Canada Computers & Electronics — Local services in Waterloo

Canada Computers is an absolute scam of a retailer, and I finally understand why their stores are always empty. Their return policy is nothing short of predatory, designed to trap customers into keeping overpriced junk with no way out. I made the mistake of buying a pair of JBL headphones from them, expecting at least decent quality for the price—especially since I’ve owned JBL products before and had great experiences with them. I know what good JBL sound quality should be, so when I unboxed these and realized they were absolutely not worth the price, I figured returning them would be a simple process.

But no—Canada Computers would rather rob you blind than take back a product that failed to meet expectations. I brought the headphones back, barely used and in perfect condition, only for them to pull their nonsense policy: No returns on opened products. How else am I supposed to determine if they’re any good without opening the damn box? They even opened it themselves, inspected it, and still refused to take it back, hiding behind fine print instead of doing what any legitimate retailer would—stand behind what they sell.

To make things even worse, their completely incompetent customer service wasted 30 minutes of my time pretending to “figure out” how to process the return, only to come back with a weak excuse and tell me no. Why even bother making me wait if you were just going to say no in the first place? This is the kind of shady, time-wasting nonsense that makes people hate shopping in-store.

What makes this even more frustrating is that I’ve returned similar products to The Source, Best Buy, and Amazon without any issues. Every single one of those stores has accepted returns even when I admitted the product was used, as long as it was within the return policy window. Because that’s how a real business operates. They understand that customers need to actually use a product to know if it’s worth keeping. Canada Computers, on the other hand, would rather trap customers with their garbage policies than build any kind of trust or loyalty.

This store is nothing but a cash grab, preying on customers and refusing to take responsibility for the garbage they peddle. It’s no wonder their stores are always empty—people are finally catching on. Their prices aren’t even that great, and you can get better deals with actual customer protection elsewhere. If you value your money, avoid Canada Computers at all costs. They don’t deserve a single cent, and frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they shut down in the near future, considering how they treat their customers...

Seldom do I ever write reviews about businesses. But I felt my experience was worth sharing.

About 3 weeks ago I suffered a house fire which resulted in some of my property being damaged. Notably the laptop screen on my personal laptop I use for taking notes at school. I thought it would be best to take care of this asap and I went to CC to get the screen replaced. I was told it would take a minimum of 4 days for their head office to send the correct laptop screen for my model of computer. It wasn’t until a week after this with no call I decided to check up on the progress, much to my surprise there was a delay in the order. I was disappointed that no one had called me to relay this information to me as school at this point is now starting in a week and a half. The real problem starts when I after a half week of school and no calls from CC I call this morning (Monday Sept 13), only to find out the screen sent from head office was not the right model and they’re sending the correct one as a “rush order”. You may think a rush order will come quick and I really hope so too, yet when asked for an accurate timeline the person on the phone could only give me “asap”. This is unacceptable. Furthermore when being told that this person was messaging their head office contact via Microsoft team, she tells me her reply was met with “….” To say I am upset is an understatement, not only do I feel undervalued as a customer, I feel disrespected as I am met with excuses such as dot dot dot or our technicians quit. During this entire ordeal I have not received any notice of timeline, nor any sort of “compensation” for this unacceptable line of work that Canada Computers is doing on my computer. It is safe to say after I get my laptop fixed, I will never be using this company again and will be advocating against using this company in favour of more local organizations. Absolutely appalling that it has taken this long for a simply fix and for there to be no clear lines of communication between the company and the consumer.

EDIT: just to be clear, the wrong part was sent not once, but twice, and Canada Computers neglected to give me a proper timeline of work and refused to reach out to me...

I had a very negative experience with this place on Black Friday. I'd like to share what happened.

I walked into the store with the intention of buying a new graphics card & SSD for my desktop computer. I asked one of the clerks what their recommendation was, and they told me that for the game I was playing, the GTX 1050ti was a good choice, and a good price. I then went to do some mobile phone research and found that the card was reviewed positively. I was ready to buy, so I grabbed an SSD on sale and went to checkout. Another clerk upsold me on the GTX 1060 instead, which was a little more expensive but I thought it was worth it.

When I got home and installed my new hardware, I found that the graphics card required a PCIe power cable that my computer did not have. I was frustrated and went back to the store. I asked if they had the cable, and as it turns out you can't just buy the cable, you need to spend $80 on an entirely new power box. At this point I felt deceived and asked to speak to the store manager. After explaining my situation to him, and pointing out that the very same graphics card I just bought was being offered in a bundle that included a new power box for THE SAME PRICE that I had just paid for the card alone, he refused to make any sort of swap for me, or to address the actions that had occurred in any way. Instead he stated "I guess the guy that helped you has poor knowledge. There's nothing I can do".

The silver lining is that the employee who did originally recommend a card to me tries very hard to fix the situation for me. He tried looking up all sorts of solutions for me, apologized, said he didn't realize my computer was an older model (which it is), and all around made a great attempt to help me. Unfortunately he couldn't do anything because the store manager couldn't care less and wasn't willing to accept any responsibility for the event.

I'm giving them a review of 2 out of 5, only because the employee tried so hard to help me out. I would recommend that anybody who is looking to buy new computer parts does so elsewhere, because CC only cares about getting your wallet out and they cease to treat you with value the second your transaction...