Gateway Repair dilemma

I bought a P-6831FX about three months ago. I upgraded to a T9300 and two 200GB 7200rpm hitachis. After two months, I noticed I was getting clusters of dead pixels. I called Gateway and they said no problem and sent me a box to return the laptop for a new screen.
One month later.....

I recieved my laptop today. Took it out of the box and gave it a quick visual.. Adhesive around the frame of the screen.. No problem, I can clean it... Some small gouges in the same frame... Sucks, but I can live with it..
So I boot up my pc to see that they reformatted my hard drives.. I go through the vista crap and finally get to my desktop.. My T9300 is there, however, they took my upgraded hard drives and replaced them with two 250GB 5400 WDs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the heck!?! Can they do that? I am not sure how to handle this. The notes on the invoice say "noisy hard drives"...?!? They worked great when I sent the laptop in.. I also noticed that they replaced my CPU heatsink. At least they left my T9300...
Sorry for the lengthy post, I guess I am looking for suggestions on how to handle the swapping of my drives and what my expectations should be in regard to retrieving my drives, exchanging drives with them, etc.. Thanks for any thoughts.. ~Deca

 

In all actuality, depending on the model, the performance isn't going to be that different as the data is packed a bit tighter on the 250gb,Plus you just gained 100gb +/- for free. I will agree that they should have definitely notified you and asked you how to proceed if there was a problem, but you're still making out pretty well.

 

you should have just put all the stock parts back in, and it warns you that they might format your drives, but they shouldn't have done that.i wouldn't have sent the hard drive in with it.have you contacted gateway about getting the drives back?

 

probably about a 5-10 meg difference but the wd are much quieter and cooler. i'd probably be angry still though.

 

Thanks for the responses. I see what you are saying, and I did consider that. I had two Hitachi Travelstar 200GB 7200rpm, and they swapped two 250GB WD Scorpio Blues 5400rpm. I am not sure of the equivalency.. My larger concern is making sure any of the data on those drives is destroyed.. Gateway CS was closed, so I have to wait until the a.m. to contact them..

 

TOTALLY understandable.

 

The Hitachis actually outperform the 250 Scorpios. Try to see if you can get back your original drives. Also, I'm surprised they didn't void your warranty since your left your T9300 inside. Good to hear though.

 

I guess I should have swapped out my upgrades, I just didn't think sending in my laptop for a new screen was going to lead to all of this... they told me to leave my hdds in and back up my system..

 

Well, contact them and see what happens. If they had given you the 320 Scorpios, I would have thought it would have been an okay trade, but 250s are outperformed.

 

Hes most likely got them raid 0 and unless hes running benches, I kinda doubt hes going to notice too much of a difference. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not saying they are equal and if he can get his 7200s back, then Id jump on it. I'm just saying that I wouldn't be too disappointed otherwise.

 

Thanks all for the thoughts and info.. I was running raid 0, but I haven't touched these new bloat filled drives yet..lol I will let you know what gateway says tomorrow. ~Deca

 

Coolness! Good luck either way!

 

I guess they needed the 200's for the new series of laptops and they figured its an easy swap.

But humor aside its illegal. It would be like droping your car off for a cracked windshield and find out that the mechanic also replaced your radio. You might have gotten a decent deal out of it...but that was still YOUR radio.

They warn of the reformats... but to just take the drives especially if you had personal information on them screams bad move to me.

Please tell us what gateway says.

 

UPDATE: Well, after over a month of phone calls (approx. 25-30 calls), a lot of horrible customer service with specks of good service, I am finally reaching the end of this saga. Gateway acknowledged that they shouldn't have taken my drives, and after making attempts to recover my drives and find equivalent replacements, they finally had me fax in my receipt for the drives today. Hopefully they will refund my cost and I can replace the drives myself. Was all of this worth the time, frustration, and two months not using my laptop?.. Probably not, but for me it was a matter of principle.

So, Lessons Learned:

1. As my fellow posters commented, one should remove any third party upgrades regardless of what cs tells you before sending in your pc.

2. If you do send in your pc and lose an upgraded piece of hardware, be prepared for a VERY lengthy process that will require your attention every 24-48 hours.

3. Realize during this time that if Gateway doesn't offer your 3rd party hardware as part of that pc's factory offered upgrades, they will most likely not be able to do anything for you. Checking on this first may help expedite the process of getting some sort of resolve.

I will let you know if gateway reimburses my or not. Since they have finally escalated this to corporate, I am hoping for the best. LOL.. Geez, and to think I could have a third generation of this PC had I waited until now..
Hopefully this will be a helpful post for a repair/service newbie like myself.

~Deca

 

Are they going to reimburse you *AND* let you keep the 250's they replaced your 200's with?Or do you have to send those back in?


T

 

Thats exactly what I was wondering.
If they give you your money back and let you keep your HDDs...you made out like a bandit man

 

it's impressive how well you're taking this, I would be soooo upset, like ridiculously upset. hope you end up with more than they took from you, looks like you very well might

 

Now THAT is funny


T

 

Did you have a lot of p-orn on those drives? I don't think you can run RAID on notebooks but maybe you can. 400GB is a lot of storage space. I don't think there's a big difference between the 7200rpm's and the 5400rpm's with ntoebook drives. What they did to your computer is basically theft.

 

Hey everybody.....it's a troll!!!

 

- you can raid on notebooks
- theres a noticeable difference between 72 and 54
- yes it is arguably theft

 

By definition a troll is not somebody who's been around since 2005. A noob is adamjon858.

 

UPDATE!!:
It's been awhile, but I thought you would like to know that Gateway issued me a check for the cost of my lost drives since they couldn't find a comprable replacement. They also let me keep the factory drives they originally sent. It's a fair deal to me, considering all the hours I spent over the past couple months on the phone working towards resolve and also the fact that I haven't been able to use my old "new" pc all this time. All in all, an unfortunate scenario, I learned a lot, and it's nice to be able to report that Gateway, while very inefficient, provided me with good customer service in the end.
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Hopefully my next post will be more interesting! ~Deca

 

Congradulations.

With the check they sent you you can probably afford the 7200rpm 320gb drives now lol

I say buy a few enclousures and enjoy 640gb internal and 500gb external storage goodness

 

Glad it worked out for you. It makes me feel good about owning a Gateway after hearing what they did for you (although a bit slow). A big thumbs up to Gateway!

 

i bet the minimum wage techy that serviced your computer seen a golden opportunity to get a freebee upgrade on his own lappy by swapping out the 72s with oem 54s and calling it "fixed". i wonder how often this happens, people look at it and see gateway as a whole being the source of the problem, when infact it could be the result of a crooked employee. just my thoughts, but sounds like you got the better end of the deal in the end. i would say pocket the check, keep the 54s and go after a decent gpu upgrade. just my thoughts

 

i was planning on sending my 6860 in soon, do you guys think it will be alright to keep the drive with me and send the laptop in? it's just the power button that needs to be fixed and i don't have any way to back all my data up, or the money to buy a drive for backup.

 

That's exactly what I was wondering. I hope someone answers this. I have...uhh...sensitive pictures of the SO. Encrypted, since I'm on a college campus, but still. Do you guys think they'd let me send it in with only 1 drive (the OS is on drive 1 but the My Documents folder + sensitive information is on drive 2.)

 

Why would they care? Its not like they are gunna send it back saying "you are missing a drive".

Unless of course the issue you are sending it in for involves the HDDs. In which case you would be a moron for even asking that question

 

anyway, u shouldnt sent the comp with hard drives and battery attached.
its a standard procedure for repair depot.
i was always told by dell online technicians leave hard drives and battery and power adaptor at home , just send in the system.

 

That seems really really weird. Companies cant expect the average user to have the know hows on how to remove their internal HDD in case they need to send in their notebook for repair. I understand why a company, like Dell, would want the HDD to be removed before the customer ships it in for repairs, but most laptop users dont know how to remove the HDD... Heck I dont think I even do.

 

I never ship with my hard drives. I have a POS hard drive that only contains a fresh install of windows and the gateway drivers for the 6860-FX.

USER1 is the profile and contains nothing.

I would never send any of my personal data to somewhere else for repairs...just not a good idea.

 

It's in the manual. However, as a general rule, I wouldn't remove anything (aside from replacing components you've upgraded yourself that are still good and you want to keep) without direction from the tech -- those components could be the cause of your problem.

 

My problem is with malfunctioning pixels in the LCD. Would it be ok to take out both HDDs or just one? Can they perform LCD diagnostics with no hard drives?

 

Reading a manual and knowing how to do it yourself are two completely different things. Kinda of

 

kinda i know what im doing most of the time... sometimes

 

techs should have their own hard drives on hand to do diagnostics or whatever they do. the original hdd shipped with notebook should never be mandatory with a repair.

 

Maybe, maybe not, but generally speaking you can't presume to know company policy. HDD's and LCD's can be refurbished and re-used or re-sold. The company may require that you give them your old hardware before offering a replacement, especially if it's a warranty repair.

If you have any concerns, then ask first; then just do what the tech tells you to do, and you can't go wrong.

 

You have never talked with a Gateway tech have you.

 

lol, ive never talked to the gateway tech team, is there serivice as "wonderful" as dells?[ /sarcasm]