Annual Customer Support Rankings 332
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo's Tech Tuesday is running PC Mag's annual survey of best and worst PC vendors' customer support. At the top of the list: Apple. At the bottom: Sony. Heard any good tech support horror stories lately?"
Best, but not perfect, obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
When the hard drive in my iBook died, I had to send it back to Apple (no problem there). As the documentation requested, I included my power adapter and the cord for it with the laptop back.
*repairs*
When my laptop was returned, not only did I not get my same power cord back, but the two pieces (the brick and the cord) we incompatible... Not only that, but I still had the small plug to go directly into the wall (I forget what they referred to it as), and that wasn't compatible with the brick piece either. WTF?
So I had to call them back up and have them send me a power cord and the small plug piece. They were quick and fairly understanding about it, but I'm yet to figure out why it would have been so hard to just send the same cord/brick piece back with it that I sent in...
But the laptop itself was repaired without issue and in a timely manner, it was just a minor inconvenience of not being able to plug in my laptop to charge it...
Reliability Ratings (Score:4, Interesting)
sony is teh suck (Score:2, Interesting)
What about non-official channels? (Score:5, Interesting)
Based entirely on my own experiences and those of my friends (how's that for sample size?) I'd bet that for every call the manufacturer receives some poor "computer geek" friend gets ten calls.
It'd be interesting to know how the unofficial support channels stack up against the real thing. I'd bet that neighborhood support would put everyone to shame: we do everything from replacing hardware faster than any mail-in service does to trouble-shoot VPN setups for our bosses and we don't (usually) fall back on the old tech support dismissal "That's a software problem: call Microsoft. Good-bye." Or in the case of a hardware issue "That's a hardware problem: Call IBM. Good-bye."
IBM Thinkpads... (Score:5, Interesting)
Compare this to Toshiba, where I have not only never gotten anyone who remotely speaks English, but every repair also seems to involve shipping your laptop back to them, and waiting for two weeks for "parts" that you were told would be in stock every day for a week.
I've also heard good stories about Apple, but nothing can beat my experience with IBM so far.
Dell (Score:5, Interesting)
Second person, same deal - sent me XP Home after apologizing for not getting it right. Waited several weeks; it never came.
Third person, "we needed to order more disks" (this is after 3 weeks of waiting for a disk that usually takes 3 to 5 days to come). Promised to send a disk.
After 2 weeks, fourth person: "our database says you've already gotten it". After checking the dates, I point out that that was the *first* disk I was sent - the XP Home one - that I'd already told him about. He checked with tech support, and found out that their database has the same order # for Home and Pro. Corrected the order number, and (hopefully) sent me the Pro disk.
It's been 4 days, so I'm still waiting. And the worst of it is that they always get my "service tag" wrong. It's got an M in it, so it's understandable that they'd mistake it for an N, but I spell it out in the international phonetic alphabet every time. Jeez. I decided to just install Home, since they said I could keep the disks. I have Office Pro, anyway. Anyone know how to do an easy (translation: without data/program loss) upgrade? And yes, of course I finally found the Pro disk the day after I installed home, despite having been looking for it for 5-6 weeks at least.
Oh, and don't forget - you can't lodge a complaint through the phone system. You have to use their website. Smells like BS to me. How many people are going to take the time to do that extra step?
Re:Dell is by far the worst... (Score:1, Interesting)
I reported that my computer continuously reboots, and never lets me in to the operating system. Their response was "Are you contacting me from the affected computer?" Ummmm, no.... or I would not have a problem.
Most of the information I found in their knowledge base advised me to "Right click on My Computer.... blah blah blah" which is probably much easier to do if the machine will ever actually finishing booting up.
Finally, I tell them that I have a mega-warranty, and I want someone to come out and get the laptop working. No dice. They tell me they only send someone out if I can prove it is something I cannot fix myself. And, because I have not completed the knowledge base steps, I am not going to get help.
I'm obviously not giving up at this point, but this has been my experience with their "service" to this point.
Great article. (Score:2, Interesting)
In 2002 28% of desktops needed fixing, while this year the number dropped to 17%.
I find that kind of hard to belive. I support about 75 desktop machines, and other than coffee spills destroying a keyboard or two, and a couple mice going bad (I'll blame that on the cords being abused), we haven't had any hardware that needed repair/replacement at all.
DELL. For a company whose users love it, it has some "now, about that " issues to address. Its desktops received high marks for reliability, but when they do break down, Dell's tech support generates some grumbling. Part of the grumbling may relate to the company's outsourcing of portions of its tech support some respondents in our survey complained about not being able to understand some of the help technicians. Whatever the reason, Dell scores slightly below average on tech support.
True. I can't understand anything they're saying, and it's very difficult to deal with their outsourced support.
Its worst category, though, is notebook computers. These rank below average for reliability in general, with 25% of business notebooks needing repairs. On the plus side, when it does have to repair its machines, Dell does a very good job.
I've had 3 Dell Laptop harddrives crash on me. All the same brand of drive, same symptoms. We've also had problems with some of them (we have around 15) overheating and freezing up.
I really wonder how many problems are actually bad hardware, and how many are things like Windows problems, and spyware/viruses.
Re:Dell is by far the worst... (Score:1, Interesting)
I think the real problem is that Dell doesn't really care about their small customers (individuals and small business) since they have such a steady client stream and therefore don't spend much money in supporting them.
For example, the small business I work at ordered a Dell a month before they were going to need it. The day before it was scheduled to ship, it was delayed by two weeks. After two weeks, nothing had changed on the status page, so we called them, and they said to wait another few days. After 3 or 4 days we called again and they said it had been delayed indefinately. We canceled at that point because after 7 weeks, they still could not give us a date on when it would ship, and on top of that they didn't seem to care.
I will say that when it comes to honoring the warranty, Dell is pretty good. If you can convince them that the part has gone bad, they will usually have a replacement at your door within two days...
Re:Best, but not perfect, obviously (Score:3, Interesting)
I got my computer back in 31 days... not good.
I had installed 512 Mb Ram into it... it wasn't in there anymore, whoops. The first stick they sent me didn't work... whoops. Then the second one worked finally. The day after I got that one, I got a third stick in the mail.
God bless Apple, but I hope they can do it a bit faster next time.
Poor support for Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a Sony Vaio laptop that is giving me troubles with the video driver under Linux. It uses the Neomagick graphics chip which is crappy but should be able to do 2D dosktop stuff just fine.
I thought upgrading the BIOS might get rid of the artifacts I see in X all the time. I went to their site to grab the latest BIOS for the machine. The BIOS on their site is in the form of a bootdisk that will do the upgrade for you. That's great. So what's the problem? The _make_ you run a Windows only
It infuriates me that they would force me to have Windows installed just to update the BIOS.
BigFiber.net [bigfiber.net]
Article hits nail on the head (Score:3, Interesting)
Bingo. Exactly.
I have two separate Apple support stories. One was at my company: for whatever reason, Preferences got corrupt on a 10.3 machine (I thought we left this stuff back in 9). Called Apple up, and the guy was extremely knowledgable and friendly. Walked me through what needed to be done on the command prompt (fun boot!), exactly what files to change, etc. Got back up and running in under 10 minutes.
Second story: iPod on PC. What a disaster. Simple installation: Dell machine that came as is with not a lot of junk installed. Installed the iPod software, installed iTunes, hooked it up and... nothing. Called them up. Played with services, played with dlls... Finally I got results a few days later by reading some forums online (not Apple's).
Now, before you say "Well, Apple shouldn't need to support PCs", 2 issues. One is that they market the iPod for the PC (in fact, I usually see it as "iPod for PC/Mac"). Second, and more importantly, when you become a PC-related company you have to learn to deal with lots of different vendors. Apple isn't stupid: they should know this. They should know (at the very least) to check the common Dell configurations and see what conflicts. "Remove the other programs" isn't an acceptable answer. "Reset the iPod" or "Restore the iPod" REALLY isn't, especially at the alarming rate I've heard it.
I always said, you can get a good feel for how solid a product is but the first bit of documentation you see. 3G iPod, bought a few days ago. Very top of the first reference card you get instructions for reseting it in case it crashes. I've only had to do this once, but kind of ominous, you think?
Why I love Apple (true story) (Score:5, Interesting)
I called Apple, and they said it was not problem for me to exchenge the KB at a local Mac dealer. I went to the Mac dealer, and they were asshats to an extreme extend (The store is going south fast, as they are using all the time to blame Apple instead of taking care of customers.)
I hung around the store for ten minutes as the second in line for service, and listened to the four people in the offices playing Snood and complaining to their bosses about how Apple rips them off. That might be true, but you still need to SELL something if you're in the selling computers-thingy.
As I could not exchange the KB there, instead they got angry with me, I called Apple again. They were shocked to hear about the treatment and sent me a new KB. This was friday afternoon. On monday morning, the new KB had arrived. I unpacked it and installed it, getting ready to send the old one back. After installing it I discovered that it lacked the Æ, Ø and Å keys. And I kinda need them to write norwegian.
So I called Apple again, and talked to a kind customer service woman. She heard my story, verified it in their log and said: "God, this is embarrasing", and sent a new KB next day delivery. This was Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning, the new KB arrived, with all the keys, none crooked. But it was the 2002 model, not the 2003 model.
So, again, I called Apple.
This time I said: "Look, I'm not complaining. There has been some fuckups, but your behaviour has been kinda superb in handling it. But the KB is not the one I ordered. I can, however, keep it for a small reimbursement"
The representative said: "What kind of reimbursement did you have in mind?"
"Well, I could really use an Apple Mouse"
"And how much do you want to pay for it?"
"Well, about 30 USD sounds fair"
"And would that be a wired or a wirless one?"
"You know, the wireless is veeeeeery nice..."
"I see. Let me talk to my manager about this, please hold"
I held the line for two minutes, before she returned. "Do you have Bluetooth in your Mac?" she asked.
"Yes, it's a new Powerbook" I responded.
"In that case, I'm sending you a new Bluetooth Apple mouse, free of charge as a was of saying sorry for the mishaps." she said.
After giving her my CC number (without exp. date), she brought up the old order and added the mouse to it. five minutes after, I brought the old order up in Safari and saw that the mouse was due to be delivered soon.
This is, bar none, the best customer treatment I have ever recieved. The fucked up, yes, but really, really went out of their way to unfuck it. And I got a new Bluetooth mouse to replace the piece of crap that is the Microsoft Bluetooth mouse.
And I like typing on the 2002 KB better. Win - win - win...
UK: NTL cable. AAARGH (Score:5, Interesting)
You ring up, and you're asked to key in your phone number. Why couldn't they just get it through caller ID? Then you're guided through the familiar maze o' optiions(tm) until you wait for 20 minutes listening to Brian Eno shite interspersed with "Your call is valuable to us, so we put you on hold you dozy twat". Then you get to a person.
I remember one time my broadband had gone tits up. So I called up, got through, said I was using Linux and was told they didn't support it. End of story, they refused even to run generic ping tests, just no Linux ever. (The company is part owned by Microsoft btw). It just so happens I had a Windows XP partition which hadn't been booted for a month or two, so I booted that up and called support again. This was at the height of the Blaster outbreak, so they screened all the calls to make sure that all XP users had the patches etc. I said that I didn't, but it didn't really matter since the XP install had been untouched since a month or two ago and I just want to get some generic tests run anyway. What did they do?
They said I couldn't be put through to tech support and they wouldn't do anything because I didn't have the Blaster patches that I couldn't get for an OS I didn't use. The reason I needed the patches was because I might have a virus which can do no damage anyway because there was no Internet connection. So to get the patches for this virus which doesn't do anything, I need them to fix the internet connection, however they won't fix it as I didn't have the patches.
Sons of bitches. If anyone from NTL is reading this, GET SOME FUCKING LINUX SUPPORT YOU COCKS.
Re:Dell is by far the worst... (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a 2000FP -- it failed after 5 months. Groups of pixels started to go bad in "puke" colors (red/green/blue clusters) I called Dell tech. support, and at first they didn't even consider it a failure, saying it was how LCDs were manufacturered, and that there is always going to be a bad pixel here or there. Realllly? And I had paid $1500 for this? (I bought them when they first came out.) Finally I got the guy to admit that this is clearly not acceptable, and he offered to replace it with a NEW one. He said they'd ship one out overnight and I'd just send the old one back. They needed my credit card to do this (which made no sense to me, since he had my address/credit card info/name/phone/etc. on his screen) so I gave him the information.
Two days went by, and I get the monitor, and discover it's a REFURBISHED unit. Plug it in, and there are three bright red "bad" pixels spread all over the screen. I call up Dell and ask to speak to the same tech. support person-- they say he isn't working today, so I deal with another person. They tell me that three dead pixels is perfectly acceptable, and falls under Dell's policies on LCDs. I asked why I wasn't shipped a brand new LCD, and he explained that they didn't make too many 2000FP's, and that refurbished units is all they have in stock sometimes. I demanded a brand new replacement, and he kept quoting the policy. Has to be "seven or more" to constitute a replacement. Tried to talk to his supervisor but he said they weren't available.
I've written complaint letters to Dell's PR department, and received back a standard "Thanks for giving us feedback" letter, along with a SURVEY. I filled it out all negative and sent it back. Still haven't heard back from this day.
After burning me on my $1500 2000FP and my $3000 Dell Inspiron 8000, I'm not spending another cent with Dell.
Re:Dell is by far the worst... (Score:1, Interesting)
My girlfriend's Dell?
First off, the laptop literally is falling apart. It's built so that every time you open it, the monitor supporting bits are stressed. Eventually, they snap. She had also lost some screws that had managed to fall out (HOW?!), so I called Dell to ask what size the screws were.
After some waiting for the rep and explaining my query, his response was that they were probably 5 inch by 3 inch screws.
After a moment of staring at the phone waiting for the laughter, I translated those dimensions into centimeters for him. Surprise! Suddenly he said "wait, those measurements are probably wrong."
Eventually I got the numbers I was looking for (no, you can't buy those screws ANYWHERE. My girlfriend is screwed, and not by me).
Of course, my girlfriend was lucky -- I know a lot of people who had Dell laptop hard drives fail 370 days after the purchase of the notebook (or up to one week later -- but no more). You guessed it -- one year warrantee...
A Good Support Story (Score:4, Interesting)
I was crushed.
I called customer service on Monday, and got a nice oriental gentleman.
me: My computer is broken.
him: just send it in.
me: but I spilled coffee on it!
him: wipe coffee off, send computer in.
All I paid was shipping to them, the fix was free and fast.
Ahh, I loved the 80's.
Re:Best, but not perfect, obviously (Score:2, Interesting)
I bought a 15" G4 Aluminum PowerBook 1Ghz in March from the Apple store. About a month after i bought it I started to notice the infamous "White Spots" on the screen. I lived with them for about a month because I didn't want to go without my powerbook while it was in for repairs.
Finally they got fairly noticeable, and I was going to have a slow week of programming so I decided to go ahead and send it in.
I called Apple about 11am CST on a thursday with my problem. I explained to TS what the problem. They were very very nice went ahead and setup a repair trip for my lil powerbook. They said DHL would drop of a shipping box and label within 24 hours. The box was here 3pm the SAME DAY! I couldn't believe it. That night I removed my non factory Airport Extreme card and packed the machine up. Friday morning I dropped it off at the local DHL office for shipping.
Friday afternoon I received a confirmation email from Apple saying it had been shipped.
Saturday Morning, I got an email saying they had received it in California.
Saturday Afternoon, another email saying the repairs were complete.
Saturday Afternoon, another update saying the computer had shipped.
Monday morning the Laptop was at my door!
I was absolutely amazed! Friday to Monday turn around time over the weekend. It was incredible.
There is a reason that Apple hardware is a little more expensive, And to a person who makes a living on my laptop its worth every dollar.
Re:Dell is by far the worst... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's really your password? (Score:3, Interesting)
(16:13:55) hackeduser25: omg i cant belive they did this to me
(16:14:35) stephen samuel: precisely what did they do?? All I saw was on the guest log page.
(16:14:53) hackeduser25: they put porn on it and changed everything around
(16:15:19) hackeduser25: im gonna havet to do it all over again it took me months and now i must re-type it all
(16:15:23) stephen samuel: Do you have a backup copy at home?
(16:15:29) hackeduser25: im gonna have a panic attack...no
(16:16:05) stephen samuel: It's possible that (most of) the original stuff is still there.
(16:16:18) hackeduser25: i know the site is frozen
(16:16:35) stephen samuel: How do you do updates??
(16:16:49) hackeduser25: easily but i cant access my account!!!!!
(16:16:52) hackeduser25: cuz they changed it all
(16:17:30) stephen samuel: You may want to get to the people who host the site and ask them to reset it back to what it was yesterday... (at least the password).
(16:19:26) stephen samuel: In the meantime, I'd suggest that you come up with a password that's not easily guessable.
(16:19:48) stephen samuel: Did you have an 'easily guessable' password?
(16:20:19) hackeduser25: well it was password.
(16:20:47) stephen samuel: That explains why you got slimed... It's the first password that a hacker would try.
(16:21:13) hackeduser25: omg great
(16:21:15) stephen samuel: Literaly -- it's the absolute MOST used password by newbies.
(16:21:27) hackeduser25: oh well great then
(16:21:49) stephen samuel: justasec.. I'm looking for my file on how to create relatively secure passwords....
(16:22:13) hackeduser25: k
(16:24:24) stephen samuel: http://www.bcgreen.com/solaris/passwords.html [bcgreen.com]
The above session is now tacked on as a warning at the end of the referenced web page.
IBM hardrive return boxes (Score:2, Interesting)
When I requested an RMA for the drives I was informed that these *broken* drives *had* to be shipped back to IBM in the orginal IBM boxes or I could purchase *new* boxes from IBM!
Fortunately, rather than having to shell out $20 for "IBM approved" boxes, I was able to borrow two boxes from a guy at work and then when I got my RMA drives back I gave him those boxes.
I don't know if they really would have refused service had I sent them back in any old box but the website made it clear that they could.
Re:Why I love Apple (true story) (Score:2, Interesting)
I had a wonderful experience with my Powerbook, with Apple. The LCD stopped working one day (the 15" PowerBook LCD problem that was floating around half a year ago).
They were very nice, and they sent me a box to put the PowerBook in and ship it to them. It arrived the NEXT DAY.
I send it to them. I thought I'd probably get it back next week or something.
But, no, I come home the NEXT DAY, and there it is, sitting on my doorstep. Fixed. With all of my data left alone, and the LCD seemed a bit better than the other one too!
Good, in my book. My experience at other places has been mediocre to horrible. Doesn't help that I have to speak through an intermediary of a relay interpreter (since I'm hard of hearing).
My Sony Support Story: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Read CD's fine
2. Read DVD's fine
3. Burned to the included DVD+RW just fine
4. Burned + discs
5. Burned - discs
I decided, saright, it works. Just long enough later to be out of store warrenty, I get around to burning a new mix CD. Hmmm, that's odd, the first track won't play. Further research showed that it would play just fine in my computer, but not on ANY standalone unit. However, the track was there, if I used a standalone unit, started on track 2, and manually rewound to track one, it would play just fine.
So I called sony and explained the problem in details, indicating that I figured it was burning a few sectors earlier than it probably should have, and that standalone units, which don't have all the error correction my computer does... couldn't handle the missing data.
Oh god. First, they wouldn't help me at all because I didn't have installed their piece of shit OEM burning software. After going back and forth on the phone, they gave me an RMA. So I shipped it out to Arizona, $10.
They said I should have it back in 2 - 4 weeks. 2 weeks later, I called to see what the status was. The response, "We couldn't find a problem with your drive and shipped it back to you yesterday." Well thanks alot.
After recieving the drive back, and the problem continuing, I called again, went through the same shpeil, and continued to get nowhere. Eventually the tech told me that the drive was performing as designed so long as discs would play in the unit itself. Half the techs I talked to flat out refused to believe me. They kept asking if I was using 'Sony, TDK, or Kodak' brand cds. Now, I didn't know that Kodak even made cd's, and so I asked where, in their documentation, did it say that I needed to use those 3 brands. The tech responded that it wasn't in the documentation, but if you were having a problem, that they recommended those.
They were completely unhelpful, would not just, send me a new unit as I repeatedly requested (being that I could not encounter ANY other stories online documenting this, I came to the conclusion that the unit was defective), and were consistently rude to me. They said the only way I could get the unit replaced was if I shipped it to Arizona and they decided something was wrong with it. Since they had decided it was fine previously, I figured that that was rather pointless.
To make a long story short, about 2 months later, a new revision of the drive firmware showed up on sony.com; listed in the revisions was, 'improve playback on standalone players.'
Installing the new firmware solved the problem.
Well I'll be damned. They knew this problem existed. If they had told me that it was a problem and that they were working on it but didn't have a fix at the moment, I would have been fine. Instead they gave me the runaround constantly.
This, coupled with 2 identical VCR's from Sony that failed in identical ways, has turned me off to Sony, forever.
Just as a note for the curious, Sony owns Aiwa, so don't buy from them either.
Oracle is the worst (IMHO) (Score:3, Interesting)