What's your experience with digitec.ch?

Most awesome company in Switzerland.

We have ordered many things from digitec and have found them to very efficent.

I can sympathize with both sides here. We handle a volume of card transactions similar to Digitec. It is an impossibility to contact everyone punctually due to them not been there, not reading their emails, etc. And sending out letters has no guarantee of delivery or cuts profits substantially.

Confirming billing address is normal business anyway but that does not mean the things would be shipped somewhere else not unless you were a "known" customer. The retailer has little if any come back against the card companies, they simply deduct the amount and then add on CHF 40 for the privilege. And that is for any complaint from the customer. Hence it is best for the customer to contact the retailer first in a dispute case.

The most probable reason for the situation you have is that there have been currency fluctuations and digitec did not refund your transaction in which case you will incur charges. IF a retailer is doing a refund they should always credit against a transaction that occurred previously. In that way any possible charges fall away. If they do not charges can occur.

And finally Digitec have probably added an automated restocking or service charge of CHF 20 to boot. I think this is most unfair and suggest you tell them you will open a credit card dispute unless they credit the money. If you do they automatically will loose more than the disputed amount. Add to that your CC fees are determined by several factors one of which is the amount of refunds you do in comaprison to sales so it could hurt in more ways than one...

One small thing that irritates me about them sometimes is that the product does not arrive at the shop on time. So I turn up all excited at the shop to pick my electronic gear and it's not there.

For example I ordered an in stock camera on Friday. It said that if I ordered before 2pm then it would be there in the evening. I ordered at 1pm and it's still not there (saturday).

Now I got to wait till Monday. Is it possible that it's there and my account has not been updated due to it being saturday? It still shows "reserved at the warehouse" instead of "ready to pick".

I hate waiting for my next electronic hit.

Do you subscribe to sms notification as confirmation that you can collect?

Yes I always do. Did not get it either hence decided not to trek all they way today. I am tempted to break into their warehous to get my camera. I need my toy now!

Couple of times in the past I picked the product after seeing online that my product was "ready to pick" but still never got the SMS.

And if you absolutely have to buy something from digitec don't go there with a car expecting to find a place to park. They only have 4 parking spaces in front of their establishment and the park house is closed to the public which leaves you parking illegally like the other 15 cars did. They have a private police which runs over to your car while you're inside of digitec and attaches a 60.-chf. fine to your windscreen..!! I sent a (polite) email to them expressing my displeasure in their parking situation, of course no answer was received from them. Oh well, learned an expensive lesson in how much they care about their customers so I will NEVER go to digitec again..!

(pssst.. Steg Computer in Dietikon has lots of free parking for their customers)

this happens at times, specially if there is somebody ahead of you who ordered the same, and the stock is just waiting, for them, and you are down the line

my worst experience with digitec is them sending me confirmation for pickup, and then my order was sent to their other warehouse, its a good thing i am only 10 min walk from their warehouse, and i just came back the next day

I thought I'd revive this old thread, since I've got a current experience with Digitec.

Yesterday, I ordered a new computer from them online, to be delivered by post today. It arrived this morning, so far so good.

I opened up the computer, set it up and was ready to install the OS (I ordered one without an OS, since I had an old XP disc and I was trying to save money). It had Vista on it...so I just went ahead and got it running with Vista to see what was up.

Turns out they put the wrong hard drive in the machine - 35 gig instead of 500 gig!

I called them, spoke with someone who spoke excellent English, who looked at the situation. In the end, they are going to replace the machine completely and they're sending me a new one with the correct size HD. And to top it off, I even ordered Vista from them, as it wasn't as horrific as I expected (and I still have my old XP disc should I hate it after using it a bit).

The only rub is that they had to charge my credit card for the new machine to send it out before the old one was returned. But I can also see their viewpoint on that. And they're not charging a second fee for the credit card, despite the charge on that being higher. I've also got a credit for the postage to send the old machine back.

All in all, I've found them responsive and apologetic for their mistake - and willing to work with me to fix it quickly and in my best interests. Let's see if the new machine arrives on Monday as expected and if they give me the credit promptly when the old machine arrives back with them.

Sounds very odd, I didn't even think you could get anything less than 120GB these days. Sorry for the basic question, but are you sure it hasn't been partitioned into smaller drives? For a good overview of the hard disk and any possible partitions, you can use the disk management console in Windows:

Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools. Double click Computer Management and then click Disk Management in the left hand column

I'd dare to suggest that they left a HDD in there that they use to test the rig before sending it out

Actually, that was exactly my thought too. Then I wondered if somehow Vista might hide partitioned disks (you know the way Microsoft likes to hide things), so I called to verify. Indeed it was the wrong HD.

I think Boxman's explanation below is dead on, never thought of that!

Thanks - that makes perfect sense!

I just discovered today that digitec.ch stores your password in plain text. This means that if you use your password on other sites, they most likely can get access to them as well. Suffice to say, this is a big security risk and also very unprofessional. There's also a risk that an attacker can compromise the site, and retrieve all the passwords.

So my advice is:

Change your password immediately to something unique.

Send a mail to [[email protected]](mailto😃[email protected]) where you request them to delete your account over security concerns.

how do you know that digitec stores your password in plain text within their database?

are you confused with the fact that you can log in via http and https?

https://www.digitec.ch is the link to use when logging in; yes, they could make their whole site accessible only via TLS/SSL but it's not the end of the world.

You have a separate username and therefore don't log in with email address. However, if you use the same password for all of these sites, you're asking for trouble.

Every time you create a login at any site, consider the fact that the people running the site could be running away with your password.

Oh yes.... and how do you log into EF? The password is stored hashed in the MySQL database but you transmit it in plain text.

Hang on, don't tell me that's the same as your other passwords?

I have placed 3 orders online with no probs. Fast delivery as well. Odered a game on Tue and it arrived Wed.

Because they sent me the password in plain text when I used the forgotten password form.

Yes, I could do things to mitigate this risk myself (separate passwords etc.), but this does not excuse digitec.ch's very sloppy security. If you do websites for a living, this is the first thing you learn that you must not do. I've just done it on a hobby basis, but even I know that.

I have bought quite some stuff from digitec, cameras, PS3, digital frame, computer, games, all with good experience so far

ah they sent the password in plain text? Rather different from storing it

Anyway many places do this and I agree that best practice suggests sending a URL to allow you to reset the password. But they're not storing the password in plain text.

Suggest to them that they send you the hashed password stored in their DB next time you forget? Not much help either but they are not alone in sending you your credentials in the clear. Some sites actually do it when you register

hmmm...I am pretty price sensitive, and buy whatever I can in the US when I visit. That being said, almost ALL of the electronics that I have bought in CH have been from Digitec. I just go to their site, search for what I need, and pick up in Zurich West. Never had a problem, but they have restrictive return policies.

fduvall

I have used them a lot in the past years as well and never had any issues, but the times I needed their service it was rather restrictive and low-end. But this is of course exactly how the can offer cheap prices.

One word on the parking situation: A vwild1 has pointed out, there is a high chance for a ticket when stopping even shortly in front of their door. However, the undergound garage is not at all closed to the public, half of it are visitor parking places. 2 CHF or so which are very well invested.