this at Market Village.

Anyway, back to the point. I take my card in, and they say my power supply isn't enough. Nope, I have 550W. Not enough, presumably the manufacturers don't know their own equipment then.

Ok, let's see who's right, the manufacturer or them. Now getting them to move beyond "your computer's crap" was a challenge, but eventually I got them to test it. Interestingly, it worked, however, I noticed one subtle thing. They'd used a different cable to the one supplied with the card. So, by a process of elimination we had established the cable as the last possible weakest link so should test that right? Nope, apparantly not. They did not want to test that. Eventually I persuaded them to, after much faffing in English and Thai. Lo and behold, symptoms reproduced. Beep beep beep and nothing else. So the cable's shagged right? Nope. Not enough power. But they've just reproduced the same problem on their PC with a 620W power supply. Not enough power.

In the end I gave up on them, and tried to find the cable. No good, no bugger sells it, so my only remaining option is to send it to the manufacturer for a fresh one, just for a lousy cable. Bastards.

The moral of the story? The customer is always wrong.

[buksida]

Nice rant ... I wish people would read HHAD sometimes though, Banana IT? Never heard of 'em. The store I often recommend, IT-net, has replaced year old mainboards with brand new ones, refunded on hard disks and even special ordered hard to get items from the suppliers direct.

Now back to your problem, I'm assuming that the graphics card is a PCIe Nvidia 9xxx series or AMD 4xxx series (as those are the only ones that would demand such a beast of a PSU unless you're running in SLI/Crossfire configuration). And I presume you've also tried all the obvious things to test with it.

I'd be happy to give it a test for you on my rig, the only extra cable I can imagine with a graphics card is its own power supply cable, the old 6600GT's used to have them - I have a busted one in a box somewhere!

[SuperTonic]

Banana IT is the new store on the top floor of market village. The cable is the one converting from the 6-pin power cable on the card to the more traditional 4-pin power connectors found in most PCs.

It's Nvidia, and really testing isn't needed, we tested it to death there (after much prodding) and established 100% that it was the cable. It worked with another cable of the same type, but not with the one in my box. they wouldn't swap it and still insisted that it was my power supply. Open and shut case really. Short of becoming abusive (not my style) or getting placards out (only works in the UK, would get me thrown out of Market Village!) I'm not left with many options but to warn my fellow nerds.

[Spitfire]

"Banana IT" -

Sorry Supertonic, hope you sort out your problem but,

The names they come up with are funny, it's almost as if they're taking the piss. Where do they get them from?

[hhfarang]

Probably should be "Banana Republic IT"!

[Spitfire]

Did the manager look like this?

[Terry]

Or maybe like this........

[SuperTonic]

Yeah the name should have given it away really. Having said that PC World have a half-sensible name and they're still a shower of bastards.

[Homer]

Three years later and the company hasn't changed. There website does not show terms and conditions of purchase or exchange policy. Likewise it's unavailable in the store, except on the receipt. Wouldn't show me a blank receipt. Only reason to go back would be to harass them, but would be really stupid in Thailand. Also checked Hardware House and Softworld websites. No terms & conditions or exchange policy either. JIB had return policy which says they can exchange a product for a more expensive one and the customer pays the difference.

So where to shop? Last spring I shopped for a laptop, bought from IT City because the expat forums had the least 'can you F'ing believe this' stores about not exchanging defective product. Now I see InvadeIt had terms & conditions, return policy and an English version of their website. Will check into it.

[advocate]

Had a bad experience there and I will never shop there again.
Once they had my money they didn't care that what they sold me didn't work.
Went into the store and they just ignored me.

[Takiap]

Had a bad experience there and I will never shop there again.
Once they had my money they didn't care that what they sold me didn't work.
Went into the store and they just ignored me.

Trust me, you CAN get them to pay attention........just depends if you're willing to start making a lot of noise.


You won't believe how Thai can blush when you really push all the right buttons. In fact, I only saw this for the first time the other day when we were at the floating market. Let's just say, there is definitely one Bangkok snob who probably will never want to visit Hua-Hin again.

[dtaai-maai]

Let's just say, there is definitely one Bangkok snob who probably will never want to visit Hua-Hin again.

Let's just say a bit more than that! We deserve to know the details!
Besides, this could be crucial information for a long term existence in Thailand...

[Marky_Mark]

Had a horrible experience at Banana IT.. Will never visit there again and would warn others not to shop there.

[hollister]

We have a Toshiba laptop that went dark after Toshiba's critical must do Bios upgrade. Went to Banana-IT's Toshiba section asking for repair, willing to pay. The guy told us to take it to Toshiba in Bangkok ourselves. Go figure that out.

All it would need is an external USB bootable 3.5 inch floppy drive to reflash the Bios. You would think that a PC repairshop has such equipment ....

[advocate]

I was very insistent. You can make all the noise you like, they don't give a damn once they have your $. I also got the impression that if I made any more polite noise, I would have a physical fight on my hands. I may be larger than them, but I was seriously outnumbered and it's not my nature regardless.

This place is a bad joke.
They treat their customers like dirt, and would be out of business in any western country in a few short months.