pff@thumper.bellcore.com (Pete Ferris) (12/05/89)
Gang, As you may recall some time ago I posted several messages about the service and treatment I was receiving from Jasmine. Many others joined in with their (mainly negative) experiences. It seems as if the bad to good experience ratio was about 8:2. For those of you that missed the original saga, I'll very briefly recap here: * I had two Jasmine drives fail with one week of each other. * The drives were only 5 units apart in serial number sequence. * It took nearly two weeks to get to talk to ANYONE other than a message center operator. * Jasmine was "kind" enough to send ONE 20MB DirectDrive (no cables or power cords, thank you) as a loaner against the 2 failed InnerDrive 140's!! Of course the ransomed the loaner against my Amex card. * Approximately 90 days later, I received the drives back from Jasmine. Thus far the repaired drives are doing fine. Thus far. I thought that was the end of a very bad experience. Since then, I have urged all of our Mac users to exclusively use Apple drives... as an Apple National Account, I feel we have a better "grip" on Apple's throat than Jasmines... so far no throat gripping with Apple has been necessary. In fact when it was determined that we had a failed Seagate drive (that was covered by recall) we had a replacement drive within 48 hours. Not too shabby, Apple. * The drives were under warranty. Jasmine did repair the drives at no cost. ------------------------------------------------------------ Evidently, it's necessary for Chapter Two of this nightmare: ------------------------------------------------------------ * This afternoon I noticed my 140MB Direct Drive hadn't mounted. I shut the Mac off, power cycled the drive. Nada... I don't hear the drive spinning... only a fan motor and power indicator LED are the only signs of life. NB: This drive is <<NOT>> one that failed previously. This drive is about a year and a half old, out of warranty for sure. * Just for fun, I tried the CDEV "SCSI Tools". Again, zip...! Which makes sense if the drive ain't spinning, but I had to try it - just in case Jasmine is using stealth motors in their drive mechanisms (ahem :-) ). * Called Jasmine. I was assured that since all techs were busy that I'd be able to leave msg with a Message Center operator (RSN...). 25 minutes later on "hold", I was able to leave my vitals, as well as a VERY terse description of the problem. Some had mentioned that after my experience that they'd received good service, etc; and that I must've "fallen through the cracks". Methinks the cracks have gotten wider. I'm going to wait 24 hours. No more. Then I'm going to try again, and again and... Somewhere if I look around, I think someone was kind enough to e-mail me Dennis Chang's phone number. I remember calling it and speaking with his assistant, Connie someone-or-another. I also remember Connie saying that she'd sure like to help, but that she was "... probably the most technically incompeteant person in the building...". Real helpful. How competant is Mr. Chang? I hope I don't need to find out. I don't suppose anyone has his DIRECT number, eh? Meanwhile, while I have everyone sitting on the edge of their chairs waiting for the climax of this fiasco, you might send me your recent (say, 6 mo or less) experiences with Jasmine. Can you say "Jasmine"? Quoth the raven: "Nevermore!" Thanks for the tea and sympathy... Pete Ferris Bell Communications Research pff@thumper.bellcore.com