So what have we learned from the whole 7970M situation.

Well shall we spend a second looking at the lessons that can be taken from this situation, I think everyone concerned has something to take away.

1) The community.

People learned the hard way that modern graphics cards are a complicated set of components and that being on the bleading edge can cause delays. Given the correct information we need to act acordingly rather than flailing all over the place which leads nicely onto......

2) The resellers.

COMMUNICATION. Almost sounds cliche eh? But quite frankly much of the mass panic was down to a complete lack of this to start with, mixed messages is the best way to spread confusion.

Dedicated information threads save you time and money. Its a place to direct that flood of emails to quickly and helps spread any info more clearly and quickly.

Don't be afraid to admit what's going on, this community will smell out pretty qucikly what it is, your better off coming clean ASAP. For the most part the community will help correct people who get the wrong end of the stick if information is forth coming.

Don't be condescending, it's guaranteed to generate anger, be aware that the issue is soley down to you and your supplier and any issues you may have with delays as a result it certainly not the customers fault, while you guys can get in contact with sager/clevo they can't. This forum has a long memory about such things.

Any discounts you choose to offer is your own choice, don't moan to customers about margins, any compensation for that is between yourselves and your suppliers, it's incredibly unprofessional (yes Malibal I am looking at you, I am APPAULED at the communications I saw and won't hesitate to warn customers of your behaviour until I see an apology! Yes even to a customer like that).

Also being quick and being fair needs to strike a balance, if you are going to produce machines in batches, maybe warn people about mismatching order times and recieving it, but try and moderate the batch size (Eg JUST doing ALL the 17" machines seems a bit overkill, maybe half 17" then the first half of the 15" machines). In any case "emergency proceedures" should be fine tuned after this event.

3) Sager/Clevo

How on earth did a batch of components get through from your suppliers in that state? The impression I got was some even managed to reach resellers? That's far too close, some suppliers heads should roll after this. This is your companies long term reputation at stake. A little more direct community interaction would be good.

Looks like there is a little extra room for improved pre-testing of batches if failure rates of 20% managed to get through for as long as they did.

---------------------------

Just some of my musings about the situation.

 

I have only this to say.

"Enduro = SuX4Or!!!"

AMD should have tested this more rigorously as currently it's in such an infant and poorly implemented stage that it makes you wonder what good was it originally for?(to compete with Nvidia's optimus gee wow, it's made me save 5 watts, I am so happy....NOT) and secondly the implementation of this technology on the EM series is very poor by Clevo.
Alienware are onto a good thing and so to are the HM series of Clevo's but what on earth was Clevo thinking with the EM series???

Only time will tell what they do...
and
PS - as for the bad batch of 7970m they are probably still floating around and I can only imagine some users have yet to seriously hardcore test their machines, and are only realizing the issue as of now. My tip for Em owners- stress test the shiiit out of your GPU to make sure you have a good card...

Good luck..

 

I think it's good Clevo stepped up to resolve the 20% fail rate issue and worked with AMD. Not so sure Asus for example would have done that.

And I agree, any compensation or discounts a reseller/builder provides and the loss taken on it, should not be whined and complained about to a customer. I don't even see why it needs to be made since the delay wasn't their fault. It's stupid business all around.

And lastly from this fiasco, this attitude from a Clevo builder astonished me. I just couldn't believe any person in business would send this message to a customer, no matter how difficult the situation might be....

- Malibal, I am appalled that you would actually email this to a customer or even have this attitude/belief. I'm truly amazed by this. No matter how upset customer might be for their order not being a priority of yours even though waiting for 2 months, I don't think any customer should be treated this way.

 

You know it was sager's reaction to the HM issue that made jump over? If you fix an issue you can gain customers and keep them much better.

 

I think the problem stems from the man-childy-ness of this kind of consumers. I can admit that I'm a bit like that myself, checking to see if my laptop is sent every few hours etc. But the community is so full of hyperbole, and seem to have a hard time grasping that cutting edge tech isn't for someone who needs something perfectly operational on time.

Just look at all the fuzz every time a single user has a random problem. You will have threads like "I'm cancelling my laptop lalala so angry because one random dude had a faulty keyboard and another one had a fault cpu, this is horrible!"

Also, how come you've been wating for 2 months? The 7970M came out in june right? It's like preordering a game 2 months before the release and when it delays a month you bash them for letting you wait 3 moths.

 

sistergodiva there is no excuse whatsover for that type of behavior. And yes, I've worked restaurants, retail, sales and marketing now. There is no excuse for that type of behavior.

A difficult customer is just an opportunity in disguise. A disgruntled customer you can win over by resolving their issue will be far happier and be more vocal I think in letting others know of your exemplary service. It's always in difficult situations that you really see what type of customer service a company provides.

Nope, it's been out for a while now. He didn't pre-order in May, the 7970M was available at that time. It wasn't until Clevo discovered a 2nd shipment from AMD had 20% fail rate did they delay further shipments until AMD resolved their manufacturing/QC issues before continuing production of the notebooks.

 

A good reason why big companies chose to kiss up to their customers is because they can afford to. If you own a small business you can't afford to give in to these kind of customers. If any of you have ever worked in a service business. You would know that many customers will start to throw a tantrum when things do not go in their favor while disregarding any reasons or logic. There are many ways a business can deal with these kind of customers depending on what kind of reputation the business wants to build for themselves.

I personally will chose not to do business with them. I do agree that what Malibal did may be too direct and may not be the best way to go about it. It certainly has put some people off. However I don't think Malibal owes an apology to that poor customer.

 

So I feel like I missed something. I've been avidly reading the 7970m performance threads as I have a p170em w/ 7970m on back order with xoticpc right now. Was there some sort of announcement of a bad batch of 7970ms or something? Has a definitive source for the problems been pinned down that is not software?

And where the heck was this whole malibal issue played out?

 

When I shop, get services, etc. I almost always go to small businesses. Even though big businesses have the cash bubble, there are many things that keep me going to small businesses. First of all, the employees SHOULD care more, as the employer only needs to hire a few employees and can be choosy. Also, the employees (Especially those who have been at the business for a long time) tend to be far more knowledgable and experienced in the field the business services. Lastly, a small business is able to serve you better because there aren't layers upon layers of management and garbage, instead you can just talk to the owner directly and get what you need done done.

That being said, the duty of a business is to serve a customer. I did not know about this issue with Malibal untill today, so I don't know exactly what went on. However, if a customer is raging, what's to stop them from spreading false information?

 

Well, I've gained a little patience when I was waiting for my laptop. I had been looking for a laptop since early March because my Macbook had a defective logic board, and I remembered when the P150EM just came out (April 8th I think?) and I wanted to order one right away with SB/675M. But yet, before I knew it, it was April 29th with IB and 7970M preorder.

Then, before I knew it, my laptop came another month later. Seems like everything can't come immediately :/

Right here.

 

AMD didn't make the cards, they simply supply the cores. Clevo has a supplier that manufactures the PCB that was faulty. Nothing to do with AMD whatsoever.

 

Where is all this info re: the 7970m failures and delays coming from?

 

Never ponied up $1500 and waited over a month for something until now.

 

Just going by what Sager official news said.
"It's also why they (Clevo) have been working closely with AMD to find a solution to this problem."
- Last I saw, the boards for Clevo/Dell from AMD are AMD branded. Far as I know, only Asus decided to fab their own boards, and it was terrible.

I disagree completely. Malibal is first and foremost a service provider. Their customer service should be their top priority. Building a Clevo notebook is not complicated, inserting hardware and applying thermal grease is monkey work... And for a small business, they don't have the large budget for marketing. So customer service and customer reviews is really their biggest asset. It's where they make it or break it, so I think it's far more important for a small business to not have the attitude that some customers are not worth it.

 

Acer had the same problem, everything went down, AMD is kinda to blame for this.. but hey it happens no one died

 

Yes, you're absolutely right. They should take care of their customers. But every now and then there will be a few bad apples, a couple of customers who are not logical or reasonable, and Malibal (or any other reseller really) still has to deal with them. It's tricky trying to make sure they're serviced, dealing with their complaints, protecting their image, trying to keep their patience, etc.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I think keeping a good name was their motivation. The customer had already explicitly stated that he would write a nasty review REGARDLESS of anything else. Why on earth would a company want to do business with someone like that? I don't know about where some people here are from, but to me I don't see what is wrong with a company refusing business they do not want. Could they have handled it better? You bet. But there is nothing wrong with refusing business on their end after what happened, and I certainly agree with that aspect.

 

Instead of blaming someone for their losses with discounts and then saying customer is not worth their time, they could have just said, we apologize, cannot fulfill your order. Still weird I think you'd rather have someone be left even angrier rather than winning them over.

 

Cards are amd branded as the pcb design is theirs. However clevo had it manufactured and the surface components attched and sourced themselves.

The issue was with their vrm controller component supplier. AMD has no say in this.

 

That's how it should've been handled IMO. Some people can't be pleased though, no matter what you do you're wasting your time and resources.

 

It's not the first time Malibal has displayed this sort of behavior on this forum towards a customer. It's a recurring and troubling trend.

 

Malibal certainly has the right to refuse to deal with any individual. The real issue is not "bad" customers who are illogical and unreasonable but dealing with unhappy customers who have legitimate grips. Sometimes it may indeed be better to walk away from a sale if you don't have the interpersonal skills to diffuse and remedy a tense situation.

Malibal did offer compensation for the inconvenience (great on their part imo) which for many is generally enough. Obviously in this case there was still aggravation.

I sympathize with the customer as it appears the real aggravation once again stems from orders be processed out of order date. I would have thought the builders would certainly have control over this situation.

 

Malibal isn't blameless but I'd have to say the customer crossed the line on this one. He really left them no option but to cancel the order.

 

Yea, I am not sure if this is the owner or the GM that has responded like this a couple times but whoever it is certainly is not helping their public image.

 

I have been following this one for a bit. I am currently shopping Sager/Clevo and have yet to order. This whole 7970m situation is one of the reasons I have yet to pull the trigger.

There is no shortage of blame to go around on this one. The situation was bad and poorly handled by the vendor. The customer ran out of patience and tempers flared.

I deal with customer service everyday. Technical service manager for a lighting company serving the motion picture/television industry. I mostly meet customers when they are having a bad day. This is a high pressure, big ego industry. In the 20+ years of doing it I have only slapped down a client once and even then I handled it better than this situation.

What the heck I'll share it: I got a call for a dimming system that was not working and showed up on location about 90min's later. Location was a good 40min drive from the shop. Once inside I found the LD (lighting director) and he was in a state. After talking him thru describing what the problem was, other than his initial "The f-ing thing doesn't work" I found out that about 5% of the channels weren't responding, however they weren't running at capacity and worse case I could patch unused channels to get them up and running. Also they weren't scheduled to shoot until the following day, so I had time. I set about testing and tracking down the failure point on the bad channels. Within 15min the LD is over my shoulder firehosing me with questions. After about 20min of this I put down my tools and gave him my full attention answering every question he could throw at me. This went on for another 20min until he asked the magic question......"When will it be finished?". Upon which I answered, "Never." He looked rather shocked and flushed a bit clearly displease and asked, "Why?". I replied, "Because I am talking to you instead of fixing the problem. If left alone about two hours."
I was fortunate that he didn't raise a stink, as the way I handled it was unprofessional however I have worked with him amicably several times since.

 

I just went back and checked my emails from Xoticpc. From the time I got the email to the time that they received the cards was roughly two weeks. Two extra weeks we waited...not that big of a wait, considering it could have been much longer.

I for one am usually not an early adopter as alot of people on this forum seem to be - but if anyone has taken any business class knows, early adopters always get the short end of the stick because they have to work with the company when and if there are failures. With this being the electronics industry, we know there will be issues and ultimately, we will have to wait.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...eon-7970m-sager-resellers-98.html#post8551744

You have no idea how long it took me to find that post.

 

I'm new to the Sager world. I just ordered an Envy 17 and am disappointed with it. I'm considering the NP9150 w/7970 instead-- is all this drama with the 7970 failures sorted out now? Is Enduro working properly?

I apologize if this is answered elsewhere and I haven't been able to find it.

 

Most of the issues with the 7970M have been sorted out and it should all be behind us now.

Enduro should be working fine for the most part, there may be the occasional hiccup in how it configures the programs to determine what will run with the discreet/integrated graphics.

 

Oh man, that's the ONE thread I've been avoiding even attempting to get into. just WAY too many posts for me to try and catch up to. TY for finding it, I am actually sure I have a very good idea how long it took you to find it (I recently went looking for a post in a Samsung Galaxy S3 thread with 5000+ posts; that thread was insane, you'd read one page and 3 new ones would pop up before you finished the one).

 

that was posted by you, can't you just look through your post history, i've been there too, looked through a thread 'til i realised i can just go on my homepage and find it haha.

OT

One of the main reasons why I leant towards nvidia was because how the whole situation panned out with clevo/AMD this could have been handled much better, i remember the anxious wait for my laptop, only to be disappointed and confused with misinformation and timelines, that is the only reason why I am investing in nvidia and not AMD.

luckily i started reading the thread when it was only like 50 pages, now it's out of control, like almost 300 pages? I've actually read all of the posts haha.

 

This is going to sound a bit dumb, but how do I know if my 7970 is even being used?
I got my comp today and did the installs and my driver disk didn't have the 7970m drivers so after browsing the internet for some time I downloaded the 12.7.
Now when I boot I get a catalyst message like "Try switching to your adapter in the displays management" whatever that means, and my windows experience rating for graphics is only a 6.5 which I assume is intels.
ideas?
thanks.

 

download 12.6 instead

 

I went back and downloaded the one on the Clevo driver site.
Up to a 7.2 on W7EI
what have you guys gotten? I feel like it should still be higher

 

its currently lowered by enduro... they will fix that hopefully with the updated drivers