Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me • Hacker News Board

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#51

Post by mbijon » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

I'll add another Toshiba support horror-story. It's why I haven't even looked at Toshiba products in 2-3 years:

My work laptop (supplied by employer) was a Toshiba and had a 1-year warranty. After about 10-11 months of using it, the DVD drive stopped working. Toshiba's warranty support was typical ship-to-depot, so IT pulled the drive and sent the laptop off for repairs. I wouldn't ordinarily care about a laptop our for repair, but IT supplied me with a temporary machine that was at least a generation back (ie: slow and heavy).

IT got a message that except that my machine had been received at the depot but heard nothing else for weeks and weeks after. By the time I'd bugged a tech at my company enough to contact them the warranty had lapsed ... and Toshiba refused to service the machine.

Toshiba refused to service it for several more weeks. I finally took over contacting support from the IT tech, and got the machine serviced after a half-dozen (long hold-time) calls. But for the amount of time the IT dept & me spent getting an optical drive fixed our company could have paid for two new machines.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#52

Post by dguaraglia » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 9:54 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #44

You probably aren't familiar with how "guarantees" work here in South America, ugh. See companies like Samsung and Toshiba have "certified" stores that "take guarantees" but they are not tied by their parent company, they are privately owned stores that just negotiated with the parent company to use their "sticker". I bought a Phillips shaver and under warranty, the Phillips station wanted me to pay 70% of the cost o…

Yup, that's the case in both Argentina and Brazil too. But then, customer service sucks pretty much at every level. In the US you can buy a product from Walmart, use it for a couple weeks and if you aren't happy with it just return/exchange it (and yes, you get your money back, not some store credit.) Coming from Argentina, I was amazed the first time it worked and felt like I was ripping someone off. After a while I got used to the idea that that is how customer service should work.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#53

Post by barhum » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #44

You probably aren't familiar with how "guarantees" work here in South America, ugh. See companies like Samsung and Toshiba have "certified" stores that "take guarantees" but they are not tied by their parent company, they are privately owned stores that just negotiated with the parent company to use their "sticker". I bought a Phillips shaver and under warranty, the Phillips station wanted me to pay 70% of the cost o…

I have actually bought many Toshibas from abroad and took them to certified Toshiba centers here in Guatemala. It seems that they recently changed which countries it covers but forgot to change the documentation on the box and the warranty card.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#54

Post by midas007 » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

barhum wrote: post #21

cabinguy wrote: post #18

I'm sorry to hear that you are having this problem. After buying/selling 10,000+ used laptops (every brand imaginable) over many years, I personally purchase and recommend only Toshiba laptops. Take it for what it's worth.

Most brands are made in Foxcon anyways. I think it is the support and service that makes the brand.

Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn).

And then there are ODMs and OEMs: ODMs provide the designs, OEMs mostly just stuff boards.

It's common to find products of different brands that look almost identical, because the chassis are the same while the bezels are different.

Dell for example is basically just a sales force with a catalog, not much different in principle from CDW.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#55

Post by cabinguy » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

taway2012 wrote: post #49

cabinguy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to the support/service (which seems to be lacking here). I'm just saying they were, by far, the most reliable machines we bought/sold.

Interesting. Even compared to the hallowed Thinkpad?

Thinkpad was #2.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#56

Post by omerhj » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 10:04 PM UTC

RankingMember wrote: post #34

cabinguy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to the support/service (which seems to be lacking here). I'm just saying they were, by far, the most reliable machines we bought/sold.

This has been my experience as well. Bought a Satellite A205 that got left near a window in the rain, so got all wet on the back. Wiped it off, let it dry, and it was fine. It's been through hell and back over the past 5 years and is still kicking. Recommended them to my family and they're all still operating fine years later. This is not to say whether or not their service sucks- I've just never needed to interact w…

I've got a Toshiba Satellite 320CDT (Pentium 233MMX, 96 MB RAM) from 1998 that still runs -- I installed Debian Wheezy on it last November. Toshiba went through a really bad spell a few years later, but now their machines don't seem much less reliable than HP or Dell's consumer laptops.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#57

Post by martin-adams » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 10:04 PM UTC

barhum wrote: post #15

JoshTriplett wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried contacting Amazon's customer service about this? Get them to either enforce the warranty or replace the laptop themselves.

Amazon has always been good with me but I am past the 30 day policy to return it them. Anyways it is Toshiba's reponsibility...

Sounds like Amazon sold you a product which was incorrectly described with regards warranty. It should be between Amazon and Toshiba to resolve this imho.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#58

Post by kahirsch » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 10:06 PM UTC

nodata wrote: post #50

I don't know why you are posting this on HN. Anyway you have several options: 1. Go to the vendor you bought it through 2. Go to your credit card company 3. Look up the consumer protection laws of your country and use them

4. Warn other consumers from buying Toshiba products.

5. Shame Toshiba into living up to their word.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#59

Post by nodata » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 10:09 PM UTC

kahirsch wrote: post #58

nodata wrote: post #50

I don't know why you are posting this on HN. Anyway you have several options: 1. Go to the vendor you bought it through 2. Go to your credit card company 3. Look up the consumer protection laws of your country and use them

4. Warn other consumers from buying Toshiba products. 5. Shame Toshiba into living up to their word.

Apple did exactly the same thing in Europe (worse actually, they lied to make people buy AppleCare). In China too iirc.

Use your legal rights, and advertise what you did. If you don't know your rights you'll probably have a bad time.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#60

Post by 6d0debc071 » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 10:12 PM UTC

Called customer service for about 2 hours, they said that they made a mistake in printing the warranty card and that I would have to pay to repair the laptop.

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Ugg. Too bad for them but I wonder what the small claims court would have to say about it. Contract is what's advertised, not what you secretly thought.

...

Assuming there is an equivalent there, of course.