CyberpowerPC safe to buy from?

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WhiteGuardian

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Messages
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I've been checking reviews among the boutiques and I know before CyberpowerPC were kinda bad but now they have a higher 6 months review than Velocity Micro. Has anyone had any experience with them and know if they are good to buy from? Thanks.
 
I've read some bad things about them in the past but haven't really read anything as of late from them. Personaly I would avoid.

Hardocp did a review of them back in 06 when they were doing system reviews.

http://consumer.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA0MCwsLGhjb25zdW1lcg==

They did one of the best jobs I've seen reviewing companies. It is a good read. Not sure if they have gotten any better but the editors here didn't think to high of them back then.
 
ya I know back then I read alot of bad reviews. But now their 6 months rating went up to a 8.06 compared to VM's 7.57. Also they're actually answering to the negative reviews on resellers.
I like them over some other boutiques because they provide a wide range of monitors, mouses, keyboards, and other accessories so that everything can come nicely in one package.
 
I will say AVADirect's ceo checks these boards and answers questions and what not from time to time. VM's does the same. You also have Heather from Puget Systems on here.

All 3 of these companies seem to have great support. It is really nice to see people talking about issues and having someone high up reading the forums and responding to them. I would personaly rather go with VM because of that over cyberpower which has a questionable past. If you do order through cyberpower though make sure you let the people in the forums know how good the treated you. If they are cleaning up their act more power to them.
 
ya if I do ever order from them I will definitely give a review. The reason I'm considering them is because the wide range of customizations they offer like AVADirect that other boutiques don't have. Also they are like $400 cheaper than the rest lol.
 
WhiteGuardian said:
ya if I do ever order from them I will definitely give a review. The reason I'm considering them is because the wide range of customizations they offer like AVADirect that other boutiques don't have. Also they are like $400 cheaper than the rest lol.
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Hey thats a big chunk of change.
 
WhiteGuardian said:
ya if I do ever order from them I will definitely give a review. The reason I'm considering them is because the wide range of customizations they offer like AVADirect that other boutiques don't have. Also they are like $400 cheaper than the rest lol.
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Recently I have configured comparable systems for Puget, AVA Direct, Maingear, and Cyberpower. Without a doubt the Cyberpower system was the cheapest.

However, the business side of me has to ask the question....how is it that Cyberpower can charge $500+ less than their competitors for comparable systems? You have to wonder given their past poor reviews that perhaps Cyberpower sacrificed quality customer support for lower prices.

At the end of the day I will most likely avoid Cyberpower. If I actually understood how they were able to undercut their competitors then perhaps I would have more faith in making a purchase from them. But at the end of the day I keep coming back to that old saying which is "you get what you pay for".
 
WhiteGuardian said:
I've been checking reviews among the boutiques and I know before CyberpowerPC were kinda bad but now they have a higher 6 months review than Velocity Micro. Has anyone had any experience with them and know if they are good to buy from? Thanks.
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This thread is on page 3, if you want to see what someone else went through with Cyberpower recently:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1242725
 
Found this on the Better Business Bureau website

http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=13080817

Here is a portion of Cyberpower's BBB report:

"Complainants allege the company sells defective merchandise, and fails to provide warranty service as agreed. Some complainants allege they receive merchandise which is inoperable or defective at the time of delivery. In other cases customers complain they return defective components two or three times for the same repair, or, repaired items are retuned without the repairs performed, in the same condition as when they were sent in for repair. Complainants are generally dissatisfied with the level of customer service provided, claiming they are unable to reach company personnel by phone, and e-mails are not responded to. Some complainants who request refunds on defective products are dissatisfied with the company's policy of deducting S & H charges from the refund amount."

And...

"The company generally requires purchasers to ship computers back at their own cost for repairs or replacement. When refunds are requested, S & H charges are deducted from refund amounts. Depending on the size and weight of the item shipped, S & H changes can add up, especially in cases when items must be returned two and three times for repairs. We advise careful evaluation of the company's technical assistance, servicing, and refund and exchange policies prior to ordering products."

Now maybe Cyberpower has turned things around. However, in my opinion there are a number of boutique manufacturers out there that have received much better feedback from their customers than Cyberpower. While their computers may cost less, can you put a price on the inconvenience you may have to endure if you have an issue with your computer?
 
swatbat said:
I will say AVADirect's ceo checks these boards and answers questions and what not from time to time. VM's does the same. You also have Heather from Puget Systems on here.
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You also have Peter from Maingear on here, as well (to be fair).

If you have questions for any of us, please post. As for Cyberpower, well...I'm not allowed to voice any opinion on that, but I would personally rather see you buy from VM. Velocity has had a rough time on Reseller Ratings here lately, but their overall rep is still sound.
 
Looks like AndonSage beat me to it.

The link he provided shows the process from start to finish I had with CyberPower. If you read you'll know it didn't turn out too well. Good news is I did get a full refund although I still had to pay shipping back to them.

From reading the BBB blurb I'll have to agree, they either put in defective parts or refurbished parts. I just had too many things go wrong with my system to think it was just a coincidence.

Customer Service in the day was quite frankly horrible, I'll throw Kevin's name under the bus. Just an ass. I don't know how else to put it.

At night, the CS rep I dealt with was completely opposite, Ray was a great rep and seemed to really care I was going through hell. He made sure I got my full refund.

However, doesn't make up for the fact that I had a crap system outta the box. I understand that bad things can happen, ie shipping/handling, Operation System, but this was all the above.

My best freind actually bought one the same day and his still works good. Go figure..seems like a crap shoot.

Overall I'd unfortunately say not worth the risk.
 
I would suggest there are a lot of other better choices out there that you can go with. Check out Maingear for a good box...
 
I'd put CyberPower in one of those "price is too good to be true" categories, although I don't have any personal dealings with them.
 
KillRoy X said:
Looks like AndonSage beat me to it.

The link he provided shows the process from start to finish I had with CyberPower. If you read you'll know it didn't turn out too well. Good news is I did get a full refund although I still had to pay shipping back to them.

From reading the BBB blurb I'll have to agree, they either put in defective parts or refurbished parts. I just had too many things go wrong with my system to think it was just a coincidence.

Customer Service in the day was quite frankly horrible, I'll throw Kevin's name under the bus. Just an ass. I don't know how else to put it.

At night, the CS rep I dealt with was completely opposite, Ray was a great rep and seemed to really care I was going through hell. He made sure I got my full refund.

However, doesn't make up for the fact that I had a crap system outta the box. I understand that bad things can happen, ie shipping/handling, Operation System, but this was all the above.

My best freind actually bought one the same day and his still works good. Go figure..seems like a crap shoot.

Overall I'd unfortunately say not worth the risk.
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Hey who did you end up getting your new system from and how do they compare to Cyberpower?
 
i've bought a desktop and laptop from them and no major problems so far. daytime CSR is a complete asshole but the 2 late night guys are intelligent and pleasant to deal with. i'm guessing its just hit or miss with this company.
 
I bought a laptop from them just recently and have had no real problems (in fact its the happiest I've been with a prebuilt system). I reinstalled windows just because I didn't like how they set it up but it was super easy to do so with the driver cd's and such. I can't give you any real reason to avoid them, good prices and have had no issues. I've heard they have sh###y customer support but I suppose it's a trade for the good prices.
 
shaunh20 said:
Hey who did you end up getting your new system from and how do they compare to Cyberpower?
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Well, I haven't bought a new one as of yet. I'm using my good ol' reliable ABS from 3 years ago with monster specs like:

AMD3400
2 Gig G.Skills Ram
78000GS BFG
80Gig HD

The thing is smokin!

Right now I'm playing some older games like Prey and get this...Rune! I'm actually enjoying the older games and really am now in no rush to buy a new one.

Didn't get to finish Crysis or COD4, but they ain't going anywhere!
I'm probably wait until after vacation in March to pick it back up again.
 
Yeah, I'm one of those. I'm still tinkering witht the idea, but working full time, with a kid and 100 house projects to do, just don't think I would have the time.

Or the patience...I don't have much of that anyways.
 
The computer I'm on now is a cyberpower. I bought it almost exactly 4 years ago and have not had any problems with it. As such, I can't really say anything about customer support or anything, as I've not actually dealt with them. The system has been rock solid, though.

I can say that if I were to buy from another builder, they'd be a possibility. But from here on out I'm just going to built my own PC's.
 
BackFire349 said:
The computer I'm on now is a cyberpower. I bought it almost exactly 4 years ago and have not had any problems with it. As such, I can't really say anything about customer support or anything, as I've not actually dealt with them. The system has been rock solid, though.
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That's the point with CyberPower... it's a roll of the dice. If you get a good system and never need customer support, then great, you got a computer at a cheap price. But if you DO need customer support, you're screwed.
 
AndonSage said:
That's the point with CyberPower... it's a roll of the dice. If you get a good system and never need customer support, then great, you got a computer at a cheap price. But if you DO need customer support, you're screwed.
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That seems to be the case for most of the major manufacturers, although I doubt even Dell and other companies support could be as bad as I've heard Cyberpower's support is.
 
AndonSage said:
That's the point with CyberPower... it's a roll of the dice. If you get a good system and never need customer support, then great, you got a computer at a cheap price. But if you DO need customer support, you're screwed.
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Pretty much. You hope you never need to use their support. Most people don't need it. It seems that more people need to call cyberpowers support then other vendors and the support team is crap when they do.
 
swatbat said:
Pretty much. You hope you never need to use their support. Most people don't need it. It seems that more people need to call cyberpowers support then other vendors and the support team is crap when they do.
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It's still pretty scary though if the rumors are true that Cyberpower uses used and refurbished parts, which would go a long ways toward explaining their crazy low prices. If it's too good of a deal to be true, it probably is..
 
I'm no lawyer, but isn't it illegal to sell used or refurbished parts as new? Doesn't that information need to be relayed to the customer in some way? Dell, Gateway, HP, et. al. can't sell their refurbs as new and must sell them at a discount from their "outlet" marketplaces instead, so doesn't it stand to reason that if Cyberpower were using refurbished parts and they didn't tell the customer then that would be grounds for a class action lawsuit, or something?

Full disclosure;
Four or five years ago I had a Cyberpower computer and it worked great for me until the hard drive completely died.
 
MightyGeekMan said:
I'm no lawyer, but isn't it illegal to sell used or refurbished parts as new? Doesn't that information need to be relayed to the customer in some way? Dell, Gateway, HP, et. al. can't sell their refurbs as new and must sell them from their "outlet" marketplaces instead so doesn't it stand to reason that if Cyberpower were using refurbished parts and they didn't tell the customer then that would be grounds for a class action lawsuit, or something?
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That's a great point, i have heard rumors of this but not seen anything about anyone taking any legal action - does anyone know of any legal action on this front against Cyberpower?
 
I'd say it's hit or miss as others have said.

After dealing with numerous companies generally what pulls me back to one company or another is their service and support and true devotion to the customer. If you lie, cheat, and steal all along the way I will at no point recommend or buy a system from that company; If the company I deal with however does a good job supporting my problems...then they have me for years.

I always say any idiot can put together a computer in reality, it's the company that can support it that matters.
 
shaunh20 said:
That seems to be the case for most of the major manufacturers, although I doubt even Dell and other companies support could be as bad as I've heard Cyberpower's support is.
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I've had expirience with Dell and HP's customer support and Dell's is a very long wait, however their warranty is pretty extenssive so that they will definitely solve your problem. Same with HP, I had to call them a couple of times about a laptop and although their wait time was minimal their techs were very hard to understand. But even that I don't really care, they just said they will pick up the PC and we'll fix it for you, which they did both at Dell and HP in a very short time. I can't say I'm not satisfied major company support, maybe I'm the lucky ones, but support for stuff like Comcast Cable is way worse :D
 
WhiteGuardian said:
I've had expirience with Dell and HP's customer support and Dell's is a very long wait, however their warranty is pretty extenssive so that they will definitely solve your problem. Same with HP, I had to call them a couple of times about a laptop and although their wait time was minimal their techs were very hard to understand. But even that I don't really care, they just said they will pick up the PC and we'll fix it for you, which they did both at Dell and HP in a very short time. I can't say I'm not satisfied major company support, maybe I'm the lucky ones, but support for stuff like Comcast Cable is way worse :D
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It's not just you, I've dealt with both HP (printer) and Dell for both my XPS 420 and E1705 and in all circumstances they treated me very well and promptly replaced anything that was broken or wrong.
 
friend bought from them and have enjoyed their pc

its up to you, i wouldnt though
 
shaunh20 said:
That seems to be the case for most of the major manufacturers, although I doubt even Dell and other companies support could be as bad as I've heard Cyberpower's support is.
Click to expand...

Not to highjack the thread but here is my recent experience with Alienware: Purchased a $6100 Area-51 ALX this past Oct, received it on Nov 1st... within an hour I ran a couple stress tests on it and the thing beeps and reboots. I turn it back on and run the same test and again it beeps and reboots... take side panel off and start checking that nothing came loose during shipping and then damn near burn the skin off my hand when I hit up againt the cpu water cooling tubing.

I download Everest and check my temps while running stress test and it hits 104c and dies again... I call their support and spend an hour on the phone just for them to tell me they are emailing a shipping label and I need to return it. I ship it out 2 days later (was the weekend) and it comes back 2 weeks later with a new mobo, new processor and new water cooling unit... I turn it on and start up stress test, I hear some crackling noises so I go touch the water tubing again and <sizzle sizzle>, I shut it down and call tech support again and this time Im flipping out and saying I want my money back because its nuts to think that they should have caught the overheating during their so called own stress testing and then a second time it goes through the same testing and still gets sent back to me overheating...

They transfer me to a tech and he asks to try one thing... I say sure... he says lets remove the plastic decorative chrome piece attached to the rear of the case, I do this and temps plummet to normal. Seems there is a design flaw in this piece that doesnt allow the hot air from the cpu liquid cooling to escape. So I let all this slide and continue using my computer for a couple days and then I install the game Call of Duty 4... one hour into it, I reboot. I install Battlefield 2... 3 hours into I reboot.... Battlefield 2142 1 1/2 hrs into it I reboot. I randomly tested this machine with literally 100's of various setups with drivers and ram and you name and still was rebooting.

I call up their tech and he suggests maybe a video card overheating so he asks me to check the fans RPMs within BIOS and I told him what was listed on the only fan and he says there should be one showing for the sidepanel fan... we spent 3 hours on the phone trying to get it to show in the BIOS and then the next day I find out that the guy was an idiot because the only fan that should show is what was there already... oh and lets not forget that he had me messing with so many settings in the BIOS that he made me hit the Default Button and thus 2 days later find out we wiped out all my factory overclock settings.... then lets mention how when we were setting all the OCing back up I was told to set the CPU Core volts to like 1.54 which I also found out later that this was set WAY to high for such a simple OC of 3.0 to 3.33... I recently sent it back and awaiting a full refund so I can build my own.
 
MaXXimus said:
Not to highjack the thread but here is my recent experience with Alienware: Purchased a $6100 Area-51 ALX this past Oct, received it on Nov 1st... within an hour I ran a couple stress tests on it and the thing beeps and reboots. I turn it back on and run the same test and again it beeps and reboots... take side panel off and start checking that nothing came loose during shipping and then damn near burn the skin off my hand when I hit up againt the cpu water cooling tubing.

I download Everest and check my temps while running stress test and it hits 104c and dies again... I call their support and spend an hour on the phone just for them to tell me they are emailing a shipping label and I need to return it. I ship it out 2 days later (was the weekend) and it comes back 2 weeks later with a new mobo, new processor and new water cooling unit... I turn it on and start up stress test, I hear some crackling noises so I go touch the water tubing again and <sizzle sizzle>, I shut it down and call tech support again and this time Im flipping out and saying I want my money back because its nuts to think that they should have caught the overheating during their so called own stress testing and then a second time it goes through the same testing and still gets sent back to me overheating...

They transfer me to a tech and he asks to try one thing... I say sure... he says lets remove the plastic decorative chrome piece attached to the rear of the case, I do this and temps plummet to normal. Seems there is a design flaw in this piece that doesnt allow the hot air from the cpu liquid cooling to escape. So I let all this slide and continue using my computer for a couple days and then I install the game Call of Duty 4... one hour into it, I reboot. I install Battlefield 2... 3 hours into I reboot.... Battlefield 2142 1 1/2 hrs into it I reboot. I randomly tested this machine with literally 100's of various setups with drivers and ram and you name and still was rebooting.

I call up their tech and he suggests maybe a video card overheating so he asks me to check the fans RPMs within BIOS and I told him what was listed on the only fan and he says there should be one showing for the sidepanel fan... we spent 3 hours on the phone trying to get it to show in the BIOS and then the next day I find out that the guy was an idiot because the only fan that should show is what was there already... oh and lets not forget that he had me messing with so many settings in the BIOS that he made me hit the Default Button and thus 2 days later find out we wiped out all my factory overclock settings.... then lets mention how when we were setting all the OCing back up I was told to set the CPU Core volts to like 1.54 which I also found out later that this was set WAY to high for such a simple OC of 3.0 to 3.33... I recently sent it back and awaiting a full refund so I can build my own.
Click to expand...

Wow, that just goes to show one thing I guess: that no matter how much $$$ you spend at a company it really doesn't seem to affect the level of testing that a machine goes through before it's sent out.
 
It also shows ya that you cant trust what ya cant see... they can tell you anything they want and just be blowing smoke up your crack-hole and how are you to know? I know we cant expect 100% satisifaction from any company... EVER, but after what I went through, I can honestly say I will never go through a boutique company to build me a computer. For all I know the parts could be hand-me-downs from someone else's failed build and so on and so forth...
 
Well, I will relay my experience with Cyberpowerpc. I just purchased a machine from them that I am using as a HTPC. I only bought from them because I get a $1000 loan from work towards the purchase of a computer and the loan is only for a full system. So I wanted a company that gave me some customization options. A co-worker had just purchased a watercooled gaming rig from them and has been very happy with it since. He had a problem with the system at first and contacted their support and was dealt with quickly and effectively.

The only problem I had with them was that I ordered the computer and took over a month to get it. I emailed them almost every other day for updates. They did reply back to me every time. However their own communication was a little suspect. They kept telling me that it was being built and this and that. And I finally got a message saying that the cpu was on back order and when it arrived they built the system and got it shipped out quickly.

The system is well built, was well packaged and has not had a problem. I even overclocked it a little on air and it's still running cool and stable. Even though I had a little bit of a rough time just dealing with my own impatience in getting the product and some poor communication, I still think they did a good job and they responded quickly and often to my inquiries.

I even recommended them to another co-worker who was looking to purchase a home computer to replace his aging machine. He is happy with his computer also.

Everybody has different experiences and there are bound to be those who have a really bad experience. I think that Cyberpowerpc has done fine for me and for my co-workers.
 
I would not get a computer from Cyber Power. They had a special and a whole bunch of people I know from online gaming ordered them and friend of mine had tons of problems with his and then it died after a year and his warranty was out. Power supply crapped out and took almost everything with it. He did get his awhile ago. He bought it with when the Geforce 5's were out. I think out of the batch who played Dark Age of Camelot that ordered the CyberPowerPcs > 50% had issues on receiving the computer and there was this huge thread on vnboards about it a few years back.

Not worth the risk.
 
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