R4 for Nintendo DS & DSi

While researching where to get the best quality R4 Revolution in the UK I came across a large number of people selling the device. All but a handful of these were small businesses. Most of these did not have much of an online reputation which could be found on business review websites.

This means that you are taking a risk when you order an R4 Revolution from most places. There is no way to know about delivery times or what happens if there is a problem with the order. More importantly, when buying an R4 it is good to know that quality of the units being supplied high as it really does vary from one retailer to the next.

This isn’t a problem with most products because usually one product is only produced by one company, but because of the messy break-up of the original R4 team, there is no way to be sure of the products quality by looking at a retailer’s site alone. This is why I created the R4 Revolution retailers comparison table based on customer feedback.

R4 Revolution Negative Buyer Feedback

You can learn more about a company from reading a few negative comments about them than you can from dozens of positive ones. That’s why this section is going to get some examples of what negative things have been said about the highest rated R4 Revolution retailers in the UK.

Memory Card Zoo

These are one of only two retailers in our survey who sell through Amazon.co.uk. They have an impressive 97% satisfaction rate of over 3800 customers (far more than any others reviews we found, therefore probably the most accurate account of how well the company manages its customer service. Let’s have a look at what upset the 3% of buyers.

The first less than positive feedback refers to the fact that a wireless Wii Nunchuck they sell not holding it’s charge for very long. This of course doesn’t say anything negative about Memory Card Zoo, but is an issue with the producer of the Wireless Nunchuck.

There are 125 positive comments before the first negative comment on Amazon. This comment states that it took 11 days for delivery to arrive. Memory Card Zoo replies with, “Please accept our apologies for the late delivery of your order. We can confirm that your order was processed and dispatched on the same day it was placed which is our standard practise. On occasion the postal system can suffer delays which we understand is frustrating however this is outside of our control.”

The final two negative comments stated: “order was cancelled as no stock was available. so unable to rate” and “too long delivery time for in-stock item. I go abroad on 16 May.”

I didn’t find any negative comments about the R4 Revolution itself and 97% is a very high customer satisfaction rate. Click here to buy from Memory Card Zoo

My Memory

The next highest rated site in our survey is My Memory. These also sell through Amazon. On there they have had an even more impressive number of reviews with over 54000. However the percentage of satisfied customers is down to 94%. Let’s see what the a 6% of dissatisfied customers are complaining about:

The fist page of results shows two negative comments: “item marked as new but opened and 2 day delivery despite a rather hefty 5 quid P&P charge. ordered at same time as another with Amazon and that was delivered a day after postage for free so whats the 5 quid for?” and “once again very efficient”. The second comment doesn’t seem that negative does it? The low rating was probably an error. Two pages later there is this comment “they supplied a memory card which didnt work and then replaced it with another card which doesnt work.” Well, at least they tried. Finally there was this natural comment “Product s a bit more flimsy than I hoped but at this price you get what you pay for.”

My Memory still have fairly good feedback and if you wish to buy your R4 Revolution from them, you can do so here

Memory Bits/R4i.co.uk/R4DS.co.uk (all the same company)

Unfortunately there are not so many reviews of this retailer and no they do not sell on Amazon so it isn’t possible to make a direct comparison with the first two websites. They have just 9 reviews on pricerunner with a current average score of 2.4 out of 5 (or 48%). Price Runner lets us see where they are getting their positive and negative marks from. The majority of the positive marks come from them having a good website, the majority of negative marks come from their standards of service and warranty.

The reviews on pricerunner are much longer so I’ll just show you highlights of every comment they have on the site, negative ones and the positive one.

• “the number they give on the website is unobtainable, so i got it via Trading Standards”
• “Waited 4 months for my refund”
• “warehouse problem, took 8 days & the second 5 days… I had been very concerned having read some of the reports on Ciao & PriceRunner. Glad to say my experience was good.”
• “it was delivered quickly… that was in 2007, over 18 months ago, and ever since then I’ve been receiving promotional emails from them, every single day, seven days a week”
• “What a total joke this company are, they don’t act in accordance with their own policy of protocol and they don’t comply with UK law.”
• “They have effectively stolen my money.”
• “fast delivery – free delivery – cheap prices”
• “customer service didn’t seem to care two hoots”
• “A truely hopeless company!”
• “They blatantly lie about stock levels and when you do receive an item it is most likely to be damaged.”

If you want to order from Memory Bits, good luck.