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Annual Customer Support Rankings
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo's Tech Tuesday is running PC Mag's annual survey of best and worst PC vendors' customer support. At the top of the list: Apple. At the bottom: Sony. Heard any good tech support horror stories lately?"
I've seen something recently about a really bad web designer who came up with a vomit-inducing color scheme for the IT section of a popular website. Sorry I can't remember the name, and I don't have a link handy...
Apple is at the top, but not perfect.
:/
When the hard drive in my iBook died, I had to send it back to Apple (no problem there). As the documentation requested, I included my power adapter and the cord for it with the laptop back.
*repairs*
When my laptop was returned, not only did I not get my same power cord back, but the two pieces (the brick and the cord) we incompatible... Not only that, but I still had the small plug to go directly into the wall (I forget what they referred to it as), and that wasn't compatible with the brick piece either. WTF?
So I had to call them back up and have them send me a power cord and the small plug piece. They were quick and fairly understanding about it, but I'm yet to figure out why it would have been so hard to just send the same cord/brick piece back with it that I sent in...
But the laptop itself was repaired without issue and in a timely manner, it was just a minor inconvenience of not being able to plug in my laptop to charge it...
Me :) Really! Ask my boss!
Posted anon, as its not my story.
s uc k/6701337.html
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I'm so glad this happened to me because I wouldn't have believed it otherwise...
This normal-looking 20-something couple came in tonight and stood at the dropbox just clutching their three movies and staring at me until I asked if I could help them. They then proceeded to tell me that the dvd copy of 'Office Space' they had rented from us had downloaded a virus onto their brand-new dvd player and ruined it. (Anyone who has seen the 'Office Space' dvd knows why this is hilarious--for those of you who haven't seen it, after the FBI warning a Window...a MICROSOFT-LOOKING WINDOW...pops up and says a virus had been detected and, when you hit menu or start, your TELEVISION (i.e. Not Monitor) screen is flooded with pop up windows. After a few seconds you are taken to the dvd's start menu and presented with the usual options.) Even though they looked deadly serious, I thought they were joking and I said as much. The man got a little testy, so I explained to him that it's all a joke and simply part of the movie. They both swore up and down that it wasn't part of the movie and that this virus had destroyed their 2 month old dvd player and, even after I popped out the dvd trailer and put 'Office Space' in and showed them and actually started the movie with no trouble at all...you guessed it: they STILL did not believe me.
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my entire life.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/customers_
ThinkGeek is running a contest and taking nominations for some sort of biggest geek gets a prize or something. A summer intern is working with one of my co-workers who does end-user support. She told him the classic "user thinks CD-Rom drive tray is a cupholder" from the first person, and now he thinks she's a goddess. He submitted her name. (I snickered to myself. :)
:)
Offtopic: When I hit "Read More" on this article initially, I got "Nothing to see here, move along!" Have never seen that or heard of it before. Can anyone tell me what's up?
Being on the phone with Dell tech support is by far the worst experience ever. They don't have a clue, and it sounds as if they are reading off solutions to a list of problems that sound like the one you might be having. Hopefully they move the damn thing out of India.
They seem to be the innovator on the PC side of laptops yet from all accounts their machines are rubbish. Considering you pay for quality hardware (which is Sony) and you add this to the old saying "you get what you pay for" i'm surprised Sony has a bad rep.
Jonathanjk.com
interesting how the two ends of the spectrum happen to be the two companies that charge the most for their computers.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
sent in my Texas Instruments Travelmate 2000 (286-12 1 mb ram 20 meg hdd) for an LCD replacement, came back with a power adapter for a travelmate 3000, completely incompatable with the laptop...
Great News! You've been linked to by Slashdot!
policy analysis and political satire
Me:
I just used a Mac and backed up 20GB of data over 4 DVD-Rs using your Backup 2.0 software. Unfortunately I no longer have a Mac but need to restore those discs, could you tell me what compression/spanning techniques are used by Backup 2.0 so I can retrieve the data?
Apple Rep:
Apple uses all open standards with their software. Thank you.
>:|
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
the call center is conviently located in the back of your local liquor/lottery/ciggarette store
Based entirely on my own experiences and those of my friends (how's that for sample size?) I'd bet that for every call the manufacturer receives some poor "computer geek" friend gets ten calls.
It'd be interesting to know how the unofficial support channels stack up against the real thing. I'd bet that neighborhood support would put everyone to shame: we do everything from replacing hardware faster than any mail-in service does to trouble-shoot VPN setups for our bosses and we don't (usually) fall back on the old tech support dismissal "That's a software problem: call Microsoft. Good-bye." Or in the case of a hardware issue "That's a hardware problem: Call IBM. Good-bye."
Now isn't a nightmare that my official vendor (whom I paid the full list price of $0 for the software) couldn't tell me this themselves, but instead someone from the community had to do it for them?
I'll never buy another monitor from them again.
Had a 21" monitor go bad, so I called Sony to get a repair. They said the warranty was 3 years, and the back of the monitor says "Mfg. August 2001" (this was mid-March 2004). So I should be set, yes?
No. That would be easy.
Apparently, Sony's system says that monitor was manufactured in February 2001 and thus is out of warranty. The only way I could prove the age of the monitor was to send in the original paperwork when we purchased it. Knowing my purchasing department, it's hidden in a box somewhere and it would be worth more to buy a new montior than spend the time looking for the paperwork.
Lousy jerks wouldn't even accept a picture of the back of the monitor clearly showing the serial number and manufacture date.
Excuse me i'm not trying to be flamebait, this is what i have heard and i am genuinly confused as to why they seem to innovate and yet are lousy on the support side.
Jonathanjk.com
Quite a few of us live them...daily. Multiple reports of how an entire computer doesn't work -- because they failed to enable num lock and the keypad wasn't "working." People whose machines freeze so they turn the monitor off and on. I've seen an occasion where a patron jams a floppy into the drive...backwards and THEN demands that we give him his floppy back.
Then there are those who know the URL but insist on searching for that address in google. Ever heard of an address bar? Guess not. Oh, and when the connection is down, they ask why -- and then proceed to give me a blank "Dummy Mode On" stare when I explain that the proxy server wasn't working. Like I should've said something like "the hamster stopped running."
Not to mention people who ask how to spell "solitary" (instead of solitaire) and those who ask how to get to "yoohoo" or "googles."
And by the way...You're Welcome!!!
Here are the tables of results for notebooks and desktops
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Our company purchased a nice supply of Sony Microvault USB keychain drives. For whatever reason, these drives just stop working. If you unplug a drive without properly dismounting it, it will fail to be recognized under any OS as a drive. Windows reports it as a "security device". There is no way to recover the data, the drive is shot. Further testing showed that even if you dismount it properly, there's a good chance of corrupting the drive.
Call up Sony tech support, you'll get bounced around to several support numbers (some long distance, some toll free). Most of the time you get directed back to the number you previously dialed, and your issue is never resolved.
This is a documented problem, and on the occasion that you're able to get the correct tech support staff Sony will refuse to fix it. There is a lengthy process to fix the drive, but it's a pain and your data is unrecoverable. Sony has since stopped making the Microvaults, but it's a good example of how bad their support really is.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
The last time I needed to call IBM (to get the recovery cds for my laptop, they don't ship with them anymore...) I was quite surprised to be connected to a quite knowledgeable guy from Georgia (In the United States). Zero time on hold, took less than five minutes to get everything that I need, and I had the cds in two days.
Compare this to Toshiba, where I have not only never gotten anyone who remotely speaks English, but every repair also seems to involve shipping your laptop back to them, and waiting for two weeks for "parts" that you were told would be in stock every day for a week.
I've also heard good stories about Apple, but nothing can beat my experience with IBM so far.
I needed to reinstall XP Pro, but didn't have the disk. So I called; the first guy told me it wasn't covered under the warranty (not true; I had the uber-extended-lifetime warranty), then finally agreed to send it to me. Sent me XP Home instead.
Second person, same deal - sent me XP Home after apologizing for not getting it right. Waited several weeks; it never came.
Third person, "we needed to order more disks" (this is after 3 weeks of waiting for a disk that usually takes 3 to 5 days to come). Promised to send a disk.
After 2 weeks, fourth person: "our database says you've already gotten it". After checking the dates, I point out that that was the *first* disk I was sent - the XP Home one - that I'd already told him about. He checked with tech support, and found out that their database has the same order # for Home and Pro. Corrected the order number, and (hopefully) sent me the Pro disk.
It's been 4 days, so I'm still waiting. And the worst of it is that they always get my "service tag" wrong. It's got an M in it, so it's understandable that they'd mistake it for an N, but I spell it out in the international phonetic alphabet every time. Jeez. I decided to just install Home, since they said I could keep the disks. I have Office Pro, anyway. Anyone know how to do an easy (translation: without data/program loss) upgrade? And yes, of course I finally found the Pro disk the day after I installed home, despite having been looking for it for 5-6 weeks at least.
Oh, and don't forget - you can't lodge a complaint through the phone system. You have to use their website. Smells like BS to me. How many people are going to take the time to do that extra step?
It's not PC, but I had this picture of an outsourced Indian tech support guy being told he had to talk and act like he was sitting at Sony corporate headquarters (when I worked tech support for Bell Atlantic we were basically told to do that, which is where the germ of this one came from).
So in a sing-song English, No! You do wrong thing! Go back, try again. You understand Enrish? Try 'gain. NO! yooo... un... er.. stand... Eng-rish?
Apple does not belong on any PC vendor list: they have yet to make any PCs.
Don't get into the "Apple makes personal computers" semantic game. No one else plays it: a PC means something different from lower-case 'personal computer'. Everyone knows it. Go to macmall.com and pcmall.com. Look at Apple ad campaigns comparing Macintosh computers to PCs. Note that they compare the Mac to the PC, not to "other PCs". Also look at software retail boxes: they mention Mac and/or PC compatibility.
If you think that the Mac is a PC, then I dare you to try and run a game labelled "PC Compatible" on your OS-X Mac without emulation. I dare ya....
according to cowboyneal Apple's support sucks big time.
Cowboyneal, the Applehater!
Is it Apple answer the most "how do I check my e-mail" questions, or is it they help you set up a network type of questions?
Any monkey can answer 100 questions on [insert basic function here], but do they just tell customers to "format C to fix it" so they can get through the most?
I like muppets.
I RdTFA and I don't know why Mr. Michael Fitzgerald couldn'ta just put all that info in a nice table rather than trying to amuse us with silly "OMG my laptop almost died, I couldn't make this up, ask my mom!" blather.
http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_paranoia.shtml
# Customer: "My government was very powerful. They can do lots of things you would never imagine."
# Tech Support: "I'm sure in Croatia, the government would have the power to disconnect you from the Internet. The service providers are under their jurisdiction there. However, in America, there is nothing they could do to force our computers to knock you off line. You're safe. I'm telling you, the first and foremost place I'd look is the telephone company to have them do what's called a 'data grade check'--"
I loved old United States...
How much of this is the single-vendor, and how much could be attributed to a better OS? There are no numbers of Linux servers/desktops listed.
Also, I love the 9.0 given by the 'self-built' desktops. Why so low (I know I get GREAT support on my home-built products - although the tech support guy acts all superior to me sometimes!!)
Great article. A few points:
In 2002 28% of desktops needed fixing, while this year the number dropped to 17%.
I find that kind of hard to belive. I support about 75 desktop machines, and other than coffee spills destroying a keyboard or two, and a couple mice going bad (I'll blame that on the cords being abused), we haven't had any hardware that needed repair/replacement at all.
DELL. For a company whose users love it, it has some "now, about that " issues to address. Its desktops received high marks for reliability, but when they do break down, Dell's tech support generates some grumbling. Part of the grumbling may relate to the company's outsourcing of portions of its tech support some respondents in our survey complained about not being able to understand some of the help technicians. Whatever the reason, Dell scores slightly below average on tech support.
True. I can't understand anything they're saying, and it's very difficult to deal with their outsourced support.
Its worst category, though, is notebook computers. These rank below average for reliability in general, with 25% of business notebooks needing repairs. On the plus side, when it does have to repair its machines, Dell does a very good job.
I've had 3 Dell Laptop harddrives crash on me. All the same brand of drive, same symptoms. We've also had problems with some of them (we have around 15) overheating and freezing up.
I really wonder how many problems are actually bad hardware, and how many are things like Windows problems, and spyware/viruses.
This article was an amusing story about technical support from the inside. I don't remember if it was posted on slashdot.
What's up with this color scheme?
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
I had a problem with my Earthlink service recently, and sent them an e-mail about it. I got the standard questionare back asking for information about the problem. (what OS do you use? What Browser? Etc.) One of the questions asked, "What kind of computer are you using? (PC, Apple, Dell, Gateway or IBM-Clone)"
I told them I was using a Touring Machine.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Yes Rajneesh got a hold of some bad curry and hilarious antics ensued.
That and having to argue with "Tom" (heavy indian accent) about who owned my modem rather than why my over priced monopolistic cable (comcast) was yet again not working.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I'm definitly not the guy involved, but the best tech support story I've ever heard went like this User: My computer doesn't seem to be working Tech: Can you be more specific? User: Sure, the computer screen is black Tech: Ok, can you restart your computer for me? User: Yes, but that'll take a while Tech: Oh, why is that? User: I haven't had power for 2 days Darwin please save us!
Here's a good example of Sony ingenuity.
.MSI file to create the bootdisk. So I can't create it because I run Linux. Further, it will not run on any other system because it detects the hardware is not compatible with the BIOS update. How about letting us download the flash util and the update so we can make our own bootdisk?
I have a Sony Vaio laptop that is giving me troubles with the video driver under Linux. It uses the Neomagick graphics chip which is crappy but should be able to do 2D dosktop stuff just fine.
I thought upgrading the BIOS might get rid of the artifacts I see in X all the time. I went to their site to grab the latest BIOS for the machine. The BIOS on their site is in the form of a bootdisk that will do the upgrade for you. That's great. So what's the problem? The _make_ you run a Windows only
It infuriates me that they would force me to have Windows installed just to update the BIOS.
BigFiber.net
Someone I know told me that someone had called him with the classic "Where's the any key?" story. He also told me about a woman who called and said "I'm pressing the foot pedal, but the computer won't turn on." Turns out the "foot pedal" was her mouse.
Apple beats sony for PC support, and it doesn't even make PC's! That says something...
I assume like most such places your laptop was assigned to a tech with more the one project on his bench. Tech got sloppy and mixed your power cord with the one sitting next to it on the workbench.
Not a good excuse but understandable HOW it happened. Better work habits by the tech would prevent that.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
My dad, who has a full service contract on his latitude D800 laptop (i.e. they come to his workplace to fix it) was asked to take his laptop apart and pull the modem adapter out, and try to place it back in when it would fail to connect. When he told them he didn't have the screwdriver (nor the expertise) to do any of that, he was told to go buy an appropriate screwdriver, and call them back so they would guide him.
Needless to say, I told him to call back, b1tch and complain and actually send a guy in to fix his laptop as per the service contract.
Turns out it was windoze XP that was screwing up. Now what would've happened if he'd fried his laptop with static electricity while trying to do the operation? Would they've fixed it? Provided him with a replacement, AND a backup of ALL his work-related data?
IBM, not Apple, have the best support, but by contrast they have poor overall reliability. Apple hardware is susceptible to the fewest failures of the hardware vendors reviewed, which is why they are top of the list.
I find it vaguely disturbing that this man, who would tell us about support and who makes his living with his notebook, would not do automated back-ups.
Although I know that this may not be an absolute statement, so many computer problems are not the fault of the vendor, and those that are, are often made worse by personal computing habits.
It is so simple to do a nightly backup to a ftp server with only a batch file, a text file, and pkzip. I only dare mention this on /. on the off-chance that the article's writer is lurking nearby. It is advice he could use.
cheers, potor
When I hit "Read More" on this article initially, I got "Nothing to see here, move along!"...Can anyone tell me what's up?
It's like a 404 Not Found for an article. It means the story (look at the URL's SID and TID) doesn't exist anymore.
I've seen it about three or four times on articles still in the queue that are viewable to subscribers only. Sometimes, the article is removed before it goes live, in which case you'll get the "Nothing to see here" message when you try to refresh it. Somewhat annoying to see a good article disappear before your very eyes.
Like here's a made-up URL which gives you that error.
Why is it that the "Percent needing repairs" for servers was higher (28%) than desktops (17%) and laptops? (19%) I thought servers were supposed to be built more reliable with higher quality parts than a desktop? If I want fewer rapairs I should be using an eMachine (13%) for a server instead of a Sun? (38% ouch!)
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
Apple: "After all, the company's control over both software and hardware helps make its systems more reliable."
Bingo. Exactly.
I have two separate Apple support stories. One was at my company: for whatever reason, Preferences got corrupt on a 10.3 machine (I thought we left this stuff back in 9). Called Apple up, and the guy was extremely knowledgable and friendly. Walked me through what needed to be done on the command prompt (fun boot!), exactly what files to change, etc. Got back up and running in under 10 minutes.
Second story: iPod on PC. What a disaster. Simple installation: Dell machine that came as is with not a lot of junk installed. Installed the iPod software, installed iTunes, hooked it up and... nothing. Called them up. Played with services, played with dlls... Finally I got results a few days later by reading some forums online (not Apple's).
Now, before you say "Well, Apple shouldn't need to support PCs", 2 issues. One is that they market the iPod for the PC (in fact, I usually see it as "iPod for PC/Mac"). Second, and more importantly, when you become a PC-related company you have to learn to deal with lots of different vendors. Apple isn't stupid: they should know this. They should know (at the very least) to check the common Dell configurations and see what conflicts. "Remove the other programs" isn't an acceptable answer. "Reset the iPod" or "Restore the iPod" REALLY isn't, especially at the alarming rate I've heard it.
I always said, you can get a good feel for how solid a product is but the first bit of documentation you see. 3G iPod, bought a few days ago. Very top of the first reference card you get instructions for reseting it in case it crashes. I've only had to do this once, but kind of ominous, you think?
Oh and another thing. Out of the box, most of the video features (specially video-out) didn't work. Calling tech support for two hours had me downloading several bios updates and drivers. And to this day, mirroring STILL doesn't work.
;)
Should they be advertising features that don't work out of the box?
Ah. That felt good. Thanks for listening Doctor
Actually I had GREAT support from Sony the one time I needed it. I bought a brand new laptop for my CEO and it came with Windows XP, I wanted it to have Windows 2000 as XP didn't like our domain controller (Active directory at the time, how ironic) Anyways, I couldn't find ANY drivers ANYWHERE for some of the things on the laptop. I called Sony and explained to him that I knew it wouldn't be supported, but I just wanted to know what things were in the laptop and I would do my own driver search (such things as Onboard Audio isn't exactly specific enough for me) Not only did he tell me what was in the thing, but he also pointed me to some drivers out on the net on some obscure website. I thanked him for his time and talked with his supervisor about the wonderful support that I had gotten from him.
I bought a laptop from Dell 14 months ago. The LCD backlight burned out a few days ago, so I called them about getting a replacement. Since my warranty just expired 2 months ago, they said it would cost around $600 for a replacement + shipping! This is because they said it would be necessary to replace the whole LCD display. The machine only came with a 1024x768 LCD anyway, and it had about the worst image quality I've ever seen on a TFT panel. It's too bad that laptops become junk when the backlight burns out. I've heard that almost all laptop manufacturers have the policy of refusing to replace the backlight/power inverter only
Plug it in, doesn't work. Now I'm thinking there's virtually no chance that the unit has a problem, and the old unit probably didn't either. So I swap out the power supply with another unit we have, works like a charm. I bang myself for not doing this first, and call back to request a replacement power supply.
Again, I get a real person promptly. They are friendly, but I am having a very hard time communicating what I need to them. Transformer, AC/DC computer, "the thing you plug into the printer that plugs into the power cord." Finally, I thought I got through to them.
Another week goes by, and a power cord shows up in the mail. Not what I need. To boot, it was a UK power cord, so even if I needed a power cord it wouldn't have done me any good anyway (Why the hell would they send a plug we only use for 220 to Michigan for their own equipment??). Call them back. Again, someone is on the phone right away, very friendly, and again, completely clueless.
Another week goes by, and another power cord shows up in the mail. At least this time it had an end that I could actually plug into a standard US outlet. Called again, extremely frustrated with their fast, friendly, and clueless service.
Another week goes by, and I finally get a freakin' power supply.
Took almost 6 weeks to get one freakin part from HP (AFTER I figured out what was actually wrong and didn't go with their misdiagnosis).
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /
Technically, that's 9 words.
(16:08:47) Me: She kept saying the modem won't turn on.
(16:08:53) I'm like, what's on the screen?
(16:09:05) Her: Well, nothing. It's black and says video disconnected."
(16:09:15) Me: I'm like, k, turn the computer on.
(16:09:22) Her: No, the modem isn't on.
(16:09:58) Me: "The modem is part of the computer - if you havenothing on the screen, the machine isn't powered up."
(16:10:10) Her: "Well, it has a green light on."
(16:10:29) Me: "Okay, sounds like it's locked. Push in the power button and hold it until it turns off."
(16:10:34) Me:
(16:10:38) Me: "Still on?"
(16:10:41) Her: "Yeah."
(16:10:47) Me: "Okay, it's really locked. Unplug it."
(16:10:51) Her: "How do I unplug it?"
(16:11:06) Me: There will be a cable plugged into an electrical outlet, unplug that cable."
(16:11:20) Her: "There are two cables - one gray and skinny, one black and fat."
(16:11:41) Me: "ITS THE ONE PLUGGED INTO THE WALL. UNPLUG IT FROM THE ELECTRICITY!!!"
(16:11:49) Her: "Which one of these is the modem?"
(16:11:55) ***/me bangs head on desk.
(16:12:00) Me: "UNPLUG IT!!!"
(16:12:11) Her: "Oh, you mean unplug it from the wall."
(16:12:14) Me: "Yes."
(16:12:27) Her: Audible BZZZZT and scream.
(16:12:32) Me: "Um, you ok?"
(16:12:36) Her: "IT SHOCKED ME."
(16:12:42) Me: Wow, that's not good.
(16:12:52) Her: "What's not good, that it shocked me? "
(16:12:59) Me: "Yeah, that's really bad for the machine."
(16:13:04) Me: "Okay, anyways, turn it back on."
(16:13:15) Her: "Um I push the power button and nothing happens."
(16:13:31) Me: "Okay, dead power supply, and I can't fix that over the phone. Sorry, bye."
This past winter, I bought a store demo 21" NEC monitor at Futureshop.
Two weeks later, a problem developped with it, something with the red beam or whatever, which caused the monitor to saturate the picture in blue.
I bring it back to the store, and they say no exchange because it's our last one, and we'll call you when it's repaired.
A couple of weeks later they call back and I go pick it up.
The guy gets my receipt and goes to the back. 20 minutes later he comes back with a 14" Panasonic LCD monitor.
WTF dude?! It's supposed to be a 21" CRT. "Oh yea, uh, I'll be right back".
20 minutes later, he comes back with a cardboard box that could've held two 21" CRTs. I look inside and there's my CRT sitting without any packing material whatsoever at the bottom of the box.
I sign the papers, and since the box obviously wont fit in the car, I take the monitor out.
I immediately notice the base is dangling, so I put it on the counter on the side.
All the hook tabs of the base were broken, and two bolts or screws had been drilled through it and into the monitor's underside.
And a huge dent was evident on one of the lower edges of the monitor.
So I look at the guy and said "is this how you repair your products?!"
I asked for a refund, and he was denying responsibility until I demanded to see the manager... 30 minutes of argument, and then he agreed to a refund.
Maybe I should've taken off with the Panasonic LCD...
I had an Iiyama monitor the broke down and all I had to do was fill in a form on their web page. They sent me a new monitor within a few days with an address sticker and their customer number at the national postal service here in Sweden.
I unpacked the monitor, put the broken one in the box and the address sticker on it. Called postal services and they picked it up a few hours later and I never heard from Iiyama again.
The monitor might have been expensive, but that kind of service makes it all worth it.
I love Apple too, but for another reason: I bought a snow-white keyboard from them, it arrived at the end of the week. After unpacking it and using it a bit, I saw that the spacebar key was a bit crooked. It was also a bit annoying for me to use, as I type a lot in my profession.
I called Apple, and they said it was not problem for me to exchenge the KB at a local Mac dealer. I went to the Mac dealer, and they were asshats to an extreme extend (The store is going south fast, as they are using all the time to blame Apple instead of taking care of customers.)
I hung around the store for ten minutes as the second in line for service, and listened to the four people in the offices playing Snood and complaining to their bosses about how Apple rips them off. That might be true, but you still need to SELL something if you're in the selling computers-thingy.
As I could not exchange the KB there, instead they got angry with me, I called Apple again. They were shocked to hear about the treatment and sent me a new KB. This was friday afternoon. On monday morning, the new KB had arrived. I unpacked it and installed it, getting ready to send the old one back. After installing it I discovered that it lacked the Æ, Ø and Å keys. And I kinda need them to write norwegian.
So I called Apple again, and talked to a kind customer service woman. She heard my story, verified it in their log and said: "God, this is embarrasing", and sent a new KB next day delivery. This was Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning, the new KB arrived, with all the keys, none crooked. But it was the 2002 model, not the 2003 model.
So, again, I called Apple.
This time I said: "Look, I'm not complaining. There has been some fuckups, but your behaviour has been kinda superb in handling it. But the KB is not the one I ordered. I can, however, keep it for a small reimbursement"
The representative said: "What kind of reimbursement did you have in mind?"
"Well, I could really use an Apple Mouse"
"And how much do you want to pay for it?"
"Well, about 30 USD sounds fair"
"And would that be a wired or a wirless one?"
"You know, the wireless is veeeeeery nice..."
"I see. Let me talk to my manager about this, please hold"
I held the line for two minutes, before she returned. "Do you have Bluetooth in your Mac?" she asked.
"Yes, it's a new Powerbook" I responded.
"In that case, I'm sending you a new Bluetooth Apple mouse, free of charge as a was of saying sorry for the mishaps." she said.
After giving her my CC number (without exp. date), she brought up the old order and added the mouse to it. five minutes after, I brought the old order up in Safari and saw that the mouse was due to be delivered soon.
This is, bar none, the best customer treatment I have ever recieved. The fucked up, yes, but really, really went out of their way to unfuck it. And I got a new Bluetooth mouse to replace the piece of crap that is the Microsoft Bluetooth mouse.
And I like typing on the 2002 KB better. Win - win - win...
This is apple we're talking about, not Microsoft. The kind of solution you're describing is a Microsoft windows solution. You don't do that sort of thing with real operating systems.
I called Sony support for a new Sony universal remote that I couldn't get to work with a new Sony stereo receiver. The voice recognition software hoops that I had to jump through were surprisingly accurate (even with street names--and I mumble!). The person I was connected to spoke clear, native English, was very knowledgeable, and solved my problem within minutes. I think I spent a total of 20 minutes on the phone. Not bad.
ReplayTV's support...
The replay was one of those "too good to be true" type things.
The thing worked fine for about a week and then it froze. I would reboot it and in exactly 5 minutes it would crash.
Called tech support and was transported to the 9th level of hell that is outsourced Indian tech support.
The first time I called I think I got a really confused lady who couldn't comprehend that the replay was freezing. She kept wanting me to press things on the remote. Then would get all flumixed when nothing happened. I kindly explained that the problem I was having probably wasn't covered in her knowledge database. At that point she explained that I'd have to pay a hundred dollars to send my replay in to get it fixed. I then asked that she cancel my subscription. At this point I was put on hold and transferred to some other person (who called himself Jack) who then wanted to know why I wanted to cancel my service and was a sure and was I really sure and was I really really sure that there wasn't something they could do to keep me as a customer, etc. He got about half way through this and I explained that I was going to go with a compeditors product because theirs sucked.
Needless to say, I spent a 99 dollars and got a DirecTivo and haven't looked back.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
So many of my clients have Dells. They are absolutely sick of the outsourced phone support - setting aside the issues with accents and nuances of language, the issues are also these: Refusal to combat viruses and spyware. Reflex action: System Restore or System Recovery CD instead of actual troubleshooting. Bonus: techs only warn about the potential for data loss when using data recovery CDs about half the time. Obstinacy: they'd rather spend three hours making sure a hardware problem is what the user claims it is, rather than just sending out the part. My clients would rather pay me to get a computer working, than use the free in-warranty tech support that's available to them.
The response may have not been exactly helpful, but it was correct...
The great thing abotu Backup is that it just dumps files right onto the CD or DVD! If you mount it you can see the files right there and copy them to your hearts content. At least, I was able to get stuff off them that way.
That's what they meant I think, in that they don't "compress" the file in some wierd way like OTHER backup programs. They make sure you can get to the data without the program.
iPhoto is simialr in that underneath, it's just storing your original photos in directories, so if iPhoto ever stopped working or you had backed up an iPhoto library to disc you can just get out the JPG files.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The best it ever worked was borking one out of ever 5 cdrs (this is when they cost between 2 - 4$ a piece). It *NEVER* wrote a cd-rw correctly. They would actually degrade over the course of a few hours. You would test the CD right after you burned it and it would be ok, 30 mins later, a couple files wouldn't read correctly, and 5 hours later, the whole thing was unreadable.
Every 3 months the drive died. Complete failure. HP would ship me a new one, it would last for 3 months ... then die. I went through 4 drives (including the original) before my warranty expired, and couldn't get HP to give me another model for love or money.
I wish I could say I was smart enough to quit HP after that, but I've owned 3 scanners each which died 5 or 10 days after their warranty expired. One even died *THE DAY AFTER* its warranty expired...
And pitty me3, I'm thinking about getting that new cell phone pda from HP:)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
over 4 hours better phone and live chat support wasted on getting a replacement subwoofer from my m505 laptop. On top of that, the replacement they finally sent didn't work at all. Now my laptop won't boot up at all (not even to the bios screen) and I dread having to call them nothing that the person on the other end will waste at least another 1-2 hours of my time.
The worst and best part of this is that I had to get really pissy and rude with the "technical" support person on the other end (of the world) before I was finally transfered to a support person in the states. Now I know how to circumvent some of the bs, but I feel bad for the poor soul since they are just trying to do their job. Offshoring may have done wonders to some companies' bottom line, but what has it cost them (and us (no-pun intended)) in customer satisfaction?
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I was moving out a building I was living in. I called my local electric company to come and shut off the power, to keep me from getting bills.
A person came and I took her to the basement where the box was. She looked at me and said, "What do I do now?"
I said, "Your job?! Turn it off."
She asked, "But how?"
I said, "Go and open the box and figure it out."
She said, "But what if I get electrocuted. I'm leaving."
I went over, opened the box, pulled out the large fuses that where there, and the lights went out. Luckily I had a flashlight because she didn't. I should have turned mine off and left her down there.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I would have thought we'd see a link to actual survey instead of a story about the story about the survey ;)
Here is the results page
Here is the start of the survey story
When I bought one of those mini Vaios on whim without knowing what it was, Sony support helped me figure out what model it was (Australian, but redone as korean by some third party, it seems), why I couldn't boot linux on it, how to change the keyboard config from Korean to Japanese, and all with a laptop that I got off the back of a truck without proper papers.
But ymmv. And sony are still wayyy overpriced.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Good heavens, you're right! This shouldn't have been (-1, Flamebait). It should have been (-1, Offtopic)! Your post is all about the quality of the machines vs. the purchase price. Try talking about support issues instead.
I hate to admit to doing this butt...
A company that I used to work for was pretty stingy with their pennies. We had 30 some Sony laptops for the salespersons. One got dropped off the top of a beer cooler (walk-in type, not the one you take to a park) and smashed it real good. Sony wouldn't repair the parts because it had been dropped (misused). So I bought a new LCD screen for it, then put the system board and hard drive into another sony laptop with a non-cracked case and sent that one in for repair by order of my boss. They replaced the parts, which I put into the dropped laptop and with some glue, was good as new.
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
I'll pipe in since my worker isn't in town.
....
He just sent his new Dell laptop back because Dell refused to admit they didn't know what they were talking about.
He specifically ordered the laptop with a P-M 725 chip (Dothan with 2MB L2 Cache).
Dell sends him a P-M 1.6 with 1MB L2 cache.
He figures, he's entitled to what he ordered so he calls Dell.
Dell L1 Tech support refused to believe that a) they make laptop chips with 2MB of cache nor do they believe b) that a P-M 1.6 is different from an Intel 725 chip.
Dell L1 Supervisor refuses to believe that Intel makes portable chips with 2MB of L2 cache nor does he believe that there is a difference between a 1.6 GHz P-M and a 725.
** note this happened like a week ago, Dothans have been out for a while**
Dell L2 tech support (supposedly the geeks) initially refuse to believe that Intel makes portable chips with 2MB of L2 cache nor does he believe that there is a difference between a 1.6 GHz P-M and a 725.
But wait, it gets better!!
L2 Tech support eventually assures him that Dell gets custom runs of Dothan chips because they are a big customer. We almost wet ourselves.
now, during all this, we had the Intel product sheets up in front of us that indicated that a 725 Dothan has 2mb of L2 cache but none of the Dell reps would look a the URL, they pretty much refused to look at any evidence that they were wrong.
A few days later he gets a call from a Dell rep because he lodged a complaint. By this time, we found plenty of Dell sites (not US sites) that accurately list a 725 as a part with 2MB L2 cache. The rep refused to believe Intel or any other Dell site. His excuse was, Dell is a large customer, so Dell USA gets custom dothan chips from Intel.. but the overseas Dells don't get them.
he sent the laptop back.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
If you are talking about corporate support then Dell does quite well thank you. Hard driver dies on one of our workstations and a new one is at reception in under 4 hours. Without a special maintenance contract mind you.
Support for the consumer/home user line is probably something different.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
According to this survey 17% of desktops needed repairs on average. Is this inflated by crazed users throwing them against walls, or do we really have that bad of a track record in this industry? I have a lot of hardware in my house and at my clients businesses and I don't see a nearly 1 in 5 chance of needing a hardware repair. Fixing a broken OS install and removing malware (usually the cause of the former) appear to be the most popular support calls I get recently.
Sig under construction since 1998.
I took care of the server and ever since, we have told Dell, "Please don't send a technician, we will take care of it ourself!"
I struggled for days and days and all I got was this lousy sig.
I have an Inspiron 1100 notebook that has had a range of issues...minor stuff like a power cord starting to fray and a rubber foot or two falling off from it.
Calling up Dell and trying to explain anything is quite the exercise. I've called four times, and have never gotten anybody that natively speaks English. Each call lasts anywhere from about 45 - 90 minutes, the first half of which is trying to describe what part is actually broken. Most people know what a power cord is or a rubber foot in terms of what could go wrong with a laptop, but evidently, Dell's tech support monkeys have no flippant clue.
Oh, and all the while, I'm having to do an English-to-English translation in my head and anticipating what he's going to say next because his accent is so thick I can't just communicate normally.
And when I finally resolve the issue after being put in hold for about half an hour, two days later I get the rubber foot UPS'd to me in a box that could hold a VHS tape, surrounded with inch-thick foam padding. And what comes with that package but a $5 invoice for a freaking rubber foot. Then I get to call Dell and deal with the same people a couple more times to ensure I'm not being bullshitted when they say I don't have to pay it.
The moral of my story is that you have to weigh resolving the part of your computer being broken against getting three or four hours knocked out of the next couple days. Somedays I just don't have that kind of time to waste. I've heard Dell business support is good, but I find their approach in screwing the individual customer in favor of the business customer rather disenchanting.
Dell's stupidity in outsourcing person-to-person technical support to a country with vast cultural differences and a language barrier is truly monumental.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
NTL support in the UK is a son of a bitch. That isn't to say the tech support staff are crap; they're usually very knowledgable and very helpful, but the service itself sucks.
You ring up, and you're asked to key in your phone number. Why couldn't they just get it through caller ID? Then you're guided through the familiar maze o' optiions(tm) until you wait for 20 minutes listening to Brian Eno shite interspersed with "Your call is valuable to us, so we put you on hold you dozy twat". Then you get to a person.
I remember one time my broadband had gone tits up. So I called up, got through, said I was using Linux and was told they didn't support it. End of story, they refused even to run generic ping tests, just no Linux ever. (The company is part owned by Microsoft btw). It just so happens I had a Windows XP partition which hadn't been booted for a month or two, so I booted that up and called support again. This was at the height of the Blaster outbreak, so they screened all the calls to make sure that all XP users had the patches etc. I said that I didn't, but it didn't really matter since the XP install had been untouched since a month or two ago and I just want to get some generic tests run anyway. What did they do?
They said I couldn't be put through to tech support and they wouldn't do anything because I didn't have the Blaster patches that I couldn't get for an OS I didn't use. The reason I needed the patches was because I might have a virus which can do no damage anyway because there was no Internet connection. So to get the patches for this virus which doesn't do anything, I need them to fix the internet connection, however they won't fix it as I didn't have the patches.
Sons of bitches. If anyone from NTL is reading this, GET SOME FUCKING LINUX SUPPORT YOU COCKS.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The only time that I call those places is when I need to have a part replaced. And it usually sucks - you have to convince those on the other end of the line that you really do, in fact, know what you're doing and that you really do believe that the problem will be resolved by replacing the dead hard drive.P? I once had a fairly new Dell Dimension die. After looking at it I just reinstalled the OS on a new hard drive - problem solved. I called tech support to replace the hard drive and told them that was the problem. They started asking if I'd jumped through their hoops - I just said that the machine is working perfectly one a spare drive and that was the problem. I got the new hard drive.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Apple, IBM, ABS, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway/eMachines, HP/Compaq, and Sony.
Wow, I think the only company that didn't make the list is that guy in Canada selling white boxes out of the back of his car wash.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
...my first Picturebook was DOE, so I needed to get another one - that went though the supplier, not Sony, so all was OK - got a replacement within a few days.
It was when the second Picturebook went wrong, a few months later, that the nightmare started - this had to go back to Sony, under the terms of the warranty. They hung onto it for a few weeks and then sent it back - still broken.
So I sent it back again. Took about a month this time. Again it came back - still broken.
So it had to go back a third, and then actually even a fourth time. And the delays this time were longer - in total, they had the machine for *nine months*. When I called, they didn't even know if they *had* the machine. I had to actually buy another notebook while I was waiting.
Quite a contrast to my experience with Compaq, which varied between their sending someone out on-site with parts for a desktop, or a courier with a three-day turnaround for a notebook...
This is a story about when I attempted to sign up for Sympatico DSL service.
After I signed up, over the phone, I was told that I would receive a installation package in the mail (I wanted the install it yourself option) in a few days. I waited, and waited. A week later I called back, and they could find no record of my signing up. I persisted, and they eventually found the record. The guy who signed me up had managed to get almost every single piece of information I told him wrong. My name (both first and last) was mis-spelled, my street number was wrong, and he also spelled the name of the street wrong. He also got my phone number wrong. No wonder I hadn't heard anything.
He also got the option that I wanted to install it myself wrong. So I then started getting phone calls from technician to set up an installation appointment. I'd explain I rather do it myself, and they would say OK, they will mail the package to me (apparently they were not allowed to just come by and give me the package). The next day I would get the same phone call from a different technician, and again and again. It took me 3 weeks to get my hands on an installation package. And when I finally received it, there was no network card. Apparently the guy who took my order checked off the "doesn't need card" option when I specifically told him the opposite.
The funny thing is, since I have got Sympatico set up, I have had absolutely no problems with it.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I recently emailed Sprint PCS to point out a problem I was having on its website, and here is the responce I got:
? PC S%20Advantage%
? PC S%20Advantage%
Dear Chris,
I am sorry to know that you are experiencing error while checked the PCS
Advantage Agreement.
Our service sometime becomes slow the heavy network traffic rush. This
might be the reason due to which you have experienced the error. I
request you to retry to access the agreement hyperlink again to view the
agreement.
If you have two-year agreement on your account, please follow the steps
given below to view the entire agreement:
http://www1.sprintpcs.com/NVP-Online/popUp.html
20Agreement
If you have two-year agreement on your account, please follow the steps
given below to view the entire agreement:
http://www1.sprintpcs.com/NVP-Online/popUp.html
20Agreement
To me this just seems absolutely unacceptable. If they want to out source their tech support, I won't support it, but so be it. But AT LEAST do something to make sure the tech support people can put together a grammatically correct email response. This pretty much entirely took Sprint PCS out of my consideration for cell phone service.
i have to say, in my few warranty dealings with apple, they've been great... first, i killed my iPod, unplugged it too much without unmounting it...so I tried to reformat/restore the iPod software, no go. So I walk into the Apple store, and walk out in 10 minutes with a replacement. Well, the replacement was iffy, and the same actions killed it, so I go back. That time, they held it overnight to let it run its onboard diagnostic (I went ~1 hr before closing), and I went back the next day and got a replacement, even though the iPod didn't show any errors. As far as phone support, the little plug for my powerbrick came unglued and was arcing inside, it smelled bad, and all that stuff. They had a hard time finding the right part number, so first they send my a power adapter, but it was only the brick, no cables, then a long cord, the finally a plug. The adapter I had to return, but they said just keep the cord, and it was really handy, so now I have a long cord for my powerbook and my iPod adapter... as far as other companies, i have to admit I don't have any first hand experience, but Apple has been great to me...
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
Way back in 1986 I got my first lappy (a Toshiba T1000, I wish I still had) It arrived in the mail on a Friday. Saturday morning, all alone with a cup of coffee, I fired it up and started playing. After no more than 10 minutes I went to drink some coffee, and I bumped the coffee cup against the top of the unfolded lappy, spilling coffee on the keyboard. The T1000 instantly died.
I was crushed.
I called customer service on Monday, and got a nice oriental gentleman.
me: My computer is broken.
him: just send it in.
me: but I spilled coffee on it!
him: wipe coffee off, send computer in.
All I paid was shipping to them, the fix was free and fast.
Ahh, I loved the 80's.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Does anyone else notice that self-builts score higher than most vendors on both home machines and servers? The results are probably skewed by the fact that self-builders are bound to be more knowlegdable than the average buyer and can fix more problems themselves, but this is nevertheless a rather bad rate for the industry. See for instance the replies to "how often is it down?" in the server category. Seems to me that PCMag should include parts vendors along with ready system vendors in next year's survey.
I looked at the survey, and where Sony was listed they were not at the bottom. Maybe I missed something, but on both Desktop and Notebook Gateway was below them (saprise, saprise). Also, HP/Compaq was at the bottom of the Notebooks and IBM was at the bottom of the Desktops. Sony was not in the "server" survey cat that I could see. So, how was Sony at the bottom? They more near the middle. Still, I won't go near Sony or Gateway after some of the horror stories I have experienced and/or heard.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
So my company buys a bunch of Dells. We had a power supply crap out on an Optiplex GX260, a standard desktop. Now, we know the power supply crapped out because when I took the power supply out of our spare and popped it into the box with the bad supply, it worked fine.
So the guy that deals with Dell calls up their tech support people and tells them we need a replacement power supply for an Optiplex GX260 for computer with service tag XXXXXX. So they sent it to us. With a new motherboard. Just in case the power supply fried the motherboard, which we still had running in a production environment just fine. Now we have a spare motherboard sitting around somewhere, and we don't have a case or power supply for it. Odd.
How do these people make money?
So, being the good user that I am, I changed my yahoo account's password on Sunday. Immediately afterward, I could not log into my account, both old and new passwords didn't work. Then I figured I must of mistyped the new password somehow so I went to the password reset feature on their website. Lo and behold, it crashes. Repeatedly. All I get is the nice Yahoo footer telling me they collect personal information.
At this point, I am at step two of the automated e-mail support. In order to reset my password, I have to give them the secret password question, AND answer it correctly, from the secondary e-mail account I gave yahoo when I signed up years ago, which of course I can't remember which one I used.
If they would just give me a 900 number to call to talk to a human, I would do it instead of going through this crap!
Dell support for home / home offic eusers is beyond terrible. However I had to call their support for server products once. What happened was a RAID controller (PCI card by Adaptec) failed in a fairly basic PowerEdge. I called at some weird hour but I quickly got a guy with a chinese-english accent (Hong Kong?) who spoke very clearly, got the troubleshooting info together, went through it, and then got me a case number for the replacement part they were to sent (and expedited it as I needed it ASAP). The new card arrived in about a day and a half and that was that.
Now if you call about a Dimention or something... then it's a complete disaster.
I called up Microsoft today and told them that the Internet was broken... and the guy was very nice, but he told me it was an "I.D. Ten T" error, and that the only way to fix it was to get a new computer. So I threw my new computer in the trash and bought a new one, but the internet is still broken.
Finally the cute little neihbor kid said that he'd take my computer that has the broken internet and give me his computer that works. I really like how all of the green stuff on the TV makes the room glow! Very high tech!
I've done support several times for a businessman (small-time) who has a Dell laptop. I can't vouch for his treatment of the device, but he has had to send it in no less than 4 times to have the harddrive replaced after it mysteriously dies on him. No click of death, no drop (that he's told me) just BAM, no POST. Of course the replacement is a refurb, and so it goes and breaks in 3 months. wash, rinse, repeat.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I truly didn't know that Sony actualy has a proper customer support. I did try to reach it couple of times (e-mails to global HQ, EMEA HQ, local distributor & phone calls to local repersentative) however I have never received an answer from or obtained contact with any support person, let alone technicaly inclined support person.
That said, I never suspected that Sony has a customer support for those who need to know more than current prices and latest sales pitch invention from market drone.
Talking about irony though: I live in a country that borders to Italy and Austria. It's not some God forgotten remnant of Soviet Union somewhere in central Asia. We're even in EU now, but some marketing drone in Tokyo that decides what products to sell on what markets decided that for this country only some obsolete two year lod leftovers scrapped from some warehouse in Alaska is good enough for us. Can you imagine that Sony actualy launched a marketing campaign promoting something called Casette Walkman?!?!? In 2004?!?! Hello? I don't even remember when I have last seen a casette and I'm not that young. I'm looking for MP3 player/w radio and they're offering me a Walkman? Sheesh... portable CD players are too good for us?
When I was talking to some poor (he will probably soon be looking for a new job) Sony store guy, he bluntly told me to sit in a car, drive 40 miles to Italy, and buy latest gear there... not necessarily from Sony. They don't manage to sell anything here any more and they will probably fold before years' end. So much about going global for this company...
If some detached drone situated in Tokyo Central controls customer support worldwide in the same way that they control distribution quotas, I really don't wonder that it's impossible to find any kind of support.
For what I care about the Sony doesn't want to sell me their products and doesn't want to support me using the ones I have. Fine... competition is OK here, thank you for asking.
Anonymous Cowards Unite
We ordered three servers, one Red Hat and two Windows Server 2003. We don't get any email confirmation or anything else sent with the spec on it. Then suddenly the servers arrive, and I note from the labels on the outside of the boxes that while the Red Hat server is as ordered, the Windows servers are Windows 2000, not 2003. I *do not open the boxes*, and call Dell right away, presuming that they would (a) swap them or (b) send us Windows 2003.
They say that I selected Win 2k on the website (I didn't) and point blank refuse to do anything to help, other than offer to sell us Windows 2003 at the full retail price. One person that I was talking to actually admitted that there was something strange with our order in their system, that it had been modified at some point, and appeared to have *both* Win2k and 2003 selected, but his supervisor denies this. This goes on for a few weeks, with them refusing to do anything, and we need these machines in a hurry, so we start using one of the Win2k ones.
Eventually we just did a chargeback on the whole transaction on the grounds that we didn't get what we ordered (you can only do it on the complete transaction). They picked up the remaining Windows box within a few days... I don't know if we actually ended up paying for the other two that we kept at all, they certainly didn't seem organised enough to charge us again...
That's my story, but I've also heard others in which Dell send out machines with a different (hardware!) spec than ordered, and then refuse to do anything about it (co-worker's laptop was one.)
Well its better than flamebait
Jonathanjk.com
Recently I had a hard drive fail. It was still under warranty so I send it in with the RMA #. I get an email right away that they received it. A few days later, I get another email saying that they've shipped me a replacement but it may take ten days to get it to me. I get busy and forget about it since it was a spare drive. Then I realize that two weeks had passed. So I send an email asking about the shipment. They respond quickly with the tracking number and it says that the package was delivered to XXXXXXX. I live alone so I pray it was the apartment manager that signed for it.
I check with the apartment and it turns out it had been sitting with my manager for two weeks. Nobody (apartment, shipping company) bothered to give me a little note saying that I had a package. I don't blame the hard drive company, but I'm sensible. Some people may not be.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
In my recent job as a salesman at a small camera store, we briefly had some Sony Cybershot digital cameras in stock. Then the fun started.
Half the Cybershots we sold came back. Literally. We had something like a 20:5:1 ratio of Sony problems to Kodak problems to every-other-company problems. (I'll save my Kodak rant for another day.)
Then, their warranty period dropped from a year, which is mostly standard with consumer-level cameras, to 90 days.
Then, when waiting for estimates, there were delays. And delays. And delays. When we finally got estimates back, a few months later, they would typically be for twice what the camera costs to buy new. If the estimate was refused, they charged an additional $50 to send the damaged camera back to us! These charges did not go over well with our customers, needless to say. I felt like crap; most of our customers were very nice people, and I hated giving them bad news.
I have no kind words about the hell those bastards put me through. I was behind the counter, taking crap for their shoddy products and awful customer service. We stopped offering Sony cameras very quickly, and we started refusing to send in Sony products for repair when they weren't bought from us.
(16:13:55) hackeduser25: omg i cant belive they did this to me
(16:14:35) stephen samuel: precisely what did they do?? All I saw was on the guest log page.
(16:14:53) hackeduser25: they put porn on it and changed everything around
(16:15:19) hackeduser25: im gonna havet to do it all over again it took me months and now i must re-type it all
(16:15:23) stephen samuel: Do you have a backup copy at home?
(16:15:29) hackeduser25: im gonna have a panic attack...no
(16:16:05) stephen samuel: It's possible that (most of) the original stuff is still there.
(16:16:18) hackeduser25: i know the site is frozen
(16:16:35) stephen samuel: How do you do updates??
(16:16:49) hackeduser25: easily but i cant access my account!!!!!
(16:16:52) hackeduser25: cuz they changed it all
(16:17:30) stephen samuel: You may want to get to the people who host the site and ask them to reset it back to what it was yesterday... (at least the password).
(16:19:26) stephen samuel: In the meantime, I'd suggest that you come up with a password that's not easily guessable.
(16:19:48) stephen samuel: Did you have an 'easily guessable' password?
(16:20:19) hackeduser25: well it was password.
(16:20:47) stephen samuel: That explains why you got slimed... It's the first password that a hacker would try.
(16:21:13) hackeduser25: omg great
(16:21:15) stephen samuel: Literaly -- it's the absolute MOST used password by newbies.
(16:21:27) hackeduser25: oh well great then
(16:21:49) stephen samuel: justasec.. I'm looking for my file on how to create relatively secure passwords....
(16:22:13) hackeduser25: k
(16:24:24) stephen samuel: http://www.bcgreen.com/solaris/passwords.html
The above session is now tacked on as a warning at the end of the referenced web page.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Ever have someone call complaining about WATER in their CD-ROM drive?
Yeah, explain that, if you will.
That's true enough (I think they are saved off as seperate files on the DVD), but actually it hadly matters - can you even name an app anymore that makes use of the resource forks for files?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
A few years ago I had a couple of the infamous IBM Desktstar GXP drives that failed. I purchased the drives OEM; they came sent to me in static bags and packing peanuts.
When I requested an RMA for the drives I was informed that these *broken* drives *had* to be shipped back to IBM in the orginal IBM boxes or I could purchase *new* boxes from IBM!
Fortunately, rather than having to shell out $20 for "IBM approved" boxes, I was able to borrow two boxes from a guy at work and then when I got my RMA drives back I gave him those boxes.
I don't know if they really would have refused service had I sent them back in any old box but the website made it clear that they could.
I've generally had pretty good support with Dell. Of course, we're an Enterprise customer with thousands of user's across the globe. I usually order my parts before 4PM CST and get them the next day. I'm also Dell certified (whatever that's worth), so I tell them that and they'll just ship me the parts. Sometimes, the support person wants to go down their checklist - I ablige. I don't really do anything they're asking me to and I script my answers so they come to the same conclusion I've already come to. Most time they're bored and want to just get the day over with, so they'll just take your word at it and send you your part. Sometimes, you get some yahoo who's not playing your tune. Just say, sorry I got to go, somethings come up. Call back later, get someone else and get your business done. Like everything else in life, a lot of it comes down to who you're dealing with (some people are more accomodating than other, and of course it helps to be nice). That being said, I've replaced my fair share of HDD's, motherboards, monitors, etc.) from Dell. Maybe too many.
As for IBM, I really like their ThinkPads (always have). Sure, they've had their share of shitty models (I always hated the one where you lift the keyboard up to replace the battery & drives), but overall I think their the best. They're usually pretty good about sending me parts too, overnight, etc. And when it comes to repair manuals, IBM kicks the ass out of Dell. With dell, you get some lame HTML (or sometimes PDF) "Service Manual" that is basically a "how to swap parts manual". But, with IBM you get pretty indepth troubleshooting checklists, screw size charts, part number lists, the works (you can tell they're a true engineering company).
But hey, that's just my experience. Yours may differ...
A contraction is one word.
" 'M' as in Moron... " ya always have to translate these things :-)
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? - Calvin
From the article, "Too few respondents report needing support with or repairs to their Apple computers to rate the company in these areas." To me that sounds like an excellent ranking.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
Barely less than a week ago, I bought a Sony Vaio VGN-S150 laptop, to replace an old HP Omnibook subnotebook running Linux. I wanted something that was small-ish but had more than 1024*768 pixels on the panel. The VGN-S150 is a "mid-size" laptop, with a panel resolution of 1280*800 and absolutely amazing brightness and clarity.
I was aware that Sony had a poor reputation for reliability and suport when I bought it. However, since I don't tend to abuse my machines, I don't anticipate needing to deal with Sony. If the machine craps out, it will be because the machine is legitimately a lemon, and that fact should be revealed within the one-year warranty period.
I'm finding, much to my delight, that the VGN-S150 is turning out to be a rather fine Linux laptop. The ATI graphics drivers, both XFree86 and radeonfb, can drive the odd panel resolution directly without complaint, so I get to use all the pixels. The internal 802.11g card, with the Intel 2200BG driver, appears to work fine (although Kismet isn't talking to it). I have yet to get sound working, and I'm still trying to get ACPI standby/suspend to work. Elsewise, it's just lovely. Once I get Linux fully working, I'll do a write-up for the TuxMobil pages.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Doing the job!
Try doing the job for a day, and you'll never biatch about TS again. It is the most underpaid and underappreciated task in the entire IT kingdom.
People hate your intestines before you even start dealing with them.
You really do see the worst of greedy, self-centered, childish, threatening, breath-holding, human behavior. Sad really.
And once in about a thousand calls someone says thank you.
Look, you get what you pay for, think about it.
I bought a DRU-500a almost immediately after it came out. (It was the first DVD burner that supported both the + and - standards.) If I remember correctly, it was 300 dollars. Anyway, I got it home, put it in, and:
1. Read CD's fine
2. Read DVD's fine
3. Burned to the included DVD+RW just fine
4. Burned + discs
5. Burned - discs
I decided, saright, it works. Just long enough later to be out of store warrenty, I get around to burning a new mix CD. Hmmm, that's odd, the first track won't play. Further research showed that it would play just fine in my computer, but not on ANY standalone unit. However, the track was there, if I used a standalone unit, started on track 2, and manually rewound to track one, it would play just fine.
So I called sony and explained the problem in details, indicating that I figured it was burning a few sectors earlier than it probably should have, and that standalone units, which don't have all the error correction my computer does... couldn't handle the missing data.
Oh god. First, they wouldn't help me at all because I didn't have installed their piece of shit OEM burning software. After going back and forth on the phone, they gave me an RMA. So I shipped it out to Arizona, $10.
They said I should have it back in 2 - 4 weeks. 2 weeks later, I called to see what the status was. The response, "We couldn't find a problem with your drive and shipped it back to you yesterday." Well thanks alot.
After recieving the drive back, and the problem continuing, I called again, went through the same shpeil, and continued to get nowhere. Eventually the tech told me that the drive was performing as designed so long as discs would play in the unit itself. Half the techs I talked to flat out refused to believe me. They kept asking if I was using 'Sony, TDK, or Kodak' brand cds. Now, I didn't know that Kodak even made cd's, and so I asked where, in their documentation, did it say that I needed to use those 3 brands. The tech responded that it wasn't in the documentation, but if you were having a problem, that they recommended those.
They were completely unhelpful, would not just, send me a new unit as I repeatedly requested (being that I could not encounter ANY other stories online documenting this, I came to the conclusion that the unit was defective), and were consistently rude to me. They said the only way I could get the unit replaced was if I shipped it to Arizona and they decided something was wrong with it. Since they had decided it was fine previously, I figured that that was rather pointless.
To make a long story short, about 2 months later, a new revision of the drive firmware showed up on sony.com; listed in the revisions was, 'improve playback on standalone players.'
Installing the new firmware solved the problem.
Well I'll be damned. They knew this problem existed. If they had told me that it was a problem and that they were working on it but didn't have a fix at the moment, I would have been fine. Instead they gave me the runaround constantly.
This, coupled with 2 identical VCR's from Sony that failed in identical ways, has turned me off to Sony, forever.
Just as a note for the curious, Sony owns Aiwa, so don't buy from them either.
Best way to get what you want from Dell tech support - be a journalist. My favourite example:
A journalist for major UK broadsheet's IT section orders a Dell laptop and it dies within a month. The replacement dies too, and he has all sorts of trouble with tech support fobbing him off, missed delivery/pickup dates. He points out to tech support who he works for and that he plans to write up his experiences in an article, and suddenly they can't do enough to help him - a new laptop will be with him tomorrow morning, a Dell technician will make sure it works etc.
The delivery time comes and a senior member of Dell UK management phones up to make sure the delivery has arrived, just as the Dell delivery guy turns up. The journalist asks the technician to hang on a second while he finishes talking and the technician replies "I'm not f***ing waiting for you, come and pick your f***ing computer up now."
Unknown to the technician, all of that is clearly audible to the Dell manager on the phone, whose immediate response is "Go to the Dell website and order any laptop you want - we'll send it to you for free". So the journalist gets a full refund, free (and far superior to the original) laptop and a 'complementary' MP3 player. I doubt the technician worked for Dell much longer...
I read the other day that Sony is tops in what consumers see as a "best brand." Up there with Coke, Dell, and others. Another metric here shows Sony at the top of the consumer electronics heap too...
More proof that your average consumer is dumb as a post. (Joe Dirt anyone?)...
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
My company had a few hundred thousand lines of decades old Fortran code accessing an Oracle DB using "pro-fortran". Then Oracle dropped pro-fortran without any explanation. They did this so quietly that even Oracle "support" people weren't informed. It took us over six months of asking to get Oracle to acknowledge the fact that pro-fortran is no more among us.
When my first child was born, I used a sony camcorder to take some video of the moment. I also decided to use the digital photo feature for the first time.
Later I realized that I needed the crappy photo imaging software CD that they provided in order to pull the images from the camera. After a few moves, I had no idea where the software was. As anyone knows, you get what you pay for with bundled software, it's really the lowest common denominator. I expected to be able to download it from their web site, but no. I even contacted them and offered proof of purchase of the camera, but they wouldn't provide me with a replacement for the software.
Lucky for me that I eventually found the software. The experience with their support and the resulting crappy quality images have made me vow to never purchase another product from Sony ever again.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
I called and asked Sony why my (and 50% of other owners') DVD player stopped working after one year. They claimed they never heard of my well documented problem nor from any of those 50% of owners (not one) but would be glad to look at my player for $180 plus shipping.
They also denied ever hearing about problems with my reciever, which also died a little after a year.
To be fair, years ago they did repair my CD player which died after one year.
When my iBook's hard drive failed after only two years, I decided to call my local Apple store to see if it was worth it to bring my computer directly to the store. I was blessed with a touchtone menu for a few minutes and finally got a human on the phone... only to realize after 15 minutes of him helping me out that I had somehow been redirected to the main Apple Care line.
Since I didn't buy Apple Care along with my laptop, I was charged $50 for the phone call, even though I had not intended to talk to their support team... unacceptable.
I'm unsure if we get supplied from different stock in Australia, but I have been purchasing Sony consumer/prosumer electronics for nearly 20 years and haven't had a problem with a single device yet.
We still have the original Sony video record, TV and TV that I bought when I moved out of home, the only thing that needed 'repairs' was a remote needed replacing (it got dropped down a concrete stairwell during a house move).
Other consumer electronnics of similar age owned by my husband have died and failed years before the Sony equipment I owned before we met. *Shrug* The only products I heard stories about reliabilty issues were the early Playstations and PS2s.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Are you sure that she worked for the electric company?
We are using Dell for all our corporate laptops, and the support is very different from the home support. We do not talk to anyone in India, and everyone I get is knowledgeable. We have 3-year Next Business Day on-site service and I have not had any issues getting problems taken care of. I usually submit issues through the web (where they go to the Indians) but if I call in I get Americans. I highly recommend that you pay a little extra to purchase the corporate model laptops if you think tha tyou'll need any support on it, as you get much better support from Dell this way.
Jake Williams
ELCOM, Inc.
If you've bought a consumer class PC from Dell and need support, beware. You'll get offshore support from people that only read from scripts and will not do any deductive reasoning. I love to read the Dell support pages as there's an area where people complain about bad customer service. Many problems about orders not being correct, dropped and mistranferred calls and so forth.
The company I work is a large account from Dell, and I have no problems. If there's any problems, I just escalate to my salesman, and then there's always the account exec I can goto if I ever needed to. Support for servers is good and no complaints with the UNISYS onsite guys either when part replacement is needed. At one point I had to call about an Optiplex and had problems with offshore support, but they've moved that back to the states. Having access to premiersupport is helpful. If you're going to buy a Dell system, get a corporate model so you get a better level of support.
A phone number which can be used to get into Dell is 800.247.6838. I cannot remember the direct number to support at the moment.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
This is fascinating to me. I have heard so many stories from Apple users with horror stories about support: from surly, arrogant technicians to overcharging ($200 for a $50 power supply?) to broken replacements to flat-out refusal to provide service.
Is there anything useful to be gleaned from these ratings?
... that seemed like an odd title, lemme read that again.
Oh.
Well I was close enough.