The Guest That Stayed Too Long
Oct 16 '00
I think of my computer as an appliance. I want to push buttons and keys and have the right things happen. I am not highly educated in the technical aspects of computers, so this opinion is simply the story of my experience with Gateway and their customer service department. I am writing this with the expectation a consumer will read several opinions about this company and making a buying decision based on their total findings.
We purchased our computer in November 1997 as a Christmas gift for our family. The purchasing process was a breeze. They had me call a separate number, where financing was arranged in a matter of seconds. I then called the main Gateway number and finished my transaction. The associate that assisted me with my purchase was very upbeat and friendly, he gave me sound advice on the printer and joy stick selection. He also explained their warranty program. For $99.00 I could purchase not only an additional two years of coverage for my computer, which included in home repair, beyond the one year that came with it, I could also receive three years of 24 hour, 7 day technical assistance, on at a special phone number, separate from the main phone line. The entire package cost just under $2500.00, which included delivery.
The cow boxes arrived shortly after and we set it up with ease. Since it was a Christmas gift it did not get daily use until after the holidays. The first week of January the on/off switch broke. We called Gateway and over the phone they coached us how to rig it to work until they could ship us the part and make arrangements for the technician to come to our home. Early February the hard drive crashed. The boot disk had not been included in our original shipment, so my husband downloaded one from work and we got it running again. It crashed again the next week. The tech person worked with my husband on the phone and determined we needed a new hard drive. A new one was shipped to our home and a technician came out to repair it.
All went well until July, when our mouse died. After another call to Gateway, a new one was shipped. The following spring the monitor gave out. I called the technician and after checking the cords he agreed to ship us another one. While taking the old one to the local package store to return to Gateway, I began to explain to the clerk what it was. He waved me off and said "I know what it is, we could stay in business by returning Gateway monitors alone". I am not sure if this speaks to the volume of Gateways in my city, or their quality in general.
At this point we were still fairly happy with our computer, despite the number of repairs it had needed in just a year and a half. The trouble did not begin until October, 1999. I noticed the computer began to connect to the internet at 4800. That is hundred, not thousand. Our previous connection speed had been 28,800, so the difference was immediately obvious. I called Gateway and the run around begin. After over an hour on the phone the technician informed me it must be either our ISP or our phone line. He also said our computer was OLD, things had CHANGED and we couldn't possible expect a good connection speed with our equipment. I resented the implication that the computer we had invested $2500 on 23 months ago was now rubble, but I agreed to check out the ISP and the phone line to make sure they were not the source of the problem.
I spent well over an hour with various technical people at my ISP. I rewrote modem strings, something I had previously not known existed. They checked their lines for problems and had me dial in at several numbers.
My connection speed remained in the basement. The only thing I accomplished by the time spent on the phone with my ISP was to learn that if you call a carrot top a pointy up thing, you lose a certain amount of credibility with the technical staff.
I then tried the phone company. It took a while to get someone to the house, so we began to creep into the end of November. The technician from the phone company came to our house, checked the lines and declared them clean. To prove it he logged onto the internet with his computer at 56,000 three times in five minutes. The problem with the phone line excuse had just been disproved.
By now we had another problem develop. The CD rom had gave out. I made another call and after checking things out he agreed to ship us a new one. He still was claiming the connection problems were not the fault of the modem, but I was concerned with getting the CD Rom taken care of, so I let that be put on the back burner. They shipped us a new CD Rom, only this time they did not have a technician come to replace it. We had to call and sit on hold for an hour, then were given a very brief primer on how to replace it. We did managed to get it installed and running.
The modem was still a problem. We were now lucky to log on at 4800. We were still getting the run around, but we were busy with the holidays and didn't want to take the time to fight with Gateway. Then December 23, 1999 our entire system crashed and had to be reformatted. My husband spent over an hour on hold to speak with a technician and received the information on what to do. The technician told him to do as he instructed and to call back the next day for assistance in getting our system set back up. We did as we were told and called back the next day, which was Christmas Eve. We had managed to get most things going ourselves. The computer was not locating our modem, despite our best efforts. There was also a problem with getting the sounds established. We called Gateway the next day, and were informed that the tech help we had paid the extra $99.00 for did not include assisting us with this kind of information, and we would have to call back on the $30 an hour number for help. Remember these were basic components we needed help with. I did not want them to tell me how to reinstall Elmo's preschool.
This was the last straw for me. I called the main number and had an old fashioned hissy fit. I was immediately patched thru to the poor individual in charge of calming hysterical women. He helped me get the computer going again, admitting we could have never done it ourselves, due to some fluke of computer programing I will never understand. He also admitted the reason the computer could not find the modem to set it back up, was due to damage. He agreed to ship us a new one. We did not have the in home repair this time either, but we did receive complete instructions over the phone, and managed to handle it ourselves. We went right back up to connecting at 28,000 with our new modem.
That was 10 months ago and we have not had any problems since. There is one month left on our original warranty and we are looking to purchase another computer. It will not be a Gateway. I resent the attitude I received from their staff that I had overstayed my welcome on their warranty and technical assistance plan. I got the distinct impression that my 3 year technical assistance package did not mean 3 years, it mean only as long as the customer service staff thought my computer was worth having. I purchased my computer package in good faith and I expected Gateway to honor it in good faith. The fact I had to fight them to do so means I will never buy another computer from them. I am going to research right here at Epinions. When we make the decision on what company to go with, we are going to consider the track record of customer service as an equal factor to the quality of the hardware.
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Epinions.com ID:
CeeJay62
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Reviews written: 43
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