What is Wickmesh?
Why "Wickmesh"?
What's wrong with it?
So what was wrong with it? Why wouldn't I buy another one?
The last major problem I had was with the motherboard, CPU fan, and CD-ROM.
The motherboard had been replaced with the wrong part previously and now had a dodgy
system clock (lost and gained time for no reason), the CPU fan had sand for
bearings, and the CD-ROM got out it's skipping rope every time you tried to play
an audio CD. I made an initial phone call on 8th January 1997 to report it, but as usual
there was no-one available to talk to me. I got called back (unusually) on the
14th of January and reported the lot. It took until the 8th
May 1997 for it to be fixed, during which time one visiting engineer damaged the
hard drive meaning that had to be replaced as well. That's four months.
Four Whole Months.
How many parts have I had? Now this is funny.
But I'm not alone.
And there's more. The following graph is reproduced from page 37 of May 1998 Computer Shopper UK;
the first page of the Dan advert.
Wickmesh is my PC, an AMD K6-200 with 64MB RAM and 8.3GB HDD. It now runs 9-T-Dive (Win95) for most of the time, but I've kept my old Dos 6.22/Win3.11 dual boot setup for when 95 gives up the ghost. Wickmesh is also me in a way, as it's grown to be my email alias - most of my email addresses are wickmesh@some-isp-or-other.
"Mesh" because it's a Mesh PC, and "Wick" because
purchasing it has taught me to never trust anything promised by anyone
representing
Mesh Computers PLC! ("Wick"
is derived from the never-said-nowadays word "wicked",
once meaning "excellent", but now suggesting something undesireable and of poor quality...)
It's more a case of what was wrong with it, because it's now long out of warranty and
I've upgraded it; it was an AMD 486 DX4/120 with 8MB RAM and a 1GB HDD when I bought it
in early 1996.
It's a long story; a catalogue of poor service and one incompetent engineer. For example,
when it first arrived, the CD software pack was missing (I got it only after
my solicitor wrote to Mesh), and once plugged in, it booted once and then failed. I
returned the base unit for repair, and was without it for over 2 weeks. It was returned
working (after lots of phone calls), but it didn't stay working for long.
When the hardware worked, it was a good computer, hence why Mesh machines always do really
well in magazine tests. BUT when (not if) it went wrong, it took so long to get it fixed
that it barely seemed worth the trouble. To be fair, my circumstances didn't help - then being
a student, I moved around the country a lot, I didn't have my own phone at University, and
Mesh no longer sold the model I bought. But how many bloody
times did I have to tell them over the phone that I was not at the address I was
last year? And then why did the parts and
engineer go home (Kent) rather than to Salford as I asked? Why did the thing seem
to almost always have something wrong with it and if not, why did it keep on
going wrong?
I learnt never to believe what I was told by Mesh. Every single time I spoke to a Mesh
employee I would be given another excuse. I don't think I have enough digits to
count the number of times I was told I would be "called back" - and I can remember no more
than three times when I actually was. Over the 2 years of my
warranty (the second given free for the trouble I had gone through) there were three
different maintenance engineer companies. Most engineers who visited were OK, but one
(who broke the hard drive) actually needed my help to install the motherboard!
The maintenance companies generally were helpful - it was Mesh that was stalling
them by not supplying the parts.
Now under warranty the parts are supposed to be replaced by exact or better
specification replacements. This was one reason for the final motherboard
replacement, as the third board I had was a mini one with less SIMM, ISA and PCI
slots than it should have had. The replacement Fujitsu mode 4 hard drive, replacing
what was an excellent Seagate mode 4, has an access time of something close to 10
years (I won't repeat here what I call it). Not what I
call same specification, but by then I was so fed up with Mesh by then that I simply
accepted it. Fortunately, I have had no need to contact them again.
This is over a period of 17 months; the final seven were problem free, although
the second CD-ROM started to misbehave in early 1998 (but it's still just about going, installed in my parents
computer).
I'm not, as you may think, an isolated case. I was contacted by another Mesh customer, who ran a site full of the experiences of other Mesh owners - Mish Mash Mesh. That site's now gone, but I've found another disgruntled Mesh customer on the web - The Ingham Report.
