Something I read recently, anecdotal, but I believe every word of it:
Quote:
A satisfied customer tells 3 people of their experience. A dissatisfied customer tells 10
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Something I read recently, anecdotal, but I believe every word of it:
Quote:
A satisfied customer tells 3 people of their experience. A dissatisfied customer tells 10
I received a phone call this a.m. from a friend who purchased an ECS A928 in 2001 from a distributer in Cleveland, Ohio. The distributer has since gone out of business, and since I build and repair desktops, he called for my advice.
Imagine my surprise when I found the forum at Virtual Dr. and read the stories of many people with an identical problem. I have not as yet seen the computer in question, but he described to a "T" the melted plastic and the ground prong pulling out from the mainboard. I expect to see this machine and will examine it and take photos. Please let me know if any of that sort of information would be helpful to you.
It occurs to me that a problem such as this (overheating to the melting point of plastic and/or solder) is not even so much a warranty issue as it is a serious safety concern. As such, it should be subject to a product recall regardless of warranty status. Perhaps the Consumer Product Safety Commission should be notified.
Please keep us posted. Most of us are just small fish in an ocean where sharks prowl...
I wonder if these lap tops use the same AC adapters as these http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/11/tech...h/dell_recall/
Here we go again gentleman and ladies. I was surffing on the internet and all of sudden the lap top died on me. I have been using it for about a year and a half since it was repaired by ECS and nnoew it is not working anymore. I will be sending it to DAvis Cai as soion as I get done with this post. I have read what he has done for other people. I hope the shipping doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. Here is the thread to the other site
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/showthread.php?t=578&page=1
Wow, what a thread. The computer industry (hardware and software) sure does seem like a mess. I'm starting to wonder if any vendor can be trusted anymore. I bought an ECS bare-bones a couple of years ago, until the motherboard died on me.
Then I got an ABS, lauded in PCWorld as an Editor's Choice (ABS is still on the mag's list this year too). But since then these things have happened: 1. Dead pixels on the LCD monitor after about four months (of course, not covered, except with a refurb -- how do you refurb something with dead pixels already????); 2. Bundled printer failure after less than a year (had to take a refurb on that too, though thank God it is still working fine for almost a year); 3. CPU failed after just over a year (AMD Athlon XP 2100, had to replace it locally, but this time got smart and took a three-year warranty from AMD); 4. Now it is in the shop again (haven't heard the verdict) after suffering random shutdowns for a week or two that appear to be electrical problems (just guessing), although when I took it in the tech immediately tested the power supply, said it was fine.
Seems it's a case of Buyer Beware anymore. Makes you wonder whether vendors are doing this on the cheap to make fast bucks because computer prices have come down so much. How, after all, can you still make a profit on a $500 machine that might have sold for $1,500 or more a couple years ago? I think I see their point. Yet of course, I wish it didn't have to be.
I suppose it might be well to turn to Dell the next time, though I have seen and heard things about them too.
There must be some kind of happy medium between $200 computers with lousy support and $5,000 computers with at least some tech support.
Cheers,
Wendy
:eek: :confused: :mad:
Good Morning Wendy,
I bought a top of the line Dell desktop and laptop 3 years ago costing $3,400 and $3,700 respectively. Each price included approximately $500 for the top of the line premium tech support.
When I had a blue screen of death issue 6 months after buying my desktop, I didn't get the next business day support that I had been promised. Instead I got the no-nothing tech support in India.
Eight months later, I finally got the issue solved by hiring a tech support company to troubleshoot my system.
If you buy a system in the mid-level to top of the line price range, I think that the hardware that you get will be reliable.
But I don't know if that is the current case now or how far in the future that will be true. The reason for my doubt is that the Dell company has been on a masssive march of greed and to hell with the customers (unless the customers are one of the Fortune 500 companies).
A year ago Dell was bragging that their net profits for that quarter were up 46% over that quarter in the previous year. The next quarter their net profits were up 27%..... and the march has continued.
Dell's treatment of their ordinary customers and small businesses has gotten so bad that I have heard comments from Microsoft employees that they are thoroughly disgusted with Dell.
I have several friends who have bought HP laptops and they have been very happy with them. These computers were priced very well.
In spite of buying top of the line systems, all of the components were not the latest components; i.e. USB 1.x instead of 2.0, which had been released a year earlier.
Check out the Technology section of the Houston Chronicle. This site provides some excellent advice for how to evaluate hardware components. If I were looking at buying a new computer, I would collect information from Virtual DR and from the resources available at http://www.chron.com/.
Cheers,
Linda
:D :rolleyes: :D
Ha, ha. Funny you should mention HP. It seems they try to make good products but I have had a $1700 desktop go down because the cheap power supply they stuffed in there died and took the HD with it...just days after the warranty ended (no I didn't take the extended). Now my $1500+ HP notebook is in pieces with a battery and a HD on order. The battery lasted only 30 minutes instead of 2 hours...fully charged. I had the power adapter plugged in, it got hot and shut off. The comp switched to batt power (I wasn't aware of it) and before I knew it the comp abruptly shut down, no more batt power. Replugged the power adapter back in, started the comp and discovered it was toast. Graphics were scrambled, tried to reboot but it never did again. Just keeps restarting over and over. I tried all the boot options and all the disks, restore and Win XP Home, but with no luck. Tried to reinstall windows but it locks on C: formatting, lol. I quit. Does anyone make decent comps anymore??? I just hope a new hd is all I need. I make my own desktops now but can't do that with laptops (a little modifying but not from scratch).
Hi Linda, zowie, well I guess that proves my point.
What to do, what to do!! I really don't feel like building the next one -- tore up my fingers wrestling the chip into the socket on the one I did a couple of years ago. It's just not fun.
I suppose the trick is to go to one of those U-Configure-It sites and be sure to choose reliable hardware. I think I might know what that is though these days, one never knows!!
My first computer was a Quantex, remember them???? I had good experiences with them, though. One day they just kind of went out of business and didn't answer the phone. Luckily by then I knew what to do . . .
It's definitely a Roll-Your-Own world out there.
Cheers
Wendy
:rolleyes: :eek: :confused:
Yep, I do. :DQuote:
Originally posted by HPNOMORE, Does anyone make decent comps anymore???
I agree with PL. Me too :D
Seriously, I wouldn't trust any of the big (or small) manufacturers. They try to sell them as cheap as possible, and the ones who suffer are the customers that buy them. No doubt about it, the best way to go is to build yourself, choosing the parts that you want. Of course, it helps to spend that little much more to get quality parts.
The reason I don't buy assembly line pcs, is their cheap parts. Lousy warranties (how many Dell's I've fixed over time, too many to count. :eek: ) Because they build them assembly line style, their parts are bought a lot cheaper than we can buy them, and off the wall computer companies, those most people have never heard of!!, I'd never buy again. I made this mistake, but only once, from then on I built my own. The mistake cost $1200. :rolleyes: :eek:
And I hate to say this, but even some mom and pop builders don't use quality parts, nor do they offer tech support, nor do they make sure everything works like it should before they hand it off to you to take home, then your find all the problems.......:rolleyes:
You can't buy parts for a laptop and build it yourself, your at the mercy of the laptop manufactures.
My laptop is on its way back from David Cai in Ontario CA, he has fixed it and many other A928 Ibuddie 4
Hey Mackey,
recognized you from the pc-review forum.
For everyone else, there are a lot of other people out there who have the same problem. Go to this forum: http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-578-1.php. There was even a guy thinking about starting a class action suit. There should be a site call www.ecssucks.com. Anyone up for it?
Cheers
It appears a few assumptions are being made with out first gathering the facts.
1) PCinfinity is assuming that the problem is user related with out validation.
2) ECS is assuming that same as PCinfinity.
Regardless, in the ideal world a customer has a complaint, the company or companies that are selling the product need to verify the information they are relaying.
If the problem is user error, state why it is user error and explain to the user what corrections they can or should have made.
Running a small resale computer store I can see both sides of the coin.
I purchase a part from a wholesaler. The part breaks, the wholesaler refuses to warrenty the part. I as the final seller have to make a decision to either suffer the rathe of the dissatisfired customer, or eat the profits on the part and make it right by the customer.(This has happened before and I lost the profit on the sales for the part, but I believe I made the right descision in making it right by the customer, as they continue to give me repeat business)
From looking at the pictures, it appears Thomas has a very legitimate claim about the ground pin.
6 months on and the thread is resurrected again.