arie@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Arie Covrigaru) (12/08/89)
I am posting this complaint for others to learn and beware. I own an external HD from PCPC for about a year. The drive came with two years warranty. It is a 45MB MacBottom with a Rodime mechanism. Until two months ago, the drive was perfect. Never had any data loss, relatively quiet, and very reliable even when travelling with it. Two and a half months ago, though, the drive refused to boot. After several trials, I succeeded to mount the drive starting from a floppy with system software on it. When running the tests provided within the drive utility program SCSITools v2.0u, it turned out that a few sectors had bad blocks that were not mapped (new bad blocks) and had to be mapped. Most of the data was intact and I was able to recover it (I did have it all backed up anyway) but I had to reformat the drive in order to fix the bad blocks problem. The utility program wouldn't let me fix it otherwise. I was happy it all ended (at least that is what I believed) well and I thought nothing of it. A few days later the same exact thing happened again. Each and every symptom with the need to reformat the drive. This time I wasn't as happy and I couldn't trust the drive with my data. As excepted, two weeks after the second incident it happened again. This time I called PCPC and explained the problem. The technician I talked to was very nice and told me to ship the drive back to PCPC. Up to this point everything was going as well as one expected. I shipped the drive and waited patiently for it to return to me fixed. Here is the problem: I haven't seen the drive back yet dead or alive. After about three weeks I called and I received the response that PCPC has problem receiving Rodime mechanisms but I have the option to replace the drive (which is under warranty) with a Quantum 40MB mechanism by paying $170.00 that will include the drive and the warranty. Obviously I refused to pay for the drive being under warranty and the company's responsibility to provide me with a working drive that I was happy with. Anyway, the person that talked to me said that in this case I'll have to wait until the Rodime mechanisms come in which might take three or four weeks and there is nothing they can do about it. It's been two months now, and I steel haven't heard from them. In my opinion, there was a lot that PCPC could do to satisfy their customer. For example to install the Quantum mechanism instead, and take responsibility of their promised warranty agreement. Maybe to ship a replacement drive until mine gets fixed and not leave me two months (and who knows how longer) without a drive that I depend on. Or maybe to call me and let me know what and how are things progressing with Rodime etc. I made a decision at the time to purchase the MacBottom HD because of PCPC's reputation as reliable company even though their prices were always higher the comparable hard disks in the market. I found out know that my assumptions were wrong and in the future I will not recommend their products, no matter how good they might appear. The bottom line is not how well the product is when it comes out the box, because problems can always arise, but how the company stands behind it's agreements and responsibilities to its customers when those problems appear. ===================================================== The previous story was my original posting of about three week ago. Since then I have been trying to get information from PCPC with no success at all. All I've got for the past three week is being put on hold for half an hour on the average, empty promises to call back and twice the chance to talk to too people, the regional salesman, who did nothing, and another (title undefined) person who promised to find out but wasn't there when I call back. The standard excuse I get from the receptionist is that the "right" person to talk to has lots of calls and this is why it takes so long (forever) to return my call. The last excuse was that she is on vacation. Now if they get so many calls, I would please like to know if other people have the same problems as I do. I don't really know what to do next, I can't believe that I lost my drive just like that, even Jasmine's seems more hopeful. The way the people at PCPC avoid my calls, it seems to me that they must be going bankrupt or at least in a situation as bad as Jasmine. What amazes me is that, not like Jasmine, no one talks about it. ============================================================================= Arie Covrigaru | Internet: arie@eecs.umich.edu University of Michigan AI Lab | 1101 Beal Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 =============================================================================