Fujitsu Support nightmare / horror story

Hey All,

I've been kind of lurking around these forums because I have been looking for a new laptop to replace my current one, but after what has happened to me last week, I felt the need to share my story as both a warning and to see if this has happened to anyone else.

I am the primary Helpdesk analyst at one of the University of California schools. Three weeks ago, my (personal) Fujitsu E-Series 7110 died. It wouldn't POST. When I hit the power button, the fan, hard drive, etc. turned on, but nothing on the screen, and no computer system. I kicked myself for not buying the extended warranty and steeled myself for the expense of an out of warranty repair. I called Fujitsu, they were very helpful, told me there was a 3-4 day turn around time, and I sent it away to their repair facility in Memphis. Once they got it, they called me and said the mainboard needed to be replaced and it would cost $600. I grimaced and said, "go ahead."

Fast Forward TEN days. I finally get my laptop back. They overnighted it, but never sent me any kind of information that it was coming, email or phone. I had to call them to find out that it had been shipped. The box it came in was undamaged; pristine. The first thing I noticed was it looked like someone had gouged the top cover with a screwdriver, several gouges, some the length of the cover. Then, upon further inspection, I realized that I had left my 3com wireless card in the PCMCIA slot. It was gone and had been replaced with a 3com 10baseT ethernet card, without the dongle. I'm a little perturbed that the wireless card is gone but am ready to concede that I'm partly to blame because I forgot about it and left it in there. The gouges tick me off though. I call up the support line and let them know and they open a ticket on it. But the laptop will boot up now, at least.

I take my laptop in to work, along with the Ghost image of the c: partition on dvd-r and a firewire/usb 2.0 drive with the d: partition files. I ghost the image on and plug my external drive into the firewire port. Doesn't show up. My computer is dual boot, and it won't show up under either OS. I try another firewire cable and drive. Nothing. The firewire connection is broken and I'm not about to transfer 20 gigs of data over USB 1.1 (which is all the laptop has). Plus, there is now some SCSI device listed in the Device Manager under WindowsXP. I remove that in safe mode, but it still shows up but I'm not sure what that is. I sigh and decide to plug it into the network and remotely connect to my home machine. At the University, we have implemented a MAC address authorization system to log onto the DHCP network that is all around campus. I assumed, since the motherboard had an integrated network card, that the MAC address for the ethernet device would have changed. Lo and Behold, the MAC address was the same. So, now I am thinking that there is a good possibility that they DID NOT change the motherboard at all. I cruise into the BIOS on the next boot up. The BIOS has been flashed to a new 2004 version (Fujitsu doesn't offer the Laptop BIOS for download to my knowledge and I know I didn't do this)I check the System Event Log, in the BIOS, which, in every motherboard I've ever seen is stored on a chip of NVRAM soldered on the motherboard or part of the actual BIOS chip, and is not cleared with a BIOS update. Suspiciously, there are system events stretching back all the way to when I first got the laptop. Close to a hundred. Plus, there are three entries on Sept 3rd, which is a date when the techs had it in their hands. At this point, I'm pretty angry and pretty sure that, barring some really esoteric and bizarre repair procedures that entail more than simply swapping out a mainboard (I can't imagine why someone would do this), they DID NOT replace my mainboard, yet still charged me for it. I called back and *****ed some more about it.

The next day, the Customer Relations guy at the tech depot calls me and wants me to overnight them the laptop at their expense, is very defensive and denies that they would charge me for a mainboard replacement, even though the evidence points to the contrary (the invoice I have says "Mainboard replaced"). He says they don't solder anything there and simply swap the boards out when they replace them (which confirms to me that they don't do anything wierd like pop out the BIOS chip or flash the MAC address with some esoteric software utility). At this point, I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. I wonder whether this was incompetence or a pattern of behavior. I don't know whether I should contact the Attorney General's office (consumer affairs) for California. Their sales office for all of California is located in the same city I am in, and I think that I am going to cruise by there with the laptop to show them what I'm talking about, as well as talk pictures of everything before or if I send it back to repair (or cover up the evidence, whatever).

Anyway, I was really surprised that this experience would be THIS bad, especially from Fujitsu. Has anyone else experienced anything like it? Or heard about anything like this? What do you guys think? What would you guys do or request of Fujitsu to "make it right"? Personally, I think it would take something extraordinary (beyond simply fixing my laptop) to "make it right". I was really happy with my laptop until this happened. My wife even bought a P-series from Fujitsu.

Sorry for the rant.

-Chris

 

I've dealt with service a few times and they've always been great. In fact they just scored the top spot in PC World (I think) for notebook quality and support.

You need to exercise your rights here though. I'd get as high a contact as you can and file a complaint with the BBB. They're more effective than any other consumer protection group I've dealt with. Also reference this thread, so they know you're serious and their actions are being documented in public.

Let us know what happens.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

Chris, Wow! That's terrible, $600? And it absolutely does sound like they've mislead you on the replacement of the main board and assumed you were not as technical savvy as you actually are.

Like Brian says, take this as far up as possible, make yourself heard. Fujitsu might be contracting with a repair service that's acting unethically and it's possible they'd be highly disapproving of such actions and want to know about this themselves. I don't know how theiri company structure works though.

Good luck, give 'em hell.

 

Chris, I just checked the event log in my BIOS, and it was cleared/reset when they had it. All of my other setting were fine and work like before, my onboard NIC was still set up with the proper ip for work, but since I didnt write down the MAC address, I cant check to see if it changed. My case didnt have any new scratches on it either. Id definately give them hell, especially since you had to pay for the fixes.

 

Chris, you might try talking to the folks at P1. They are an authorized repair depot for Fujitsu, and they might have some suggestions for you. Granted they don't have any reason to help you, but they sure seem nice.

 

I had terrible experience with Fujitsu as well. The lost my hard drive.

 

I have had just as much bad experience with this company as you have had. I had to send my system in no less than one dozen times. I also had my unit sent back to me with gouges in the LCD cover.

They never did fix the smudge on the LCD either. So, it looks like I am stuck with it.