TS, you sound educated enough compared to the others. You also definitely seem annoyed by this ordeal of being tossed back and forth and this is very understandable but let me share some of stone cold facts with you.

- Ideal offers decent prices and let me assure you that dealer margin is very small. Each product (depending on category) generates about RM40-70 if sold at MSRP but most of the time this is not possible. Even if you take into account of quantity pricing it is not a whole lot more. There are much better business to be had.

- Knowing the above, it is the nature of many of our local businesses particularly companies that offer "decent" prices to only provide "limited" after sales service. There's only so much time they can spend dealing with problems. For example, you should not expect the same level of service from shops in lowyat or any "bargain stores" with the likes of Dell which offers on site repair and next business day REPLACEMENT.

- Going back to point #1, so why are our prices still so high/higher than the USA since we pay no duties and sales taxes in the country? That is because distributor pockets majority of the margin. Therefore, in Malaysia, when you purchased something make very sure of the dealer's exchange policy. Some offers 7 days while some offers 14 days. Make very sure that you noticed the problems within this time period. Attempt an EXCHANGE immediately as soon as you found out of the problem. And let me assure you, some bigger companies will give you "less" trouble but again "bargain stores" will probably be "more" troublesome (goes back to point #2). If you are outside of that time frame, usually dealers would send the card for you to the distributor, which again most don't do it immediately because they would need to fork out travel expenses. This comes out of their profit margin (ouch). And since the margin was already so narrow to begin with, it is natural that this goes to the bottom of the list. Therefore some times (if not most of the time) dealers tend to pile up a bunch of defective goods and return to the distributor in one trip. Which is why you may have to wait after dropping off your defective items. Also, this is why some distributors reside in IMBI plaza and Lowyat Plaza because knowing this issue, they can better handle warranty services. Like some have said, some distributors do not allow end users to deal with them directly although TBH this is ABSOLUTELY ABSURD because if the dealer goes out of business, the warranty is still the distributor's liability and responsibility. Therefore, it is still your best interest as a consumer to deal with the distributor immediately should you have any issue after the exchange policy period. If distributor refuses your request, you should then deal with the dealer. And if they dealer gives you trouble, you will have to request to speak to someone with a managerial position from the distribution company. If all else fails, write to the tribunal or the HQ of the brand and you will see issues resolved very quickly. For example, albeit not related to PC parts, my brand new Samsung Galaxy S2 was defective around the home button. I bought it from Maxis (dealer) but I did not bother going back to them and instead I went to Samsung's service center because of the above experience. I got this resolved but it wasn't without being ping pong around for a few days.

- Besides the above issues, dealers are not service technician. They deal mostly with sales. Some bigger companies like Viewnet and All It has their own service department that deals with complaints and troubleshooting. Some don't. I'd imagine IDEAL doesn't but they do offer warranty claim services so I'm kinda unsure about their real position in this. Regardless, treat the dealers with such impression in mind. You would complain to the waiter with regards to the food being poorly prepared but they can only pass words to the chef. Ideal is not the chef. Additionally, troubleshooting a PC is really NOT easy because there are many parts involved. Many possible compatibility issues. Known/Unknown hardware issues, software issues, driver issues. This is why it's recommended to test a PC with a fresh PC. BUT EVEN SO if the problem lies in the driver then you may still see the issue. Ideal won't have time for this. They don't know about everything. Sadly but when you build your own PC, it is YOU as a consumer to find out what the problem is. Which YOU did, but still got tossed around, it is normal. You should see why I'm saying this now if you already grasped the whole picture.

- Do not compare local companies with Newegg, NCIX, performance PC, and etc. You will NOT get this sort of customer service here. HOWEVER, I would say that APES (company), particularly PPTEK (distributor) / Ezzy (seller) has provided me with customer service experience that was comparable to experience I've had in North America. I'm not related to these guys, I'm just a customer of theirs.

- In every conflict, both parties would always claim themselves to be correct and other party wrong to a certain extend...hence the disagreement. But from the tone of what was written here you can quite clearly tell what sort of customer treatment you'd received.