Portege R830 - Horror Story!!!

After 6 weeks of detailed research I purchased a Toshiba Portege R830 from Toshiba Canada. Along with the extended 3 year "SystemGuard" warranty my total bill was $1540.

This laptop was primarily for travel purposes for my business. Within 7 weeks of receiving it my HDD failed!

The laptop at this point had not even been used on a trip yet, it was being used at home, on a desk as a desktop replacement. Only usage was MS Office programs and checking of internet email. Thats it, no gaming no abuse nothing.

Toshiba Canada has outsourced its Tech support to Phillipines, there is no way to speak to anyone in "post-sales support" in Canada on the telephone. The only people in Canada who are available are "pre-sales".

The Phillipines reps forced me to do a full restore on my HDD (said that was the only way to proceed with the service request) so I lost all my business documents, when that didn't resolve the issue I was escalated to the supervisor who claimed that according to Toshiba HDD failure is considered " normal wear and tear".

I was then advised to ship the laptop to the nearest repair depot.
Since I used this for my business I drove down to the depot myself and was then told that it could take 2-3 weeks to repair as it was subject to "parts and availability", when I pointed out my 3 year warranty explicitly stated 3-5 business days turnaround I was told to take it up with Toshiba HQ.

Of-course there was no way to contact anyone in Canada and when I spoke to the Operator at Toshiba HQ I was informed that ALL post-sales or technical support issues go to the Phillipines!! When I told her I insist on speaking to someone at Toronto HQ she told me to hold one and then transeferred my call to teh Phillipines!!! Can you believe it!!

Once they shipped me back my laptop I powered it on to find that they had resused someone elses HDD, the OS was registered to someone else, various programs had already been installed ..... so basically they gave me an old used HDD.

I was shcoked I have never come acros this in over 15 years of running my own business (mind you all my previous laptops were Lenovos).

I am now back to square one with no way to speak to anyone other than the Phillipines, and they are useless and basically reading to me off a canned document. They told me to ship it back tot he depot.

The Toshiba sales rep who sold me the laptop said he had tried to escalate the issue to their in-house customer service team but declined to provide me with their phone number as it was against company policy and he claimed that the Canada Customer service team had no "inbound telephone lines".

Its been 2 weeks now and I had to go buy a cheap $400 laptop so I could carry on with my business activities .... while this $1500 Toshiba POS sits here and gathers dust.

Yes folks its super-light and uses fancy metal alloys etc etc but Toshiba doesn't support the product, so if you are going to use this for your business then be forewarned.
Better buy a Lenovo or some other company that stands behind their equipment and will make it right if something goes wrong.

Toshiba sucks!! I learnt that lesson the hard way.

If you are planning to use this laptop for your business then you are pissing into the wind. This is a bad bad choice.

p.s. I know there are people onhere who will pipe in that equipment can fail and its not a manfucaturers fault .... and while that may be true, it I S the fault of Toshiba that they have such crappy post-sales support and the fact tht you can't even speak to someone in the Canadian HQ shows that the system is designed this way on purpose.
The reusage of an old HDD raises its own issues from an Information Security standpoint.

 

I had issues with their customer service and depot folks. I b*tched enough and demanded to have my case escalated to a manager. When you do that, demand to speak to a manager, not to have one call you back. They will try to say they will call you back, but they never called me back, so I demanded to speak to one and they got me one. Granted, the manager could only forward the issue to a group that handles situations like I and, seemingly, you have had, which resulted in leaving a message and getting a call-back a few days later, but they did call me, and they shipped me a brand new laptop. Push them enough and they'll work for you.

 

I'm with you mate. I'm tired of big business giving U.S. and Canadian customers the shaft.

Sorry to hear of your troubles. They did give you back a working HDD (though used) and with someone elese hardware, but the time to "fix" your problem is way to long.
Because of stories like yours, I actually upgrading to On-Site repair service. Repairer comes to you within a few days of contacting their non-English speaking CS reps. Awww, I wish WTO and NAFTA never existed.

Good luck and keep us updated. +rep for good info.

 

When one is on the phone, the location, nationality or race of the person at the other end is immaterial to most people.

I won't defend Toshiba, but it is true that equipment can fail, which is why most people keep backups. If you had an image of the drive, you could replace the drive yourself with a brand-new drive for a lot less than $400. I am not saying that you are required to make your own repairs if the item is under warranty, but it sure sounds like the better option in this case. It would also have saved wear and tear on the exclamation key on your keyboard.

Yes, but it's not a Toshiba issue, it's an issue for whoever returned the HD without cleaning it.

 

Chuckles - You must be a Toshiba marketing or PR employee.
I've never met a "genuine consumer" who thinks its acceptable to go buy replacement parts for an item UNDER WARRANTY.
In fact you must be the IDEAL Toshiba customer ... buy a laptop for $1500 with 3yr warranty and then go buy replacement parts and fix the defective laptop yourself.
You also find it acceptable that I was stonewalled by telephone support and that its impossible to speak to someone in Canada.
You're also blind to the obvious privacy issues reuse of HDD's raises (but ofcourse thats normal in your "I love Toshiba" world).


CONCLUSION - spoke to Toshiba and they offered me their profuse apologies but nothing else, they will not replace the laptop, they insisted that they do not reuse HDD's but obviously mine was a reuse, my only recourse at this point is to ship it back to them so they can "investigate" the incident further. Another week or so to have the laptop back to me.

What will happen is they'll simply re-image the HDD and send it right out back to me and call it "new".

BOTTOMLINE: TOSHIBA SUCKS for Business customers (unless you're Chuckles of-course).
Folks stick with Apple or Lenovo they have a far superior level of post-sales support. Last time I had a problem with Lenovo and I told them its a business computer they shipped me a new one immediately so it would be minimal impact to me. Now thats service!!

As soon as I get this POS back its going on Ebay (or I can sell it to Chuckles).

 

My horror story included them replacing my CPU fan in my Portege for over 2 months. Oh yeah, that same CPU fan went 3 times over a period of 3 years. The other two times I just payed for the fan my self (eBay). Also the monitor cord frayed over time at the hinge. Repaired the cord myself. I swore to my self that I would never buy Toshiba again, but I just bought a Toshiba with an A6-3400m CPU for $330. Couldn't resist the deal.

Lesson here is don't buy expensive notebooks. They depreciate too quickly, get outdated too quickly and break down far too often.