Comments on: Technosophy: Computers Don’t Kill People, Tech Support Kills People

By: Gryphon

Gryphon — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:58:24 +0000

Well, I did say “replacing failed defective parts with new defective parts that had not yet failed”. We were all well aware that we weren’t working with the best quality parts. This was especially true during the Great Mouse Replacement Period, in which every single mouse shipped with a new Leading Edge computer for several months did not work owing to the fact that Daewoo had bought a huge bulk order of them from, at a guess, Uncle Park’s Bait Shop and Electronics, Ltd. in Inchon. What was especially fun about that was that all the replacement mice we had on hand in Westborough to send out as replacements? Were from the same enormous bulk order and didn’t work either.

Ironically, our hardware support people and especially the guys who worked down in the HQ repair shop (where dealers would send their hardest cases) really were conscientious. We wanted to do a good job. We wanted to take care of our customers. Sincerely, we did. We just… weren’t always able to.

By: Chris H.

Chris H. — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:53:09 +0000

I’m tempted to make some crass joke about the poor guy’s heart and shoddy RMA practices, but I’ll refrain.

And yeah, I did work for one of those dealers, though in our defense, the reason they’d fail again after repair was often because the replacement parts provided by Leading Edge were…um, not so great.

Mind you, Leading Edge was hardly the only culprit of that. We became convinced that a certain laptop vendor wasn’t even looking at the RMA descriptions of parts we sent back; this was confirmed when they sent us a replacement power supply that was identical to the bad one we’d sent in. Our problem description? “Cannot generate the 1.21 gigawatts necessary to induce time travel.”

You’ve thought I’d've at least gotten a phone call…

By: Bakk

Bakk — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:02:22 +0000

Wow, Thats a story for the grandkids one day!