legal action against Averatec

Greetings fellow Averatec owners-

I am (was?) a senior member on the Unofficial Averatec Forum site. That site has been down for well over a month now. I contacted the hosting service and they said their RAID server failed and the most recent (separate) backup was about 3 months old. They were sending the drives out for recovery.

Excuse me? This is either the most incompetent hosting service I've heard of, or there is something more to this story.

Shortly before the site disappeared, there was some organization work among the members to take legal action against Averatec over issues regarding the 2370.

We are all familiar with the fiasco surrounding the Vista Express Upgrade. There is more to this story. After (finally) obtaining the upgrade promised with the sale of the 2370 and installing it, I had (have actually) an issue and contacted Averatec Technical Support in writing via their web site.

I was informed that because I had upgraded the OS, I no longer had access to support under the warranty terms. Several other members reported the same thing in the forum.

I contacted the California Attorney General's Office over the issue, and urged others to do the same. That's the point the Unofficial Averatec Forum went offline.

The AG contacted Averatec on my behalf, then forwarded Averatec's written response to me. (I would post a copy of that letter, but do not have attachment privileges in this formum.) To summarize, Averatec's Customer Care Manager on July 9th assured the AG that the agent had responded in error, that indeed my 2370 was eligible with the upgrade for warranty support services, and that he had so informed the staff.

On July 31st (letter in hand) again contacted Averatec Tech Support via Averatec's site about my issue and was again told I had no warranty support due to my OS upgrade. Again, I had all this in writing and notified the AG on August 7th. Based on past experience, it will be a couple weeks before I hear anything further.

If you have encountered problems with obtaining warranty support on your Averatec product, I urge you to file a complaint with the California Attorney General's Office. Follow the links to the consumer complaint form. Provide as much *specific* information as possible (I pasted a copy of the email correspondence). You will need to supply Averatec's contact information, so look it up beforehand.

If you do this, also know that no State Attorney General represents individuals in legal issues. They will only contact the vendor on your behalf. However, if the AG feels State law has been violated, the AG may bring legal action on behalf of the State. Part of the AG's decision to start legal action will be based on the number of complaints received.

So what's really going on with the Unofficial Averatec Forum? I haven't a clue.

In spite of the above, I have really liked my Averactec notebooks and have a goodly amount of experience with the 3150 and 2370 models. I look forward to interacting with fellow Averatec owners in a positive way in this forum to provide mutual support!

Jim Johnson
Serenity Consulting

 

Well, in any event if you guys want to communicate on this board (and nothing illegal is being suggested in this thread) feel free to.

The forum failure is indeed suspicious, and if you could prove Averatec took down the forum via legal action to keep people from acting against Averatec's failure to honor their warranty that is another legal offense the AG could charge Averatec with.

Anyway, like I said...Averatec wouldn't be able to take us down (most likely ) so we won't have to worry about mysterious RAID failures here...

 

Hi Jim,

Anyone experiencing what Jim has described should definitely get on board. Following Jim's advice I went after Averatec because they would not send me my upgrade dvd.

Now I have the DVD, but I haven't installed it because of the fact that they have not updated their drivers appropriately.

 

Thanks for the plug Seraphim. I don't want to clog this thread with Vista issues, so if we get too far astray, I'd just as soon start a new thread.

With that said, I am happy with the move to Vista. While not entirely smooth, I have learned a lot about Vista in the process. My only remaining driver issue is related to the wired Ethernet port (there are plenty of comments on this on Nvidia's user forum). And after speaking with AMI, I know there is a BIOS issue preventing Vista from truly optimizing use of the CPU cores.

Jim Johnson
Serenity Consulting

 

Hi guys, good to see some of you back again. I was Okie over on the old averatecforum board. I upgraded my 2370 to Vista without too many problems. I ended up going back to XP because my wife needed to run some software for her job that wasn't Vista compatible. I had a "restore" CD, so I ended up completely reformatting the hard drive and restoring the system that shipped on the 2370.

Hope we get the old forum back. IN the meantime, I guess that we'll be able to consult here.

Fuelscience, aka Okie

 

Hi Jim, glad you found this forum .... when I briefly tested Vista on my 3250 I noticed that the Ethernet port did not work also. But I was happy that the wireless worked. I didn't stay with Vista and went back to XPPro on the 3250. There were too many features that were moved to different places and the eye candy didn't make it a "must have" for me.

Maybe someone who knows how can add a link to this forum in the message that displays when you try to go to the old Averatec forum.

 

Does anyone know "haner" or "Han Er", the admin from the board?

Is he an averatec employee? Was averatec somewhat involved in the site but wanted to avoid liability issues? (this actually happens fairly often)

Just some things to think about and maybe research.

If he was not/is not associated with Averatec then he might point the domain directly to this forum. If he was/is then......

 

Something I haven't mentioned is that I routinely keep tabs on computing industry trends to better serve both myself and my customers. As a result, I have a casual acquaintance with several trade columnists. And more than one has been following my trials with Averatec.

Ed Foster writes the Gripe Line for InfoWorld, and felt he had enough verifiable documentation to publish the situation in his blog. If you are interested, you can read it using the URL below:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2007/08/an_aversion_to.html

Jim Johnson
Serenity Consulting

 

Good work Jim! Perhaps companies like Averatec will remember that without us, the consumers, they are nothing.

 

Hi Jim
Im having a problem with the ac adapter with the 3200 series. I have sent in my 3200 4 times and 2 times for the adapter. Do you think I should contact the AG about this as well. Can we try to get a class action suit against them. I talked to the out of warranty people who say about 20% are coming back. Averatec is still fixing them but time is money and shipping costs are 25 or more each time. So any advice. Thanks for your time
Gail L Boucher

 

I'm happy to join a class action suit that has a chance of getting somewhere. Unfortunately it sounds like Averatec is honoring their warranty terms for you. However, most states have 'lemon laws' where after so many tries, the OEM must either replace the whole thing or fully refund.

First ask Averatec about this - in writing - and if they refuse, then you can consider contacting the CA AG's office. Just remember that the AG represents the State of California and not individuals.

 

That is a total crock. I don't know of any competent web host that doesn't do at LEAST a weekly backup if not nightly.

Either way i was an old poster on the old forums as well and was surprised to see it down due to 'hard drive' issues. i might just start up another unofficial averatec forum myself..

 

Yeah, I agree with your sentiment. Unfortunately I haven't received any verifiable information as to what actually did happen. We don't know if Averatec, Inc had a hand in this, there were unpaid bills from the hosting service, etc. All we do know is that the domain lease is paid for and DNS for the domain hasn't changed.

If I were the management of the hosting service I'd be embarrased by an 'unrepaired hard drive crash' notice, presumably put in place by the hosting service, sitting out there for months.

 

Sorry but I could help but notice that they said this was a server which has *RAID* drives? As in Redundant Array of Independent Disk (Drives)

i.e. Raid is built for redundancy, and I'm sure if you call them up (if it's possible) and do some general talking, then do a curve ball and ask them out of the blue what RAID configuration the server was placed it - I'm sure you could probably catch them off guard where their answer would expose them as liers..


even so..Lets say what they said was plausible - does the forum pre-date that 3 month period? If so, where's the forum? I mean they DID say they had a 3 month old backup


Something smells fishy here and I doubt it's coming from a local fish market

- Jordan

 

Certain levels of RAID are pretty failsafe - except for the weak link. If your RAID controller, as opposed to the drives themselves, goes berserk, the data on those drives is still toast. I wouldn't use any hosting service that didn't have something in addition to RAID for disaster recovery. (yep, ripe fish)

Something not discussed yet is that unless you have a really big site, typically a hosting service has more than one site located in its storage network. I certainly haven't gone looking to see what other domains this hosting service may have had on board. But if our subject site died, others likely went with it. And the media loves to cover stories about multiple site outages. Heard any? Me neither. (lots of very ripe fish)

Still, all is speculation at this point other than the forum is not available.

 

This is definitely a mix of incompetency and bad luck, and it happens regularly in the web hosting industry because web hosts believe a catastrophic failure will never happen to them. Web hosts should at the very least maintain weekly remote backups even if they already have disk redundancy. But likewise, the owner of the account should have made backups themselves as an added layer of protection.

In addition to RAID-10, I keep local (full incremental, made every other day) and remote backups (per account, made every night) for all hosted clients so their data stays somewhat safe. They also have the ability to make backups themselves whenever they want (through cPanel). So even if the datacenter gets obliterated, the clients data is still safe somewhere and is no more than 24-hours old, and can be restored relatively painlessly.

 

Wow! Glad to discover we are back, fellow Averateckians.

What is the protocol? Do we post all Averatec-related questions/comments in this one thread?

I discovered the forum was gone in August when needing a new computer and considering a used Averatec 3715EH and wanted to see what forum members thought of it. No forum. Bought it anyway. So now I have two Averatecs.

AM having a problem right now with the 3715. Will make a separate post about that.

Welcome back.

ken winston caine

P.S. I know where many if not most of the files from the old forum are hiding. Don't want to post it publicly but if any senior members are interested in possibly creating a private online archive of them, message me. I might even be able to make webspace available for such an effort, but can't, right now, devote time to doing the actual snagging and uploading.

 

Never mind my silly question about protocol.

I figured out how to get to the main Averatec board and saw that we have LOTS of threads. This just happened to be the first one that showed up in my Google search.

Best,
kwc

 

Welcome to the forums, and I hope we can help!

Yes, typically new threads are always created for new questions and issues...unless you find a currently existing thread that it would belong better in.

If those files are relevant to current topics and would be useful to the general Averatec (or general NBR) population, you can upload many things to our server space. We usually get a lot of pictures and stuff uploaded, but I do not know what kind of files you are talking about

 

I have heard many people on this site that have stated to file class action suits, non had any good reasons I feel like this one is a good reason and serenityconsulting you have had lots of problems with Averatec i would go for it.

 

Oh? Are you going to underwrite the attorney fees to get a class action suit going?

It will take a lot of money, and when it is finally over, I doubt I will see much for my troubles.

While I have no evidence, there are a lot of circumstantial events that lead me to believe Averatec will soon declare bankruptcy. It is even harder to get money from a company that no longer exists.

 

I was a member of the averatec forum as well and was wondering what happened. Interesting story.

 

Someone else has already started an "Averatec-only" forum at www.averatec-forums.com

 

Though I'm a newbie to this forum, I was fairly senior on the old demised Averatec forum. The forum fairly bristled with the infamous warranty issues with our Averatec buddies.

I, myself, have just finished an 8+ week foray into their warranty hell. I had the infamous white vertical line through the display. There were 10 of us in the old forum that had this issue. Pretty much all relegated to the 7155-EH1.

Anyway, with 2 months left on my warranty, I got the dreaded RMA and returned it to their Irving TX warranty repair facility. That was in October.

I too got the runaround for nearly 7 weeks. Displays are on order from China, "no we don't have any in the US, and we have no idea when or if we'll get them". I could see my laptop turning to dust by the time I might get it back. Finally, on the fourth call to Cust. Service with the same bull answer and a testy attitude too boot, I decided it was time to pull out the stops.

First tact was to send an email to Brian Yoon, CEO, S. Shahbazi, Pres., and Joyce Ahn, VP of Sales. Yes they were all delivered successfully. After a week, I heard nothing (as I expected). I did warn them in my email the actions I would take if I didn't.

So, I did the following:

Lodged a complaint with the Southland BBB.
Lodged a complaint with the Cal AG's office.
Dug out senior management for OfficeMax, the retailer who sold me the unit and sent an email to the Exec. VP of Merchandising.

Let me tell you, the fur began to fly. While Averatec never did respond directly to me, I heard from the BBB and OfficeMax. The displays magically appeared and were emergency freighted to Irving, my laptop was to be placed on top priority repair as soon as they got them and then sent next day air back to me. It happened!! Back and working fine.

It's just a shame that Averatec just can't seem to get Customer Service right. Good communication would have prevented half the issues I'll bet.

 

Well, don't be a stranger ... join us over at the new Averatec forum and post your story there. www.averatec-forums.com

 

Hey Chuts,

Already a member and have been keeping that forum's membership appraised of my trials and tribulations of this ongoning saga. See "Taking Action Against Averatec" postings. Will update my last of Dec. 13th so the users of that forum are updated as well.

Anyone interested in the email and other specific info on contacting any of the above, I'll be happy to provide off line.

By the by, it's so great to be actually typing this on my Averatec without the horrific white line through the middle of the screen (LOL).

Rick

 

...so here we are a year later, and the "new" forum has mysteriously dissappeared. Gone for months in fact....

what happened this time??

Joe

 

More importantly, since Trigem stepped in and took over Averatec, has anyone actually seen new product for sale at a 'brick & mortar' location in the U.S.?

 

Hey Joester .... glad you found this forum ... what took you so long . Yes, even the "new" forum has also disappeared ... didn't last long at all. My 3250 is still doing okay except that the burner can only read but not burn either CDs or DVDs and I don't plan to put any money into it. But it isn't a biggie ... I use the desktop to burn anyway.

 

Just a guess, but maybe another forum administrator drops out?

Looking back at web.archive.org only finds one homepage snapshot of averatec-forums.com from Oct 12, 2007, so it seems like a shortlived site.

The history of averatecforums.com is documented from Jul 07, 2003 (running phpbb) and goes till last board snapshot on Jun 23, 2007 (vBulletin). The Sep 18, 2007 snapshot shows the hard drive crash message.

The board was a great depository of information that should be resurrected somehow if available. Here's some stats from June 23, 2007:

Most users ever online was 504, 03-14-2005 at 08:29 PM.
Unofficial Averatec Support Forums Statistics
Threads: 6,633, Posts: 41,949, Members: 7,907

Is this forum the best replacement so far? Any other potential contenders?

BTW, I would be very surprised if breaking up organized legal action had anything to do with the demise of these boards. A forum that helps solves problems should work towards minimizing the number of owners who would want to take any legal action.