I've owned a Gateway 2000 Pentium computer for about a year now.
Lately the hard drive has been making strange noises and the entire
system then locks up until I reboot. I've tried various things like "fixdisk"
with only temporary results.
I called the convenient 800 number on the Gateway 2000 mousepad
to contact their tech. support department. I was told by a recording
that I should expect to wait at least 30 minutes for a response.
Well I can guarantee that I'll probably never buy another Gateway
2000 computer again. No support....no business...it's as simple as
that!
30 minutes of my time is worth far more than the $2 or so that
Gateway 2000 could have paid SystemSoft, Cybermedia, Award,
Phoenix Technologies, or SOMEONE to license a user "self-help"
product that would have told me instantly what was going on with my
hard disk (something that I'm sure the system was recording).
Who has the answer? SystemSoft has been saying for a year that
they have a product with NO competition, yet they seem to be having
a really hard time selling the product and when they do it's for far
less than $2 to manufacturers.
Cybermedia sells a retail product for around $30, but the manufacturer
of the PC that can't seem to support its own products has a far bigger
incentive to find a solution than I do....they're probably losing thousands
of repeat customers...yet could have solved the problem VERY
economically.
Is the answer going to be Award Software with their pre-boot remote
diagnostics product? If my system hangs up, are they going to record
the problem and let me know without having to get remote support
from the same jokers that put me on hold for 30 minutes?
What about Phoenix Technologies? They have a 7-year technology
agreement with Intel to supply key system software components for
all their motherboards. Intel has a big stake in reducing the cost of
ownership and certainly the key system software is going to be critical
in identifying and providing essential information to the application
that will report the problem to the customer (both on a pre-boot and
post-boot situation) WITHOUT having to dial out into cyberspace.
Phoenix Technologies calls this market niche "user assistance",
while SystemSoft calls it "call avoidance". I definitely want to
avoid calling Gateway 2000 if I'm going to be on hold for 30
minutes. If I can get some user assistance, I'd be happy to cover
the few dollars that it'll cost Gateway 2000 to keep my business...
don't they want my business and the business of thousands of
other unhappy customers???? Even if the product doesn't
answer EVERY problem, certainly it's worth a few dollars to them! |
