Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: Computer manufacturers are fairly equal, but what about their customer service?

My first computer had some bad parts and I struggled because I was very new to the computer. Family members convinced me it was not right. It froze up often, overheating caused the fans to run on high continuously.
It did seem that support was always willing to try to help but seemed to start from square 1 with each new session. I finally just informed them that those troubleshooting steps have been followed in previous support sessions and it was time to honor the warranty. They immediately arranged for shipment and replaced some bad hardware. The computer is still being used by a family member years later without ever a problem sinse it was serviced the first year in warranty.

We had an issue with a printer also and a replacement was shipped while we still had the faulty one.
Because of our favorable experience from support offered by the manufacturer we have since purchased two more computers from HP.

It's odd that the support offered by the same manufacturer will lock in one customer and drive away another customer!

Document the first time an issue arises that might be related to the product. Alert the manufacturer as early as possible so it is on record. Let them attempt to guide you through a troubleshooting session or two to enable them to learn if it is a problem with their product. But if you begin to realize it is not going to be resolved this way tell them you expect it to be repaired now under warranty.
If in a new support session with an old problem remind them that it is an unresolved issue that has been previously reported.

I've been in the US since 97 and I buy an extreme amount of hardware considering
how little money I have.

I used to swear by HP and mainly because a bunch of years ago, I had a SUPER
great experience with a guy from HP that bent over backwards to help me.

When I get a good product and more importantly, good service, I am an extremely loyal
customer. To give you an idea, here's a list of what I can remember buying over the last
20 years.

1. 4M laser
2. Scanjet 4c scanner
3. Another scanner
4. One more scanner
5. 2500c and Color Pro GA (+ 3 or 4 replacements that they had to keep sending to make sure it was working fine, which it never was)
6. 890c printer
7. 1200c printer
8. Business Inkjet 1220 printer (I think this is the)
9. CD burner
10. B9180 (several replacements here too)
11. dv9135nr laptop
12. tm2 (one replacement)

Now, it's gone so far that although I want a new laptop and I LIKE their stuff, I don't want to buy one.

I got a Thinkpad X200 with touch screen and sold it to a friend of mine. He had some problems with it and Lenovo was great to deal me. In one forum they tell me that's because the thinkpad is a business product, not so with the others but I have no experience with this.

I've had NOTHING but bad experience with Asus and Samsung and although I love the configuration of their laptops, I won't touch them with a ten foot pole.

HOWEVER, since I'm low on bucks, I can't find a thinkpad that suits me at my price level.

My point is, most service SUCKS!

Just to give you an idea, here's my latest computer that I got two years ago....and I have boutht LOTS of new stuff since
including a custom built server with 15 drive capability.
Yes, I do spend a lot of money on hardware.
http://www.1stchoicemonroe.com/images/New-Computer-Configuration-Jeff-3.jpg (configuration has changed since and peripherals added)

Why am I showing all this? Well, I hope people from Asus, Samsung AND HP read this and that they'll know that they lose money with ME and others that they screw/don't take care of.

I have an HP tower and 2 HP printers. They began providing free Chat support in 2005, but stopped providing it for free in January 2011. I can go for months or even years without needing tech support and I don't want to waste my time with them unless it is necessary. When something comes up that is NOT covered by their user guide, I expect free chat support. I get that from Belkin, Time Warner Cable, Brother, etc. so I also expect their equipment to work or expect them to dialog with me if they FORGOT to put something in their manuals. I began using computers in 1958. Although I have retired three times, I still use computers daily. If they build good equipment and write good manuals, they don't need to provide any tech support.
Winston

Please, drahuschek, don't entice HP to give you money to take one of their units because it may come to that. Life is too short to endure anymore of HP's garbage.Though we both, as-well-as many others, have been duped to believe in HP, this discussion has brought us together to expose HP for what they really are. WORTHLESS.... The paint isn't even dry on the case and it's environmentally unsafe to throw it in the garbage. In retrospect, I could just as well burned the money and had less grief.

HP was pondering the decision to cease building PCs. Actually, "building PCs' is a misnomer. Unfortunately, they must still believe there are people dumb enough to buy their products. I was one of them and will admit my grievous error. But, it is now my mission to to give them nearly a thousand dollars in advertising that I am paying for myself. I have receipts for this expensive tin box referred to as an HP Pavilion Elite (no less) HPE 410f PC.

And a word to HP. I will keep hammering until HP goes under or/HP decides they can fill this box up with parts that will actually make it work as advertised. I'm not holding my breath on the latter.

To anyone still considering buying an HP: I have a very lightly used HP described above at a great price. I will even assure you it will work just as good as a new HP. Well, according to HP standards anyway.

Customer Service sucks no matter where -

I cannot think of a single manufacturer of computers that grant 100% customer service. So with that said, then yes all manufacturers are pretty much equal.

My most recent turmoil would absolutely be HP, NEVER AGAIN! When you're hard drive crashes within the week after the 1 year anniversary (Warranty time) and HP Customer Service is downright rude - WELL then? Never again!

The biggest problem with customer service would be the lack of English speaking service representatives. I strongly feel that if communication were clearer then customer service would be best for all companies. Instead of "Bill Payment - Press One", "Billing - Press two" it should direct you from recordings such as; "English - Press One", "Swahili - Press Two", so on and so forth. We are used to the one and two option however, they should provide options for at least for the most prominent countries purchasing their product.

Thank you for letting me voice my personal observations -

Not only did Cyberpower ship me a $1,500 laptop with a cranky disc drive that won't respond to the touch sensitive key for eject, they either wanted me to ship the whole laptop back (VA to CA) to fix it or have the disc drive removed and send THAT back for a replacement BEFORE they would send me a replacement. I wanted them to send me a replacement and then I would send them the defective player so I wouldn't have to go without the disc driver for a week or so. They wouldn't even have to pay their techies for the time it would take to swap it out. No dice.

I said the hell with it. I can live without the touch sensitive button function.

I was cranky by that point (about a half dozen email exchanges later) so I said how about sending me the free 17" bag for the laptop to replace the useless 15" bag they sent me went they shipped the 17" laptop. First they tried to tell me they had sent the right bag until I forwarded a CB email they had sent me earlier telling me the 17" bags were out of stock and they didn't know when they'd be coming in. I mean WTF kind of company runs out of cheap nylon laptop bags for weeks at a time? Do they only sell one 17" laptop a year? I still don't have the damn thing.

All this garbage is my reward for having bought a 15" laptop and a desktop from them previously. My customer loyalty is gone.

P.S. How else am I supposed to offer my opinion on customer service if I don't "vent" about the incident(s) behind my opinion?

Dell and HP are probably victims of cheap crap Chinese manufacturing! Not that I feel that lets them off the hook, but maybe the US makers will smell the coffee someday and wake up!!

I hope you didn't get that from my post!

Why buy the longest warranty possible on Dell and HP? Just buy something that will last (like the Lenovo) Paying extra money for a warranty on a product that can not be trusted is not good sense. It is like buying a Yugo with a 3-yr extended warranty that may not survive the warranty period or a Honda for the same money w/o warranty that will be running ten years w/o missing a beat.

I have been pretty lucky, up until my last HP, to buy (even refurb.) electronics without extended warranty and have excellent service life. If it is going to fail, it will be in the first year.

My HP started to fail almost immediately. I have found that even HP's first year warranty is worthless if they will not acknowledge the problem. And Staples is "playing the fiddle" for me because I didn't buy the extended warranty. Being a very strong believer is customer service, I won't deal with either of them in the future. These companies are doing business like there is no tomorrow. But their legacies are close behind and, eventually, there will be no tomorrow.

i bought an acer aspire notebook in aug 2011 and the hard crashed in about 3 months. not sure it was a bad HD since i have 4 children in the family who arent so gentle with lappers as they should be. anyhoo i did all i knew to try and restore the HD but it was a lost cause. after a short time on the phone with an acer customer service agent i was given clear instructions on how to get the unit repaired, (the agent was clearly not American but that is no big deal to me. her english wasn't perfect but it was intelligeable). all i had to pay for was postage to ship the unit to the nearest repair facility. i received an email when they received the unit, an email when they fixed the unit and finally an email when the unit was being shipped back complete with tracking information. the repair was done in a timely manner and i write this reply from said repaired laptop. thanks acer.

I am glad you got good support from Acer but I have a story also. I bought my wife an Acer notebook and it lasted until the warranty expired and then stopped working. The jack that is used to plug in the AC power had broken it's solder connection to the motherboard. I am pretty handy with electronics and built my own tower PC the year before. I took the cover off and resoldered the connection. This was EXTREMELY tricky as too much heat can ruin the motherboard. After about a week, the connection broke again. I went back to the store and bought another ACER notebook. Same song, different verse. After the warranty expired, the same thing happend to this one. This time I took it to a local highly rated computer shop and left it for repairs. The owner called me to say he could repair it but the cost to resolder the connection was $180. WOW! I asked him why it was so expensive and he said it was because it was very dangerous to do and his shop guaranteed such work for a year but it was highly likely that it would happen again and he would have to repair it again for free under this shop warranty. I asked him if this repair was common and he said it was very common as the manufacurer has used a very poor design to keep the power cord in place when it is connected from exerting a bending force on the jack which was why so many of them break that connection. In other words they needed to reinforce the mounting of the jack so that movement of the flexible cord does not result in flexing the jack and its connection to the mother board.
The computer worked great when its battery was charged but it cannot be charged if the connection is broken. All this because of a design flaw. Now my wife has a new APPLE MacBOOK PRO notebook and her ACER is in the closet still broken. The same connection for the power cord on the APPLE is via a magnetic connection instead of a plug-in connection to a jack soldered to the motherboard. If any force or bending is applied to the APPLE cord, the magnectic connection just breaks loose. Simple solution but APPLE did it and ACER did not.
Winston

As an inventor with 83 patentable inventions in my portfolio, I think that a lot of patent law needs reform.
However, the fact that Apple may have a patent on the power connection that I described would not have prevented Acer from coming up with this improvement and getting their own patent before Apple did. Apple was just first.
Also, if Acer wants to pay Apple for use of this concept, I am confident that the executives at Apple would entertain a proposal.
In addition, Apple's solution is not the only solution. A simple redesign of the power jack could provide enough stability so that movement of the cord would not flex the solder connection. This would have cost ACER next to nothing and would not require a new design for the cord.

As a person who's an insider here's the answer. It all depends on money. These companies only goal is to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. When you ask for support it's considered a cost that is not wanted. These companies have developed systems to keep support costs to a minimum. These companies rate their support employees on the amount of time they spend fixing your problem. If they go over their allotted time per call on too many calls they are fired. Most of these people are poorly paid and poorly trained so they are mainly concerned with keeping their job, not repairing your computer. Since all the manufactures get their components from the same place the only cost that a company may leverage to bring down the cost of the computer they are selling is its labor cost. While there are no manufactures today the give the kind of customer support that buyers expect the ranking in the order of best to worst is as follow:
IBM (they no longer make or support PC's but they are included because sometimes the manufacturers contract IBM to service it's machines. This is the company that spends the most time training their technicians), Lenovo, HP (aka Compaq), Asus, Acer, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway. I don't have experience or any inside knowledge of Samsung so I did not list them. Apple is in its own category and cannot be compared.

I've had a few computers over the years, and experiences with a few more. The best computers I've ever had were -- are -- OEMs.

The fact is that IT supply shops and chains have a reputation to maintain, and customers to lose. They do build to price as well as specification, but OTOH you do get what you pay for. This machine now is about 10 years old, an Intel 845 chipset for which I had to download W2K drivers, and is still running like a steam-train. It was originally an education (High School) tender, reconned and sold second-hand -- but it is an OEM by a local Perth, Western Australia company.

My next machines, running W7 and W8-capable will also be OEM, perhaps 2nd-hand, perhaps new. I've seen too many dramas with Brand Names, especially at the Home User level, with many "features" which make it difficult to extend them, eg: add a decent Graphics card, or replace a not-so-good NIC.

Gordon.

In 30 years of owning Desktops and Laptops. Worst or no customer support Fujitsu ( previously Fujitsu Siemens), HP mess you around, Dell I found the most accurate, responsive and good follow up. ACER not Bad.

We are talking Computer Manufacturers but a lot of the time it is the Software or operating system( updates?) that has corrupted, leading to Blue Screen, System will not Boot etc.

Therefore I must add my 0 points (out of 10) to Microsoft and in particular Windows-Microsoft Answers. Close it down or get the site and engineers to perform. Bill Gates Your Service is the worst.
I have solved software issues with many Suppliers eg Nero, DWG, Google, Android-Samsung/Google and Ubuntu.
Never I have I had a solution from Microsoft.

My local PC Store have become my best support.