"Getting my account back" Giveaway

[z1tu]

Hello folks,

So earlier this week I promised I was going to do a game giveaway as celebration for getting back my Origin account which was blocked by EA on false claims of TOS breaching. I'm going to be giving out a game on Steam(can you really blame me?) of the winner's choosing worth $10(I'm flexible on this, might also gift the value if you want a different game which is slightly more expensive).
Ok, now time for the rules :
1 Must be a member no later than 01.01.2014 (sorry newcomers)
2 Must have a Steam account
3 Tell me the worst customer service nightmare story that happened to you or your friend which ended positive for you
4 ??????????
5 Profit

The winner will be determined with random.org (never used it but I'm sure I'll handle it). Best of luck and I can't wait to hear some good stories!

EDIT 1 : I'm giving this a week.
EDIT 2 : Please also mention if you're participating in the giveaway

 

[RCoon]

About a year ago (god it hasn't been that long since it happened), I bought the 780 reference on launch day. It was glorious, so much so that I went full watercooling. I used a universal block, so I put heatsinks on all the other passive parts for fans to take care of. Eventually I bought a full cover block, and thus the heatsinks needed to be removed. That LAST heatsink I removed, pulled off one of the R22 inductors on my newly bought £550 card.
Needless to say I panicked, took pics, uploaded them here and everybody sympathised with me, but you know, it was my fault, I was totally retarded.
So I thought hey, I'll fix this myself because nobody will RMA this thing, I toasted it. Went out and bought a new soldering iron, contacted both NVidia and Gigabyte about sourcing me a new inductor. After about a month arguing with Gigabyte (their UK customer support is quite frankly shocking), they fobbed me off, had one of the hardest support request systems available, and made the whole thing more of a nightmare. After another month, I finally contacted NVidia, who didn't have to do anything at all because all they did was provide the chip, the rest was Gigabyte's issue.

I talked to a guy called Ray. Ray is a champion. Ray is the epitomy of what every customer services assistant should be. Ray deserved a goddamn medal. Not only did Ray give me a direct line to him, he gave me advice over a full 7 days, eventually put me in a conference call with Gigabyte live over the phone, but he also witnessed how shockingly bad Gigabyte's support was. He was very disappointed at how negative Gigabyte was, and wasn't particularly happy. So champion Ray, he calls up the chipset engineering department. His engineer friend emails me personally, and Ray tells me if Gigabyte refuse to help, and nothing else can be done, Ray will have their factory send me down an R22 inductor from China free of charge if I don't get anywhere. I tell Ray how awesome he is, and go back to Ebuyer, where I bought the card from, and forwarded them my ENTIRE support log with Ray. Champion Ray from NVidia then pokes and prods Ebuyer on my behalf, and Ebuyer agree to take the card in and check it for possible support/repair.

1 month later I hear nothing. Then all of a sudden a parcel arrives. They did not fix my card. Master Champion Nvidia support Ray, gets ebuyer to take my reference 780 in and sent to NVidia for repairs, and then sends me a Gigabyte Windforce x3 OC card as a replacement, which to this day is still running and is now in my brother's PC.

Shame on Gigabyte for being useless, and props to NVidia for dealing with something they didn't need to.

Wherever the hell you are Ray, I contacted one of your colleagues the next day, asked where your offices were, and ordered a pizza to your office address. Hope you got it, you glorious man.

In the unlikely event I win, send my 10 dollah to Childs Play charity.

 

[z1tu]

About a year ago (god it hasn't been that long since it happened), I bought the 780 reference on launch day. It was glorious, so much so that I went full watercooling. I used a universal block, so I put heatsinks on all the other passive parts for fans to take care of. Eventually I bought a full cover block, and thus the heatsinks needed to be removed. That LAST heatsink I removed, pulled off one of the R22 inductors on my newly bought £550 card.
Needless to say I panicked, took pics, uploaded them here and everybody sympathised with me, but you know, it was my fault, I was totally retarded.
So I thought hey, I'll fix this myself because nobody will RMA this thing, I toasted it. Went out and bought a new soldering iron, contacted both NVidia and Gigabyte about sourcing me a new inductor. After about a month arguing with Gigabyte (their UK customer support is quite frankly shocking), they fobbed me off, had one of the hardest support request systems available, and made the whole thing more of a nightmare. After another month, I finally contacted NVidia, who didn't have to do anything at all because all they did was provide the chip, the rest was Gigabyte's issue.

I talked to a guy called Ray. Ray is a champion. Ray is the epitomy of what every customer services assistant should be. Ray deserved a goddamn medal. Not only did Ray give me a direct line to him, he gave me advice over a full 7 days, eventually put me in a conference call with Gigabyte live over the phone, but he also witnessed how shockingly bad Gigabyte's support was. He was very disappointed at how negative Gigabyte was, and wasn't particularly happy. So champion Ray, he calls up the chipset engineering department. His engineer friend emails me personally, and Ray tells me if Gigabyte refuse to help, and nothing else can be done, Ray will have their factory send me down an R22 inductor from China free of charge if I don't get anywhere. I tell Ray how awesome he is, and go back to Ebuyer, where I bought the card from, and forwarded them my ENTIRE support log with Ray. Champion Ray from NVidia then pokes and prods Ebuyer on my behalf, and Ebuyer agree to take the card in and check it for possible support/repair.

1 month later I hear nothing. Then all of a sudden a parcel arrives. They did not fix my card. Master Champion Nvidia support Ray, gets ebuyer to take my reference 780 in and sent to NVidia for repairs, and then sends me a Gigabyte Windforce x3 OC card as a replacement, which to this day is still running and is now in my brother's PC.

Shame on Gigabyte for being useless, and props to NVidia for dealing with something they didn't need to.

Wherever the hell you are Ray, I contacted one of your colleagues the next day, asked where your offices were, and ordered a pizza to your office address. Hope you got it, you glorious man.

In the unlikely event I win, send my 10 dollah to Childs Play charity.

Holy popsicles that was an awesome story! Thanks!

 

[RejZoR]

Not entering for givaway, just sharing my experience...

My worst experience was with Lenovo netbook. It had shitty WiFi reception from day 1, but service center insisted it was within specs. Except this was the only device in my home that failed to be permanently connected and had constant WiFi issues, disconnecitions, poor signal etc. Even phone had better reception and its tiny! While it was in service center, screen died. When i got it back with a fixed screen, HDD died. I was so pissed off i demanded a new laptop. Distributor for my country luckily resolved the issue by giving me a brand new netbook. Which was the same model so i sold it. I'm not sure i'll ever again buy anything from Lenovo, but i have a good experience with distributor/service center.

 

[Ahhzz]

I've got a very recent CSR issue that came out well. A few months ago (3, to be more exact), I purchased a refurbished HP Chromebook. Worked great, loved playing with it, did what I expected, and I was pleased. It got used off and on over the next several weeks, sometimes with an external mouse, sometimes with just the touchpad. Well, the last couple of weeks, it had just stayed in the bag, not being used at all. Monday, I brought it to work, took it back and forth, forgetting to get it out for the purpose, until Wednesday.

Wednesday, I brought it in, let it start charging, and booted it up. No mouse cursor. no touchpad response, nothing. Keyboard worked, hooked an external mouse up, worked great. But the touchpad would not come up. Now, I'm an IT guy, so I start troubleshooting: go through all the steps, and learn all sorts of things about how to reset and reload one of these Chromebooks, including downloading the OS and letting it re-install, but no luck.

Next step, warranty? Check the warranty. It ended 2 days prior. 2 days??!! Seriously??!! Well, I've called everyone from Dell, Lenovo and HP to IBM and Compaq, and I've had to get warranty "extensions" with almost all, including a 2 1/2 week one from Dell. This should be easy.

Over the next 2 1/2 hours, I spoke with 5 different reps (2 of whom were supervisors), and got exactly nowhere. Even after specifically telling the first one of them "I need a warranty extension. If you are not authorized to do this, then transfer me to someone who can". He transferred me to the non-warranty support team, who couldn't do anything but charge me for the phone call. Called back to tier 1, yelling at the new guy. Insisted that he either patch me to his supervisor or someone authorized to extend a warranty. He put me on hold for 10 minutes, during which I had a server fan go full-jet engine at a client, and had to drop the call to go deal with it. Got back to them later, got to a supervisor, found out that he couldn't do it either, and started cursing. Explained how many different times I'd called the different vendors and gotten small extensions on warranties, and if this was the way HP was now dealing with their customers, I'd be glad to start selling Dell, Lenovo and Acer to my clients, and be sure to explain the reason why. After a few minutes of back and forth "Sorry, the system won't let me", he told me that what he could do, was put the ticket into their Customer Loyalty group, who should call me back within 2-3 hours, and maybe they could help. Ok, fine, we'll see where that goes.

This was at 12:30. At 8:45 that night, I get a call at home from HP, and a CSR named (something like) Bertram. "Bertram" gets my story, checks my troubleshooting steps, and proceeds to tell me that while he cannot "extend" the warranty (I start to steam), he can enter an "Exception" (which apparently does the same thing, as my followup email shows my device status is now In Warranty). Under this "exception", they will issue me a packaging box and a pre-paid mailer to ship the Chromebook to them, and they will repair the Chromebook at no charge to me, and once the item is returned, I can, if I wish, extend the warranty at that point for another year or two. 10 minutes later, after entering the "order", I've got an email explaining the process, and I'm a much happier tech and Chromebook user.


In conclusion, thanks tons Z1tu for the giveaway, and good luck all

 

[xvi]

Bought three Socket A Gigabyte motherboards back in the day from three different vendors. All DoA. Found the various vendors through pricewatch.com, none of which would reply.
My stories don't have a happy ending.

Subscribing because not only do I like CSR stories, it's also my job.

 

[z1tu]

Not entering for givaway, just sharing my experience...

My worst experience was with Lenovo netbook. It had shitty WiFi reception from day 1, but service center insisted it was within specs. Except this was the only device in my home that failed to be permanently connected and had constant WiFi issues, disconnecitions, poor signal etc. Even phone had better reception and its tiny! While it was in service center, screen died. When i got it back with a fixed screen, HDD died. I was so pissed off i demanded a new laptop. Distributor for my country luckily resolved the issue by giving me a brand new netbook. Which was the same model so i sold it. I'm not sure i'll ever again buy anything from Lenovo, but i have a good experience with distributor/service center.

Heh, had a friend work for Lenovo support, told me a lot of horror stories Glad it worked out for you and thanks for sharing!

I've got a very recent CSR issue that came out well. A few months ago (3, to be more exact), I purchased a refurbished HP Chromebook. Worked great, loved playing with it, did what I expected, and I was pleased. It got used off and on over the next several weeks, sometimes with an external mouse, sometimes with just the touchpad. Well, the last couple of weeks, it had just stayed in the bag, not being used at all. Monday, I brought it to work, took it back and forth, forgetting to get it out for the purpose, until Wednesday.

Wednesday, I brought it in, let it start charging, and booted it up. No mouse cursor. no touchpad response, nothing. Keyboard worked, hooked an external mouse up, worked great. But the touchpad would not come up. Now, I'm an IT guy, so I start troubleshooting: go through all the steps, and learn all sorts of things about how to reset and reload one of these Chromebooks, including downloading the OS and letting it re-install, but no luck.

Next step, warranty? Check the warranty. It ended 2 days prior. 2 days??!! Seriously??!! Well, I've called everyone from Dell, Lenovo and HP to IBM and Compaq, and I've had to get warranty "extensions" with almost all, including a 2 1/2 week one from Dell. This should be easy.

Over the next 2 1/2 hours, I spoke with 5 different reps (2 of whom were supervisors), and got exactly nowhere. Even after specifically telling the first one of them "I need a warranty extension. If you are not authorized to do this, then transfer me to someone who can". He transferred me to the non-warranty support team, who couldn't do anything but charge me for the phone call. Called back to tier 1, yelling at the new guy. Insisted that he either patch me to his supervisor or someone authorized to extend a warranty. He put me on hold for 10 minutes, during which I had a server fan go full-jet engine at a client, and had to drop the call to go deal with it. Got back to them later, got to a supervisor, found out that he couldn't do it either, and started cursing. Explained how many different times I'd called the different vendors and gotten small extensions on warranties, and if this was the way HP was now dealing with their customers, I'd be glad to start selling Dell, Lenovo and Acer to my clients, and be sure to explain the reason why. After a few minutes of back and forth "Sorry, the system won't let me", he told me that what he could do, was put the ticket into their Customer Loyalty group, who should call me back within 2-3 hours, and maybe they could help. Ok, fine, we'll see where that goes.

This was at 12:30. At 8:45 that night, I get a call at home from HP, and a CSR named (something like) Bertram. "Bertram" gets my story, checks my troubleshooting steps, and proceeds to tell me that while he cannot "extend" the warranty (I start to steam), he can enter an "Exception" (which apparently does the same thing, as my followup email shows my device status is now In Warranty). Under this "exception", they will issue me a packaging box and a pre-paid mailer to ship the Chromebook to them, and they will repair the Chromebook at no charge to me, and once the item is returned, I can, if I wish, extend the warranty at that point for another year or two. 10 minutes later, after entering the "order", I've got an email explaining the process, and I'm a much happier tech and Chromebook user.


In conclusion, thanks tons Z1tu for the giveaway, and good luck all

Yeesh, that's a lot of time spent on that but it's good they managed to make an "exception". Are you in signing up for the giveaway also?

Bought three Socket A Gigabyte motherboards back in the day from three different vendors. All DoA. Found the various vendors through pricewatch.com, none of which would reply.
My stories don't have a happy ending.

Subscribing because not only do I like CSR stories, it's also my job.

Sorry about that, that really sucks Are you in for ze prize?

 

[xvi]

Sorry about that, that really sucks Are you in for ze prize?

Heh. No worries. Most of them are my fault for not pressing the issue. I'll leave the prize for someone who has more time to play. Thanks for doing the giveaway though!

Another no-happy-ending story is the Galaxy S3 I pre-ordered from Verizon. It had GPS issues from pretty much day 1. I once left it outside, clear blue skies, screen on, for 20 minutes. It couldn't even lock on to one satellite. I brought it in twice and both times they said "Yeah, that's getting fixed in the next OTA. Just wait for that." Turns out the issue is caused by the screws on the back of the phone being loose. The rear plastic housing has compartments sprayed with some kind of metallic paint that isolates things like the CPU from the RF-sensitive things (cell, wifi, gps, etc). The screws back out and let RF leak from some compartments in to others, causing interference. Sure enough, tightening the screws resulted in a 5 second, 20 satellite lock. Shortly after, I cracked my screen.

 

[qu4k3r]

Six years ago, I entered into a Hispazone review contest sponsored by Gigabyte Spain. I wrote a review of my former Sapphire HD4850 and I won. The prize was X38T-DQ6 mobo, so I bought a brand new C2D E7200 with a pair of OCZ DDR3 1800MHz ram sticks in order to build a new system. I was veeery happy because I live in Venezuela and I got my new mobo from the other side of the atlantic ocean.

When received the mobo I noticed it was not brand new, had scratches on pcb, had not i/o shield but I didn´t care becuase it was a high end mobo for free. But when building the system, it did not post, it had a on-off loop. I went to 2 computer shops to find what was wrong and tested the mobo with another combinations of cpu and ram sticks. The result: The mobo was bricked.

I wrote a lot of emails to Hispazone and Gigabyte to explain what happened, and I did not want to ship a broken mobo to Spain in order to get a new one. A couple of months later, they finally sent me a brand new X48T-DQ6 for free, without sending the broken one back.

I actually used this mobo in one of my PCs, but nowadays Hispazone contests are limited to Spain residents only.

 

[z1tu]

Six years ago, I entered into a Hispazone review contest sponsored by Gigabyte Spain. I wrote a review of my former Sapphire HD4850 and I won. The prize was X38T-DQ6 mobo, so I bought a brand new C2D E7200 with a pair of OCZ DDR3 1800MHz ram sticks in order to build a new system. I was veeery happy because I live in Venezuela and I got my new mobo from the other side of the atlantic ocean.

When received the mobo I noticed it was not brand new, had scratches on pcb, had not i/o shield but I didn´t care becuase it was a high end mobo for free. But when building the system, it did not post, it had a on-off loop. I went to 2 computer shops to find what was wrong and tested the mobo with another combinations of cpu and ram sticks. The result: The mobo was bricked.

I wrote a lot of emails to Hispazone and Gigabyte to explain what happened, and I did not want to ship a broken mobo to Spain in order to get a new one. A couple of months later, they finally sent me a brand new X48T-DQ6 for free, without sending the broken one back.

I actually used this mobo in one of my PCs, but nowadays Hispazone contests are limited to Spain residents only.

They learned from your bad experience and didn't want to repeat it probably At least you got a brand new shiny mobo By the by, are you participating in the giveaway?

 

[qu4k3r]

Well, I'm not really interested on the giveaway.
In fact I have many games on my steam account which never have been played.
But thanks for asking and doing the giveaway.
Just wanted to tell my funny story.-

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Sure, I'll enter.

I think my worst custom service dealings were with the USA branch of Sapphire Tech (Althonmicro). I RMA'd my reference HD 5870 because the fan was making a racket. They sent me one of their non-reference designed cards (Vapor-X) which would do this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/something-is-wrong-and-i-think-it-is-the-vid-card.125402/

Clearly not my fault whatever that was so of course it got RMA'd again. This time, because Sapphire took so long last time, I bought an HD 5670 from PowerColor so I could keep using my computer while it was gone. When I got the card back, it was the same exact design as the one I sent and lo behold, it did the same damn thing under the same circumstances. I looked at the clocks, realized it was overclocked and underclocked it to AMD reference speeds. The problem went away. I debated about sending the card in again but knowing Sapphire would probably just send me another craptastic, unstable, factory overclocked card, I decided to do nothing. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. After the card was outside of warranty, it started doing it again even at reference clocks. The only thing left that I could do was flash the VBIOS, so I did using BIOS from a Sapphire card with reference clocks, and it has never acted up since.

Needless to say I am never buying a Sapphire card again but it still ended positive because of ATIflash .

 

[Ahhzz]

....



Yeesh, that's a lot of time spent on that but it's good they managed to make an "exception". Are you in signing up for the giveaway also?

...

Nah, like qu4k3r, I've got more not-installed games on my steam account than I have installed, and many more Off steam. I'll pass, just thought I'd share thanks again!!

 

[z1tu]

Sure, I'll enter.

I think my worst custom service dealings were with the USA branch of Sapphire Tech (Althonmicro). I RMA'd my reference HD 5870 because the fan was making a racket. They sent me one of their non-reference designed cards (Vapor-X) which would do this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/something-is-wrong-and-i-think-it-is-the-vid-card.125402/

Clearly not my fault whatever that was so of course it got RMA'd again. This time, because Sapphire took so long last time, I bought an HD 5670 from PowerColor so I could keep using my computer while it was gone. When I got the card back, it was the same exact design as the one I sent and lo behold, it did the same damn thing under the same circumstances. I looked at the clocks, realized it was overclocked and underclocked it to AMD reference speeds. The problem went away. I debated about sending the card in again but knowing Sapphire would probably just send me another craptastic, unstable, factory overclocked card, I decided to do nothing. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. After the card was outside of warranty, it started doing it again even at reference clocks. The only thing left that I could do was flash the VBIOS, so I did using BIOS from a Sapphire card with reference clocks, and it has never acted up since.

Needless to say I am never buying a Sapphire card again but it still ended positive because of ATIflash .

Wow, I had a few Sapphire cards back in day and never had problems although I skipped the 5xxx series altogether Thanks for the story and good luck!

 

[patrico]

I can honestly say that my CS with my fav tech companys has actually been ok to date, no great mistakes or ignorance on their behalf, RMA's just fine and deliveries on time,, I guess so far I have just been lucky eh

Really like the concept of the giveaway and glad you got your account back

@z1tu NoT Going To Enter Thanks But Big Thanks For The Opportunity

bumpy bump

 

[z1tu]

I can honestly say that my CS with my fav tech companys has actually been ok to date, no great mistakes or ignorance on their behalf, RMA's just fine and deliveries on time,, I guess so far I have just been lucky eh

Really like the concept of the giveaway and glad you got your account back

@z1tu NoT Going To Enter Thanks But Big Thanks For The Opportunity

bumpy bump

Glad to hear that, hope it's like that for you from now on.

 

[Flogger23m]

I'll enter the giveaway.

One of the more annoying issues with an order I had was with a Corsair 550D case. Out of the box some things were broken, including a bent side panel, USB 2 to USB 3 converter which did not work and a fan which made some noises. The side panel was only slightly bent and it would close, but opening it was rather difficult. The other two issues I could not tell until I turned on the PC for the first time. Upon noticing all three issues I contacted Corsair for some replacement parts. I could have gotten the entire case replaced via Amazon easily, although I did not want to constantly swap out my entire PC multiple times. I sent emails to Corsair, with vague responses. Three weeks later I had no new parts or even a confirmation if I was going to get any. I was rather upset with how poor the communication was with Corsair customer service, both in response time and lack of clarity.

I then contacted the Corsair representative on Hardforum via PM, and I assume he sorted out the issue as a few days later I got replacement parts. Free, no charge at all. The new parts worked and I can properly remove my side panel, have no more fan noise and USB 3 works great (although I since upgraded motherboards and no longer need the converter).

Even if they end up being slow it seems like Corsair is willing to help their customers out. The Corsair 550D is an excellent case in most aspects and I am glad with my purchase.

 

[Steevo]

I cancelled Bresnan Cable full package service, returned all their equipment, Modem, Cable Box, DVR Cable Box. Was charged almost $1000 for failure to return items, emailed proof of return, they couldn't open the attachment, and if I put a picture of me returning the equipment, or any other attachment on the email it was removed "for security reasons", I went down to the local office, where I had the signed form with serial numbers for returned equipment, and they were unable to deal with it as it had gone to the collections department in Bresnan (2 months of dealing with it). They were unwilling to call and be on hold for the 45 minutes it took to reach the "cancelled accounts officer", so I sat outside for a lunch hour waiting on hold, when they answered I told them who I was, my issue and where I was, went in and the lady behind the desk managed to finally confirm my return of the equipment, and then got "disconnected". In short it took 3 months, being threatened with outside collections, about 5 hours of my time and 30 miles of driving to actually get my account closed.
But this was after paying for two boxes, HD service, On Demand, and much else that was "coming" at some unknown point in the future. Bresnan came in and had the local city coucel agree to a no competition contract with the city for cable providers, meaning 30 miles on either side they had all the features they were paying for, and we were stuck with cable, and about 20 HD channels, and 10 of those were BS like Cspan.

I am glad when Charter bought them out, we resubscribed and the speeds went up, the features were there, and the billing wasn't FUBAR. On demand Karaoke was good for parties.

 

[z1tu]

I'll enter the giveaway.

One of the more annoying issues with an order I had was with a Corsair 550D case. Out of the box some things were broken, including a bent side panel, USB 2 to USB 3 converter which did not work and a fan which made some noises. The side panel was only slightly bent and it would close, but opening it was rather difficult. The other two issues I could not tell until I turned on the PC for the first time. Upon noticing all three issues I contacted Corsair for some replacement parts. I could have gotten the entire case replaced via Amazon easily, although I did not want to constantly swap out my entire PC multiple times. I sent emails to Corsair, with vague responses. Three weeks later I had no new parts or even a confirmation if I was going to get any. I was rather upset with how poor the communication was with Corsair customer service, both in response time and lack of clarity.

I then contacted the Corsair representative on Hardforum via PM, and I assume he sorted out the issue as a few days later I got replacement parts. Free, no charge at all. The new parts worked and I can properly remove my side panel, have no more fan noise and USB 3 works great (although I since upgraded motherboards and no longer need the converter).

Even if they end up being slow it seems like Corsair is willing to help their customers out. The Corsair 550D is an excellent case in most aspects and I am glad with my purchase.

Nice one, I'm glad the issue was resolved for you, I own a Corsair Vengeance C70 and I love it! Good to know they can help me out if something happens!

I cancelled Bresnan Cable full package service, returned all their equipment, Modem, Cable Box, DVR Cable Box. Was charged almost $1000 for failure to return items, emailed proof of return, they couldn't open the attachment, and if I put a picture of me returning the equipment, or any other attachment on the email it was removed "for security reasons", I went down to the local office, where I had the signed form with serial numbers for returned equipment, and they were unable to deal with it as it had gone to the collections department in Bresnan (2 months of dealing with it). They were unwilling to call and be on hold for the 45 minutes it took to reach the "cancelled accounts officer", so I sat outside for a lunch hour waiting on hold, when they answered I told them who I was, my issue and where I was, went in and the lady behind the desk managed to finally confirm my return of the equipment, and then got "disconnected". In short it took 3 months, being threatened with outside collections, about 5 hours of my time and 30 miles of driving to actually get my account closed.
But this was after paying for two boxes, HD service, On Demand, and much else that was "coming" at some unknown point in the future. Bresnan came in and had the local city coucel agree to a no competition contract with the city for cable providers, meaning 30 miles on either side they had all the features they were paying for, and we were stuck with cable, and about 20 HD channels, and 10 of those were BS like Cspan.

I am glad when Charter bought them out, we resubscribed and the speeds went up, the features were there, and the billing wasn't FUBAR. On demand Karaoke was good for parties.

Wow, what a nightmare, I kept hearing these kinds of stories from US customers when I was working in CS. Glad it worked out for you in the end and hope it doesn't happen again. By the way, are you entering the giveaway?

 

[RCoon]

Sure, I'll enter.

I think my worst custom service dealings were with the USA branch of Sapphire Tech (Althonmicro). I RMA'd my reference HD 5870 because the fan was making a racket. They sent me one of their non-reference designed cards (Vapor-X) which would do this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/something-is-wrong-and-i-think-it-is-the-vid-card.125402/

Clearly not my fault whatever that was so of course it got RMA'd again. This time, because Sapphire took so long last time, I bought an HD 5670 from PowerColor so I could keep using my computer while it was gone. When I got the card back, it was the same exact design as the one I sent and lo behold, it did the same damn thing under the same circumstances. I looked at the clocks, realized it was overclocked and underclocked it to AMD reference speeds. The problem went away. I debated about sending the card in again but knowing Sapphire would probably just send me another craptastic, unstable, factory overclocked card, I decided to do nothing. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. After the card was outside of warranty, it started doing it again even at reference clocks. The only thing left that I could do was flash the VBIOS, so I did using BIOS from a Sapphire card with reference clocks, and it has never acted up since.

Needless to say I am never buying a Sapphire card again but it still ended positive because of ATIflash .

After the gr33n g3cko fiasco I don't intend on buying a Sapphire card any time soon. Their cards might be great, but to allow that sort of thing on your support is worrying.

 

[z1tu]

Bumpity bump! No moar stories left?

 

[z1tu]

I have totally forgotten about this, I had a friend stay over the weekend and was busy. Sorry about that Only 3 people in the in the run as Steevo didn't respond to say if he's in the giveaway or not
So, without further ado, the winner is :

The prize money was sent to Child's Play Charity on behalf of RCoon

Thanks once again for your stories and for participating and sorry for forgetting and for the long post.

 

[RCoon]

I have totally forgotten about this, I had a friend stay over the weekend and was busy. Sorry about that Only 3 people in the in the run as Steevo didn't respond to say if he's in the giveaway or not
So, without further ado, the winner is :
View attachment 59813
The prize money was sent to Child's Play Charity on behalf of RCoon
View attachment 59814
View attachment 59815

Thanks once again for your stories and for participating and sorry for forgetting and for the long post.

Thanks very much kind sir, and congratulations again

 

[BarbaricSoul]

Ok, I know I'm late and the winner has been selected (congrates @RCoon ), but I'll share my customer service experience.

Ok, some of you may have noticed (or maybe you didn't) that I haven't been on TPU as much as I normally am. The reason for this is I just bought a new toy, a 1992 Corvette. Well, while the car is driveable and reliable, it does have some electrical gremlins living in it. I contacted one of my local Chevy dealerships, Casey Chevrolet in Newport News VA and got on the phone with thier "Corvette Specialists". I explained what the car was doing, and the information about the issues I got from corvetteforums.com. Now I am the type of customer that pays in cash. I have a nice chunk of cash coming to me within the next month (around $3500), and I want my car fixed with little regard as to what it will cost me. I explained this to the "specialists", to which his reply was I could bring them my car, and they would get to it when they get a chance not giving me any indication of how long it would take, but that it is possible the car will sit for a month before even being looked at, let alone worked on. He also said any new cars with warranty work or maintenance would take priority over my car.

WTF, is my money not green? Is my car not good enough for that shop to work on? Wouldn't the mechanic shop make more money off keeping my 22 year old car running properly than doing maintenance on new cars? Needless to say, my last words were "The next time I am looking to buy a new car, Casey Chevrolet will not be an option, DICK!!"

The 'Vette-

 

[RCoon]

Ok, I know I'm late and the winner has been selected (congrates @RCoon ), but I'll share my customer service experience.

Ok, some of you may have noticed (or maybe you didn't) that I haven't been on TPU as much as I normally am. The reason for this is I just bought a new toy, a 1992 Corvette. Well, while the car is driveable and reliable, it does have some electrical gremlins living in it. I contacted one of my local Chevy dealerships, Casey Chevrolet in Newport News VA and got on the phone with thier "Corvette Specialists". I explained what the car was doing, and the information about the issues I got from corvetteforums.com. Now I am the type of customer that pays in cash. I have a nice chunk of cash coming to me within the next month (around $3500), and I want my car fixed with little regard as to what it will cost me. I explained this to the "specialists", to which his reply was I could bring them my car, and they would get to it when they get a chance not giving me any indication of how long it would take, but that it is possible the car will sit for a month before even being looked at, let alone worked on. He also said any new cars with warranty work or maintenance would take priority over my car.

WTF, is my money not green? Is my car not good enough for that shop to work on? Wouldn't the mechanic shop make more money off keeping my 22 year old car running properly than doing maintenance on new cars? Needless to say, my last words were "The next time I am looking to buy a new car, Casey Chevrolet will not be an option, DICK!!"

Wow, I don't think I've ever had that issue with a garage. They simply book you in regardless of what car you drive or how easy or cheap it is to fix and that's that. Most dealership garages leap at the opportunity of a customer going to them, because they can charge more than the independents. Pretty weird if you ask me.

But, nice car man