Life Musings

Well, Toshiba screwed up with regard to my laptop.

They were supposed to send me a new power adapter, but two days later, they were still placing the order. This seemed a bit odd, since they themselves are the ones that manufacture the thing. At any rate, they assured me that it would be shipped to me on the following day.

One day later, I called to ask for the tracking number. After some investigation, hey apologetically explained that the part was on backorder, and that there would be further delays. As you can imagine, I was rather upset. After all, if they didn't have the part in stock, why didn't they inform me at the time? Also, if the part had to be backordered, then why didn't they notify me that there would be some delay? That would have allowed me to make alternate arrangements, if necessary.

So I asked when this power adapter would arrive. After some hemming and hawing, the tech support guy said, "Well, we're hoping to have it in a week." Hoping? In a week? In other words, they didn't know, and it could take weeks before the part actually arrives.

This is totally unacceptable.

For what it's worth though, Toshiba's tech support was courteous, eager to help, and vastly superior to that of Hewlett-Packard. Their call center personnel were mostly incompetent -- and believe, me, due to numerous hardware malfunctions, I had plenty of opportunities to call them!

They were also enormously unskilled at answering simple questions. When I asked them simple questions, they repeatedly answered with unrelated answers. At one point, I asked how I should get in touch with a customer service representative to air my grievances. Their response? "If you ship your laptop to us, we will fix it for a fee." I ost it at that point, and yelled, "THAT'S NOT WHAT I WAS ASKING!!! I WAS ASKING YOU HOW I CAN GET IN TOUCH WITH A CUSTOMER SERVICE REP!!!" Talk about incompetent.

So I'm basically displeased with Toshiba, but I recognize that they're trying, and that their call center reps are trying to please. In contrast, I have no good things to say about my experiences with Hewlett-Packard, their unreliable hardware, and their incompetent call center staff. A pox on you, sirs.