About 3 weeks ago, my laptop's 1 year warranty ran out. So you can almost imagine where this is going...
The good news is that my laptop had a major issue about 1 month ago (yep, 1 week before warranty ran out). What happened? Well I was tweaking Vista and noticed that there was a recommended BIOS update on the Gateway site for anyone running Vista. So I downloaded the burning software, and the update... actually I saved this one for last, but was having some painful WiFi issues that I decided to go for it.
Well, the burn completed successfully, BUT upon reboot the machine would not boot. It goes through the standard tests. So it went back for service.
In my mind this should simply be a matter of them cracking open the box getting the BIOS chip out, dropping it into a chip burner, re-burning it, and then dropping it back in the box...
I got a phone call on the day I expected it back in town...
"Mr. Kimble, the problem your laptop is having is not covered by warranty..."
(Ok,here it comes... couple hundred bucks... this sucks but I can live with that... I NEED this laptop)
"You need a whole new motherboard to repair this" (What!!?? Are you kidding me? It's a chip... that just needs re-burned... if I still had the equipment I would have done it myself... well except that my soldering skills leave a lot to be desired)
"The price to fix this is $ {take laptop original price and add $500}. Do you want me to fix it?"
"Hell, no!" (sorry for the profanity) This laptop has never been right... I was under the gun when I bought it and I kept it beyond the return window. I bought it at Best Buy, after talking to some of the Geek Squad guys, I decided to call Best Buy's customer support line.
I didn't figure they would do anything about the laptop, but to be honest I thought I might get something from them (discount, coupon, or something).
How short sighted? It is the difference between a customer loyalty and customer ennui (or worse customer hatred).
I don't hate them, but they gave me nothing... A $100 off coupon actually causes me to buy from them as well as causes me to remember this whole bad experience as "those stupid jerks at Gateway!!" It's now "those goofs at Gateway and Best Buy."
Anyway, I bought the "Man's Laptop." Or at least a reasonable fascimile. I took the money I would have spent on fixing the motherboard on my crappy machine and bought an ASUS A7t-AS1. The thing I like the most (which you probably won't like) is the 17" monitor (it's also a Turion TL-60 -- 2.00 ghz). From now on whenever I speak or go to conferences, people will remember me as the guy with the massive laptop!
[BTW, Papa Fish, I need a new Microsoft sticker for my new laptop bag... the ASP.NET podcast sticker looks puny on it].
[tags:gateway sucks, gateway, best buy sucks, best buy,ASUS rocks,ASUS]
Print | posted on Friday, September 07, 2007 5:25 PM