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Guys, their has been much debate back and forth and really much of it is my fault. I had not researched the envy m133 but was making comments about it on old reviews and such. I have really made a fool out of myself, and I just kept digging myself deeper.
I am contemplating making up for what I have done with a review of the m133, but I have not received any kind of response from roz or rahul about some questions I have asked. I can understand that they are mad at me, but I have good reason to.
When you buy a boutique laptop you expect to have no problems. Well I assumed that and well problems just happen and they are out of your control, unless you cause them yourself. I was a very proud owner of my laptop and a very helpful member of the old voodoo boards. I bought my laptop because I liked the people their and I liked the system and their warranty, and the salespeople. I did buy my system from them just over a year ago and I loved it. I was able to get it unpainted, by talking and negotiating with a sales rep on the phone. I dont know his name, but he was a nice fellow. Before purchase I did ask about my system being painted, and I told the whole story about a friend owning a paint shop and I can get it painted teh way I want and so forth. I talked with a few different people expressing concerns with the system before purchasing, cause people do that with large investments. However, I did ask about painting my system at this point and I was told on the phone that painting the system does not void the warranty. That made me really excited cause I am a modder at heart and I love to build and make something my own. I loved my system and I am very gentle with it. I spent hundreds of hours designing what I wanted to make of my system while it was being built, and everything was going well until my friend Kenny, who was going to help paint my system, through his uncle's paint shop, decided to go into construction and he sold the place. Well that ticked me off a bit but then I found Dave D in sasketchewan Canada, through a guy Glen I know. Dave painted my system and made it the way I wanted.
I posted pictures and all of my ideas on the mutthaboards, as they were called, and pretty much all of the members left a comment in some fashion. I ran the pics by the voodoo staff and they thought it was a cool mod. However what I should have done was get the guys name I talked to to sign a paper stating I could paint my system. Well time went on I painted my system and the days went by. Over 6 months it took to paint my system, and I finally got it back from Canada. I fired it up and everything was working well I was so happy my system was working. I used it for 2 days and everything was running perfectly. I even have video proof. Then all of a sudden while I am using it the inner right speaker starts making a really loud popping noise and then the system freezes. I power off and the thing wont turn back on. So I look back into my system and see that everything was connected fine. I tested the memory, gpu and hdd's in another system, and everything checked out except the motherboard. Then I contact Ryan (Imax) who is basically the go to guy, who I have much respect for. I asked Ryan what he could do for me. At that time he told me that I had voided my warranty and that he could not help me.
I was told:
Painting your laptop and modifying the case does void your warranty.
You dismantled the unit to do so.
You've pulled her to pieces, repainted her, and modified the chassis. In the process, something went wrong. We will help get her back up and running, but we are not going to cover this under any warranty.
The warranty clearly states: (Taken from our warranty statement.)
This Warranty doesn't include:
b) Any defect or damage to the hardware attributable in whole or in part by improper use, abuse, improper handling/installation, maintenance/repair by any person other than an official authorized Voodoo service technician, or the installation of unapproved parts.
In addition, this Warranty does not cover any defect or damage to your Voodoo System attributable in whole or in part to accident, unauthorized modifications, attachments or peripherals, and damage caused by lightning, power surge, brown-out, leaking, or connection to a power source having a different rating than that specified in the your power supply and motherboard manual.
So yes, what you have done to your system does void your warranty.
If you would like us to bring it to repair it, we will do so.
But the costs will be the motherboard, labour and shipping. (Plus anything else that has gone wrong with the system during it's dismantling.)
Well I was not told this on the phone, and I told Ryan that in a email response
I get this as a response:
And just to clear, we are not saying the paint job you got done caused this. But the disassembly increases the obvious risk of something going wrong with the components.
We can't say at what point of the reassembly, or which ever, caused the problems. All I know I am not allowed to honour the warranty because of the modifications.
For example. Lets say you made your mods and everything went perfectly. 6 months down the road, someone goes wrong and you send it in. It then arrives and we see the modifications that are made, our work then has to stop. The modifications may not have caused the problem, but because the unit has been modified, we cannot honour the warranty.
Trust me dude, I am the last person that likes giving news like this.
I have known Ryan for some time, and I see that he can only follow what he is told, but I feel cheated. I was told I could paint my system on the phone and that is what I believed.
I was also told that I can paint my system as long as no paint gets on the inside of the laptop. Well for that to be done I assumed that I would just take the laptop apart and do it the right way, I mean how else can you possible paint a laptop without getting paint inside. It is impossible.
Plus I had shown the pictures on the boards and everyone was okay with it, so I went a head and modified the system.
Only after the fact was I told that taking it apart voids the warranty. I have never heard this from anyone of the voodoo staff until after the fact, and that gets me really frustrated. I was even going to have the owner sign the thing. (rahul, I know I promised not to say anything if it happened, but you never did it, so its fine) Well Rahul told me well sure it is no problem to sign the system. Well Dave took a little longer to paint the thing than I would have liked, and by the time Dave had the piece ready, Hp had taken over. Well, rahul responds and tells me he cant do anything cause he is no longer the one in charge. Well that is complete BS, and that ticks me off, he told me sure and said he would do it, and then he turns around and backstabs me and tells me no. Well lying to my face was not right, and he should have done it, since the system was made under his ownership, and it was a real voodoo pc.
Anyways, back to the case, my system is now out of warranty and I needed a new board. AS anyone could be, I was extremely mad. I paid some $3000+ to have a Voodoo over a standard clevo, to have the customer support, warranty and decent people to deal with. That was a nice draw in, especially cause I was told on the phone I could paint my system. I now wish they had some records of the phone calls or I wish I had something signed.
I have learned a lesson that I cant trust people in this world, especially if they sound really nice. Well I was very heartbroken, and mad. I had invested some $2500 into the paint job for Dave to do, and the $7140 for the system, and the parts for upgrade, (fans, hdd, bondo, compound, fillers, sandpaper, etc), it was a huge investment. When I was told that taking apart the system voids the warranty I was extremely shocked, I had taken the system apart to begin with, and nobody from voodoo said anything about the warranty, so I thought, wow that guy on the phone wasnt lying to me. Then something breaks unrelated to the mod, and I get turned back on. WIth such a huge investment, I wanted a new board, and I demanded it, and nobody their would do a damn thing. Well then what the hell did I buy a 3yr waranty and the system from you for in the first place. No matter what, I was told I had to pay $500 for the board, installation and all that jazz.
Well I emailed rahul and got the same, so I looked around. I emailed all Clevo D900K odm's and found that RJTECH, sager and xotic answered the call. However rJ had the best price offering. I talked and found that I could get a replacement board for much less than what Voodoo could do for me, and this is from a company I had not even dealt with before. It is sad that Voodoo, known for their great customer service and such would do this to me, and that some random Clevo ODM could help me out. As you can imagine I was pissed off big time. I tried emailing voodoo tech for help diagnosing the problem, and all I got was, check you bios battery and your memory. I mean, they should have been able to give some more help, someone their must have seen this somewhere along their career. Well I emailed RJ, and we went through over 30 emails back and forth and a 2 hr phone call, and I tested everything they mentioned, including disabling the system touchpad, hdd's and such which the voodoo folk failed to help me with. My treatment, or lack thereof of help, has really put me against the company I once vouched for and helped other people to decide on buying through. I loved owning a voodoo and I did buy others. I did not but them new, but I bought both the m360 and the m855 while my u709 was being painted.
Obviously both were broken, which is why I bought them. Other problems arised their, as I was trying to find out information on the systems. I was told the M360 was a Compal Cl-50, which it is not, its a CL-56. Well I needed a new motherboard and I called this was around february. I talkedd to some lady on the phone, and she was just very unknowledgeable. I asked her for pricing on a M360 motherboard, and she asked me what that was. Well if you work their, you should know what a motherboard is. Well she did not know what she was talking about, so I was referred to a guy, who I think was named Brendam. He gave me a price on the board, and we tried negotiating. Well he was stiff, so I emailed Ryan, and he said he has some M360 boards lying around. Well I asked him if I could buy one for I think $200, as it is better to make something off something which has been sitting their for 4 + years than for it to sit their gathering dust. Well of course the answer was no. It is completely absurd. What is the demand for a 4+ yr old motherboard, I mean come on. I couldnt even get a $100 discount. Well it still sits their without a replacement board, since they refuse to sell me one.
The M855 was another story, in which it was back and forth with Judy. She was really nice and helpful, however mistakes were made on the invoice which needed to be corrected. I was told I needed to pay the shipping price from mrblur's laptop to voodoo and the diagnosing fee. Well I though how much could that be, and man was I shocked. I emailed the owner, and he said he paid for the shipping cost to voodoo, so that lie was straightened out. I then had the diagnosing fee waived, and I got the system. These mistakes could have cost me nearly $200 if I didnt email the owner of the system. You should be taking care of these things, but clearly that is not the case.
Other issues arise, as I am told by rahul, roz and chris s, that I cant order a replacement shirt because of whatever reasons. I am told in three different ways, why it cant be done:
1) hp doesnt allow voodoo to ship textiles, but I could be shipped a Blackbird shirt if desired, that statement from chris doesnt make any sense.
2) textiles cannot be shipped in the mail (I had dave send me a shirt, and he lives in Canada, and again, I had no problems receiving the shirt)
3) textiles cannot be shipped to the us, or across the border
well I checked canada's border rules and they state that textiles can be shipped as long as the sender has proper a proper permit. Well clearly they have one to be able to ship blackbird textiles.
I would really like straight answers rather than this back and forth misguiding crap. Their misguiding statements have cost me $$$$ for a new motherboard, $$$ for having to figure this out and more time and headaches than should have ever happened. I am very sick and tired of this continual nonsense and I would like a straight answer.
I have asked Ryan and research and development on numerous occations to make a custom splash screen for the bios, and nothing reulted from this. I must have sent him 5-6 emails on this and posts on the mutthaboards. I finally get a repsonse and I was told that R&D will look into it. Well I check back in, and find that: well Chris, the demand for the splash screen is not high, and its a fairly old system, so basically I was told no. Well this was around November, when the system was like 5 months old. Alienware has been doing it for years, and I thought, wow hey maybe Voodoo could do this too. Well I found out that they could basically care less. I am very disappointed that nothing I have asked for every grew to fruition.
The only thing that did happen, was something Rozzie did for me, and I appreciate her for helping me and taking the initiative and care to do so.
I still respect roz and ryan, and the original team, but it is very heartbreaking to know that everything you have asked has been shot down, I was lied to by the owner, and lied to about painting.
It is very hard to like them at the moment cause all I know is that I have to pay more money for some issue, which happened regardless of my modifications. Plus, I now have no warranty, and no piece of mind. Basically I am screwed if something else breaks.
I really cant believe that everything I have added to their old community and all of the people I have talked to would do this, but it is true and a terrible act, which companies shouldnt get away with doing.
K-TRON
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King, what do you work for the now
you are right about most everything you said. I know you are a business man, so you know corporation's much more than I do. I am only a college student so I had no idea.
However I still believe that someone from Voodoo should have came out and told me that it would void my warranty, on account that almost everyone who has read the boards new about it, and nobody said anything.
King, you did mention that it was a beautiful way to void one's warranty, but I phased that out because of my prior hearing that I was good to go.
I also just check the box and hit next, unfortunately you cant do it any other way, you have to always sign your life away. I should have read through the terms and warranty but I didnt because I was on my own trip in my head and could care less. I believed too much without getting any kind of ink on it.
I am very sorry that I had not had anything written down, because it would have made life a lot easier for me. My invoice states nothing about what was mentioned on the phone because I was informed that I could paint my system long before I puchased. I was still debating between the XPS 1710 and the Toshiba P105 at the time. I should have brought it back up, but I forgot to, so in a way a bunch of it is my fault, but it would have been nice for one of the people who work their to take 2 minutes to tell me that it would void my warranty. I hate how it always occurs after the fact.
I know now to never take anything for granted, and that I need ink on paper when issues like this occur again.
I cannot continue the fight, because I was told that they couldnt do anything for me. I then took the initiative to fix the board by myself, since I had nothing to loose, and I am sure that violates any user allowance in the book.
K-TRON -
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I actually fixed my own motherboard, by taking my electrical engineering skills to a deeper level. I had to have a friend of mine who interns at VIA get me the spec sheet/pinout of the K8T890CE chipset. The problem was the solder was causing too little current to flow through the fixed area, and it caused the current which is supposed to run through that circuit to back up back to the chipset. I force discharged the chipset by shorting three pins on the chip while trying to power on. This thankfully fixed my problem. The system made a ton of beeps and then automatically restarted. It has been running fine for a few hours.
I managed to use an x-acto to scrape away the top layer of the pcb, so the solder job is much better now. I have had the system running since tuesday, and it has been working fine. I still have a problem with the one speaker which shorted the board, but that can be replaced with my next mod.
I did not take ryan up because of a few reasons,
1) I am no way in hell shipping my fragile and expensive system back up to Voodoo, so they can make me spend shipping and tech hour fees, plus have to go through the headaches of if it got scratched or damaged
2) the guys their would have never fixed it, but would have rather replaced it, so I would have lots of downtime and other costs.
3) I get home from work at 9Pm, so I dont have time to dig up the work order stuff.
I had a sticker on my lappy, but that disappeared with the new paint job, so the search continues.
4) after my mod, and trying to fix my own board, they cant do anything and I would have had to pay for the board.
5) they might sound nice trying to make up for my problems, but they did much too late, and I had already ordered a replacement motherboard through another Clevo ODM, for $250 less than what Voodoo could get it for me. I did put the order on hold cause I told them that I fixed my board. I will be buying a replacement board around Christmas time just so I can get a good reliable replacement for later on if god forbid my system board dies again.
I keep reviving her, so I guess you can call me a pc doctor
K-TRON
K-TRON's story with Voodoo
Discussion in 'HP' started by K-TRON, Jul 17, 2008.
