Gateway Techs Suck

I’ve been silently harboring a great disappointment in Gateway for the last 18 months, so although this has vectored into a technical discussion, I’m going to cut loose anyway.

I bought a top of the line Gateway laptop in August 1998, to the tune of about $3000. The computer that was shipped to me was fine, except that the floppy drive didn’t eject disks cleanly. I called tech support and they dispatched a new modular floppy drive.

The new floppy drive that arrived worked fine for about a month, and then the eject button siezed on it, and I had to resort to using paperclips to eject disks. Replacement floppy drive no. 2 sent.

That drive worked fine for a couple of months, I guess, since I don’t use floppies very often. Then it stopped working entirely, for reasons that are not clear to me. Called Gateway, received floppy drive no. 3.

About a week before the first anniversary of my purchase (and the expiration of the warranty), the hard drive utterly fails. No warning, no data loss beforehand. Just one morning, the computer tries to boot up and can’t even find that a hard drive exists. I report it to Gateway tech by e-mail, and receive no response. I wait another few days and report it again by phone. They tell me on the phone that my warranty has expired and they can’t send a new hard drive. After some extended runaround, I manage to get them to locate my original, timely report of the problem and they send a new hard drive. (I, of course, must reinstall all my software and cope with the lost files on the original drive.)

Now, about 18 months from when I bought it, my floppy drive has gone kaput again-- it won’t read or write to any disks and insists they are all unformatted. Since I’m now out of warranty, I’ve given up on the idea of getting it fixed. I can e-mail files up to 1.44 mb without much problem, and if I absolutely need to make floppies for something, I’ll go buy an external drive.

I will admit that laptops pose durability problems. The smaller the computer, the tighter the tolerances on moving parts, and the greater likelihood that something can go wrong. But it is absurd that I can experience mechanical problems in four separate floppy drives (which don’t get much use to begin with) over an 18 month period. Add to that the hard drive failure and a cosmetic defect (poor design put plastic hinges on an access panel on the part of the computer that rests on the desk, guaranteeing that they’ll break off eventually. Nearly every demonstration laptop in a Gateway store has a broken-off hard drive access panel.) and you’ve demonstrated a surprising absence of quality control in my eyes. I would be more willing to accept defects if I had purchased a budget computer, but Gateway is a prominent retailer, and I expect that their top of the line model will work reliably.

I have no real complaints about Gateway customer service; but for the somewhat annoying episode with the hard drive, they have been more than willing to quickly send replacement parts. But I am so frustrated by the repeated failure of their merchandise that I have resolved never to buy a Gateway computer again.

I got to sleep in late…hoooooooooootie whooooooooooo!!! ANYWAY…First of all, thanks for the msconfig thing…makes things run faster…and as for BIOS? What the hell is that?? lmao…as you see, i’ve never done something like that tech. i will work on it later today…i have errands to run. Let me tell ya what happened, I had to reformatt my hard drive already. Gateway tech walked me through it over the phone (after waiting on hold for 3 hours, anyway, thats another story lol). I had to reformat because I came in from work, and nothing on my puter would open up. Kept getting illegal ops-whether it was my email, my excel, etc. SO, long story short…i rebooted, and it wouldnt do that. Kept getting stuck in some dos command. called gateway, reformatted. since the reformat, i’ve done so many things to ‘fix’ the illegal ops, manually changed the time umpteen gazillion times (through the dos mode), and who knows what else. I could try purchasing a new battery-i’d rather try that then messing with the people at the store first. Lordy Lordy, who the hell knows lol. I dont understand why a battery would cause all the illegal ops. Any explanations? (remember, i’m not the guru of puters obviously lmao). And if i do get a new battery first, what do I go in the store and ask for, and where is it located in my “box”–cpu…hehehe…THANKS! and you all are great!!!

Based on everything you just now said, you almost certainly have a hardware problem. If you can’t even reload windows (aside from the fact that windows sucks a lot), you have something wrong with your hardware.

Question: were you as descriptive about your problem with the techs on the phone as you have been on the board? If so, then I think I found your problem: they can’t fix a problem if you don’t explain it clearly. If you’ve been having a lot of random errors in windows, and a clock that’s not keeping proper time, you have a problem with (almost certainly) your motherboard.

By the way, it’s probably not a good idea when you call gateway’s tech support to alienate the technician by bitching about how all gateway techs suck and how sexist they are because the e-mails are addressed to your husband. Insulting and belittling the people whom you hope are about to help you is generally not considered to be a good plan.


Mere Life is not Victory.
Mere Death is not Defeat.

Joe Cool

I asked a Gateway tech what he was doing while he was helping me.
-Listening to the radio on-line
-Playing a game of chess with another tech
-Doing a crossword puzzle
-Writing into some tech-geek-gaming message board
AND helping me out.

Amazing.


~handcrafted signatures since 1975~

Byzantine says:

Don’t take this personally, because I don’t mean it that way, but if you think a simple format reload is that big of a deal, then maybe you aren’t as technical as you think you are.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong… I think that if strait is smart enough to get online and register and post to a message board, it shoes that with step by step instructions that tell her in plain english exactly (or near enough) what to do, I think strait is smart enough to figure it out.

Burn me, I mean no disrespect, byz. It’s only that your wide-eyed response to a format seems to scream “inexperienced” to me.
Once again, I don’t mean this in a mean way. I know it may sound that way, but truly, I don’t. It was just stunning to see a technical person react that way to the suggestion of a format.


“Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots.”

I meant shows.
Lexicon=dork.

Lexicon…hehehee…thanks for the vote of confidence lol

Well, here is a bit of insider information… When they answer the phone, ask where they are located. If they say florida or Souix St. Marie, hang up the phone, call again. I worked for gateway for a while (well, technically it was outsource, which by the way all but 1 call center for gateway is, no matter what they tell you) and we had some really good techs here in dallas (which by the way, is now no more). We also had some ragin dumbasses. Suffice to say, the standard people were held to was not very high. When you hired in, you got 3 weeks of training, on how to troubleshoot win95/95. Some of these people didn’t even have computers themselves!!! However over time, most of the morons were weeded out. Although, every time we got a call that the customer was really pissed off and the last tech had fucked thier computer up good, it ALWAYS came from one of the 2 florida call centers. It got to be such a joke that a lot of us had flags we’d put up when we got one of these calls. The flag said “Florida fix in progress!”. :slight_smile:


“Oh dreadful angel of mine, enrich me with the vastness of your being…”

You can do it!
I have faith in you! If I lived in the same city, I would come on over and do it for you, and only charge you a home cooked meal.
Too bad.


“Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots.”

I believe that Gateway now has three internal tech support call centers…

Lexicon is a dork? No, no, no…Lexicon’s a gelding, remember? (See my post in Lex’s “Piss like a racehorse” thread in MPSIMS) Hee hee…still have to rib you on that, Lex. :stuck_out_tongue:

Strait, I do not and have not owned a Gateway, but my friend did. It was experiencing several program errors, to the point of nonfunction, around Christmas. She called tech support, they had her bring in her computer and Quick Restore CD. They neglected to tell her a Quick Restore would wipe out all of her files–she was not told she would need to back up–and she lost two years worth of work. (They did other repair work, but I’m unsure what.)

Yes, perhaps it was a little ignorant on her part. But, IMO, the Gateway techs should have warned her and encouraged her to back up everything as needed. When my Compaq crashed, had the hard drive replaced, and Quick restore run, the techs told me repeatedly I would need to back up everything. I did. She should have been told the same.


Teaching: The ultimate birth control method.

Laura’s Stuff and Things

Format reloads are suggested a little too often. I do agree that not telling someone that they are going to lose their data is wrong.
The problem is though, programs share so many files and they all have to have their own version that it so hard to tell which ones are the culprit, so FFR’s are a lot time necessary, so be ready with your information backed up anytime you call support. I have an external zip and I just bought a CDRW for backing up my data.

In regards to the the problem at hand (Strait’s system). The Restoration CD that you have, formats and reloads your system quite nicely. I have done it a few times on my system and it was simple. The whole process is pretty automated and only a few common sense decision have to be made. Like it will tell you to take out the CD and put in your Windows 98 CD. This will also load all of your hardware drivers.

I personally would have reloaded my system a long time ago if I was having the problems you are. I back Lex on the whole FFR thing.

In regards to the the problem at hand (Strait’s system). The Restoration CD that you have, formats and reloads your system quite nicely. I have done it a few times on my system and it was simple. The whole process is pretty automated and only a few common sense decision have to be made. Like it will tell you to take out the CD and put in your Windows 98 CD. This will also load all of your hardware drivers.

I personally would have reloaded my system a long time ago if I was having the problems you are. I back Lex on the whole FFR thing.

Ooops, having problems with my connection.

Thats okay…we’ll have Bob the Tomato straighten it out before they roll the credits…

Hey Lexi…(you dont mind if i shorten it do you? if so, PLEASE tell me)…according to you info/profile, you ARE NOT that far from me…just a few hops skips and jumps…and oh man, can i cook!! I’m originally from WV, and I can do some serious country cooking!!! BTW, saw your pic…your a cutie hun! lol Anyways, I think i’m gonna have to just haul my big 'ol box down to the gateway store. That way, if they screw it up more, it isnt my fault :slight_smile: I truly appreciate everyones input! You are all wonderful!

Damn, I knew I would do this, too…I forgot…Shagrath? thanks for the inside info. i honestly believe a lot of larger companies are like that. The company I work for, we do the same thing with one of our centers. Sounds as bad as ours

Hey Strait,

I work on the same street as the Gateway call center in C Springs…I have known a couple of people that have worked there and are pretty knowledgable.

In fact, I waited on the freaking phone for over 20 minutes once waiting for a Gateway Gold tech…come to find out I could have walked up to the center, with puter in tow, and had the problem resolved in less time!

No go figure that, it’s the nature of the beast I guess. But then again, getting good customer service anywhere anymore for anything is a dream for those that lack a sense of reality.

< tech’s not disgusted at Gateway, just at the business world in general >

Lex – hey, gosh, this is the Pit. You can jump all over me and call me a know nothing moron if you want to! It’s not that I think re-formatting your hard drive is that “big” of a deal but I was afraid of telling someone who said they were not all that technically literate to do something like that. I was just afraid that all of our helping was going to put her into a state where she would be worse off than before.

But, since this is the Pit: Why don’t you just jump up my butt you low life fart sniffer! Just kidding! :slight_smile:


Best!
Byz

Voted most sex obsessed. (Yeah, blow me smart ass!)