I lost it today. I don’t often do that on the phone, but I got seriously angry at the oh-so-polite, oh-so-lying through his teeth customer non-service guy at Toshiba.
I think I’ve already mentioned, Qosmio G15 mobos were a Known Issue. Not when I bought mine, but within the year, problems were evidently springing up all over. By the time mine went out, Toshiba was giving an automatic upgrade board, even on machines whose warrantee had run out (because the other board was garbage…something in the video card/display interface.) This new board had a Geforce Go 6600 rather than a 5700.
Well, last night, after upgrading my bios, and taking the system back to a pre-problem system restore—both without any effect—-I began trying to replace/upgrade my video drivers. Problem: Toshiba’s download site has no G15 driver set for the 6600. Nvidia makes proprietary drivers for the Toshiba systems for their power saver and other such, so I couldn’t download the drivers from Nvidia’s site. The only drivers I could find on Toshi’s site for a 6600 were for a G20, and while those were the same version number as what I have on the machine, the like-named files were way different in size, so I couldn’t even consider bypassing the Toshiba driver-installation exe file and try loading them, just for giggles.
So…off to the restore disks given me by CompUSA when I had the board replaced. I put them in…and it immediately the machine spit them back, saying they were for a G15 not a G15R, which I have.
Oh, joy. CompUSA gave me the wrong expletivedeleted disks! So, this morning, I’m on the phone to Toshiba to explain the situation and at the very least get appropriate disks, which I should have been given two years ago. The tech person says the warrantee is out of date and therefore I must pay for the disks to the tune of $25.00. Not so bad, but there’s a lot of other things I could do with that $25 and besides, it’s the principle of the thing. I wouldn’t be in this position if the machine I bought had worked.
So…send me to customer service. These service people are all, of course, Somewhere Not in the US, and oh, so po-lite…and oh, so rule following. No, my warrantee was out, never mind I should have been given the right disks to begin with, never mind the circumstances, never mind the drivers I need are probably not on the disks anyway. More than that, he blithely insisted there was no history of problems with the mobo I had. That he’d been working for Toshiba for years and there’d been nothing like that, and he didn’t know what I was talking about re the GeForce 6600 vs 5700. (I since have found the number of the post on Toshiba’s site for the auto-upgrade and extended warrantee. Unfortunately, I didn’t have it when I talked to this jerk.) And no, I couldn’t talk to his superior, because his superior didn’t dirty his lilly white hands talking to mere customers, who have been using Toshibas for twenty years!
Grrrrr…..I’m getting hot under the collar again just thinking about it. Finally, I agreed to pay their stupid $25. Not that I think reformatting the disk will solve the problem, but it’s the last reasonable thing to try to save the system. So, I give him my credit card, silently consign him to the devil…silently because I did want the disks, then immediately got off the phone and went surfing for solid evidence of my memory (CompUSA never gave me anything in writing re: the extended Toshiba warrantee. My mistake for not getting it.)
Then, I got on the phone to Toshiba again, this time the non-800 Corporate number. I punched Zero repeatedly until I got the operator and then asked to be put through to the complaint department, or something like that. I got a “please leave a message…” and, boy, did I leave a message! 
And wonder of wonders…I got a call back! By that time, I’d cooled off a bit (shoveling and shoving lots of dirt in the hot afternoon sun.) And of course, this lady (who actually spoke English as a first language) knew exactly what I was talking about. She didn’t even argue. She agreed I shouldn’t be charged for the disks and also realized that the disks were probably for the original board and weren’t going to do me any good anyway. But they’ve already shipped or are at least in the shipping pipeline, so when they get here, I’ll try them, but we don’t hold out much hope. I’ll have to take it to a Toshiba repair place (there’s only one left in the city!) and get it streamed back on. As I say, I don’t hold out much hope, but it’s worth a try.
And, I have a phone number! I could probably auction it off on ebay and make enough to buy a new computer! :twisted:
But I won’t. She was very nice and refunded my $25, so I’ll be nice back. And I can’t really complain. The computer is three years old now. Sigh. And I can still use it, if I just ignore the weird background. 
Ja ne!
At the endstages of my twin destructive reboot I got on the phone for the mumblesomethingth time and discovered a shortcut through the oh-so-polite automated voice that kept assuring me that they could help me more efficiently if i would tell them if the problem involved a)press 1 b0 etc etc…Even knowing that it was pointless I positively shrieked ‘the dam machine is totally f*d up!’
Said recording promptly transferred me to a tech! (Not that it did any good……………
I LOVE it! I’m trying that next time!
LOL, Pence!
OSGuy just had a surprisingly similar experience w/ Dell. Off-shore support again, with a rigid rule-follower who just couldn’t seem to understand that it was DELL who had messed up, and royally — multiple times. Dell must have gone out of their way to make so many mistakes, because the odds of random probability are against it, lol!
OSGuy finally gor a real customer support person in the US who was able to understand and semi-fix some of the problems. But, as OSG says, the entire fiasco is one probably *the* worst customer service experience he’s ever had. He’s telling everyone about it, of course, because the story is so long & wild.
The bottom line, is: people have no idea what they are talking about & just try to bluff their way through! Just like your experience, Jane. Unbelievable! I can’t wait to hear *exactly* what it is you said today.
I honestly can’t remember. It was more the tone I let get into my voice. I try to be pleasant dealing with these robotic service people…it generally gets me better service, tho I’m not sure how good it is for my blood pressure. But I did say I wanted to speak with his supervisor, who, as I mentioned, didn’t lower himself to speak to mere customers.
At one point, as I went for my credit card, I did say I was going to splatter my experience all over the internet. He said something like: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. I did not repeat myself.
I did say it was their mistake, and I shouldn’t be paying for their screwup.
He wasn’t impressed. But then, his job is to be a brick wall.
Dell Customer Support is horrible, but I expect it now and don’t really plan to solve anything when I call them, its more like a checklist item, step one call Dell to allow them to tell you they can’t help you, step two search the interweb, …
Personally, I think they’re all putting out too many different machines hodge-podged together with whatever part they got on a deal this week. Each one with a slightly different configuration has to have a new model number and who know what’s going on in the assembly department!
Their answer is all too often to reformat, and with the way microsoft secretes its program data, it’s really hard to keep all your data in a recoverable spot.
There are ways to set it up so all your data goes into My Docs, then all you really have to do is back up MD, but most users have no idea how to do that. If all programs would just do that by default, life w/b much easier.
An email just arrived a few minutes ago from Dell — another one. Dell has More Problems and there will be yet **another** delay.
I think this will be the final straw & OSGuy will cancel his order. Dell can’t seem to do ANYTHING correctly, or on time. OSGuy has now gone without a laptop since March or April. I don’t think he will be willing to wait another *month* longer.
I don’t blame him.
I think I’m probably going with an HP from Costco. Have to wait until next month, then you get a free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, which seriously matters to me. I won’t own a Vista machine.
But 4G of Ram for the graphics I’ve been doing would really make a difference. Just not sure I can come up with the cash. We’ll have to see. Meantime, I’m limping along on computers that are slowly but steadily dying under me.