| [Rant] My AmigaOne Experience | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 06-Oct-2003 15:31 GMT by Joe (Edited on 2003-10-09 10:04:34 GMT by Christian Kemp) | 151 comments
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Read at your own risk.
[ Please also read Alan M Redhouse's side of the story. - CK ]
Hello there. Heres some good things to say to all you chirpy AmigaOne owners.
I ordered a G3SE in November 2002 and it arrived Christmas eve. It wouldnt work from the start. Oh what a fun christmas that was. After a day of owning it I felt like smashing it to pieces. Nothing would boot whatsoever and when it did get so far it would crash at the logon screen.
I called Eyetech and they sorted it out. After a while they switched it to KDE.
Next set of problems. Instability. I tried everything and nothing would resolve. The machine was basically unusable, it was logging out randomly. I posted on sites like this for help and didnt get much really. Then it wouldnt even boot KDE after a while for some reason, so I tried a re-install.
Then it decided not to read any CD's.
I just left it there gathering dust, too stressful to even think about to be perfectly honest.
Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago, I called Eyetech and explained about the constant problems. They said if I replaced the ROM chip and installed Debian instead of Suse it would make things better.
I explained to them on the phone, I am a bit of a novice and dont really know how to do this. "Well the instructions are very clear" they say. I say "Well could I just send it back. I dont really know what I'm doing here and I dont want to make things worse". The phone conversation ends.
As I'm getting prepared to post the whole thing off I recieve an envelope from Eyetech which apparently contains a ROM puller and a ROM chip. We did not spot this at the time. There were instructions saying you need a paperclip (not a rom puller) so we got our paperclip and got prepared to remoev the "ROM". The instructions were very clear indeed... right. The photograph supposedly illustrating how to remove the ROM properly is somewhat poor quality and the mans finger is completely covering the ROM chip, thus making it impossible to see which part to remove (like I said on the phone, were novice).
After trying hard to remove the thing we ended up removing the ROM chip AND the socket and most of the pins. We knew instantly the motherboard was now well and truly ####ed. We call Eyetech and they say there is nothing we can do now. After that we discover the ROM chip and puller hidden in a tiny sponge on the back of the envelope, with the replacement ROM (if we had seen this we would have known which exact part to remove).
As you can imagine I am furious with this, after 10 months of sheer hell from investing in the new "Amiga" computer, I am over £900 down, not going to get a penny back really and I feel like smashing the thing up.
Such a thing as this is what has driven me more and more away from the Amiga community.
One furious ex-Amigan.
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| My AmigaOne Experience : Comment 115 of 151 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Jens Schönfeld on 07-Oct-2003 17:57 GMT | I usually do not add to such long threads, but I feel like I have to, because people with common sense get dissed for no appearent reason (Joanna Kurki being the one with the most precise, but hardest words for the situation).
This is the way I see it:
Eyetech first explained to Joe's parents that it's an earlybird system, not suited for anyone who is not an expert. Parents confirmed that he's a supergeek, he would be able to handle it.
Here's the first communication problem: Parents don't know anything about computers, so they can't know if their son is a computer expert. They're parents! They want to be proud of their son, so of course, he's an expert!Having this false issue, Eyetech sent out the board, and this is where the trouble started.
Joanna is right about refunding would have been the best thing, but there's a psychological problem with this: I have made this offer quite some times before to certain customers who could not handle installing a network, or handle some of my other products. The thing is that this offer is highly insulting to people, putting an even worse light on the customer support. You should have heard what people said to me on the phone when I told them that installing the XXX product in the way they want to may be too complicated without further knowledge. They did not accept that it would take me days to explain to them how it's done, and that this kind of support is not included in the price.
I'm happy to say that the C-One developers are a well-selected group of people. Only a few even applied to become developers, and out of those, only one has been rejected. The others have enough common sense to ask before they do anything. To be honest, I think the kid I rejected is very similar to you, Joe.
Joe, there's a chance to repair the board, hoping that your dad still has all the parts. Send all the stuff back to Eyetech, and give them some time. I think it should be clear that you have to pay for the repair, and most of all, you owe them a public apology for the bad mood you're trying to spread.
Jens Schönfeld |
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