Toshiba laptops and customer service

1. Preface

I had a Sony Vaio SZ1 laptop, bought back in 2006, and I didn’t know about 5 years of grief with it (except for the dead battery, which was eventually replaced under warranty). By the beginning of 2011, due to intensive use, the laptop was visibly worn out, plastic in some places became not so good to keep, and therefore I made a difficult decision for myself to replace it. What to change? Of course, first of all, drew attention to the Sony line. After SZ, I wanted a laptop not in a plastic case and quite light. From the Sony lineup, only Z series laptops were suitable for me, but I did not have financial resources for such a purchase. The situation was saved by Toshiba, which offered for relatively little money a reasonably good and light Toshiba R630-143 laptop, which was bought due to the lack of alternatives and my confidence in Toshiba products.

2. A little joy

Time passed, the laptop was not used as intensively as Sony used to, mostly just at home. I was glad about almost everything except the color scheme of the screen, which is very cold, but this is a matrix problem, I knew about it before buying and I will not find fault, and high-frequency noise (like a mosquito squeaking), which was made inside the notebook when charging. At night it was impossible to charge the beech, because A squeak eats into the brain and did not let me fall asleep, charged during the day and while working on it (and it takes about 3 hours to charge). I wanted to take everything to the service, but I could not get it together. After about half a year of use, the laptop lid began to get loose little by little. Over time, the backlash cover became more and more. I put up with all this until the interlocutor began to hear interferences while talking on Skype instead of my voice.
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An attempt to reinstall the sound card driver, to make system recovery from the boot image failed. Then I went to an authorized Toshiba SC, called RSS (R-Style Service), for warranty repairs (I’ll say right away that I didn’t go to the seller, naively expecting that the defects would be fixed in the SC without any problems in a short time).

3. SC in Russia with my own eyes

Arriving at the SC, I saw an impressive lineup, but this is not surprising, since 2-3 specialists take there various equipment of several dozen companies, as well as legal entities. Persons who bring not one device. But the adventures were just beginning ... On November 18, 2011, I handed over the laptop for warranty repair, saying the following faults: high noise during charging, backlash of the laptop cover, incorrect operation of the built-in microphone.

Time passed: a week passed, a second, a third, a month, the repair did not end there. On December 26, 2011 (37 days later), an autoinformer called me and said that the repair was completed and I could take my laptop. Having been delighted, he immediately went to the SC, again spent an hour and a half in the queue. And now, a crucial moment, they bring a laptop, and an act of the repair, which says that the defects have been eliminated, the motherboard has been replaced, so well ...

4. Come, take it!

Immediately check: the cover does not play, when charging a squeak there is no, hooray! But it was not there. Immediately I was embarrassed that a second after switching on, the cooler reached its maximum speed and, humming half the receiving point, blew out air. Further more interesting, it turned out that the microphone didn’t work and didn’t work. Acceptance guys said that the problem with the microphone lies in the OS (and the OS is not included in the warranty), and received an answer that the system was restored from the image before handing over for repair.

I decided to try reinstalling the drivers on site. I climbed from the SC to the street to download sound card drivers, and at the same time check how the cooler behaves in a cold place. The result is not brought in both directions. I went down to the SC again, made a note that the flaws were not eliminated. But nothing more than to return the repair to the laptop again, the SC staff could not offer me, because That repair has already completed status. Well, we are doing a new work order, as well as writing a statement asking for the deficiency to be eliminated as soon as possible, without violating the general elimination period of 45 days starting November 18 (by that time 37 days had passed). At the same time he wrote about the situation on the Toshiba office in Russia.

5. Repin's painting “Not Waiting”

Three days later, on December 30, they call me from the repair shop and say that the defect of the cooler is not a defect at all, but a design feature, and it should work, ostensibly, this was confirmed by Toshiba. And the microphone is working. My words about the fact that the cooler used to work normally, but now it turns the maximum speed all the time, they did not want to listen, saying that I can pick up after the holidays.



January 12, the laptop was taken to the receiving point, I went to pick it up. As expected, the cooler worked a la the turbine of the aircraft, and the microphone was still recording only interferences. Once again, I was told that to restore the microphone to the operating system, it is necessary to reinstall the OS. In a situation with a cooler, things were somewhat better: together with the SC engineers, we tried to twist the cooling system settings in the BIOS, exposing various operating modes (performance, silent, etc.), but nothing changed, the cooler still tore and threw air . Here already and the staff of the SC expressed some confidence that he should not work this way. In general, I again handed it over for repair.

I will omit further details of my interaction with the SC, in order not to load a respected audience with a text volume. I can only say that 2 times I was given a laptop with the conclusion that everything is fine with the cooler, it should be so, but the microphone does not work because of the OS curve. The problem was solved only after I was able to reach the head of the claims department of the SC and, at the same time, Toshiba’s representative office. As a result, at the beginning of January 20th, I took a workable laptop from the SC. In the explanatory note, the engineers of the SC wrote that they just reinstalled the OS, and everything began to work normally. Miracles, not otherwise! And if in the case of a microphone I can still believe this, then in the case of a cooler this is downright mystique, given that it worked at maximum speed since the start of the laptop, and not after the OS started. But not the point, the goal is achieved - I got a working laptop.

6. Miracles do not happen

And I worked for this miracle of technology for 4 whole days, after which, when I next connected to the charger, I heard the familiar mosquito squeak from the depths of a laptop. This time, the desire to return the device to the seller (legally I have the right, because after the elimination, the malfunction reappeared) prevailed, and I called the Toshiba hotline to consult how to proceed: carry the laptop to the seller or in the SC for a conclusion. The hotline specialist replied that it was necessary to carry the SC and request a technical opinion, then with him to the seller. So did. It would seem that everything is simple!

A week later, the laptop returns to the collection point with the conclusion that this is not a defect at all, but a design feature (somewhere I already heard this, apparently, the favorite answer of SC and Toshiba). Immediately I call the head of the claims department with the question “How so? 2 months ago, it was a defect that was eliminated by replacing the motherboard, and now it has become a design feature? ” At the other end of the tube, the question was treated with understanding and explained that such decisions were made by Toshiba in any case (ie, the SC would agree on any operations), but agreed with my arguments and sent a request to Toshiba again. At the same time, the same question was sent to the Toshiba representation.

On the same day, Toshiba receives the answer that the motherboard was changed so that the coolers did not make noise and regulate the speed, and now everything is OK, and the noise that I hear is the norm. Well, I really can't hear the excessive noise of the coolers, but what have they got to do with it? There were no problems with them before the replacement of the motherboard, they appeared after its replacement, i.e. already upon re-treatment, and indeed they eventually miraculously disappeared after reinstalling the OS (according to the SC). I wrote the answer that the coolers are now working correctly, and the problem is not at all in them, but in the electrician, which whistles when charging the laptop (as people in the know explained, whistling inductors), and that this problem was corrected by replacing the motherboard during the first repair.

But again Toshiba showed her “customer focus” by sending a patterned answer that this is a feature of this model and everything is in order (they wrote that they even made a request to the manufacturer), ignoring my question about why they fixed the repair is this flaw if it is not flaw at all?

7. Conclusion

Unfortunately, at the moment, the dialogue with Toshiba is at an impasse.
From the above, I can conclude that the company sells products, and when problems arise with it, there is no interest in taking the side of the client. In the first year of using a laptop, a lot of problems have arisen which, in aggregate, cannot be solved for two and a half months. I can assume that I got a bad copy, this can be. But it is surprising that the manufacturing company not only does not try to solve problems as soon as possible, but by all means tries to disown the situation. Indeed, we can say that high-frequency squeak when charging a laptop - this is indeed its feature. The truth is that because of this "chip" it is impossible to sleep, and you do not even want to be around while charging in the daytime, as this squeak makes its way through the rest of the noise.

I understand what it is in Russia at every step, but after Sony, which was trying in every way to solve the problems that arose with the equipment, from a company no less respected by me to see this situation is sad. And my trust in such a company quickly disappears.

Unfortunately, besides the notorious hotline by phone and e-mail, no one can be contacted at Toshiba. And in dealing with these people, unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding. Perhaps, on Habré there are representatives of Toshiba, who can somehow clarify the situation?

Thanks for attention.