Bought a refurbished Compaq 5900z in 1999 in ebay and had to send the comp back to the place as the comp was freezing up. Just had to make one call and UPS guy came-in and picked up. Had few more issues after that but only s/w and had to call Compaq few times and it was satisfactory in the sense I had to order quick restore cds as I lost them. Someone in this board was complaining that Compaq doesn't send OS cds but I got Win98 cd along with quickrestore cds. One more thing is that it is really a big pain in all the wrong places to sit with a cust and reinstall os, drivers and application (Yes! I work as a tech support in Dell not Compaq). Some times we end up sitting with the same customer for 2,3hrs at a stretch where as the quick restore cd would do it in 30 minutes w/o any help. Guess, 95% of the customers do not need OS cd. All they need is something like quick restore. When it comes to proprietary h/w I was able to use nvidia graphics card, sb sound card, conexant modem and also the nic that came with Compaq on the other comp I built before I added better parts w/o any problem at all. I was able to add a pci graphics card with TV tuner(ATI) and had no issues though it is not purchased from Compaq. One essential point is that I didn't have any issues ordering quick restore cds in 2001 2yrs after I purchased the comp. In dell we wish we could but can't do that after certain period of time even if the customer is ready to pay. They have to go online and download the drivers, burn a cd and use it. As far as the case design, my compaq was a bit difficult to open and I used it with the cover completely removed. I used one of my friends compaq recently and the case design was decent and easy to open just like the Dell's. But anyway the case I bought later was the best. Good thing about Dell is that they get lifelong support which most of the customers do need as they still would be trying to figure out how to click on Start two years after buying the computer.
I had to call few tech supports to get few more parts replaced.
AMD - I fried the processor 1800+ along with the MOBO and it took 20 minutes to get hold of a tech and 5 more minutes to get the thing replaced.
Localtech/Gigabyte - I fried this MOBO in the first week and was able to get it replaced very fast as I bought it through a local tech shop in chicago.
ATI - I had to call Canada as I needed help with multiple monitor setup and couldn't get the solution which is what I expected as it was stupid to seek help over the phone( Yes! I hate the idea of tech support over the phone). Anyway I was not tried to be dumped or fooled but was clearly told they do not have a solution and there is nothing much they can do and I was happy as my time was not wasted not bullshited.
Visioneer: Scanner model 3300 was not working and I was told that scanner is not working as it was a multi-boot system. Finally the supervisor told system resources were very low and finally agreed to replace it after some argument.
Crazypc: I purchased Dr.Thermal EXTREME SE over the website and went in to pick it up and the lever broke when I was about to leave and they replaced it immediately.
If we take all our bad experiences into count, the only thing we will end up using is toilet paper unless someone had issues with Charmin customer support.
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