Morgan Computers shuts its doors, sells website

End of an era?

I've had loads of bargains from Morgan over the years, pretty much every desktop I've ever bought for me or my neighbours post-K6.

Sadly their auction site has been offline for a year or more.

Their non-auction site has had a near-negligible selection of HP desktop PCs for a similar length of time; this morning the desktop section isn't there at all. It's those "factory refurb" bargain HP Pavilion PCs that I mostly used to buy. HP used to sell them direct too at www.hp.co.uk/auctions but although the HP shop is still there they never have any stock (nor do they have any PDAs or anything else).

I blame Carly and Hurd, and Vista. Who wants a refurb PC with Vista. I don't. I don't want *any* PC with Vista.

C'mon Richer Sounds, there's an opportunity here.

Amazing

Morgan offered excellent value and I would have thought that, in these times, they would have been performing better than retailers who sell at much higher prices.

It seems that something is not quite right... did they borrow money to expand and fail to pay back loans on time ?

I shall miss their A5 yellow pamphlets (which I have not seen for some time). The don't seem to be selling desktops on their website - I got a refurb HP desktop from them in 2003 and it's still running fine. Best of luck to the new owner - Morgan were the Richer Sounds of computing.

Ahhh the good old days...

My first full time job was with Morgan in their New Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road branches.

Good luck getting a comment out of Bob Nicklin though - ever - he's as tight-lipped as a very tight-lipped thing (unless of course you take him out drinking for the night - he'll tell you everything then!). Never in a million years thought he'd ever sell the business though - best of luck to him and his family.

The Morgan Flyer

In the days before ebay Morgan was the place to get end of line kit and much much reduced prices - I've visited both their London and Brum stores (when I was in the area) and it was like walking into a timeslip - generally older stock but some interesting bits and pieces and I reckon I probably bought 3-4 items over the years. Remember buying a pre-cursor to flash drives - 2gb of diskspace stuck into a PCMCIA card format - toshiba IIRC and it felt like a bargain at 40 quid or thereabouts when had been going for 100 or more pre-Morgan. Staff were great - really knew their stuff and seemed to be enthusiasts rather than wage slave monkeys you get at high street stores nowadays. The flyer always got a good browse too, but surprised it doesn't seem to have made it into my email in-box. anyway I guess rents for Oxford street etc are just too expensive for a low-margin, low ticket items so that's probably the end of the stores, but nice to see the website will still be running!

Toshiba 2GB PCMCIA hard drive

Morgan sold me one of those too, and it still worked a couple of months ago, as did the (non-Morgan) HP Jornada 720 "netbook" it was bought for, and unlike the useless CPQ iPAQ which was intended to (but never did) replace the 720.

I also had more HP Pavilion PCs from Morgan than you can shake a stick at, 2 Olympus cameras and starter kits, a Samsung Syncmaster monitor/TV, some WiFi kit, a cuddly toy...

No, but seriously... what's happened here? What exactly is wrong with the idea of buying last season's model at a very reasonable price, rather than sending the stuff to landfill? What could possibly be greener than that (apart from making everything to order, rather than guessing at volumes and making for stock)?

Thank you and best of luck to those who made Morgan what it was, and to those that brought it down: may you burn in hell.

Recycling King?

Got some bargains there too. Until I bought a large monitor. It was defective so I returned it with a note explaining the problem and my contact details. Suprised to be phoned a few weeks later by another customer who had been sent a new identical monitor - which was defective and on investigation he found my original note.

How to pi** off two customers with one simple 'mistake'?

"...but seriously... what's happened here?"

In one word.

Ebay...

Morgan is where the trade used to go to offload out-of-date, obsolete, just plain unfashionable, refurbished, returned, surplus, second-hand or sometimes even scrap stock. Nowadays they're either doing it either direct or through people with much lower overheads and sadly operations like Morgan just can't compete with an ebay traders margins.

--

JG

Another piece of my life gone.

I've bought lots from Morgan, from camera's (my first digital), through laptops, PC's, memory, hard-disk and DVD recorders and GPS devices.

I'm seriously upset by the demise of one of the first places I would go to to get a good price for slightly out-of-date but perfectly usable kit. I guess that the PC manufacturers are moving to build-to-order, so there are not the remainder stock that Morgan could shift so well.

I can't believe that whatever happens, the website will remain the emporium of gadgetry that it was.

Various

Another comment already pointed out that HP used to sell their refurb/surplus kit through Morgan *and* through HP's own eBay shop. The HP shop is still there but hasn't been active for a year or more, and no one else on eBay seems to sell the "official HP Renew" (factory refurb) stuff.

So I'm less than 100% convinced that eBay is behind this.

A desktop for £200? A half decent one? Where, other than HP Presario from Morgan 12 months ago?

Are HP really capable of managing their volume business so well that they're now reliant on make-to-order rather than make-to-stock? Even Dell can't do it right, otherwise you wouldn't see the various "Dell overstock" places around...

Well I blame Expansys

;o)

Pah.

I worked at the Birmingham store in late 2001, upstairs in mail order. Was my first job out of college but didn't get on with it too well, didn't think they were that cheap either ! I only lasted 6 weeks but it's a shame to see them go under.

morgan-schmorgan weren't that great

expensive, and always something really idiosyncratic about anything I bought that made it less of a bargain.

my first 386 came from there. It had non-standard slots tho'

wait...

that tiny store on New Oxford Street is their flagship shop?

Mixed views

The stuff they sold was cheep but it was not always best quality. I bought a Leading Edge laptop (AKA Daewoo) which lasted a little over a year. Still it got me into this new-fangled Windows stuff (3.11) and helped me to find a new job, so I got my moneys worth.

Damn Shame

Gutted, used them a lot for those people that wanted basic kit at an affordable price, lost count on the amount of PC's I bought from them for other people :(

Oh dear...

Not bought from them for a while, but my first PC (Amstrad 2386) came from there, as well as two current desktops (famous name refurbs - turned out to be Packard Bells) which are still going strong.

My dad still have a Psion II series with printer from there as well :)