OQO’s massive QC failure and apology
- February 3rd, 2008
- Read 8164 times
- 4 Comments
Fortunately and unfortunately us tech journos get pretty good technical support. We make a call to someone in company PR, they come and help us, and we rarely go through the hoops normal consumers face when they have a bum PC or printer (incidentally, I’m happy to escalate problems with products to the proper folks for CG readers. I’ve done it before on WWR for people who had broken watches and we’re happy to do it here at CG as well). Well, one of our own finally felt the pain of being “just some guy with a problem” and the story wasn’t pretty.
OQO makes little UMPCs. Dave Ciccone’s OQO 2 wouldn’t hold a charge so he called support and they told him to send it back. Two weeks later he got the unit back in worse shape than he sent it and called to complain. They asked him for a credit card number to hold a “deposit” and swap out the unit for a new one — most companies just ship you a new unit and give you a label to return the old one expecting, rightly, that you don’t want a piece of crap bum unit and a new unit cluttering up the place — and Dave refused. Finally, they relented and sent the new unit and it didn’t have a battery. Bloops.
Dave updated his post with a little of the old “communications breakdown” line, but I don’t believe it. If Dave had this problem, I’m sure a number of others have had the same problem. OQO needs to rework its returns policy and teach its customer service reps that there are actually human beings at the other end of the line who, policy or not, purchased their products in good faith.
UPDATED..OQO quality control problems - Resolved [MobilityToday]
Nehemiah
2008-02-03 13:29:51
How about ETEN corp? Their flawed products like the ETEN Glofiish Pocket PC phones have been giving headaches to their owners yet ETEN is providing NO customer phone technical support. These are $600 phones… I speak from experience: I can’t yet even make a phone call with my X800, and I did buy it in good faith.
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rgdyk
2008-02-04 08:31:07
Buy a new car. Park it in your garage long enough to kill the battery. Get it towed back to the dealer for repairs. What do you think the CEO’s of GM, Toyota or Ford will tell you if you go crying to them afterwards that the guys in the shop scratched the hood, or your Sirius Satellite radio no longer works, or the windshield got replaced? Do you for one minute believe they’d give you a brand new car replacement?? Ha! They are in the business to sell, and are responsible to the stockholders to consistently show profit. In the course of doing business however, there are always those who’ll complain about bad quality in a product before ever taking the time to read the quick start guide. Some would argue with Dave Ciccone’s story that if he only took better care of his 2K investment in the first place, then he wouldn’t have had to deal with all the other issues later.
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John Biggs
2008-02-04 10:20:09
I would tend to agree with you - 99% of tech problems are between the keyboard and the chair - but when Ciccone sent it in he got it back in worse condition, something even I can’t accept.
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Ray
2008-04-27 17:19:53
I think every company has some service issues but to me the bigger problem with OQO is it just needs a lot more improvement in the design. Sure it is small but how to you use word, and most programs that a made for a keyboard with your thumbs? They need to rework the exterior input then maybe they would sell more and have better service as they would be making a lot more money?
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