yeah it's OUR fault you didn't burn recovery discs...

[PepperElf]

This one was a doozy and a half.

First off we've been so swamped I've been working an hour late the past two shifts. And since breaks are only if we can spare the people it's pretty much been non-stop work with barely time to breathe.

BC: bitchy customer
Me:

Me: <opening spiel> Could you hold for a moment? <I was actively working with a customer on a long process>
BC: NO I CANNOT HOLD!
Me: <okaaaay> How may I help you? <sigh>
BC: YOU FUCKING LIED TO ME!!!!!!!!
Me:
BC: YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO SHIP MY COMPUTER TO TOSHIBA AND NOW YOU SAY I NEED RECOVERY DISCS. WELL I CALLED TOSHIBA AND THEY NEVER GOT A COMPUTER FROM YOU AND THEY TOLD ME THEY COULD HAVE DONE THIS FOR ME BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH....

When she finally paused I informed her that we don't ship to Toshiba - we ship to our own service center. Then I offered her a manager cos I really didn't want to deal with her.

Me: <on radio> <Manager> Call on line *blah*.
Manager: What's it for?
Me: Very irate customer, already dropping f-bombs.


I don't know what happened. I don't actually care. Manager is the one who doesn't take shit from people so... I'm not sure how well her f-bombs will work with him.



and what i like most... they get mad at US because they didn't have recovery discs.

well fucking BURN THEM when you get your computer.
No they don't come with the computer. Yes you have to burn your own. No we don't have spare copies. No shit the manufacturer will have them... that's their job. Not ours.

go suck on a hard drive.

there. i feel better.

[dalesys]

My experience with the DIY recovery disks over about 8-12 systems: Only getting a 67-75% successful burn rate, and the sh*tware will only allow one try. so if you have an imperfect CD-R or DVD-R or if they ever get damaged, you are sheep out of luck.

[PepperElf]

we don't work on the internal organs of the toshibas much ... i mean changing out an hdd maybe but there's a bit of stuff we send off to our service center for.

our service center however can replace hdds but they don't always have recovery information for that specific computer



the thing is though... screaming at us doesn't magically make us shit recovery discs out if we don't have them for her specific computer. we don't stockpile them and i suspect the repair center we use doesn't either.

i think she just though she'd get her way and get a complete refund if she screamed ... and we don't usually refund just because people have hissy fits.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I just bought a new Toshiba back in May and before I even turned it on for the first time I took the time to read the User Guide and specifically checked on the part about what to do when you turn it for First Boot.

Good thing I did . . . I had to pick up a pack of DVD-R's on the way home from work the next evening (laptop was charging that day) and when I finally turned it on that night, I was prompted by a program called Toshiba Recovery Media Creator to make the Recovery Set.

Took close to an hour and a half, but I have a set of recovery DVD's made just in case something happens and I have to reset it to factory settings.

I'm sorry, but if you're too lazy to make your own recovery discs to start with, then you are just asking for trouble later on IMHO.

[sirwired]

*smugly lords my MSDN access over all lesser computer owners*

MSDN is a Microsoft website with almost every non-entertainment PC product Microsoft has ever sold. Everything from DOS 5 on up (except for Win98 and WinME, due to Java license problems.) I have access to this wonderful system through work. It's only supposed to be used for non-production use, but I don't have any personal qualms about using it to get a "clean" copy of an OS that came with the box.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

Yep, MSDN definitely comes in handy sometimes. I think my husband has access to it through work (since he IS a developer after all...lol). I used to have my own subscription when I was part of the Microsoft MVP program. Alas, it's been about 4 years since then...

[TopEndDave]

I worked the Hardley Normal tech bay when the manufacturers where moving from supplying the recovery disks to having having a recovery partition. Customers managed to loose the supplied disks and then chuck a huge fit when we asked them for the disks. Their belief was that we should have recovery disks for every model of computer that was ever sold by the store.

[tropicsgoddess]

The ones that don't back up are the ones that bug the fuck out on the poor reps. It's not that fucking hard to burn a disc for a recovery CD...hell not even that hard to back shit up.

[PepperElf]

*smugly lords my MSDN access over all lesser computer owners*

MSDN is a Microsoft website with almost every non-entertainment PC product Microsoft has ever sold. Everything from DOS 5 on up (except for Win98 and WinME, due to Java license problems.) I have access to this wonderful system through work. It's only supposed to be used for non-production use, but I don't have any personal qualms about using it to get a "clean" copy of an OS that came with the box.

what about your drivers?


That's one thing the recovery discs do that a full install of windows doesn't. so it's not unusual to get a computer with a fresh load of windows... only to find out that you have to use the legacy drivers (generic for mouse, keyboard, monitor*) and those don't always include your ethernet drivers.

so often it means having to get your drivers from another computer...

* legacy for monitors isn't pretty

I'm sorry, but if you're too lazy to make your own recovery discs to start with, then you are just asking for trouble later on IMHO.

we get a share of people who just want to take it home and have it work right out of the box, including having the discs burned for them etc.

[emax4]

Speaking of recovery discs, I was messing with my wife's All-in-one Dell and screwed up the hard drive somehow. Dell support said I'd have to send it back for a repair/replacement (not true), after I couldn't find any recovery discs that my wife had on her. I checked parts of Dell's websites, and some pages said I would have to pay for recovery discs, but I found another page that said I wouldn't have to pay for such discs! So after looking around I found the free option.

HP and a few other manufacturer's have a separate partition on the existing hard disk that have a recovery partition. Not every owner nor retailers know about this, but it would be helpful to the buyers to know this before they leave with it. I agree that customers just want to use their big, new, shiny box when they get home and don't want to be bothered with manuals and such. But I also think sellers could have their butts covered by not only advising the customer of the restore partition of the computer has one, and to advise the customer to burn a set of recovery discs if the hard drive fails entirely.

[PepperElf]

I have to find out who the fuck is telling people we ship to Toshiba for our work.

Another customer called in today... this time a man calling for his wife. At first I thought it was BC's husband but BC was bitching about recovery discs and this man was talking about a computer that hasn't yet come back.

He too thought we were sending his computer to Toshiba directly... and I had to explain that we had our own service center in <city> that handled the computers and what the status of it was.

eep

[emax4]

Do any of them say why they're actually upset? Does the customer get more comfort when shipping to the manufacturer instead of the retailer's service center?

Although the customer wouldn't laugh, you should say, "yeah, we have an employee named Toshiba Jones..so yeah, we ship to Toshiba." (cue customer catbutt)

[PepperElf]

The man actually explained his concern. It was his wife's computer and she used it to communicate with him while he is deployed. The longer it's out the longer they cannot communicate as easily.

He explained his anger was over the amount of money he spent on his computer... although that in itself really means jack shit on the repair process. But I was polite to him and tried to be as helpful as possible.


The woman... she was just bitchy because she found out she was going to need recovery discs and felt it was all our fault that it would take an extra step... and of course she somehow thought we shipped it to toshiba and not our repair center. although beyond that i didn't listen to her much because... after her opening statement with the F-bomb I was ONLY interested in waiting for her to STFU so I could pawn her off on the manager.

[EricD]

If you need drivers to use with a standard load of the operating system you can get them from the manufacturers web page usually.


I make an almost all-in-one driver dvd from this site:
http://driverpacks.net/

One dvd for each o/s (xp, vista/7 64 bit, vista/7 32 bit).

I needed some 98 drivers the other day... That didn't end well.

[PepperElf]

If you need drivers to use with a standard load of the operating system you can get them from the manufacturers web page usually.

unless of course one of the drivers you need is for your NIC

I laugh because... yeah. I had that one happen to me personally with my old beast of a desktop never thought about downloading the drivers for it until after i installed xp to the computer