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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 ..."
This is basically the same problem organ transplantation has - transporting and speed is essential. Hearts and lungs must be transplanted within approximately 4 hours after being removed from the donor. Livers can be preserved between 12 - 18 hours; pancreas can be preserved 8 - 12 hours; intestines can be preserved approximately 8 hours; kidneys can be preserved 24 - 48 hours. (quoted from ) I wouldn't be too surprised to see the UPS people coming out from the back room in scrubs (and shorts, of course), and then washing up really well before going back.
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Since they're responsible for breaking most of the notebook computers during delivery, they decided to close the loop and profit from it.
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
The repair labor is outsourced to UPS's facility.
UPS is adding services above and beyond shipping. I remember 8-9 years ago having them do warehousing and packing.
It is handy for a growing company to just buy more space from UPS, than having to build ever increasing warehouses.
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.
I just got an order of books from Amazon today, shipped using their free Super Saver shipping, which ended up being UPS Ground in this case. I'm in Wisconsin, it came from Kentucky. I ordered Monday, they shipped Tuesday, they arrived Wednesday. That's pretty damned fast.
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I wish companies offered discounted DIY warranties, where they shipped you the part and a short instruction sheet and you could replace it yourself, even for semi-complicated things like keyboards.
Basically, it'd be a warranty on only parts, but you could choose to supply your own labor (instead of paying them to do it).
$8.95/mo web hosting
Now UPS can read your hard drive as well as open your packages.
Apparently, the only reason that the specific search in the linked case was questionable was the fact that the UPS employee opening the packages would sometimes allow DEA agents to assist her if they were on site and the package was difficult to open.
Of course, a "Toshiba repair shop" would likely be free to do the same, as they are also a private entity. (Only government entities are "required" to abide by the Bill of Rights.)
Read, L
...trust me, this is a bad idea. I did a year as a Loader/Unloader at UPS. With the way we treated those packages I'm surporised andyone gets anything from UPS in good condition. One time the Stanley Cup came through my hub and got lost for 3 days. Management had us combing the building for the crate. And on the third day it just showed up in the international section. Whoever stole it must have realized the shitstorm they had started up. Before thanksgiving one year we had 50 Turkeys packed in ice that somehow didn't make it on the last truck (on Monday we had a small hill of individually packed rotting meat floating in water. I've got a million UPS horror stories. Trust me you don't want to ship anything UPS. And if you do ship UPS, package your stuff so that it could at least withstand being drop kicked 20 feet into a metal wall...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
According to the linked article, the repairs are to be done at a central location (in Louisville, Ky) run by the UPS "logistics outsourcing division". This is really more of an outsourcing story than a shipping story.
I worked for a company years ago that did pretty much this same thing. It was a freight and logistics company and one of the customers was Apple Computer. We coordinated supply chains for the parts and brought the assembled systems, packaged and all, to where the end customer or store was. Less bother for the manufacturer.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I remember when we used to have to do computer repair for UPS. Back in '95 or '96 there was quite a rash of false computer damage claims. I think someone started passing around instructions on how to rip off UPS, but it didn't take UPS long to catch on and start bringing in damage claims for assessment and repair.
I was working for a small local computer shop at the time and we didn't do a huge volume of UPS claims, but what I saw was outrageous. Yeah, there were a couple of legitimate claims - almost always loose cards or cables from vibration - but most of the fraudulent ones didn't even try. VLB cards stuck in ISA slots, toasted motherboards, junk components just jammed in a case... nothing that even looked remotely like shipping damage.
Not sure what they did to the people that tried to pull this stuff, but the claims seemed to stop almost as fast as they started.
Actually, I don't think I trust the brown men with my laptop.
Racist!!!
I'll post this AC for fear of being hunted down and slaughtered by my evil UPS-corporate overlords... but the rumours are true. We, at UPS, really do drop-kick your boxes. Off the trucks to the belt isn't so bad, the damages happen in the trailer. They crank the belt up so high that packages will literally start piling into the ass end of the trailer if your packers aren't working fast enough. Unfortunatly, most of the time the only way to work fast enough is to not give a shit about the packages, and just start throwing them. But of course, the managers would never slow the belts down, because then we might be a little late *gasp*. So yeah, you basically get trained to break things.
:).
;)
:)
After a while it becomes fun though, almost like a game. We do all sorts of stuff to your crap. Sit on boxes, stand on boxes, drop boxes, throw them, kick them, drop heavy boxes on lighter boxes... its a great stress reliever really! Some highlights from my UPS-trailer career include:
- Sliding on packages down the rollers like a slip'n'slide.
- Taking long, heavy automotive parts like suspension pieces, and using them as javelins to impale other boxes
- Finding the absolute heaviest package on the truck, lining it up over some other boxes, and then going "Oops!" as you roll it into the belly to smash the other boxes
- Using any sort of metallic crate, case, or box, and tossing it onto other boxes so the sharp corners rip into the packages
- Building a wall of packages until only a small, 2 ft gap is left at the top of the trailer, and then taking small, light packages, and drop-kicking them over the wall like a football player. We even keep score (honestly, we do).
- Having shotput competitions with really heavy packages. The bags we use for letters are really fun, because you can swing them like a hammer-toss for extra distance.
- Playing "smash-up-boxes", or "Darwinism". Basically two guys take random boxes and throw them at eachother and see which one survives the impact the best. The winner then takes on a new challanger. Its supposed to find the "ultimate package", but generally it just leaves a whole lot of beat up crap scattered around.
Oh, and don't bother labling your packages "fragile". For one, they don't get treated any better than anything else (the ONLY packages that get treated with kid-gloves are the specially insured high-values). For a second thing, fragiles can actually be treated WORSE than regular packages. Probably 75% of everything we move has a "fragile" sticker somewhere on it. Even if the part is an 80lb chunk of metal, you idiot customers still seem to think its "fragile" and that we need to gently carress while placing it in the trailer. So when we see boxes that are marked fragile, its kind of insulting. Especially packages that are obviously not fragile, or overly labled ("OMG FRAGIEL PLZ DONT DROP OR STAND ON END PLZ K THNX BYE!!"). We target those packages for extra abuse
Other things we hate and tend to abuse are boxes that are shitty and falling apart, or just too thin to hold their contents correctly. Since those kinds of things tend to bust open easilly, we like to drop the heavier stuff on them to see what happens. Also, be wary of heavier boxes with shifting loads. If a worker is ever injured by your box (contents shift and smack you in the face, box opens and contents fall on your foot or whatever), then your package will get the "royal treatment". Royal meaning we royally beat the fuck out of your stupid goddamn package.
Anyways, I hope that little insight into UPS was enough to convince some of you to never ship with our shitty fucking company ever again.
Cheers!
I would have been thrilled to get it back the following Monday or Tuesday - next day service blew my mind. I can only assume that Dell has a repair depot located at the airport Airborne uses.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
Oh, that didn't come out right...
/me drinks more coffee
Ok, the men in brown...
The men who wear brown.
The men who wear brown uniforms.
The brown-uniformed men
The brown men... Oh wait...
The men who work for brown...
"Piter, too, is dead."
99% of the computer repair I do is spyware removal.
--Gentoo Baby!
The last thing I want is some moron rushing through a $3000 laptop repair, losing parts and breaking things in the process!
Honestly, whom do you think Toshiba employs in their repair shops now? You can be sure it's not an EE. Six of one...
Besides, you all aren't reading TFA. They aren't going to be doing computer repairs in the local UPS hub or depot, all of the repairs are going to one central UPS shop in Louisville, KY. So it's either morons who work for Toshiba in God Knows Where or morons who work for UPS in Kentucky, what's the difference from the consumer POV?
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.
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.
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