My Weekend With Gateway

Many thanks to those who commented and e-mailed after my post detailing my frustrations with Gateway support. Some were even kind enough to offer free technical support from other companies, but I wanted to see how Gateway would respond to the issue. I’m a certified masochist in that regard, but as a former customer service professional, I wanted to see how long they would try to string me along before acknowledging the hardware problem.
First, I should note that I left the external wireless adapter attached all weekend long — and it never failed. Actually, the adapter is specifically not Vista compliant, but it worked anyway. In fact, I’m writing this post on the Gateway system now. That shows pretty conclusively that my router works just fine, as if the other two computers using it wasn’t proof enough.
Over the weekend, I received a series of four e-mails from the “Advance [sic] Technical Support” group. The first e-mail instructed me to make a series of changes to my TCP/IP protocols, which their Tier 1 group had already performed when I allowed them to take remote control of the laptop. I sent an e-mail reminding them of this, and their next reply instructed me to reload my drivers from the Recovery program. I replied that if they would have bothered to read the chat dialogues from my earlier contacts with Gateway support, they would know that I had done that several times already. The next e-mail instructed me to change my router, and my reply instructed them to quit wasting my time and read the damned dialogues.
Finally, this morning, they acknowledged what CQ readers and I knew all along: the hardware is faulty. They told me that “based on the troubleshooting, we have determined that parts of your notebook need to be replaced.” No kidding! I wonder which part of “troubleshooting” determined that — my input to them on all of the ways I had already isolated the problem, or the fact that I wouldn’t go away? I’m suspicious that it’s the latter and not the former.
Gateway will send me a box and an RMA to get the work done, which they say will take 7-10 business days after delivery. I expect it to be gone three weeks. I’d take it back to the store, but I’d wind up with the same hardware, and I think the problem is in the Realtek chipset. I can’t believe it took Gateway this long to reach this conclusion, and I’m left unsatisfied as a result.

23 thoughts on “My Weekend With Gateway”

  1. I think you may be correct on it being an isue with Realtek. The Realtek audio bridge on my newest system does not want to play with XP64 at all. I can run god sound without the Realtek driver installed, but as soon as I load that driver, no sound.
    As a rule of thumb, I will only use a new OS after 1-2 years of availability. I want all of the driver and hardware issues solved before I rely on them. It has proven providential in the past (I missed out on all of the fun of Windows ME, for example).

  2. IMAGE YOUR DISK!!!
    Before you send the laptop out for repairs either take a complete image or at the very least get all data off of it that you want to keep. There’s a very good chance that they’ll go and reinstall the factory image after whatever hardware changes they make in order to test it.

  3. We simultaneously bought a Gateway Desktop & a Tablet Notebook and had hardware problems with both, out of the box, only eclipsed by their horrendous technical customer service. Unfortunately your recent experience is typical. We can fill a hard drive with our numerous unsatisfactory encounters with their totally incompetent customer service technicians, the black hole that is their “escalation” department, and how you have to start from square one each time.
    Suffice to say, we would never, ever under any circumstance buy another Gateway.
    If there is any way to return it and get a refund, I would do it now, while you still have your sanity.

  4. I use HP-Compaq amd my turnaround time has been 5 busines days for laptops. I sent mine in on a Monday and had it back on Friday, The second time it went in on Friday and was back on Wednesday. They’ve given good service to me once I get past the first line of the Indian customer service mafia. I can’t really complain, they’ve been very good to me.

  5. I wouldn’t just tolerate my laptop being gone for 3 weeks. Seriously, CE, tell them to take it back entirely and refund your money. That’s the only way those jokers will learn. I can understand if it’s a really weird problem, but a bunch of us on here would have had the problem diagnosed within 10 minutes and there’s no reason they shouldn’t have been able to do the same.

  6. Re imaging the hard-drive, when I sent my Dell laptop to the service center, they told me to remove the battery, hard drive, and CD/DVD drive. It got turned around in 4 days, door to door!
    Strangely, it was shutting down due to over-heating. I cleaned the dust out of the fan before I even called them, but it didn’t help. When I got the machine back, the tag said they had replaced the heat sink!
    What the heck can go wrong with a heat sink? Did some of its mass disappear? Funny, I don’t recall any small nuclear detonations….

  7. The hard drive on my daughters desk top Gateway failed 2 years ago. It was still under full warranty.
    Round and round we went with the guys in India.
    They eventually emailed their solution. I printed it out. It was a 57 step process.
    I’m not a computer guru, and I was lost as to what they were talking about after about the 4th step.
    They eventually sent a new hard drive. Problem solved.

  8. This is the strong point of gateway’s operation. Once you put the computer in the box and it’s picked up, it’s a very short wait until it arrives back on your doorstep.
    With my hinge problem, two day turnaround by Gateway.
    Good luck.

  9. Wow, it’s hard to believe this is a mail-in problem. When I got my Dell laptop, it had wireless adapter problems. It’s a customer-replaceable part, and they sent the part to me so I could put it in. Down-time for replacement was about ten minutes.

  10. ConfusedOne gives good advice. Regardless of all the troubleshooting that’s already been done, the first thing the repair team’s going to do is format your hard drive and reinstall the OS and drivers. If you’re really lucky they’ll test the system well enough after they do to determine that the problem’s still there. If you’re less lucky they’ll do a thirty second test, pronounce it fixed, and send it back to you.

  11. Ed, I would personally recommend Dell the next time around.
    Yes, I know, Dell has had issues as well, but I can say that Miami University (of Ohio) buys nothing but Dells or Apples. They tried some Gateways a few years ago in the computer lab, but eventually chose new Dells to replace old (Pentium II, yuck!) Dells.
    The reason? The Dells broke down less frequently, and when they did, Dell was much quicker with replace/repair than Gateway.
    I don’t think I would ever buy anything from a company who was that bone-headed about a support problem. The next thing you know, they’ll tell you your TCP/IP stack needs to be “configured” for Vista!

  12. Gateway is not alone in blind stuborness. I bought a HP PC about two years ago. It developed a series of problems within the first month I owned it. I, at HP’s instigation, replaced the drive and then replaced the motherboard. The thing went from not recognizing the CD drive to not booting up at all. I spent perhaps 20 hours on the phone to their tech suport (in India) over two weeks, spent $75 for a home visit by their techs, and shiped the thing back to HP for repair. A month later it was returned ‘good as new with all the original programing on the PC’…I hauled it to a local service provider and asked them to test it for me. It crashed in under an hour.
    HP refused to either replace the piece of junk or refund my money. I bought a new machine, NOT HP, and gave the old machine away to someone who tinkers with PC’s. That guy tells me the PC had a fire before it was junked.
    That was when I discovered that HP’s service is awful and their warranty worthless. I would never, ever buy another HP PC again…never.

  13. Thinking about this, I’ve got a bad feeling. Card works for a while and then suddenly hangs, forcing a reboot. The reboot fixes the problem.
    Why would a software reset fix the problem? You aren’t shutting down and de-powering the system, only doing a reboot which causes a new device driver load and resulting device reset.
    That indicates to me a driver issue, not a hardware issue. If it is a hardware issue, I’m expecting that replacement of the chipset with the same rev level is not going to make a difference.
    And for those who would recommend Dell, it’s worse. I had my Dell work desktop out of commission for almost two weeks. It would have been four, but luck in the guise of a dropped palletload of Dell desktops interposed. My computer started acting up — BSODs and hangs. Dell-certified corporate techie says he knows problem — undersized headsink/fan assembly has caused CPU damage. Solution: replace heatsink/fan/cpu with upgraded model. But Dell won’t let local tech support do this directly without going through the Dell-mandated maintenance path. The ONLY order things can be replaced on a desktop system is power supply, then hard drive, then motherboard, and, finally, heatsink and cpu. One step at a time. In that order. So, I’m on step one when I get word that guys delivering a palletload of Dells dropped them off the loading dock, and Dell has authorized complete replacement of the innards of all the dropped boxes. I get a new computer that literally looks like it was dropped off of a truck, (the case is all cattywampus) but it works.
    We are moving from Dell to HP for exactly this reason. It may be from the frying pan into the fire, but we know what the frying pan is like.

  14. i’m Fw: you a email from Gateway News Media…”I’d like to connect him with our Executive Response Team to get this issue resolved.” She’s asking how to contact you. Same way i am trying …i guess – captain*at*captainsquartersblog.com

  15. The issue more often than not boils down to where the technical support is coming from.
    If it is a center in India then it all makes sense. The language skills of the people are so poor that they have to follow scripts and if your reply differs from what they are expecting they just send the next script.
    I regularly run into this with Dell and my solution has been to reply to every query with s single word: escalate. Escalate! Escalate!! Escalate!!! Eventually they get crustrated with me and escalate me to technical support in the US, where they either speak English or Texan (either is an imporvement) and I am able to get my issue resolved.
    At some point American busines will realize that the cost savings of having call centers in India are not worth the long term customer satisfaction issues that are created, and that having a building full of so-call customer service professionals who would rather argue than solve problems is a major turn-off to customers.
    I used to agree with the theory that the world would br a better place if we just shot all the lawyers. I’ve since discovered that the lawyers aren’t the worst of it, the finaincial analysts are!

  16. unclesmrgol: your experience is individual, hence anectotal.
    While one may argue the reverse is true, this is not the case. I did not cite my own experience, but the experience of a major American university with a very significant financial interest in buying reliable computers. I’ll admit the conversation in question took place four years ago.
    Honesly I’m surprised that you insisted on on calling support for an insufficient heat sink/fan, unless the thing is still under warranty. Replacing a heat sink and/or fan is very nearly trivially simple.
    But then, I have bought only one “pre-fab” computer in the past fifteen years. I put the things together for fun. 🙂
    If I had to buy a pre-fab system today, I’d look very seriously at HP. On the other hand, I’d look even omre seriously at Apple. They produce their own hardware, have a reputedly high-quality support system (Apple Care) and feature an operating system which is in many respects far superior to Windows.

  17. In 2003 Gateway and a few other companies had real problems with Maxtor drives. We wound up with over 50% failure before they knuckled under and replaced all drives under warrantee.
    Thank you for participating in the Vista Open Beta test (paid). It is thru the long painful experiences of people such as yourself that I will be willing to purchase Vista here in another year or two.

  18. They typically follow a flowchart in a manual, that’s why they keep asking you the same questions. I find it annoying too, and of course it’s exponentially more aggravating when communicating asynchronously via email because of all the iterations involved.
    FWIW I was very very happy with my Dell support through BancTec. They came out to me the same or next day (critical when you’re an IT consultant) and fixed things right away (one case of display cord pins detaching from socket inside laptop, two cases of stupid consultant spills crap on keyboard).
    IME Apples are just as unreliable as PCs, plus all the software is six months late. But they’re pretty and easy to use.

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