My wife had a Toshiba Tetra 8000 which suddenly went haywire. It brought up a message telling her to load a disc which she hadn't got and we knew nothing of. A search on the net informed us it was fairly fatal so we contacted Toshiba for help. A long and involved series of phone calls ensued including several to Istanbul where it appears their call centre is located and the staff have less understanding of English than the more common Indian call centres. Eventually we reached an English tech support who informed us the motherboard had died and if we sent it back to them it would end up costing around £300 to repair. I decided the machine was too old so opted for a new one. I purchased a machine she is very pleased with from Novatech.
3/4 days after this all took place my tame engineer came to look at my machine and we told him the story. He asked to see the old machine. Removed the keyboard, gave it a good clean with a compressed air canister, reassembled it and it fired up perfectly. He suggested we contact Toshiba and request as a gesture of good will they replace the keyboard. We did and the tech support was horrified at the story and promised we'd get full refund for the new computer we had to buy on their bad information.
This is still on-going with Toshiba denying any responsibility as no calls are logged regarding this. I too am "off Toshiba" as is Carol.
Roger Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.----- Original Message ----- From: "Carol Pearson" <carol.pearson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 11:38 PMSubject: [access-uk] THE TOSHIBA SAGA (LONG SO HIT DEL IF YOU WISH) - was Re: Re: GETTING READY AND EXCITED
OK, Ray, I thought Toshiba were the greatest too! . . .. Here goes, then, with my story!I scoured the internet for a month or two before settling on a Toshiba Satellite Pro A120SE in late September. I looked carefully at the specs, not wanting to spend money on changing JAWS so rejecting anything but XP Home to be sure everything would/should work well! This narrowed my search somewhat all round in fact because I discovered that (in general) many of the cheaper range computers offered are with XP Home but, increasingly, more are being sold with Windows XP Professional and with other slight variations on Windows XP. . .. Finally I had my model and, as I could only find the exact match in a couple of places, decided to go for it and order, via Toshiba from their agreed seller, which in this case was Ingram Micro. (Big Mistake!)I was given some of the blurb about the user of the card having to live at the same address as the goods being ordered and thought that was fine. However, I wasn't told all of the story: The computer arrived promptly, being delivered by one of my lesser favourite couriers, City Link. I know them quite well though and even knew the delivery man when he arrived. He asked for the cardholder to produce his driving licence or passport (no alternatives appeared acceptable) in person and also to sign the sheet as required. Well, Mike was at work, we didn't at that time know where to locate the passports easily and had little sighted help available to us for some days. The driver refused to either leave the laptop with us or to call his depot again, saying he'd already discussed the matter before leaving, knowing that he was coming to us and that they had to abide by the company's (in this case Ingram Micro's) stipulations! Well, I almost had my hands on that computer, yes, almost, and could in fact have taken it from him whilst pretending to get Mike!Yes, it went back and then commenced the battle which is not yet totally over! First, I spent all morning the following day ringing Ingram Micro and couldn't get a telephone answered anywhere, anyway. I decided not to put up with this and contacted the sales person at Toshiba with whom I had placed the order. He followed it through and was eventually told that they were their rules and no way would they change them. They would agree to the computer remaining in the depot for a few days to allow us time to find the relevant documents; but by that time I really didn't want to do that and, besides, we still had no way of finding them within the next week or so, until friends were well and truly back in the swing of things after various times away. With reluctance, therefore, we started the battle of getting our money back from Toshiba, or rather from Ingram Micro via Toshiba. (I was not going to try to call them again and waste my time.)Some days went by before we learned the computer, supposedly, had gone missing from City Link's depot! (Surprise, surprise!) They therefore wouldn't refund us . . . then suddenly the computer had turned up and eventually we were told the money would show back in our account in a further ten working days. Well, that long! <GRRR!>I was also told that Toshiba had now changed that model (as they apparently do every month or two) and so it was no longer available but they would tell me when something else came out that may be suitable. They did tell me, but of course, it didn't have XP Home and they wouldn't install it for me!Eventually we did get most of the money back, but they had taken out a charge which we later tracked down to being for delivery. No, they weren't getting away with that either! Finally we have had a promise that this will also be refunded, but we have yet to see it.Despite my discussions with Toshiba about their lack of information about the terms of purchase when I arranged to buy and the fact that they haven't come up with a suitable alternative, they refuse to help any further and, with great annoyance, I've closed the door on that one!We have been staggered at these rather over-cautious safety arrangements and certainly consider it unfair that totally blind people have to be put in this position. We almost ended up with the Disability Rights Commission and I'm certainly "off Toshiba" right now!I searched and searched again and finally ended up going Roger's route and buying a very light weight DELL, albeit that the price was a fair bit more and there were a number of hassles in placing that order which I won't cover here! With a back problem, I just hope I've perhaps done myself a bit of a favour!I'm also hoping now that we really can enjoy the new laptop with not too many more problems, but no doubt I'll be writing for advice here and there as I get things set up - so watch this space!If you've read to the end and can at least identify with all that's gone on and feel a sense of annoyance at the lengths some companies are going to in order to guard themselves regardless of the cost and inconvenience to the customer, then I'm glad I told the story. If you were bored then I can only apologise that you didn't press that DEL key <Smile>Goodnight to all! -- Carol carol.pearson@xxxxxxxxxxxx ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq