Slashdot Mirror
UPS - Your Computer Repair Depot?
dcsmith writes "UPS and Toshiba are entering into an agreement to have UPS provide warranty service on Toshiba laptops. Might not be as weird as it sounds -- they claim that the bulk of the effort in a computer repair is moving the computer and the necessary parts together. The actual repair itself is often trivial. I'm not sure I'm onboard 100%, but if its a faulty display or a bad CD drive, this might actually work ..."
In today's PCs and Laptops, everything is very modular. And at the same time the components are so tightly packed that you cannot possibly do 'real repairs' without major magnifying glass, special tools and access to documentation on the device that nobody outside the original manufacture can have.
:) Especially if the huge spares warehouse IS at the said shipping depot.
So its all about replacing dead parts until the thingy works. You can eliminate the cause by simple trial & error + pile of known working parts.
I know I've been 'trained' for laptop repairs of certain models. In about 30min for each model - which basically consisted of demonstrating how to disassemble and reassemble the thing, and which parts were replaceable and how ya could troubleshoot few of the most common faults.
Not rocket science... and if they can save on costs of moving things around by doing that in some shipping depot, more power to them
By using UPS outlets, Toshiba makes it really easy to provide service points for customers and nails the transport issue too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Given the brain dead contract technicians we usually get for PC repair, my guess is that the UPS guy/gal is probably OVERQUALIFIED for the position. Go "Brown".
A key got stuck on my Dell laptop about a week ago. I sent a message to tech support through support.dell.com, and they replied that the easiest thing to do would be to replace the keyboard. I got the keyboard the day after next (I messaged them after hours, so it couldn't have shipped until the next day), and replaced it myself. Thing is, unless you send them the broken part back (they send a prepaid return label with the replacement), they charge you for the replacement. For high-rent items like screens, they'd probably test to make sure that you weren't lying whenever you submitted your support ticket.
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
Maybe Toshiba entered the deal so fewer of their laptops get "mishandled". If UPS is responsible for repairs, maybe they'd tell their employees to be careful with the Toshiba/UPS warranty boxes.
It would still be "Open Season" on the Dells, but denting a Toshiba could get you fired...
blog
Trust me; finding the Stanley Cup is rocket science compared to most computer repair.
All hardware problems arise from a bad part. The only way to fix a bad part, is to either replace it, or pay some super-genius to fix it with a solder-gun and a circuit tester...and about a million dollars worth of non-portable specialist equipment---so really, repair is not an option. So its about replacement.
Replacement is only slightly more complicated than putting two legos together, easily within the realm of any half trained A++ certified techie with a static strap.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I agree that this sucks, however I don't think the UPS people even have facilities where they can store anything at -20C. And if whatever you were sending was that valuable, you should have insured it for $20K.
...in other news, parent actually works for FedEx and just got a stock bonus...
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
I worked as a UPS loader for a while too (and I won't go anonymous to admit that), although my supervisors were perhaps a bit more responsible than yours. We would never did anything as crazy as spearing boxes or "Darwinism"... but yes, packages marked fragile are not treated any differently than any other boxes, and yes, the conveyer belts will move boxes so fast that they tumble into piles, etc.
Rule of thumb: if you think your items will be damaged if the box gets dropped from, say, twelve feet, you didn't pack it well enough.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
It was Friday afternoon around quitting time, and it hadn't arrived.
So you went home.
So UPS showed up, and left the package (perhaps ignoring the 'signature required' - you don't say so, but perhaps).
What were they supposed to do? Bring it back to their special freezer for people who don't stick around to make sure $20K packages are properly handled?
And what about insurance, anyway? Had you not heard that packages don't *always* arrive on time and intact?
Sheesh.
Your absolutely right! I've repaired hundreds of laptops and frankly after a full day of working on them, you feel like someone beat the hell out of you with a baseball bat from all that concentrating on not screwing something up. However the real problem with an "A+" tech doing the repair and it being a monkey-replace-part issue, is that you have to get the part right the first time! Your warranty reimbursement from the manufacturer is directly proportional to the repair's efficiency. The dotbomb days of "throw parts at it until it starts working" doesn't work today. With the 50 USD per warranty claim reimbursement the company is getting, how good do you think these bench monkeys are?
So if you think about it, anyone good at troubleshooting hardware problems is not going to work for the wages they want to pay. Therefore, the repair is nearly guaranteed at being screwed up. Either due to a hasty repair or a moron.
Until someone has actually done the work, they shouldn't comment on it being a "replace parts issue" like the grandparent post.
And UPS won't insure *anything* for 20k, which would be your first hint that they're not capable of handling such valuables. This does suck, and so does UPS from my experience, but due diligence wasn't done.
I'm betting this will come down to- you say there's something wrong with your laptop, they swap your hard disk into another refirbished laptop of your model and send it back- it still dosen't work; they try it one more time, then you loose the hard drive.
Somewhere along the line a tech will look at all the 'dead' laptops and find the working ones, as well as fix easy to repair ones, and lable them refirbished for other people to get on exchange.
But all UPS will be doing is swapping hard disks- you grandmother, while drunk, could do that.
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post