First of all you have loads of rights under the Sale of Goods Act in the UK. As this is slashdot ignore the Americans who cite CompuUSA and the American laws as they actually don't apply here.
I've taken people to court in the UK a couple of time (IANAL) and won each time. This was always a small claims court (Kennington, London) rather than the big expensive one.
It's not difficult but you need to do things correctly.
1) Go back to PC World and state your claim again to them verbally. Ask to speak to the manager and state why you think you have a claim against them. Ignore the rubbish that they have nothing to do with the sale, they are the company who sold you the computer, they are the people you have a contract with.
2) Make readable notes, ask for names of appropriate staff. Be polite.
3) Tell them that you are not happy with this and will be taking further action. You can prepare in advance a latter stating that you think the goods are not of merchantible quality as defined by the Sales of Goods Act and you wish to receive a refund. You have the option of either a refund or a repair. If you accept a repair you cannot get your money back at a later stage, so go for the full refund. In the letter allow them a reasonable time to provide a refund, 14 days is acceptable, 24 hours is not. State that unless you get a full refund you will take them to court under the Sales of Good Act.
4) Go home, write your notes up, make it clear and concise.
5) Either PC World pay up, job done or they don't answer or they refuse. If they don't answer, send them a reminder and copy this to the chief executive of PC World, who appears to be John Clare. Don't get stroppy, don't get cocky. Explain the situation in simple to understand terms. This is later evidence you will give to the magistrate. He or she may not be IT literate so don't get too technical. They appreciate concise information.
6) PC World turn you down again. So you have to hit the small claims court. Go to your local court and ask for a small claims form. I forget the details but Google-is-your-friend. Fill out the information on the form. This is where you state your case and attach copies of your evidence, so all the careful notes you've made and the copies of letters you've sent help. You did send them registered through Royal Mail so you have proof of receipt didn't you? It costs about £35-40. I've not done this for a couple of years so am not up to date.
7) Wait.
8) Either PC World pay up, offer you something or they go to court. They cannot ignore this letter, it is now a matter of law and for them to do so means you win.
9) if they go to court, this is your big day. You do not need a laywer or barrister to represent yourself. The magistrate is the only person you need to convince and in my experience they were very friendly and helpful. They do not look down on you defending yourself. Explain your case to them, do not use technical terms, explain that the case has broken due to a design default and let the other side explain why loading Linux causes a hinge to break. keep it simple and clear. Dress smartly, but be confident of your case. Don't make jokes, make copious notes (or pretend to to keep yourself busy).
10) The magistrate will make a judgement there and then. If he/she says yes you're home and dry, if not then lifes a bitch and then you die. I've done three and won three.
11) if you win, PC World will pay up. If they don't you get the fantastic (and I mean that) of sending the bailiffs in. This means that you could probably get them to march into a store, section part of it off and say that this stock is now being held due to default of payment. This happened a few months ago in Tescos wher the bailiffs sectioned off the drink section and claimed it in default of a payment. £60,000 of booze held for a couple of thousand pounds fine. Tesco's paid on the spot. I know a few bailiffs and they are all nutters and hard cases and love this sort of grand standing.
As many people have said here $1,000 for Astrophotography is not really going to get you a great deal. I speak with experience as I tried to do exactly this. I expect you to ignore this as everybody thinks they can get something for nothing.
Lessons I learnt:
1) The mount is more important than the scope. For Astrophotography you need the sturdiest mount you can afford. 2) The mount is more important than the scope. Repeated just in case you forgot it the first time. 3) Don't buy a scope off eBay unless you really, really, really know what you are doing. Ignore the cheap scopes that advertise themselves based on the magnification. Any scope (and I mean *ANY*) scope that advertises itself based on 675x or 300x is junk, no exceptions. Most cheap Chinese Newtonian reflectors on eBay use spherical primary mirrors. These are useless, junk and a waste of money. 4) Most mounts on eBay are rubbish and junk. See points 1) and 2). Exceptions are Losmandy, Televue, Williams Optics and a very few others. Most people do not sell their second hand gear on eBay. They use Astromart or Cloudy Nights. 5) Join a local astronomy club and check out what everybody else uses. Ask them nicely and they may let you use their kit. 6) The best scope you have is the scope you use the most. You can get excellent results from small refractors (66mm or so). Check out the William Optics range. They will attach to cameras using a T-Adaptor. 7) If you want to do astrophotography then a reasonable German Equatorial Mount is the easiest (though not the only) way to do it. You will need a decent mount (see points 1 and 2) and a decent motor drive. The Vixen EQ5 range of mounts are pretty good, though there are others. You do not need GOTO on a mount to do photography, though it's sometimes a nice-to-have. 8) You can do pretty good photography with an ordinary camera and an ordinary camera lenses of just about any size. Clearly a 50mm lense is not going to give you a nice closeup of Saturns rings or Jupiter or any deep sky object, but check out what you can do with them on www.cloudynights.com. You will need something that tracks though to do long exposures (> 10 seconds). You can try and track manually. this is in the difficult to do category or you can use a decent GEM mount (see points 1 and 2) or use something like Astrotrac (http://www.astrotrac.com/prj104/html/104_3.htm). Astrotrac, a small 66mm or 77mm scope (e.g. Borg), a decent photo tripod will cost around $1,000 or so. This is pretty much the entry level. Of course now you need eye pieces, possible a finder, though with a 66mm or 77mm this is not really needed. 9) Astrophotography is hard. To do it properly you need to polar align your scope (make sure it's nice and level), you need to align and find your object. Mmm... I wonder which point in the sky that really is? You need to get your camera attached to the scope and then check that everything is focussed set up. Whoops, nudged the scope, lets start again. Ah! Digital cameras have noise and hot pixels, mmm...need to remove that, oh and I need darks and flats. It's not as easy as point your scope upwards and pressing the button. 10) Webcams are an easy (and cheap) way to get started. A cheap webcam (Phillips Toucam II is recognised as probably the best), a 1.25in adaptor and you're away. Connect it to a laptop and save that AVI file. Use Registax to take each frame and stack a couple of hundred. Check out Damian Peach for what he's done with webcams. 11) Allow a couple of years to become proficient. I class myself as a rank, useless amateur and I've spent a lot of time and money. 12) Once you get a decent picture you'll be hooked. Assume you will then spend all your disposable income on the latest Takahashi Mewlon or a high end TMB, Astro Phyics or Tec refractor. 13) Oh and just in case you've forgotten, the mount is more important than the scope!
Slashdot Mirror
First of all you have loads of rights under the Sale of Goods Act in the UK. As this is slashdot ignore the Americans who cite CompuUSA and the American laws as they actually don't apply here.
I've taken people to court in the UK a couple of time (IANAL) and won each time. This was always a small claims court (Kennington, London) rather than the big expensive one.
It's not difficult but you need to do things correctly.
1) Go back to PC World and state your claim again to them verbally. Ask to speak to the manager and state why you think you have a claim against them. Ignore the rubbish that they have nothing to do with the sale, they are the company who sold you the computer, they are the people you have a contract with.
2) Make readable notes, ask for names of appropriate staff. Be polite.
3) Tell them that you are not happy with this and will be taking further action. You can prepare in advance a latter stating that you think the goods are not of merchantible quality as defined by the Sales of Goods Act and you wish to receive a refund. You have the option of either a refund or a repair. If you accept a repair you cannot get your money back at a later stage, so go for the full refund. In the letter allow them a reasonable time to provide a refund, 14 days is acceptable, 24 hours is not. State that unless you get a full refund you will take them to court under the Sales of Good Act.
4) Go home, write your notes up, make it clear and concise.
5) Either PC World pay up, job done or they don't answer or they refuse. If they don't answer, send them a reminder and copy this to the chief executive of PC World, who appears to be John Clare. Don't get stroppy, don't get cocky. Explain the situation in simple to understand terms. This is later evidence you will give to the magistrate. He or she may not be IT literate so don't get too technical. They appreciate concise information.
6) PC World turn you down again. So you have to hit the small claims court. Go to your local court and ask for a small claims form. I forget the details but Google-is-your-friend. Fill out the information on the form. This is where you state your case and attach copies of your evidence, so all the careful notes you've made and the copies of letters you've sent help. You did send them registered through Royal Mail so you have proof of receipt didn't you? It costs about £35-40. I've not done this for a couple of years so am not up to date.
7) Wait.
8) Either PC World pay up, offer you something or they go to court. They cannot ignore this letter, it is now a matter of law and for them to do so means you win.
9) if they go to court, this is your big day. You do not need a laywer or barrister to represent yourself. The magistrate is the only person you need to convince and in my experience they were very friendly and helpful. They do not look down on you defending yourself. Explain your case to them, do not use technical terms, explain that the case has broken due to a design default and let the other side explain why loading Linux causes a hinge to break. keep it simple and clear. Dress smartly, but be confident of your case. Don't make jokes, make copious notes (or pretend to to keep yourself busy).
10) The magistrate will make a judgement there and then. If he/she says yes you're home and dry, if not then lifes a bitch and then you die. I've done three and won three.
11) if you win, PC World will pay up. If they don't you get the fantastic (and I mean that) of sending the bailiffs in. This means that you could probably get them to march into a store, section part of it off and say that this stock is now being held due to default of payment. This happened a few months ago in Tescos wher the bailiffs sectioned off the drink section and claimed it in default of a payment. £60,000 of booze held for a couple of thousand pounds fine. Tesco's paid on the spot. I know a few bailiffs and they are all nutters and hard cases and love this sort of grand standing.
As many people have said here $1,000 for Astrophotography is not really going to get you a great deal. I speak with experience as I tried to do
exactly this. I expect you to ignore this as everybody thinks they can get something for nothing.
Lessons I learnt:
1) The mount is more important than the scope. For Astrophotography you need the sturdiest mount you can afford.
2) The mount is more important than the scope. Repeated just in case you forgot it the first time.
3) Don't buy a scope off eBay unless you really, really, really know what you are doing. Ignore the cheap scopes that advertise themselves based on the magnification. Any scope (and I mean *ANY*) scope that advertises itself based on 675x or 300x is junk, no exceptions. Most cheap Chinese Newtonian reflectors on eBay use spherical primary mirrors. These are useless, junk and a waste of money.
4) Most mounts on eBay are rubbish and junk. See points 1) and 2). Exceptions are Losmandy, Televue, Williams Optics and a very few others. Most people do not sell their second hand gear on eBay. They use Astromart or Cloudy Nights.
5) Join a local astronomy club and check out what everybody else uses. Ask them nicely and they may let you use their kit.
6) The best scope you have is the scope you use the most. You can get excellent results from small refractors (66mm or so). Check out the William Optics range. They will attach to cameras using a T-Adaptor.
7) If you want to do astrophotography then a reasonable German Equatorial Mount is the easiest (though not the only) way to do it. You will need a decent mount (see points 1 and 2) and a decent motor drive. The Vixen EQ5 range of mounts are pretty good, though there are others. You do not need GOTO on a mount to do photography, though it's sometimes a nice-to-have.
8) You can do pretty good photography with an ordinary camera and an ordinary camera lenses of just about any size. Clearly a 50mm lense is not going to give you a nice closeup of Saturns rings or Jupiter or any deep sky object, but check out what you can do with them on www.cloudynights.com. You will need something that tracks though to do long exposures (> 10 seconds). You can try and track manually. this is in the difficult to do category or you can use a decent GEM mount (see points 1 and 2) or use something like Astrotrac (http://www.astrotrac.com/prj104/html/104_3.htm). Astrotrac, a small 66mm or 77mm scope (e.g. Borg), a decent photo tripod will cost around $1,000 or so. This is pretty much the entry level. Of course now you need eye pieces, possible a finder, though with a 66mm or 77mm this is not really needed.
9) Astrophotography is hard. To do it properly you need to polar align your scope (make sure it's nice and level), you need to align and find your object. Mmm... I wonder which point in the sky that really is? You need to get your camera attached to the scope and then check that everything is focussed set up. Whoops, nudged the scope, lets start again. Ah! Digital cameras have noise and hot pixels, mmm...need to remove that, oh and I need darks and flats. It's not as easy as point your scope upwards and pressing the button.
10) Webcams are an easy (and cheap) way to get started. A cheap webcam (Phillips Toucam II is recognised as probably the best), a 1.25in adaptor and you're away. Connect it to a laptop and save that AVI file. Use Registax to take each frame and stack a couple of hundred. Check out Damian Peach for what he's done with webcams.
11) Allow a couple of years to become proficient. I class myself as a rank, useless amateur and I've spent a lot of time and money.
12) Once you get a decent picture you'll be hooked. Assume you will then spend all your disposable income on the latest Takahashi Mewlon or a high end TMB, Astro Phyics or Tec refractor.
13) Oh and just in case you've forgotten, the mount is more important than the scope!
Rob.