I'm sorry this happened to you, buddy. That really sucks. Us United States consumers should be more concerned with the shortcuts and backhanded ways companies deal with customers outside of the States. A company that treats customers badly just because it CAN instead of doing what it SHOULD doesn't deserve our business.
Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
161–170 of 200 posts
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fuck everything about that. No. I work at a big company and get sales, marketing, press, and customer inquiries ALL THE TIME, at my PERSONAL email address (which is easier to find than my work address). There is absolutely nothing I can do to help you if you contact me directly because company policy forbids it, official channels exist for a reason.
That's fine as long as official channels work. But too often, "official channels" is "the mechanism by which we ignore everybody". If a company suffers from people contacting the wrong people, I think the solution is to make it easier to contact the right people.
Are you an executive? At a lot of companies executives can safely ignore company policies at their discretion.
Also, you could just inform the customer to resend the info to the official channel and make sure someone is actually keeping an eye out for it.
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Some people do abuse this to rip companies off, to varying degrees; I know some people who treat returns as free rentals, buying something, using it without ever intending to keep it, and then returning it. Some people go even further and steal things and then return them for cash. But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.
REI has a 100% satisfaction guaranteed. About a year or two ago I purchased a few different bicycle parts. I kept them without using them for a few months and decided I didn't really need them after all. Since they were a few hundred dollars worth of parts I didn't want to just keep them or get rid of them, I wanted to return them. Even though their policy is "satisfaction" guaranteed, I felt like I was abusing the good faith of the policy--knowing just how heavily discounted their garage sale items are.
What I ended up deciding to do was returning them but asking for an 80% refund. The guy behind the counter gave me a really weird look and told me he had to ask if that was even allowed. Luckily for me, it was. They refunded me 80% of the total amount and I called it fair.
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#164You 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.
When I worked at Microsoft, we had a situation where the office XP upgrade policies were changed but the boxes were not. The fact is that in these cases, my view has always been that the documentation given to the customer is authoritative. After fighting with my boss for two weeks over this (and breaking policies to help fill our written promises to customers), I finally went over their heads to get it fixed and got flack for that :-P No good deed goes unpunished.
The fact is, Toshiba made a written representation to the customer. They can change their policies, but they shouldn't break those promises in the process.
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's clearly advice, not an order. Don't be so defensive.
Advice is something that often needs to be pushed away just like orders do.
Sure, call the advice bad if you want. But "please don't tell me what to do" is a rather strong misrepresentation.
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#166I purchased Toshiba laptop in 2002. Within 3 months the laptop's graphics card failed. Toshiba does not repair their own laptops, rather they send it out to some 3rd party repair center. The repair center took 3 weeks to repairer the laptop. When I came back to pick it up, the laptop started but the screen turned off as soon as I picked it up from the counter. I left it with the relier center. 2 weeks later they call…
> I gave up and got a new laptop.
Hopefully for free. Most states have a lemon law.
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#167Oh, yes, Toshiba's support sucks, especially if you live outside US and EU. My Qosmio laptop was constantly overheating in summers, power adapter got broken twice (and on one of those occasions literally started burning, smoking and all melted down), volume control got broken after about 6 months and started randomly changing the sound volume to max (very scary thing since I often leave my laptop playing music when I go to sleep)... and each time I would have to wait for 2-3 weeks for them to "repair" it. And it wasn't cheap at all, I could easily get Apple MBP for that money (which I eventually did)
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#168You 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…
In my country (Norway) the seller, importer and manufacturer are obliged by law to fix or replace broken items the first 3 to 5 years after purchase depending on type of item. So warranty/guarantee is mostly useless, what the law provides us consumers is already better.
If that is the case, then your country Norway is good man.
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either there is more to this story, or the OP went to one illiterate customer care guy. OP should go and show them the official website and maybe make him/her talk to a customer care executive over phone.
I talked to one call center in India and then I had to speak to the Latin America call center. They all said the same thing.
Rather mail to Toshiba and raise grievance. I see these days company responds better if you tweet against them. Just try it.
Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me
#170You 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 bought a low end lenovo after loving their high end models at work. They were crappy (you order online, there's no place to see them). I hated, but there was a $200 restock fee on a $300+ product, so i just gave it to a relative when i was visiting. two days in Brazil and the mother board died. I called lenovo, they gave me the number of a local shop. I called the local shop. They arranged to pick it up. I had linu…
Their cheaper laptops don't have international warranties, but some of the lower end models do, atleast that's how it was a few years ago when I bought my "Ideapad Y"-series laptop