Be wary of buying a Toshiba - you may never see your notebook again!!

My 2006 Christmas/anniversary present was the Sat P100 Gaming Notebook with ALL the bells and whistles. I received it the second week of January and it worked beautifully until the end of April. This involved heavy WOW playing. One morning after paying bills, I closed IE and put it in suspend mode. The unit decided to overheat instead to the point when i found it less than 15 minutes later, heat was radiating through the top of the Closed LCD panel that it made my hand red. From this point forward, the unit would randomly shut off and could not handle anything at all graphic intensive. My otherhalf is a Network Engineer and I myself have done fair amount of IT work over the last 10 years so the diagnosis was not difficult for us.

So I made my first call to customer service. Took 4 days to get the notebook to Depot service in Kentucky (b/c of the weekend) and when i received the unit back a week later (5/10) only the Cooling fan had been replaced. Within two hours it is shutting down again. I nuke the box (because they didn't do it) and problem stil exsists tho appears to be more random --load back up WOW (which is the real "business" reason I bought the unit and even on low graphic settings the video graphics start wigging out after 20 minutes of play. The unit still randomly shuts off in game and surfing the web etc. So I cal lthe service center again. My husband calls them and we are promised overnite service and the replacement of the CPU, Motherboard and memory which could have been damaged with thermal overheating.

So on 5/14 I send the unit to Toshiba. There is no overnight shipping (oh and dont get me started on not being able to upgrade your additonal warranty which they say you can add to in the first year --but you really can't) The unit gets to the service center -two days later they enter notes "burn in -- no problem found - software conflict --- the morning after the burn in ---- LCD damaged /bezel cracked. Nevermind the unit was verified by the UPS shipper before being packed that there were no cracks and nothing was wrong with the LCD. So now I have a damaged notebook that doesnt work and I've had it 4 months. This is all by the 18th. Thus entered my nitemare into Toshiba Hell.

Nevermind that we went with Toshiba for the accidental damage b/c Dell doesnt provide for in Florida. We are never contacted by the Service Center. They have horrible customer service agents who claim they are supervisors who will look at your case and customer relation reps who wont call you back. I started calling Irvine and now have a CR rep out there who told me the unit was going to Irvine to be repaired and no the service center hadnt fessed up to the damage and wanted the money for the screen which we didnt send it in for to begin with. As of 5/31 --- I havent heard from John and I have no idea where my $3200 gaming notebook is or if i will ever see it again. So I will again be on the phone tomorrow in an attempt to find my notebook, knowning it will never be the same again. Four four months old it's completely unacceptable b/c Ive worked with big name computer company and refurb part in my new notebook is totally unacceptable.

Granted when it worked it was beautiful and I loved it. I have an older HPZD7000 which had a design flaw but HP did everything they could to make the customer happy.
Being very intimate with the workings of Sony Customer Service and Depot repair I would never in a million years recommend or buy a Sony product knowing what goes on behind the scenes. Never in a million years would I have thought there was something worse than Sony Customer Service and Repair. I stand corrected -- Toshiba is the icing on the cake!

 

Hmm, Resellingratings Lifetime Rating for Toshiba: 4/10 (Of 13 entries).

Seems common, too bad. Sorry to hear about the troubles, and hope that they fess up and repair what they did.

 

I was considering purchasing a toshiba as a back up notebook but I've been scared by reading this! Dell support is awesome!

 

i think i just changed my mind about a toshiba

 

My story is about the same but with a different product, the tohsiba Gigabeat S (Digital audio player).

I live in canada and i've buyed this product about 4 month ago from buydig.com. I contacted one of my friends living in the U.S to ask him if he was wondered to mail my product at my home, in canada and he say yes. I do it because the price was really great in the U.S for a 60GB but terrible in canada (toshiba dont know money conversion appently). The player have coasted 268$ with shipping U.S $.

I've recevied the player one week afther and they have worked for 2-3 month before the hard drive have started to make some weird noise. I put it on charge and the day afther when i wanted to use it the device have only worked about 4-5 min. I switched te battery on and off to reset the device and the PMP was totally death ...

So, i've started to contact toshiba canada. The first representative have say that he was needing my serial number, i give him wath he was asking. He told me that my device was not on is serial database ! Okay ... He tell me that he would recall me lather in the day and never did it. So, i've recalled Toshiba customer service and the representative tell me that i was needing to send the device in another city (the nearest was at about 40 min. in car). He tell the adress and the company name (apparently toshiba dosn't support the device directly, you need to send it to another random company that have been approved by toshiba and if this computer company found a problem they send it to toshiba.) So, i called the company and said that he dont do support for Toshiba !!!!! .... The representative give me a bad number or what ?

I called again toshiba canada and they said that this is not the good phone number for gigabeat support in canada (they sold the product but dont have any support line for it so in the past call i was calling the computer division). This time, the representative for toshiba give me a ENGLISH phne numer but i only speak french (i live in quebec). I say that i wil try to speak english and he give me the phone number finally. An 1-900 phone number (paying by minute line in canada dont know if its the same number for paying line in U.S) I ask him why it's a 1-900 number and he said that this was the line for gigabeat product in canada. So, i deceided to make the call and this representative found my serial number ! FINALLY !!! He told me that he cannot take back my product because i don't buy it from an genuine toshiba reseller. I say him that i lost money, time to call here, that they dont have any support line in french and you sell this product in quebec and it's inacceptable to have all this difficulty to return a product. I also add that one of is representative was ignoring was was a GIGABEAT ! Did you imagine that a representative ignore what his company sold ? !!!!! I hang up the phone frustrated.

I finally deceided to try if buydig (the online store where i bought this product) want to take the product and send me a new one and they said YES !

So, thanks for this online store, without us i will have a dead mp3 player for life with a warranty. I will definitly never buy again Toshiba product.

Now, my Gigabeat is a new one and work great !

 

If you want top quality and good service: go IBM.

 

IF you want quality (Latitude, Precision, XPS) and AMAZING service, go with Dell.

 

I can't believe anyone would spend $3Gs on a Toshiba and think it can be gamed on. For $3Gs get a Alienwear or Hypersonic or Sagar. *Rant over*

Now for some useful information. I also play WoW and I purchased a Toshiba because it was cheap <$350 also was hoping to give me some WoW mobility when on work trips. I had the exact same issues the laptop would shutdown after ~30min or less of 3D gaming. I own A135-S2xxx with IGP ATI X200m. I found on my POS the IGP heatsink is right next to the ram. The IGP would heatup causing the ram to overheat. Now for the $22 solution that allows me to play wow for hours on end Laptop cooler I play WoW getting ~20-30 FPS in Azroth and ~10-20 FPS in Outlands for 6+hours with no thermal problems.

 

These are not issues unique to Toshiba - the same mechanical issues and ****ty customer service are pretty much universal amongst most of the main notebook manufacturers. There are exceptions, generally the IBM/Lenovo series and some Dell tend to be better wth both quality and service, but between HP/Compaq, Toshiba, Acer, etc, you'll find the same problems.

Problem is the use the same basic shells for their cheap notebooks as their high-end stuff. This of course does not apply to the business lines of these companies, which are pricey but definitely much higher quality. If you use a notebook for work, and depend on it compeltely, it is a must to get the business versions, which is simply manufacturer speak for high-quality versions.

 

Oops -- Update to the neverending Saga.

The beginning of June, they agree to fix the notebook stating the holdup was the service center wanting money for the cracked screen. So we get a phone call from John the unit is shipping overnite. Honey goes to pick it up, takes it out the box and the lovely rust colored lid is warped like a bow. At this point, honey is spewing words that he before had been nice enough to refrain from. Because I actually hard work to do and really wanted to raid, I booted the puppy up. Not only was the graphics problem still apparent, the sound stuttered and sounded like an old tape played backwards --in game and out.

The next day, we took our son to camp --and I called Toshiba's legal department and told them I was printing the paperwork for Mediation to have them buy back the notebook. Honey called John and left him a sweet message stating the same. On June 14th, we got our buyback offer --$90 short of what we paid but we didnt care. It took the full 8 weeks from June 14th to get the refund check.

So to the person who said buy an Alienware -- Well I did; However there were features on the Toshiba I liked better. I also bought the Aurora M9700 in July before they put the disclaimer that the dual nvidia cards cant run SLI enabled in Vista --and the betas blue screen the notebook nonstop. (I am aware of the all the "lets sure Nvidia" talk too) and I understand why. So that part bites. I've also had this expensive little puppy not boot up on two occassions where Im pulling everything out of the darn thing thats detachable. Despite onsite service Alienware wants me to send it in because they dont know what's wrong --twice in 2 months isn't that bad .......
I dont have space for a desktop but these "gaming" notebooks are more trouble than they are worth. Love the Metallic Blue color though -- matches my truck

 

scared, i just ordered one

 

Well so far my Toshiba X205 has been great and I am doing a good bit of gaming on it. Hopefully things will be fine. I had a Dell XPS Core Duo with the 7900GTX and never ever had one glitch. Hopefully my experience with Toshiba will be the same. But I do agree, they have a ways to go on these high $ gaming laptops still. Progress is being made, but it still is too much to invest with no much recourse.

 

That's really odd! I've had my Toshiba for almost 3 years and it has a desktop grade Pentium 4. (I actually am currently on it.) I had some issues after about 6 months with dust collecting and causing it to overheat, but Toshiba promptly agreed to replace any damaged parts and even cleaned out my laptop for free. It now runs fine and I haven't had a single glitch with the hardware. (You know the standard Microsoft glitches happen, but that really isn't anyone's fault.) I am looking at the new X205 though, because this baby can't last forever.

 

I heard a lot of these horror stories with toshiba, my X205 is the third toshiba laptop and the last never gave me any problems, to make sure my X205 works with the least amount of problems, I decided to take it apart and I upgraded the cpu to the T7700 and put Arctic Silver 5 on the cpu and gpu, and nb chip and Ceramique on the video card memory. I am glad I did this as the goop that was on the cpu and cpu would have caused some heat issues for sure.

 

If you buy a Fujitsu Lifebook, you get a USA based customer service center for the life of the notebook...Not to mention you'll NEVER call them...I've only witnessed how they stand a notch above most all...(dell, Hp,....Acer, well that isn't hard to do)....anyway, was a huge fan of Toshiba, have a 6yr old Satellite, almost bought another....The A215. BUT the 2nd generation just came out and they still haven't corrected the "intermittent screen blanking out issue", I'm completely bewildered on why they would release the new line without fixing that bug...The toshiba of a few years ago wouldn't have done that...
Then again Dell is supposedly declining pretty rapidly in all depts as well...the nightmare list is growing for them as well.
Good Luck

 

You should see how Toshiba abandoned their previous gaming notebooks (I have one), the P105/P100 series. Yes, when they barely came out (one of the first with the 7900gs/gtx cards) they were $3000, around the time where the OP bought his. But since they forced Vista on us we've been having ugly stuttering issues caused by the BIOS and Toshiba is reluctant to fix it. Their CS reps act are so ignorant, they wont even transfer me to level 2/3 tech so i can better explain my issue. If you ask me i've had it with toshiba, this is my last time I buy a laptop from them. Next time I'm getting a dell or something, my friend has a Dell XPS and told me their XPS service is top notch! Toshiba needs a premier CS service for its gaming customers that actually know what they're talking about.

 

wow i was going to buy a toshiba but decided on a sager.. but we own more than prob a dozen toshiba's at me and my wife's office and we have never had anything but good luck. we did have one failure but they sent us out a brand new system with a call tag to pick the other one up. i can not say a single bad thing about them

 

Note to self: Continue buying/building whitebooks and repairing them yourself...

@The OP: Sell your Alienware off to someone else, buy a Clevo M570RU with 7950GTX, and you'll be happy. May not be SLI but it'll be stable AND it's fast.