New repair story :-((((

[Gogolo]

First I waited OVER a month to get my device repaired (screen crash).

It comes back - and you know what: the stylus doesnt work.

Oh great, intelligent repair center...

Gogolo

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Gogolo

First I waited OVER a month to get my device repaired (screen crash).

It comes back - and you know what: the stylus doesnt work.

Oh great, intelligent repair center...

Gogolo

We had that happen to a Dell notebook we sent to get repaired. Keyboard was working fine, but they sent it back and it didn't work. At least we talked them into just sending us a new keyboard and we installed it ourselves.

BOb

[axel77]

had once an HP notebook, brought it to service center because of broken display, a week later I get it back, display changed, but keyboard didn't work, brought it back, I get it back after an hour, and when giving it back to its owner (I organized the service as my job), I get the back, internal camera not working this time. When I went to the service center the third time, after they fixed it again, I took the notebook, set down in the corner and told them, you don't mind if I do the quality assurance this time?
---
from the reports I guess the company iRex sourced out the service at obvouisly has no quality assurance that all parts go through before to be sent back.

[daudi]

I remember once reading somewhere (possibly something someone posted somewhere on some forum so it might not be true) a while back that these days it is cheaper for companies to deal with returns than to employ people to do QA, effectively making the customer the QA tester.

[Gogolo]

it is cheaper for companies to deal with returns than to employ people to do QA, effectively making the customer the QA tester

You may be so right daudi. This is too bad, its so much energy, time and troubles. They only could have started it one time and try some basic functions...

Now I remember somone who got his iLiad back after screen repair and then the buttons were wired the wrong way...

Gogolo

[axel77]

Originally Posted by daudi

I remember once reading somewhere (possibly something someone posted somewhere on some forum so it might not be true) a while back that these days it is cheaper for companies to deal with returns than to employ people to do QA, effectively making the customer the QA tester.

Does this take into account the negative sentiment spread by non-quality repairments? While this might have been negletable in say the 1990ies its surely to have changed in the 21th century, since before the age of internet I would e.g. have never heared of Gogolos story.

[daudi]

Originally Posted by axel77

Does this take into account the negative sentiment spread by non-quality repairments? While this might have been negletable in say the 1990ies its surely to have changed in the 21th century, since before the age of internet I would e.g. have never heared of Gogolos story.

When did you have the problem with the HP notebook? 1990s? If it happened again now, would you be on the HP forum saying something about it? I'm not sure I would.

I think that the iliad is a little special, and the users on this and the irex forum are somewhat passionate about it (possibly an understatement). If I bought a vacuum cleaner and it developed a fault I can't imagine checking out the dyson forum to see if others are having the same problem. Imagine this post to the trouble-shooting forum: "Hey, I'm getting some ghosting on my carpet where the my dyson leaves some traces behind. Is this normal? I've tried refreshing the waste container several times but it is still there."

I think the same applies to a PC from Dell or HP or wherever. I'd just send it back and no-one would know that I've had a problem. And if it came back after repair and still had problems (like your HP notebook story) I'd just have to send it back again and still no-one would know.

I know next to nothing about business and how the trade-offs are balanced, but I guess it depends on how many or what proportion of units are likely to fail. If it's a small proportion then most are going to be okay so people employed to do QA are mostly going be sitting there saying "yup, this one's okay ... and this one, ho-hum, and this one ... hey, did you see that thing on the news last night about the guy with the ... " so they are costing the company money to "just" say everything is fine. But as you point out there is the downside of negative reports and complaints in public in places like this and the cost of paying people to test things needs to be balanced against the cost of damage to the company from complaints. I don't how you make the decision about things like this.

[axel77]

at least get the repair engineers in person union to make a small QA test before sending the thing back. Iwas a service engineer. I always ran the self test before I send something back, a well coded (interactive) self test will catch the majority of all possible faults, if not all faults that are caused by forgetting to connect anything..

IMHO the importance of QA depends on where you position yourself in the market. If you stand for high quality, but elevated price against the competition (which IMHO the iLIad is) than QA is very important, if you are the price cutter on the marktet, than its okay, I as customer knew that go this risk by trying to safe money...

[MarkRPenn]

Originally Posted by axel77

Does this take into account the negative sentiment spread by non-quality repairments? While this might have been negletable in say the 1990ies its surely to have changed in the 21th century, since before the age of internet I would e.g. have never heared of Gogolos story.

Yes I think it has changed. We now seem to have a culture where bad service is almost expected from large companies, especially technology companies, so although people complain and post on forums, the products still sell. I guess it's a result of our "throw away" attitude to these devices, and also of their desirability - how many people here would genuinely NOT buy an iLiad if they knew beforehand how bad their customer service is? Not many I'd wager, as we all lust after them too much to do that.

The internet has helped AND hindered; it's now easier to research a companies reputation, but it's also harder to communicate with these outfits directly, so that we feel they genuinely take on board what we say, because it's too easy for them to hide behind the web.

So yes, it's changed all right, for the worse IMHO.

Mark

[Gogolo]

Everybody thinks: "Surely I will not be affected by bad luck" Its always the others...

Now my iLiad is going on a new journey to the repair center. The story began with my first e-mail to iRex on 27.2.08.

Gogolo

[yokos]

Originally Posted by Gogolo

Everybody thinks: "Surely I will not be affected by bad luck" Its always the others...

This is the way the world goes. Smokers believe they can't get lung cancer.
Good luck, Gogolo.

[Gogolo]

Thanks. The bigger problem is, since I have my iLiad I began more and more to relie on it for buisness. Reading Articles, Taking notes... paperless office. Now I have iLiadless office
Gogolo

P.S.: In the meantime I take comfort with the Samsung YP-P2..