Hey all,
I don't know if you will be able to help, but I would appreciate any suggestions etc.
So my buddy's sister goes to uni in winnipeg. My buddy works at a staples in Burlington, Ontario. He hooks her up with a laptop. A Toshiba, against me critism, but hye , its his sister.
She has had problems with it ever since. Of late, the RF mod blew and shorted out the touch pad. So now she has no LCD screen or touch pad. She uses her warranty and toshiba's and goes to the staples in Winnipeg. They basically tell her that they will not replace or fix anything on it and that they will hve to send it out to toshiba to look at.
Sister calls big brother, who then calls the winnipeg store to try to figure out their reasoning and to try to straighten things out.
My buddy knows all the procedures in and out( begins manager training shortly) and knows what will happen, and what is wrong. Despite every effort, no luck and they sent the laptop out. The problem is Toshiba wont fix anything of 500$ in repairs, they will replace the whole unit. Also here warranty explcicitly is supposed to protector her from this situtaion.
The sister was able to get a loaner ( how nice of them....), however when they give her the password( written and verbally) she gets home and it is wrong. Staples closes at 6pm there, and so she was out of luck to get the correct password. Bigger problem is that she has two projects do one tomorrow and one the next day.
My buddy calls me up and I got her in through Safemode and they either created a user account for her or set the admin pass word. This was on XP home.
What can be done about this bad customer service? Well, my buddy is going to the district manager of the winnipeg area to formally complain and hopefully eh will try to seek conpensation. I on the other hand wish to cripple the laptop the loaned out so that when they get it back they have to do as much work as us to get it running. Turn about is fair play. But I really do not need to bring my self to their level.
I was going to:
Delete all accounts except the local admin, make all files read only and remove all access to the files for the SYSTEM and EVERYONE groups, issue a 128bit admin password on the account, diable the account, go into CMOS and disable and turn off every boot option enable all passwords with the strongest strength I can put in, as well as passwording the CMOS but the boot up and have it not even find anything in the machine.
I know it is not the right thing to do, and can easily be fixed by wiping the CMOS to defaults and reimaging the machine.
Well since what I want to do is not practical, nor is it any better customer behaviour, and after somehting like that getting any kind of conpensation is out of the question.
What is the best way to handle this? I thought about billing staples for my services on their laptop as well. then if they do not pay, lockit.
Anyway,
Please give me some more info, adn ideas!
Where does this topic go? Tech support? or RANTS?