[lug] Pass the word!

[Gary Hodges]

Sure!  I'll try and keep to the main points.

1.  Several months back I purchased a case, mobo, processor, and RAM from 
TC Computers

2.  About four weeks ago the mobo started flaking out on me.  My sig 11 
posts resulted from that.

3.  I called TC about getting a replacement.  They were happy to replace 
the board, had even had other sig 11 complaints so they knew what I was 
talking about, but they wouldn't cross-ship another board to me.  That 
is, I had to take my computer down, send the board to them, and upon 
receipt, they would ship out a replacement.  That was unacceptable to me, 
so I decided to live with my flakey computer.  There is more to this part 
of the story, but you get the point.

4.  My computer was getting worse, so I had to return the board.  This 
was on March 29th.  They said they would 2 day ship a replacement upon 
receipt of my board.  They should have received my board on the 30th, so 
I was expecting them to ship the replacement no later than Friday the 
31st, and was looking for the new board on Tuesday April 4th.

5.  Late in the day of the 4th, I called to find out what the scoop was.  
I talked to a really helpful person (Alex I believe).  He told me my 
board was being repaired, and it would be at least a couple of weeks 
before I would get a replacement.  I was quite surprised by this.  I 
complained again about TC not doing cross-shipments, and he said they 
did.  He said he did them all the time.  I asked him if he would just 
send another board now, and get this taken care of, and he agreed.  I 
wanted to get a Tyan instead of the same FIC, and Alex agreed that was 
probably a good idea since they have had a lot of trouble with that 
particular FIC board.  So for a difference of $16, I was next-day shipped 
a Tyan S1598.  I got the board on the 6th (It was too late on the 4th to 
ship that day), installed, and it seemed to be working fine.  Note, that 
it did have that funky shutdown issue I posted about, but hey, at least I 
could compile a kernel again!

6.  On April 7th a replacement FIC board arrived.  Yesterday I got around 
to calling TC to get an RMA to return the FIC board.  The long and short 
of the conversation was I have to return the Tyan for credit, or buy both 
boards.  Their reasoning was I had the original FIC board for more than 
30 days, so it is impossible to return it.  It didn't matter to them that 
one of their employees had already fixed my problem, that I _was_ 
satisfied, and it was obviously their problem that they sent the second 
FIC board.  They acknowledged all of that, and still they told me that 
returning the Tyan was my only option.

So that's the gist of the story.  Am I in the right here?  I see their 
point, but it doesn't change the fact that an employee evidently went 
against policy by sending my the Tyan.  I certainly didn't make the 
decision to purchase two mobo's for one computer.  Arrgh!

Gary



On Tue, 11 Apr 2000, llornkcor wrote:

> care to share any details?
> > 
> > TC Computers totally sucks!  I promised those bozos I would do this.  
> > Never buy anything from them if you think there is any chance you may 
> > have to return the item.  Repeat...  Avoid TC Computers!  Pass the word.