The Alternative Time/Tiny Information Source; ex. 10 Reasons Not To Buy

last updated by Inquisitor on Friday 22nd April at around midnight

(AKA: TIME, TINY, GRANVILLE TECHNOLOGY GROUP (GTG), THE COMPUTER WORLD, THE COMPUTER SHOP, COLOSSUS, MJN)

PLEASE NOTE: Sources for this list include private and public sources. Public sources will be referenced. Private sources will not. Note that the veracity of some items on this list has been disputed by Time/Tiny/GTG etc. themselves, although if any actual member of the public has any complaints about it I'd love to hear them. Currently being updated to tone down the vitriol of the original list. Please send requests, information etc. by email.

21.04: Apologies for the extremely late update. This is not a full time endeavour, and I haven't got around to updating this for a long time; my web page is not my #1 priority, sorry to say. As the people on the comments section should be aware, I am easily contactable by email, which I actually do read (the link to which on this page has been here for a very long time); the fact no-one has tried means their insistences in the comments section are somewhat hollow. Nevertheless, as anyone can see from the Romulus2 forums and Tiny's appearance on Watchdog, I still wouldn't touch any of their machines with a bargepole.

So I've reorganised the sections, deleted anything I couldn't verify at the time. GTG should be aware that some sections of this, regarding faulty machines etc, has been inferred from private email the source of which I will not reveal. That said, a large proportion of public sources of such complaints are now linked to.

A quick note to GTG: please, please, fix yourself. This isn't meant as a permanent thing, you know; despite your long history, you might not have to go down as the MG Rover of the British computer industry if you just fix yourself up. Stop making machines with idiotic user restrictions, start supplying restore discs so users can actually fix anything serious that goes wrong with the machine, stop hiding machines' real features, stop ignoring customer service complaints until someone posts on the right Web forum or goes to Watchdog. And if you do that, there is a possibility your consumers will forgive you.

 

10 REASONS NOT TO BUY FROM TIME (NEW VERSION):

1. If a company has more than one name, it generally has something to hide. Time Group (ex-Granville Technology Group) has four, and regularly uses three.

2. Hidden extras: Time charge a lot just for the privilege of being able to recover your computer from faults. Just for a Windows XP restore disc (which wipes your computer back to its original state), costs £59.99 according to Time themselves, which is more than the price of a real Windows XP CD for an OEM. They are also currently supplying a 60-day trial of Office 2003, but you wouldn't know it wasn't the full version in the advertising without reading the small print.

(Note: A GTG employee on the comments board has stated that the price is now £29.99 and the page hasn't been updated, which is fairer but still no dice, since Dell, HP/Compaq, Sony etc. supply restore discs with the machine and without extra charges.)

3. Hidden features: Time Computers currently supply modem drivers which will not dial into anything other than their own “Supanet” service. This has been confirmed by USENET group members and Internet forums, and they originally did not tell you about this in the advertising (other than referring to said modem as "optimised" for Supanet, which is not exactly true). They are anticompetitively stopping users from using anything other than their so-called Supanet without either giving into their suspiciously intrusive "deoptimisation" process or replacing the system’s modem driver; in the early weeks of this policy, there were reports that GTG were selling external modems to customers affected by the locking. Also note their 'Supanet Explorer' IE shell replacement, causing problems for even those who have got past the driver issue. Solutions for this stuff, however, are below.

4. The company is run by a man called Tahir Mohsan. According to the Guardian’s Young Rich list for 2000, he is worth £35m – and that’s before the Tiny merger. Surely he could, therefore, afford to reduce the technical support phone charge from the truly abominable £1/minute? If Dell, with its enormous profit margin, can manage a national rate line, so can Time.

5. When Time merged with Tiny, it left former Tiny customers without technical support; which credit card companies were originally forced to cover (although, to their credit, they now appear to be covering the few remaining warranties from pre-2003, although it did take them a while to do so).

6. Can you trust a company which, after the Tiny merger, changed the branding of its shops to “The Computer World” specifically to cause confusion with Dixons Stores Group’s PC World chain? (Recently, it rebranded these shops again, to “The Computer Shop”, presumably because DSG leaned on them.)

7. Time have prevented unions from organising at their call centres, and have a history of going against the nature of employment law (e.g. preventing workers from taking rest breaks on schedule.) The current wage for technical support staff appears to be £11K/yr, 40hrs/wk, which is below the industry average. See the Independent Time Employee Forum (ITEF) and GMB Lancashire websites for more information (note: I am not affiliated with ITEF, although I am linked to by them.)

8. On romulus2.com’s customer rating feature, Time are currently rated 3.77/10 overall (and 2.06/10 for the year as of 21/04/2005). One of the first quotes (on page 2) is from a former Time manager:

“Do NOT EVER buy from this company. I hired a new member of staff, and he said "We've sold 10 computers this week, and 8 are faulty. Is this common???". That is a genuine quote. And yes, it is common. Very few people go back. And the staff laugh if they do go back, as it's so un-common.”

Other ex-employees have reported that Time staff have refused refunds for no particular reason, even when the system is actually faulty. Is this really the kind of company you want to shop with? Didn't think so.

9. According to an ex-Time employee on “The Complaint Station” – the current number one hit for “Time Computers” +complaint on Google - Time will cut corners merely to save money:

“Not only this, but they knowingly sold machines that did not and WOULD not work! I saw it with my own eyes! Model 80 and 81. Sold with PC66 SDRAM running at PC100… And all because PC66 was cheaper”

(Note that this is historical, from circa 1998, although there are similar stories on other sites like the Romulus2 forums. And it's still the same people running the company.) Similarly, I have been informed by other ex-employees that machines were actually sent out with missing components, on the off-chance that the customer wouldn't complain, although the veracity of this claim cannot be verified at this time.

10. To conclude: no other computer manufacturer in the UK pulls such stunts as locking you to their own ISP, hiding you out from features of Windows, or makes you pay for the restore disc. Not even PC World do that. Doesn't that say something?

 

TIME/TINY TELEPHONE NUMBERS:

Try these landline numbers instead of the extortionate premium rate numbers TIME and TINY want you to call for technical support. I found them on another website - hope they are of use to some of you.

Time Computers (Tiny.com) / 0870 8303116 / 01282 684516 / 0800 771107

Time Computers (Tiny.com) 0906 5580234 / 01282 684734 - Technical support (PC products) 24hr

Time Computers (Tiny.com) 0870 8303229 / 01282 684729 - Technical support (24hr) also for 0906 5580234

Time Computers (Tiny.com) 0906 5580233 / 01282 684733 - Software Assistance support

Tiny.com (Time Computers) 0906 5580237 / 01282 684737 - Technical Support (non PC products)

Tiny.com (Time Computers) 0906 5580232 / 01282 684732 - Technical support (PC products) see 0906 5580234

Tiny.com (Time Computers) 0906 5580234 / 01282 684734 - Technical support (PC products) 24hr

[As seen on Romulus2: http://www.romulus2.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12891]

 

...BUT IF YOU HAVE ENCOURAGED THEM...

1. The Winmodem problem.

Whilst they use the same winmodems as any other PC manufacturer, Time have created a driver for it that locks the internal modem into dialing only a couple of particular numbers. These numbers are for Time's ISP, Supanet.

(They get away with this by calling the modem "Supanet-optimised" on the advertising. Complete hogwash - in all cases, it's the same Conexant PCI software-asssisted modem that you can get for £5 down your local market, and "optimisation" doesn't come into it - but the ASA don't care.)

This Supanet trojan (as it is, really, despite the pleadings of Time employees on the comments section) can be removed. Time have not made it easy. Originally, they required you to call their £1/min technical support line, refer to it as "de-optimising" the modem, and plead to be helped with the fault they themselves introduced. Now they'd like you to register for Supanet, obtain a "deoptimisation key", use a utility that takes ten minutes to run (yeah, right) and then still get nagged at when you boot the machine.

This is probably the best option, considering the complexity of the other way of doing it. However, I supply the Registry way of doing it as a reference: to show you exactly why the thing doesn't really need a key, for a start.

Firstly, you should download some real Conexant drivers from their site; agree to the license agreement, look under "HSF Generic Modem Drivers", and download the relevant one for your operating system. You probably have a PCI modem; you can download a Conexant utility from the same page to confirm whether it's PCI or AC97, and then you can get the relevant driver. Once you've done this;

1. Unzip the file you've obtained using your favoured zip client (Windows XP has one built in; open up, right click, select "Extract All..."; else use WinRAR, with which you right-click on file and select "Extract To"). Extract all the files to a directory on your hard drive; I recommend "C:\CONEXANT\".
2. Open up the Device Manager.
   1. On Windows XP: click Start, right-click on My Computer, select "Manage". Select "Device Manager" under the System Tools entry.
   2. On Windows 2000: right-click on My Computer, as above.
   3. On Windows 9x: (this is assuming they've pulled this stunt under 9x too; I haven't actually heard of it, but they may well have done so) right-click on My Computer, select "Properties", click on the tab marked "Device Manager"
3. Now click on the "+" next to "Modems", find the Conexant modem.
   1. On Windows 2000/XP: right-click on the entry, click "Uninstall".
   2. On Windows 9x: select the entry, click the Uninstall button.
4. Reboot your system.
5. You should now get a "Reinstall driver" box appearing. Thankfully, due to Time's idiocy, they haven't placed their crocked modem driver where the system will automatically find it. Do not select "automatically find driver"; tell the system to look for it in "C:\CONEXANT" (or whichever path you used), either using "Have disc..." or the driver search screen. Make sure no other sources are selected.
6. Recheck Device Manager. The modem should show as a "Generic" modem.

[Source: ITreviews.co.uk forum #1]

Some people are still having problems when they've replaced the driver, indicating that Time have got wise to this and are starting to do other weird stuff in order to lock the system down. In no case, however, is the hardware locked down - it's all standard, albeit crap, stuff. This you can use to your advantage.

There is another solution for the current method, which involves editing the Registry. PLEASE NOTE: editing the Registry is pretty dangerous, and on no account should you do anything other than what I'm about to ask you to do.

1. Click on Start, then "Run".
2. Enter in "regedit", press ENTER.
3. Click on the "+" next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then next to SOFTWARE.
4. Click on the folder "PDCR4032". Nice, easy to identify name, isn't it?
5. In the right hand pane, you should see a list of entries: Default, Band0, Band1 etc. Click on the Band entries, press F2 on your keyboard, and rename them; Old0, Old1, Old2 etc. Do not change the default entry.
6. Exit Regedit.

Next, run Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and all your favourite anti-spyware tools (make sure to update them!), and you should be able to dial your own ISP. Also look below at 2) and 3).

[Source: ITreviews.co.uk forum #2]

 

2. Supanet's nag screen

This is quite amazingly simple to deal with:

1. Click on Start, then "Run".
2. Enter in "msconfig".
3. Select the "Startup" tag, and remove the tick next to "Status".
4. Click "Apply", reboot.
5. After reboot, check tickbox so MSconfig won't run on restart, click "Yes".
6. Enjoy.

[Source: ITreviews.co.uk forum]

 

3. Supanet Explorer.

Unfortunately, Time are now pulling a new trick involving an Internet Explorer replacement called "Supanet Explorer". This is not a rebrand for IE; this is an IE frontend a lot like MyIE2 or Crazy Browser that is specifically designed to work only with Supanet's web packages, and even causes problems if you're using broadband or similar on your machine. They have also used tools provided by Microsoft to remove the real unrestricted IE interface from your machine.

So you can either reinstall IE, or install a different web browser. I recommend you do both; IE's security record is appalling, but you do need it around for Windows Update and the occasional badly-programmed website. So, to reinstall the real IE:

1. Click on "Start", then Control Panel.
2. Switch to the icon-based interface if you haven't already.
3. Select "Add or Remove Programs".
4. Select, in the icon bar to the left, "Add/Remove Windows Components".
5. Check "Internet Explorer", click Next, and follow instructions.
6. You may then need to configure Internet options to make sure: load IE specifically from START/All Programs/Internet Explorer, and press YES when it asks about being the default web browser.
7. Now go back to Add or Remove Programs, click on "Supanet Explorer" in the right hand list, and eliminate it.

[Source: ITreview.co.uk forums.]

Next, follow the software recommendations below.

 

SOFTWARE RECOMMENDATIONS, CAVEATS & COMMENTING

For a web browser you can trust, for day to day browsing, I highly recommend Mozilla Firefox, which is free (including a configurable popup blocker and JavaScript restrictions, and the opportunity to use many fantastic extensions). Also see the excellent Mozilla mail client, Mozilla Thunderbird, which is improving dramatically on a release-by-release basis (and beats the crud out of almost any other Windows email client if you're using IMAP mail.) Other good alternatives: Opera, although that's advertising-supported in its free version (not spyware, though).

If you still wish to use Internet Explorer, note that the version in Windows XP Service Pack 2 is so much improved that most of my caveats about using IE disappear. If you haven't installed it already, install it now. Also, see the Get Firefox and Thunderbird links on the sidebar.

For spyware prevention, I recommend Microsoft Anti-Spyware, Spybot - Search & Destroy or Lavasoft Ad-Aware, or some combination of the three. For anti-virus, I highly recommend Avast!, free for home users (which I use), or Kaspersky paid-for.

CAVEAT: I do not own a Time Computer, although I know some people that do. I am providing this page as a public service, as a sort of central information store. If you have any suggested improvements or further information that could be useful, or if the instructions on this page have enabled you to actually use your expensive computer, please use our HaloScan commenting system, which is still the same as it was before (I do, however, plan on shifting to Blueyonder's free message boards when I get the time.)

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