PCParts
2004-06-02 05:14:07 UTC
My ears are bleeding... I'll give you 1 guess who this is.
I'm not gonna waste much time on this, so dont expect a reply, but I am
gonna explain the situation to anyone here to ensure this brainless
bashing stops.
I'm not sure who made this post, but I do know who dropped the system off,
it was a woman with long black/grey hair and both VERY poor English skills
and VERY poor French skills. As in she couldn't speak either language the
store normally dealt with very well.
The problem was described to me as "can't install Win2000, get blue screen
of death etc" and she needed it fixed ASAP, like in less then a day. The
system was a full tower system with 1 HD installed in it and another in a
removable bay. Now I never format a customers HD without prior consent
from the customer. However I must note that the store CLEARLY states at
the service desk we take NO REASPONISBLITY FOR LOST DATA. None the less I
said Ill need to format the HD and install an OS again to test it and
asked can I format this HD?
- she said something about no you dont need to install the OS, I can do
that
- my reaction was, well I need to do so to test the system fully
- her reply ok, well you can install if you want, all important data on
2nd HD
To me this sounded like its ok to use this HD since Ive placed all the
important information on the removable HD (which she had just taken out
of the computer).
Now for what I found, well its been a while, but if recall correctly the
new mainboard she installed was installed incorrectly (an A7V600 I
believe). Several mounting brackets were missing, the board was shorting
out against the steal back plain and the CPU was installed incorrectly
(the fan was backward and I think it had inadequate thermal gel too).
Either way when I looked at it, the CPU was overheating and the board was
shorting out. I reinstalled the CPU and the mainboard correctly. Then
ran a mem test for a few hours; it passed so I proceeded to install WinXP
(our test OS) on the HD (which from our discussion she had authorized).
The install took just fine first time, installed all drivers, ran a burn
in test program we had, the CPU wasnt over heating anymore, all looked
good, I charged her like $75 and called to say it was ready (I believe
this was later on the same day).
She came in, I showed her the OS running, she said good, I then said I
need to format it again because I had used the stores WinXP licence and
she said ok. I formatted it, she paid the bill and all seemed good. A
few hours later she called up and was freaking out on the phone to our
help line guy (the Oriental). Long story short after he talked French
with her (which she was a bit better with) it turns out the important data
drive she left IN the computer and the empty HD in the removable bay she
took OUT!?!? Plus she believed that formatting a HD didnt mean she would
loose the data either!?!?
It was clear what had happened here; due to her poor English and lack of
knowledge about terms like format and clean install she had
inadvertently permitted her primary HD to be deleted. We were all very
sorry for this and apologized profusely. However since the service center
doesnt take responsibility for lost data we werent about to pay her the
$400,000 or whatever ridiculous amount she had claimed the data was
worth. None the less we did tell her we had HD scanning tools which would
most likely recover most of her data and that we would not charge her
anything to perform a drive recovery. She declined, claimed the computer
still didnt work correctly, just wanted the system working properly and
didnt care about the data anymore.
She brought the system in again, we asked her to leave it longer this time
(so we could test it more), she agreed and our other tech tested the shit
out of it. From which he learned that sometimes the OS would go in fine
and other times it didnt. The cause of which turned out that the old
mismatched 2700DDR chips she was using didnt get along well with the
A7V600 mainboard she had installed (and did the same with all the A7V600s
we had in stock). We offered her 2 options, either change the RAM to
Crucial 3200DDR which we knew did run stable in the A7V600, or change the
mainboard to one that didnt take issue with her old mismatched 2700DDR
chips. Since she didnt want to pay for new RAM, she went for the change
mainboard option (which we exchanged free of charge). I think she took an
A7V8X-X which is not as feature rich as the A7V600, but we find ran for
over 24 hours problem free with her RAM chips.
So now with the mainboard mounted correctly, the CPU installed correctly
and an intermittent compatibly problem between her old RAM and new
mainboard seemingly solved we return the system to her a 2nd time, free of
charge. In fact I think we even gave her cash back since she selected a
less expensive mainboard. Ultimately the only thing she paid for was fact
that she had installed the mainboard and CPU incorrectly (VERY incorrectly
I must say). We never charged her for troubleshooting the compatibly
problems of her old components. Something that we were fully in our right
to do so, but feeling bad about the miscommunication and HD deleting
thing, did it for free. She left, seemed happy to us, and we never heard
a word about the whole thing again. Well that is till I discovered this
little one sided pissed off post of hers.
Personally I think the store and I were VERY nice to her about the whole
thing. We could have charged her for the second more extensive service,
but did not, even though our new parts and workmanship were not the root
cause of her troubles (it was her old parts and personal workmanship). We
also were under absolutely no obligation to offer her a free data recovery
simply because of a miscommunication, yet we did so.
Anyways thats my side of the story. I cant speak for the final thing
about the RAM, never heard any about that. Hell I didnt touch the system
after it was found she could communicate in French a little better then
English and we started having our 2nd French speaking tech deal with her.
In any case I dont feel at all responsible for the loss of her data. She
could have placed that data on her removable HD, backed it up ages ago or
better yet simply removed the critical HD from the system altogether.
In any case SHE was the one who turned down our offer of a free data
recovery at the time of the incident, so all I can say is shes got no
business crying about not having her data today.
BTW Yet again, we did apologize for the miscommunication MANY times, from
the moment we realized what had happened, right up to the final time she
left the store, with extra cash in her hands.
Regard
Ian
I'm not gonna waste much time on this, so dont expect a reply, but I am
gonna explain the situation to anyone here to ensure this brainless
bashing stops.
I'm not sure who made this post, but I do know who dropped the system off,
it was a woman with long black/grey hair and both VERY poor English skills
and VERY poor French skills. As in she couldn't speak either language the
store normally dealt with very well.
The problem was described to me as "can't install Win2000, get blue screen
of death etc" and she needed it fixed ASAP, like in less then a day. The
system was a full tower system with 1 HD installed in it and another in a
removable bay. Now I never format a customers HD without prior consent
from the customer. However I must note that the store CLEARLY states at
the service desk we take NO REASPONISBLITY FOR LOST DATA. None the less I
said Ill need to format the HD and install an OS again to test it and
asked can I format this HD?
- she said something about no you dont need to install the OS, I can do
that
- my reaction was, well I need to do so to test the system fully
- her reply ok, well you can install if you want, all important data on
2nd HD
To me this sounded like its ok to use this HD since Ive placed all the
important information on the removable HD (which she had just taken out
of the computer).
Now for what I found, well its been a while, but if recall correctly the
new mainboard she installed was installed incorrectly (an A7V600 I
believe). Several mounting brackets were missing, the board was shorting
out against the steal back plain and the CPU was installed incorrectly
(the fan was backward and I think it had inadequate thermal gel too).
Either way when I looked at it, the CPU was overheating and the board was
shorting out. I reinstalled the CPU and the mainboard correctly. Then
ran a mem test for a few hours; it passed so I proceeded to install WinXP
(our test OS) on the HD (which from our discussion she had authorized).
The install took just fine first time, installed all drivers, ran a burn
in test program we had, the CPU wasnt over heating anymore, all looked
good, I charged her like $75 and called to say it was ready (I believe
this was later on the same day).
She came in, I showed her the OS running, she said good, I then said I
need to format it again because I had used the stores WinXP licence and
she said ok. I formatted it, she paid the bill and all seemed good. A
few hours later she called up and was freaking out on the phone to our
help line guy (the Oriental). Long story short after he talked French
with her (which she was a bit better with) it turns out the important data
drive she left IN the computer and the empty HD in the removable bay she
took OUT!?!? Plus she believed that formatting a HD didnt mean she would
loose the data either!?!?
It was clear what had happened here; due to her poor English and lack of
knowledge about terms like format and clean install she had
inadvertently permitted her primary HD to be deleted. We were all very
sorry for this and apologized profusely. However since the service center
doesnt take responsibility for lost data we werent about to pay her the
$400,000 or whatever ridiculous amount she had claimed the data was
worth. None the less we did tell her we had HD scanning tools which would
most likely recover most of her data and that we would not charge her
anything to perform a drive recovery. She declined, claimed the computer
still didnt work correctly, just wanted the system working properly and
didnt care about the data anymore.
She brought the system in again, we asked her to leave it longer this time
(so we could test it more), she agreed and our other tech tested the shit
out of it. From which he learned that sometimes the OS would go in fine
and other times it didnt. The cause of which turned out that the old
mismatched 2700DDR chips she was using didnt get along well with the
A7V600 mainboard she had installed (and did the same with all the A7V600s
we had in stock). We offered her 2 options, either change the RAM to
Crucial 3200DDR which we knew did run stable in the A7V600, or change the
mainboard to one that didnt take issue with her old mismatched 2700DDR
chips. Since she didnt want to pay for new RAM, she went for the change
mainboard option (which we exchanged free of charge). I think she took an
A7V8X-X which is not as feature rich as the A7V600, but we find ran for
over 24 hours problem free with her RAM chips.
So now with the mainboard mounted correctly, the CPU installed correctly
and an intermittent compatibly problem between her old RAM and new
mainboard seemingly solved we return the system to her a 2nd time, free of
charge. In fact I think we even gave her cash back since she selected a
less expensive mainboard. Ultimately the only thing she paid for was fact
that she had installed the mainboard and CPU incorrectly (VERY incorrectly
I must say). We never charged her for troubleshooting the compatibly
problems of her old components. Something that we were fully in our right
to do so, but feeling bad about the miscommunication and HD deleting
thing, did it for free. She left, seemed happy to us, and we never heard
a word about the whole thing again. Well that is till I discovered this
little one sided pissed off post of hers.
Personally I think the store and I were VERY nice to her about the whole
thing. We could have charged her for the second more extensive service,
but did not, even though our new parts and workmanship were not the root
cause of her troubles (it was her old parts and personal workmanship). We
also were under absolutely no obligation to offer her a free data recovery
simply because of a miscommunication, yet we did so.
Anyways thats my side of the story. I cant speak for the final thing
about the RAM, never heard any about that. Hell I didnt touch the system
after it was found she could communicate in French a little better then
English and we started having our 2nd French speaking tech deal with her.
In any case I dont feel at all responsible for the loss of her data. She
could have placed that data on her removable HD, backed it up ages ago or
better yet simply removed the critical HD from the system altogether.
In any case SHE was the one who turned down our offer of a free data
recovery at the time of the incident, so all I can say is shes got no
business crying about not having her data today.
BTW Yet again, we did apologize for the miscommunication MANY times, from
the moment we realized what had happened, right up to the final time she
left the store, with extra cash in her hands.
Regard
Ian