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Jul - Craziness Domain - Toshiba's repair technicians are incompetent. New poll - New thread - New reply
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Sukasa

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Posted on 06-05-13 04:53:56 PM (last edited by Sukasa at 06-05-13 04:54:24 PM) Link | Quote
So, Some time ago, in June 2009, I bought a nice laptop. Decent specs, good OS, and not *too* expensive. It was a Toshiba. It served me faithfully for a couple years, but towards the end of its warranty period the unit was showing its age. The chassis was worn, the screen discoloured in the corner. The battery barely held a charge and the cooling system just couldn't keep up anymore. Don't even get me started on the failing hard drive.

I decided it was time to give the thing some TLC, and sent it in for warranty repair and maintenance. All seemed well - when I got it back, I was barely holding the same unit! They'd replaced the LCD. They'd replaced the battery. They replaced the Chassis.

They replaced the motherboard. They replaced the hard drive. They replaced the wiring harnesses.

That's where the trouble started. Some time later I tried to use the fingerprint reader on the unit. Oops, that didn't work anymore, and Windows couldn't find it! Well, it was too late to do anything about it, and at least I never really used the reader. Cue trying to use the USB ports on the other side of the chassis than normal.

Oh. Those aren't working either. Shiiiiiit. Welp, time to get used to playing games with everything plugged into the working side of the laptop. Oh wait, it just overheated and shut down. Seriously?

A few days ago, I got tired of the CPU and GPU constantly overheating and triggering a thermal shutdown. So I check the thermal pads on the GPU.

They are so badly cooked that they have gone brittle and darkened. Great, so that's why I can't use my GPU. Guess I'll just have some replacement pads expressed up. I don't need the GPU much, but can I at least get the CPU working? Good thing the GPU is socketed, and thus removable.

Pulling off the entire cooling assembly, I'm greeted by the sight of what should be white thermal paste apparently so badly degraded it has turned a shade of blue. I carefully clean all of this blue shit off the CPU and northbridge, and re-apply some premium paste. Reattaching the cooler, I power on the laptop and check my temperatures. Simply re-pasting the CPU lowered its idle temp by 40°C, and it can get past 75% load without going anywhere near 105°C.. in fact, it maxes at 66°C like it should! I am happy with this, and leave the system alone for now.

We rejoin yours truly this morning. I am sick and tired of the USB not working... and pull out the motherboard to take a proper look at the USB connection to the fingerprint reader. Note, I long ago removed a lot of the peripheral boards, including the 'dead' USB ports. That's when I noticed it.

A small connector, plugged into the motherboard... and running under the thin orange insulating film. Going to.. nowhere. That makes no sense, what are.. the... wi..res. . . .

Red. Black. A twisted pair of brown and green. Cue rage. This connector. This stupid, goes-nowhere connector. It's a USB connector - and it *should* be plugged into the fingerprint reader. Quietly raging, I plug the connector back in, and retrieve the peripheral board that normally houses the additional two USB ports I previously could not get to work. I carefully and PROPERLY reattach them, since the connector isn't polarized.

Whoop, power on. Laptop boots (still no GPU, remember) and I access remote desktop and bring up device manager. Oh, hey. There's some hardware here marked as problematic...

Oh. OH.

It's the Fingerprint Reader. Windows needs to install drivers for it. And hey, there's the USB keyboard I plugged into the dead ports!

...

Seriously? I spent TWO YEARS without those ports and that reader, because the techs couldn't be bothered to MAKE SURE ALL THEIR CABLES WERE PROPERLY SEATED?

Toshiba repair techs, pray to whoever you believe in that you never meet me.

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Lunaria

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Posted on 06-05-13 05:09:49 PM (last edited by Lunaria at 06-05-13 05:10:04 PM) Link | Quote
Actually, some studies were made regarding PC repair here in Sweden and it seems they are incompetent across the board. :V

So I kinda personally decided I will do my own repair job should anything I have break, since I know what I'm doing.

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Lyskar
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Posted on 06-06-13 09:05:42 PM Link | Quote
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Metal_Man88's Post
Toshiba techs also failed to repair my computer's horrible overheating issue despite me taking it in 3 times, then it broke again right after the warranty died and I was SOL.

Don't buy Toshiba Laptops. Seriously.

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Post 10890/11363

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Posted on 06-06-13 09:23:14 PM Link | Quote
I've never dealt with Toshiba support. Just Acer's. (Which was, believe it or not, shockingly good. Except they wiped my OS for some strange reason. Oh well! I'd backed everything up anyway, at least, so little harm done.)

I did take my old Satellite to get fixed once and got quoted $400. Fuck that.

Turns out all I had to do was glue something in place, when I finally worked up the guts to go inside of it.

Seriously. Plastic breaking. That was it.

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Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 06-07-13 08:27:42 PM Link | Quote
Post #5024 · Fri 130607 162742
Any time I get something repaired and it's not in perfect working order when it comes back, I send it back again, and again and again if I have to until they figure out what it's costing them to keep paying for the shipping and incompetent repair work and fix it properly or outright replace it.

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Pandaren
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Posted on 06-08-13 07:52:15 PM Link | Quote
ACER HAHA.

A few years ago, the keyboard on my friends laptop stopped working. Being the "tech-savvy" friend, he asked me to take a look at it. I did the usual driver checks, asked if he had dropped it, spilled something on it (no on both), vaccuumed the thing, but nothing really helped. The computer still had warranty so I didn't want to open it lest I void it. In the end, I decided to contact the customer support and ask them how to proceed.

They told me that there'd be instructions for packaging and they'd send them to my email... which they never did. After waiting for a day, I simply packaged it with what I had at hand, cloth, bubblewrap, tape, etc. The delivery company came the next day and picked it up.

Four weeks passed and they sent me a letter, stating that there was fluid inside the case which was the heart of the problem. Now, the computer was only used in dry indoors and my friend was very protective of his computer, so nothing could have spilled there. Faulty packaging on the other hand... I came to the same conclusion, the packaging had failed and moisture had built up in the computer.

So now that Acer "knew" that YOU DID THINGS WRONG, they immediately declared the keyboard AND the motherboard faulty, devoid of warranty and slapped a 700 euro bill on the thing and told me to pay... or pay 100 euros for shipping fees and get a broken computer back.

I told them that there was no possible way that moisture could have gotten into the machine, unless it was from faulty shipping. I also told them that I never recieved packaging guide, so this might be the case. I had to argue for a week over emails before they checked and realized that they never had sent me an email. Got the laptop repaired for free.

So yeah, Acer experiences.

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Jul - Craziness Domain - Toshiba's repair technicians are incompetent. New poll - New thread - New reply


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