Do Manufacturers Adequately Support Their Products?

Chris Edwards asks: "I've been having quite a few problems with Dell support recently, and would like to ask the Slashdot community a question. To what extent should computer manufacturers support their product? I own a Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop, which has been plagued with problems since the day I purchased it. The Inspiron 7k series were the first from Dell to take advantage of the new 15"/15.4" screens that had become available. They made one very tiny mistake; they didn't change the hinges to support these gigantic LCDs. The hinges on my laptop have broken four times since I purchased it two years ago. To put this into perspective: 8% of the time that I've owned my laptop, it's been in for repair. Should Dell just replace the laptop? Their support department doesn't think so; what do you think?" Dell isn't the only guilty party here. I'm sure you all have had your share of hardware support stories, the recent Ask Slashdot on IBM Deskstars is another example of this. Which manufacturers have a real bad track record of this kind of behavior?

Kind of a strange question...

[Logic Bomb]

To what extent should a product be supported? I think the fact that someone can seriously ask that question makes a statement about the mindset of the computer industry when it comes to backing up their products. This has been said time and time again; in no other industry do people accept such high product failure rates! I think it's really that simple. That something is expensive doesn't mean it shouldn't be expected to work almost perfectly (perhaps just the opposite). Companies must take whatever steps are necessary to completely alleviate problems with their products within any time period they've specified. If a laptop has a 1-year warranty and the customer has a problem in that year which the company can't get figured out in a week, they shouldn't be able to say "replacing the motherboard is too expensive so we can't help you." And if they're having a lot of problems like that crop up and they're losing money because they have to replace so many motherboards, they shouldn't be allowed to screw customers; it's their suppliers' fault, sue them. Bottom line: there is no accountability for lousy products in the computer industry, and that needs to change.

OEM support sucks/Sun Rules

[supabeast!]

Sun Microsystems has some of the best support around. When I have problems with Sun hardware, I call them and tell the what part I need replaced. Then they send the replacement, I send back the old stuff, and swap the parts myself. If I can't handle a problem, they send a tech out within 24 hours to troubleshoot and fix the problem. And this is all under standard warranty; with a nice service contract you can get two hour turnaround on five year old hardware.

Why are computer vendors worse as a class?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is: why do computer vendors, as a class, treat consumers so much worse than other vendors... and get away with it?

My GE dishwasher has an 800 number attached to it... when it was ten years old I had a problem with a small plastic part that broke... my fault. I called them about it, they took the call without saying "Oh, it's too much trouble for you to try to order such a small part, we'll just send you a new one free." Which they did.

When my daughter was in a university dorm, she ordered some clothing from L. L. Bean via UPS. She never received it. When she traced it through UPS they said they had left it at the front desk, had obtained someone's ILLEGIBLE signature, and insisted they'd followed their own rules and, therefore, would not do anything about it. So she called L. L Bean back, and L. L. Bean said, "Oh, we're sorry that happened, no problem, we'll just send you another." Which they did.

How do computer vendors manage to get away with restocking fees, and refusing to acknowledge defects even when the bulletin boards are awash with them, and refusing to take support calls after 90 days unless you agree to have your credit card charged $40, and so forth and so on...

Does having an on-site warranty help?

[Fencepost]

Anytime I've been advising people on laptop purchases I've tended to push them toward getting as good a warranty as the manufacturer provided, particularly with on-site coverage.

My reasoning for this was that while they may say "business addresses only," it's easy to bring a laptop to the office. A field person may not be able to do anything to fix a laptop, but the other comfort is that in theory at least it gives you more leverage if there is a problem and you have to push for a resolution - if it's a continuing problem, there's the implied threat that you'll keep calling and they'll have to keep sending someone out. Eventually the third-party company that they contract with for field service may start giving them flack because of all the calls, and if you get the same field service person regularly they may have more clout with the manufacturer's tech support. Besides, the cost increase isn't that much, maybe a couple hundred dollars that spread over the life of the machine is insignificant compared to the cost of sending it away for weeks.

One thing I have learned though: when buying a laptop, find out what it takes to remove the HD so you can yank it (at least to make a backup) before sending the machine in. I've heard enough horror stories from people whose systems died, they couldn't extract data & didn't have a good backup, they sent it in for service and got it back with the drive restored to the original shipping configuration.

Re:You've had a laptop for 2 years...

[Telek]

I had a problem with HP and their crappy burners. I bought a 2x a few months after they came out, and within about 6 months it was unusable. After about a dozen coasters I complained and got a refurbbed drive that lasted about 2 months before it failed. I complained again and got another one that was DOA, and was getting "hardware failure" messages. I tried to reply and they told me "well, normally if you got those messages we'd get you to send it in, but since you just got it from us it must be your problem". After about a week of convincing them I finally wrote a 2 page letter to the head of the customer service department and CC'ed it to a few other high ranking people in HP. I diplomatically asked for a new drive and 20 disks to replace the ones that I lost, and basically got a call the next day saying "ok, where'd you like us to send it?".

Re:VALinux was my best experience

[Deal-a-Neil]

Recently, I asked for a little support -- asking them if they could tell me if the VA Linux 1000 server could come up after a power-cycle (remote power reboot units used if a server locks up). I would fudge around with it myself, but it's already at the data center, and the next time I go out there, I'd reconfig it.

In any case, the warranty expired last month, so they told me that for $250, they'd answer my question. I asked the lady by e-mail, "Okay -- how about this -- just tell me *IS* this possible? Some motherboards don't have the ability to bypass the soft power switch." She responded saying that it is 100% possible, but it will still cost me $250 if I wanted to find out how. ;-)

So what in the fudge is VA doing now anyway, now that they're not selling servers?