RMA time for my 9750 and PCTorque/ATS warranty issues...:(

Well..my 9750 started getting really sluggish while playing BF2 and doing 3dmark06 and also I started having the sudden battery charging eventhough my 9750 has been on full A/C (batts suddenly drop to 92% and then starts to recharge). So I talked to my usual guy at Sager and no problem getting an RMA...

The next day Sager emails me with pictures of the vents, all clogged with dust. The GPU vent looked like it was clogged 80%...oh gawd, how embarassing, I completely forgot to check them before sending it in.

In any case, that doesn't effect my other battery issue which they are still working on.

Next time, check your vents if you guys start getting sluggishness in your games. Riva was reporting 85C on my 7800GTX which doesn't seem high but I guess it must be if it starts throttling down.

Also another major concern, over the NBF/PCT, it looks like those who purchased the extended warranty from PCT may be with the ATS mob - they have gone out of business. I am not sure even where I stand with PCT and I had coughed up $500 for the extended warranty and ADP back in mid December 2005. I emailed Charles and waiting to hear back from him.

It might be an idea for those who bought their Sagers from PCT with the extended warranty to check with PCT to see if your warranty is with ATS or Warrantech or Phillips....

 

Here was an e-mail posted on the nbf forums


Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately, it has just been made aware
to us that ATS is declaring bankruptcy, and is defaulting on numerous
agreements and contracts to our past customers. This explains the lack
of support an tech lines, leaving PCT out to dry. While ATS is a
warranty provider, PCTorque is a marketing organization. PCTorque
resells products from industry solution providers. All products offered
by PCTorque are serviced by that respective 3rd party, whether that item
sold be a notebook computer, a software package, a peripheral, an
accessory, or a service contract.However, we are currently working to
come up with a solution to help those customers that were affected by
this but we can make no guarantees. We sincerely apologize for any
inconvenience this may have cause you but ATS' company actions are
simply out of our control. PCT has the best interest of it's customers
at hand. We are doing everything LEGALLY possible to ensure warranty
service experiences the least possible amount of downtime As soon as a
proper solution has been found it will be posted on our website as well
as our forums. If you have any other questions please let us know. Thank
you.

1-800-346-6986 | [email protected]
http://www.PCTorque.com


They seem to have a knack for picking horrible 3rd party warranty dealers, first philips/micro medics now ATS. This does not look good for PCTorque, they should have stopped selling laptops while their only mistake was philips/micro medics.

Did Adam get out of PCTorque? I think his sister is a part of it.

 

I wonder if the other resellers like discountlaptops are effected by this ATS debacle ?

 

well what do you know?



Well,

I should have posted earlier to this, i'm sorry it has taken this long. This is not an official statement or position of DiscountLaptops.com but I will shed some light on the situation to date.

ATS is, as most/many of you know the 3rd party warranty company that we sold as an extended warranty solution for Sager and some Chem models. Sager only provided a 1 year warranty at the time (currently they do provide a 3 year warranty) and Philips Magnavox (the 3rd party warranty company Sager suggested to use) was simply pawning off responsibility when claims were sent in. In short, we found ATS. As they had other such clients as AlienWare, Hypersonic-PC, and Eurocom, we thought we were in the right boat. Now the latter two companies above, ourselves and many others, are in a world of hurt due to ATS turning upside down on work the endusers have submitted to them.

As the post stated above regarding our statement on the website, we are doing everything in our legal power to right this wrong. However, we can in no way decipher how long this will take. Know that in your defense, we have not sued for a "prorated" amount due to the fact that a 1 year warranty is worth the same the first day as it is the last.

We at DiscountLaptops.com are doing the most we can for our customers. If you are in this boat, PLEASE, come to us first for repair work. We get better pricing for your motherboards and components through Sager than you do directly, and in most cases, we can get them to waive the labor fees.

We are all trying to help you, the endusers out in this situation. We are not proud of ATS or their actions and are doing all we can to rectify the problem. Please be patient. Remember, all of us in the office also have those warranties on our notebooks... We're in the same boat.

Again, I say this is NOT an official statement from DiscountLaptops.com, it is more of a simple update and a way for us to show you we DO understand what you are going through.
http://www.notebookdiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=1215

 

Thanks...Nice find rickster!!!

If I get anything back from Charles, I'll let the forum know as well. In a week or two my 1 yr Sager warranty is up, ho hum.

 

These people have only waited 3 months to get their laptop repairs, i had to wait 6 months before micro medics would send me the **** box to ship them my laptop. They kept promising me they would send it and they never did. I could have called more often but the 30 minute hold times turned me off. My warranty even expired but since i was contacting them well before it expired they honored it and fixed it...

I don't think i want to get an extended warranty again. It seemd like a clevo reseller incident but apparently the guy at discount laptops said AW, hypersonic and eurocom used ATS as well. Lame.

 

Well...I will see. One good reason to go back to Dell or stay with 'em. The 9750 is the 1st time I got a notebook outside of Dell, I've owned 4 Dell laptops so far...anyway, we shall see. Sager has been really great with the RMAs though, could not have worked better with 'em. P*sses me off to blow $500 on the extended warranty though....

 

Phew Eurocom in Canada is telling me they will honor extended warranties directly while they make another partnership with a warranty provider. Mmm so far I like them. We'll also see in the future if something is to happend with my 5760...

 

Donald from powernotebooks told me that his company learned not to use cheap 3rd party warranties after the whole philips/micro medics fiasco. Now they only use sager for their 3 year extended warranty.

 

its only recently that sager introduced their own extended warranty those of us who purchased prior to that we offered 3rd party cause thats all there was out there, even powernotebooks. we would have all loved the sager one...

Still no email reply from Charles at PCTorque.com. tick, tick, tick....

 

A copy of my post from Notebook Forums re situation at PCT-

Guys, I want to let you know Charles was out of office all last week and no one else who works there was answering phones or emails.
Send him an email and he usually responds same day or next at latest.
I had major problems last week and ended up calling Laura at NBF to see if they still owned PCT but they dont .
She tried to get a message to Charles for me. I even rang Sager to see if all was OK with the company as my notebbok that arrived on Fri the week before was stuck in limbo because Charles instructions to have it shipped to me same day were not followed. After I finally got thru to him on Wed he got it shipped and here by last Fri.
I had originally paid for 3 day shipping.

I must say that Charles has been very helpful when I have been able to get thru to him.
He says they are very understaffed there at the moment.

Due to them trying to totally revamp the website and trying to fix the whole disaster with ATS going under which has also eliminated their direct telephone tech support they are swamped.
They definitely need to get more staff or at least a temp or 2 to answer the 800# or at least return calls within 1 hr as the voicemail says and also answer emails within an hour or two.
I have NEVER gotten thru to anyone when calling the 800# and NEVER gotten a call back in response to a voice message. Only got a callback from Charles when I requested one in an email.
I would be interested in anyone else's POV regarding this drop in Cust service standards due to these issues.

 

they've been "revamping" their website for the past month or two...

some excuse

 

Well, hope Charles gets around to my email...i want some documentation to identify what warranty I got when i bought it in mid Dec 2005 since there is nothing on my invoice. I'm pretty sure it was ATS because of the ADP & onsite...may be i should just resend that email...

:Life is too short to go through this crap...

 

wow pctorque is pretty dissapointing, at least discount laptops is saying that they're trying to help people, charles took a week vacation or so i hear

 

yep...i did badly...bought from PCT and then they decided to close it down and then bought the extended warranty and ATS goes balls up. At this point I will steer everyone away from PCT..ho hum.

Anyway, i just got my 9750 back from Sager today, even driving down to City of Industry to pick it up myself and shes cooking with gas....temps are WAY DOWN even on full [email protected], atm its idling at 49C and max load temps is around 53C to 55C. Not sure if changing the mobo had anything to do with it or not but I am glad its cool and the 3dmarks and BF2 is once again buttery smooth on the 7800gtx.

At least in my dealing with Sager they have been great with the communication and they do everything they said they will do. My last issue with the battery charge drainage - they could not replicate it but replaced the mobo anyway and then let it burnt in when others would probably just shove it in and call it done...

Qudos to Sager for sure