My Experience with Toshiba Canada......and the update... (WHT #90)
SCROLL DOWN FOR THE UPDATE (Feb 20, 2012)
We all need reliable products when it comes to running a business. I purchased a Toshiba laptop just over a year ago and as of a few days ago, it won’t even start. Yes, you read that right, it lasted a year. Actually, since it wasn’t running while I was on Christmas and trip holidays, and the fact it had to be re-booted a few months after purchasing, it didn’t even last that long. (Note: I’m currently working on my back up 10 year old Dell….)
I posted my complaint on the Toshiba Canada facebook page……here’s how it played out:
Their response:
Hi LoriAnn – We’d like to look into this for you. Can you email details of your issue, full contact info and case number (if you have it) to Melissa@toshiba.ca.
I’m not getting excited at this point as I’m not the only one on their page that has received this response. However, here’s my email (unfortunately its all true!!):
From: LoriAnn Toplak
Sent: January-23-12 11:42 AM
To: Melissa@toshiba.ca
Subject: toshiba computer
hi Melissa,
Bought a toshiba satellite computer last December and have been plagued with issues ever since.
The disc drive stopped opening one month after purchase, but when took to repair they wanted to keep the computer for a week – not conducive to my work! i since had to buy an external cd/dvd player.
i had problems about a month or so after buying, and called your company to get help to reboot.
The windows operating system has closed automatically over the last 6 months, (at last scan over 140 times), but since it kept re-opening, i could deal with it. It said i needed the newer version of Nortons, but even that didn’t help!
finally last week the computer stopped working all together – it won’t start at all and F2 and F12 won’t help. i’ve tried the external cd/dvd player with windows 7 backup disc and it won’t load.
after calling your lovely toshiba line, i got a testy lady letting me know that without payment, she would not help me since my warranty expired recently, and that i should have called earlier with all my problems. after the problems i’ve been having, i’m not paying another penny for this machine!
if this is representative of toshiba products, its pretty sad.
i’m interested to see what can be done………
Here’s the reply:
Subject: RE: toshiba computer
From: “Melissa”
Date: Mon, January 23, 2012 11:51 am
To: “‘LoriAnn Toplak’”
Hi LoriAnn,
Thank you for providing detailed information. I have sent this to our senior customer support team for review, they will contact you directly.
Melissa
And so the wait begins. We’ll see how long the review takes and if there’s a response at all. I’ll keep you posted……
Feb 20, 2012. Sigh. The saga continues. So Toshiba offered to fix the hard drive and reboot the computer at no charge. I had to drop off the computer in Markham and pick it up as well. I also mentioned the CD drive does not open. I get a call to say its ready for pick up, and I ask again if the CD drive was fixed, to a response “should we look into that for you or would you like to bring it back to get that fixed?”. Are you kidding me?
I then have to wait for it to be fixed and I get another call to pick it up. I open the box and of course the CD drive is not fixed. What a surprise (sarcasm galore).
So that was around 2 weeks ago. Let me repeat that – about TWO WEEKS AGO. Since then, I’ve contacted Al from the service department (voice msg and email) with no response. I’ve had so many problems it’s almost unbelievable if you’re not working on this plastic hunk of junk. I even have to keep saving this blog post as the screen can freeze or windows could close unexpectedly at any time and I’ll lose my work. Windows has closed unexpectedly over 18 times by now (I’ve lost count at 8 times TODAY ALONE!), the pages load with errors (and therefore don’t work properly), the screen flashes at times, line error messages come up (and pages won’t load). I have to keep shutting down the computer and re-starting just to attempt to get pages to load property and lots of times windows just keeps closing. Did I mention that the computer was ‘fixed’ about 2 weeks ago?? I’d toss the laptop out the window, but knowing my luck with the crap, it would bounce back and probably knock me unconscious. Hmmm, maybe that’s not a bad idea. At least I could temporarily forget this nightmare!!
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My Experience With Toshiba Canada: 1/26/2012
End of November, 2011, I purchased a new Toshiba 24″ TV for the bedroom, Model 24SL410U. The audio, with the echo and very tinny sound, was unexpected and unacceptable; the set cannot be adjusted to improve the sound quality.
When contacted, Toshiba’s Team Leader, Al Cameron, in Customer Relations, advised me that I should have listened to the TV while in the store before I bought it. The TV was sitting among 40 – 50 various other TV’s on display. I suppose I could have asked the store sales associate to turn off the audio of all the other T.V.’s while I listened carefully to analyzed the sound quality of this brand new and latest technology TV before I purchased it.
Mr. Cameron suggested that I purchase a pair of good quality external computer speakers and plug them into the audio jack at the rear of the T.V. and that, quite likely, I would need to have another remote to control the volume of these external (add-on) speakers. In other words, if I wasn’t satisfied with the existing and inferior sound quality, it’s easily fixed, however, at my expense. Moreover, Mr. Cameron did acknowledge that my complaint was not the first he had heard regarding the poor audio quality of this TV; “but you are getting sound aren’t you? With skinny TV’s you can’t expect much better; there’s not much room in there to place larger speakers”.
In summary, Mr. Cameron was not open to any compromise whatsoever; I got what I paid for and, after all, “it is doing the job it was designed to do”. I will say that the picture quality is excellent, but that’s as far as it goes.
We have other TV’s; this Toshiba brand is our first; it is also our last.
Thanks for sharing your experience Eamon. Sorry to hear about your TV….lets hope it works for a while, even if you can’t hear it!!
My update so far. Soooooo, after numerous tweets, FB posts and email you read above, I was contacted by Fario from Toshiba Canada. Should I get the laptop to the Markham headquarters (if you’re told the address, write it down as you won’t be able to google it!) they have offered to fix it free of charge.
I dropped it off yesterday, January 27th and mentioned that both the hard drive is not properly opening, and the computer won’t turn on. I confirmed again that there is not to be any charge (there better not be!!), and am awaiting a call to hear what’s going on.
After speaking with a number of clients and colleagues, they had mentioned that Toshiba Canada should offer with the repair a 1 year warranty and stand by their repair. Upon asking about a warranty, they apparently offer 30 days. Yes, you read that correctly – Toshiba is sure it will run at least 31 days, but won’t stand by it any longer than that. How nice. I guess if it dies on day 32, I’ll be back where I am right now.
Well, it hasn’t even been fixed yet, so let me take it one step at a time.
More upon hearing from Toshiba Canada…..