Computer-vendor warranty departments - scrap them?

[markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org (markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org)]

I feel your pain.

I can honestly say I have not had one, thats right, not one, instance
where a tech-support center helped me in any way. The answer was either
something that I already knew ("like can this do that? I don't see a way
to do it."... "Oh, you can't, damn.") Or lead me to a conclusion that I
had already come too. ("Hello? Yes, I have a faulty RAM SIMM, my I have an
RMA?" ... (20 minutes later, putting SIMM back in, rebooting several
times, mucking with the BIOS, etc.) "OK, the SIMM is faulty, RMA?" ...)

The worst is dealing with Comcast on internet issues. I know FAR FAR more
about networking than *anyone* I can contact at the other end, and it
usually takes 15~20 minutes to get it through their drone-bee thick skulls
that, if it were merely *my* end of things there would be no need for this
phone call. Yet still, a day or two later, the guy comes to the house,
determines that it is not, in fact, a problem with my setup and that there
is something wrong with the wires outside of the house. Arrggg!!!

all that said, 99% of computer problems are stupid little things about
which most people have absolutely no clue.So, these places are good for
joe-the-plumber who installed a virus, or is having problems getting their
USB drives working. You know, stuff with which we wouldn't even see an
issue.

FYI: I have been buying motherboards and bundles from www.mwave.com for
about 8~10 years now. Good prices and RAM/CPU/Motherboard bundles that get
full burn-in. I have *never* had an issue with anything I've gotten from
them, and I run my systems 24/7.  The burn-in is the big thing, IMHO, once
infant mortality is eliminated, most electronics will run for a thousand
years.


> From: "Rich Braun" <richb-RBmg6HWzfGThzJAekONQAQ at public.gmane.org>
> Subject: Computer-vendor warranty departments - scrap them?
> To: discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org
> Message-ID: <33636.192.168.2.251.1226843316.squirrel-UBmCrHUNhTjk1uMJSBkQmQ at public.gmane.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> In April, I visited Microcenter's BYOPC section and bought a case,
motherboard, CPU and RAM.  The motherboard's an Intel DG33TL and the CPU
is an
> Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600.  It's turned into a saga; the outcome is a
non-working doorstop.  Here is my story.
>
> Something on the board apparently went unstable after a few months of
running
> as my main desktop (belately long after the sale, I looked at the
Newegg.com
> reviews of this motherboard and learned that I'm not the only victim of
this
> product).
>
> Being overly busy, I decided to give the Microcenter repair department a
shot.
>  They had the box for about 3 or 4 working days last month.  They
> collected
> $70 "diagnostic fee" up front and didn't promise to handle warranty
replacement.  On the last day, the tech picked up the repair ticket and
called
> me to say he'd flashed the BIOS and everything checked out OK.  (In the
written notes, he mentioned nothing about the BIOS:  it looks like a typical
> customer-is-idiot, must-not-have-checked-the-obvious writeup without any
reference to a problem found.)  They charged me another $10 for
"dressing the
> cables".
>
> Within 24 hours after I got the PC back, it crashed and scrambled the
hard drive again.  (That was the same symptom I reported:  it takes a
heckuva failure to cause Linux to overwrite the filesystem the way this
thing did.)
> During my 4th attempt to rebuild the system, the board finally failed
utterly
> with a POST code E7.  Still being busy with work, I put the whole thing
aside
> for a few weeks and then this week decided to give it another shot, this
time
> by calling Intel.
>
> The Intel warranty line (not an 800 number, only open 5 days a week) led
me to
> a tech who inquired about the BIOS version number.  0293, I read off to
him (vintage October 2007).  Oh, you want to be running 0497, he said.
(Their website cautions you not to flash the BIOS unless you've got an
explicit reason.)  I asked him for a reason, he said it's what he
recommends trying.
> OK, I said, I'll give it a shot tomorrow.
>
> It's *very* difficult to follow any of the *five* sets of instructions
for different methods of flashing an Intel board, in particular when the
board fails POST.  I suppose I could call them back--during work hours
M-F--and have
> them walk me through it.
>
> But I JUST WANT A NEW MOTHERBOARD.  How difficult should it be?  I
already found a $50 replacement for this thing on Newegg.  The old one's
cost me $130
> plus $80 repair costs plus at least 10 hours of effort.  Factoring in a
token
> amount for my time, the true-blue Intel board cost about 10 times as
much as a
> "lesser" Gigabyte/MSI replacement.  At the moment I'm wrestling with the
decision to yank the processor/memory out of the failed unit and going with
> the replacement paid for out of pocket.  If I do that, that's the end of
my efforts to diagnose anything else with the DG33TL.
>
> No wonder America is the throw-away society.  It's almost never worth
trying
> to fix anything, even if it's only a couple months old and covered by
warranty.  If you're pressed for time, is a warranty worth anything at all?
>
> -rich
>
>
>
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> End of Discuss Digest, Vol 13, Issue 18
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