Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Gateway?...Go away

Status
Not open for further replies.

Centretek

New Member
Have just been through a series of fruitless requests to Gateway for the values of two burnt out resistors in a VX700 (V8507 chassis) monitor.
Their reply was that because the monitor was not purchased in the U.S.A. (I'm in Australia) they are not prepared to tell me anything.
It would appear that in the American Corporate mode, they sell stuff made for peanuts in the Phillipines and then screw their customers when the stuff fails.
From now on I refuse to touch their junk ,even with yours, and I suggest that anyone, who appreciates a manufacturer standing behind their product, should avoid GoAway like the plague.
 
I think you are over reacting! - Gateway, along with most PC manufacturers, just buy their monitors in - and they are considered just a disposible component, like a HDD or a mother board. Warranty repairs are simply a swap of the monitor, and spares and circuits are probably not available.

People want their equipment to cost less and less, the prices don't provide enough margin for any spares or service facilities.
 
The irritation is that they offered to join me up into their "Premium Service" plan for around US$18 so that their 'experts' could diagnose my problem. Until they found out I was in Australia.
It would have cost them nothing to email the values as they obviously have schematics on hand for their 'experts' to use, if I was in the grand ol' USA.
 
LCDs might save space but they're actually inferiour quality to CRTs. They have a slower response time and a smaller colour garmat. I consider it as more of a downgrade rather than an up grade.
 
Centretek said:
The irritation is that they offered to join me up into their "Premium Service" plan for around US$18 so that their 'experts' could diagnose my problem. Until they found out I was in Australia.
It would have cost them nothing to email the values as they obviously have schematics on hand for their 'experts' to use, if I was in the grand ol' USA.
Why do you think the experts had the schematics. If the unit is broken they authorize the replacement. Why would they need schematics?

If I have it right this ia 17-inch Monitor? Over here you can not give the things away. Whay would you want to fix one?
 
No premium service plan is going to walk you through troubleshooting at the hardware level, an open CRT monitor can kill you and they could be held responsible.
The service plan usually means you get to talk to someone from a call center in India who can walk you through basic troubleshooting, these plans like the extended warranty are often cash grabs for the retailer.

A search on eBay shows 17" CRTs going for $9 AU
 
Personally, I admire Centretek's tenacity. I think the difference between his attitude (and for perhaps a lot of the same reasons, I share his attitude) and the attitude behind much of the advice he's getting here has a lot to do with where he lives.

Where I live, there's nowhere to recycle your CRT monitor (there isn't even recycling for glass!). They have a "big trash" day, where everybody puts their stuff out on the same night, and all night people drive around picking through each others garbage. Whatever's left by the morning gets picked up and chucked in a landfill. It's just the economics of it: real estate is so cheap, people are deluded into thinking they're better off chucking stuff (some if it quite dangerous) into a hole in the ground.

But there's global post all over anyway, and global information resources (like this forum), so it doesn't have to be like that. Living in a remote location with a fragile environment, it makes a lot more sense to replace the least that needs replacing, rather than paying the cost (economically and environmentally) for more than you need.

I think Centretek's right to rant. His problem reflects the consumerist greed of large companies. They'd rather make a buck off selling him a new monitor, and at the same time passing the buck onto him for the disposal of his old one. If that's the way they want it, fine, but let them pay the cost of the landfill, or better yet, the recycling facility for his old monitor.

The argument of "repairing the product is too hazardous to the consumer" is really weak, because it's well within their means to both provide you with a safe procedure for repairing the monitor, and covering themselves legally in doing so (e.g. "OPENING THIS BOX VOIDS ALL OBLIGATIONS FROM THE PROVIDING COMPANY").

Keep up the good work, Centretek. I'm just sorry I'm not able to help you more. Somewhere out there there's a hacker with the help you need, keep looking. Just keep it safe.
 
In fifteen years I have never been tempted to recommend Gateway to anyone. Their reputation for quality and service hasn't cut the mustard over the years IMHO. In my experience the best service I've seen was from local shops which build the computer to my specs. The exception is my new laptop (which I'm using now): an Asus G1S I ordered in from Ontario last year. It's still in its break-in period in my opinion but is performing well so far. (I got the gaming machine even though I don't game much--the high screen resolution and other features mean I can go a little longer without having to change machines again.) Given that the warranty from the local shop which offered it was no better than the manufacturer's (in fact it was just the manufacturer's warranty) and the mail-order was $300 cheaper, you do the math. Of course I don't expect to get schematics for it but at least the parts are standard.

If I *had* to recommend mail-order it would be Dell. That said, I've never strongly recommended a Dell either.

Computers are like any other tool. You might get what you pay for, but you don't get what you don't pay for.


Torben
 
I'm a big fan of the idea of incinerating rubbish and using the heat to generate electricity.

The environmentalists are wrong when they say this is environmentally friendly. Modern incineration techniques are very clean and lots of rubbish is pretty carbon neutral (wood, paper and food). The energy produced would have come from fossil fuels anyway; I'm not suggesting this to be a substitute for wind, hydroelectric, solar, etc. but as an alternative to building more nuclear, oil, gas and coal power stations.

After the waste has been burnt, the ash contains inorganic many materials that can be easily recycled: iron, copper, nickel, gold, zinc etc.

The idea of just burying waste is pretty retarded, it's just burying useful energy.
 
Torben hit the nail on the head. It makes little difference what brand you buy if you buy cheap consumer computers. The competition for low price is so stiff that any brand that competes in this market has to build an inferior quality computer to make it saleable.

The manufacture 90 day and one year warranties are part of the problem. There is no incentive to build a durable product.
 
Hero999 said:
LCDs might save space but they're actually inferiour quality to CRTs. They have a slower response time and a smaller colour garmat. I consider it as more of a downgrade rather than an up grade.

I am actually very happy with my 22" ACER LCD (AL2216W), but i want another one now (dual screen)... :D I do, however, really enjoy my Gateway 17" CRT (don't remember the model#). It had perfect graphics (even though it was rated @ 12ms response time). I picked it up for free at a garage sale a few years ago. The family didn't know what was wrong with it, so they just gave it away. It turns out that their 5 year old played with the color settings, so i just reajusted them. It has worked perfect ever since. ;)
 
I have nothing against using what you have.

But why bother putting any time into fixing a 15 inch monitor which you can pick onw up most anywhere for free. Perhaps that is not the case where the OP lives but it is in many parts of the world.

Then there is the 20 minute thing. By the time you take off the case and put it back on you have chewed up a chunk of that. Then you have to find the schematics, then there is the quesiton of why the resistors blew...
 
Right on Hank Fletcher.
Too many people just upgrade for the sake of having the latest instead of using whatever does the job you want it to do.
Why should we throw stuff into landfill if it only needs 50 cents worth of components and 20 minutes work to fix it.
If the monitor was an IBM or Ipex, there are schematics everywhere.
Go Away just want to screw their unfortunate customers, ( a common failing with many corporations).
I am a technician with over 30 years experience and if some piece of equipment fails then I like to think I can fix it, I can't reconcile wasting money for something I can do my self, all I needed was the information.
The sad thing about 'modern' appliances is that there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of manufactures to prevent repair at all cost. This is, of course, a major cause of energy and resource squandering and is causing monumental damage to our planet.


Enough ranting. Just employ the K.I.S.S. principle and all will be well.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top