mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (05/16/89)
In article <694@accuvax.nwu.edu>, jon80@gamma.eecs.nwu.edu (Jon Adee) writes: > 1) The facts and specifications about their machines differ > from one authorized dealer to the next. > > 2) They rarely know what the h-ll they are talking about. Okay, I'll give you the first two. When I called a "Heath/Zenith Authorized Dealer", I asked about the "expansion chassis" that was listed on a Z-148 info sheet that I have. I wanted to know how much it cost, whether or not it was still being made, how many slots it added, and how many slots it took to install. The saleswoman I talked to told me that she didn't know, and she would call the warehouse and find out, and then call me back. I gave her my phone number, expecting a call in a few days. It's been over a month, and I still haven't gotten that phone call. I'd call their Tech Support line, but seems that it (at least the "Operating Systems/Applications" one) is continually busy. The fact that they are only open until 4:30 (coupled with the fact that I don't have any free time to call before 3) has made it very hard to get through. Someday, I'm going to just set up my modem to attack dial it, and wait. Maybe I'll get through. (Heh, heh, heh. Riiiiight.) > 3) If you need to get something fixed, you must bring your > computer back and forth at least five times before they even > get slightly warm to where the actual problem is. > > 4) It takes no less than ten phone calls while you computer is > at the dealer to get them to even look at it each time it is in, > meanwhile you grades drop in your classes because one does not > this much time to waste. Well, I don't know where you got the idea for these. When my hard disk suddenly started to randomly get "General Failure" and "Sector not Found" errors (even after backing it up, LOW-LEVEL reformatting it, hi-level reformatting it, and restoring it), we brought it into the Zenith dealer mentioned above (I have the "kit" version of the Zenith Z-148). They examined it, and within a week, called us and told us that the media on the hard drive was dead (they can't fix it). They asked us whether or not we wanted them to replace the hard drive. If this happened now, I probably would have told them no, and gotten on the phone to PC Connection or CompuAdd to order a new hard disk. However, I didn't know that much about computers at the time, so I told them to put in a new 20-megger (the old disk was only 10MB). We had the computer back within another week (a little less than two weeks total time). I'm still running the 20MB disk they installed (a later-model ST-225), so they seem to do a fairly good job. The Zenith dealer I've dealt with so far is at: 29433 Orchard Lake Rd. Farmington Hills, MI Phone: (313) 553-4171 (Just in case you're near enough to try them yourself.) Note: I have no affiliation with Zenith except as an occassionally satasfied customer. -- Marc Unangst UUCP smart : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us UUCP dumb : ...!uunet!sharkey!mudos!mju UUCP dumb alt.: ...!{ames,rutgers}!mailrus!clip!mudos!mju Internet : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us