24 Jun
2002
24 Jun
'02
1:35 p.m.
From: Michael Passer <passerm(a)umkc.edu>
Being a little hard on Yugo there, aren't we :)?
The thing I remember
most
about Packard Bell was that a friend of my wife's
bought one (without
asking
my advice), needed some help, and it had tamper
resistant seals over the
edges that asserted a voided warranty if the case was opened. My thoughts
were along the lines of "how dare they?"
They *dare* because of the customers. People who would never dream of
working on a TV set will eagerly open a PC and cause all kinds of havoc. I
use warranty labels in my shop, and the warranty is VOID if the seal is
broken, but if I know the customer has a reasonable level of skill,
tempered with caution, I tell them not to worry about breaking the seal.
I don't sell motherboards any more, for the same reason. Last one I sold
was a dual-processor Asus board (not cheap) and the customer returned it
one hour later with an area about 3" x 5" on the board *charred black* on
both sides of the board. He claimed I sold him "junk" and was in my face
when I told him I wouldn't replace it. Fortunately there was an off-duty
deputy sheriff in the store at the time . . . absolutely not worth the
hassle.
Warranty seals *do* have their uses . . .
Glen
0/0
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?
And if not now, when?
-- Pirkei Avot
24 Jun
24 Jun
1:06 p.m.
They *dare* because of the customers. People who
would never dream of
working on a TV set will eagerly open a PC and cause all kinds of havoc. I
use warranty labels in my shop, and the warranty is VOID if the seal is
broken, but if I know the customer has a reasonable level of skill,
tempered with caution, I tell them not to worry about breaking the seal.
PCs, unlike televisions, are sold as being user-upgradable--it is no more
"servicing" to add a card or drive to a PC than adding a component to a
high-end stereo is.
I would probably be frustrated myself if customers tried to return items
they destroyed. It's certainly your prerogative to sell PCs with
warranty stickers. To me, though, that's a deal-killer, absent the kind
of relationship you appear to have with your knowledgeable customers.
--Mike
1:52 p.m.
Rumor has it that Glen Goodwin may have mentioned these words:
Tandy & others did this as well... My CoCos always had one screw taped over
with a tamper seal - if it was punched, they wouldn't warranty it. Granted,
it didn't take long for the 90-day warranties to expire, and when I was
more experienced with computers I knew I could fix anything necessary
inside one of my machines, so I didn't care... (just like my Tivo - The
only reason I didn't open it within the first 24 hours of owning it was
because I had to work late that day... :-)
Now, what really bugs me is when I see PackardHells, Acers & more recently
Gateways that have "Quality Seals" -- what always goes thru my mind is:
"What... did they need these to keep the quality *Out*???"
;-)
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
From: Michael
Passer <passerm(a)umkc.edu>
Being a little hard on Yugo there, aren't we
:)? The thing I remember
most
about Packard Bell was that a friend of my
wife's bought one (without
asking
my advice), needed some help, and it had tamper
resistant seals over the
edges that asserted a voided warranty if the case was opened. My thoughts
were along the lines of "how dare they?"
They *dare* because of the customers. People who would never dream of
working on a TV set will eagerly open a PC and cause all kinds of havoc. I
use warranty labels in my shop, and the warranty is VOID if the seal is
broken, but if I know the customer has a reasonable level of skill,
tempered with caution, I tell them not to worry about breaking the seal. 
25 Jun
25 Jun
10:14 a.m.
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4:01 p.m.
see below, plz.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 4:14 PM
Subject: Re: [OT] Waddizzit??
> Tandy & others did this as well... My CoCos
always had one screw taped
over
> with a tamper seal - if it was punched, they
wouldn't warranty it.
Granted,
Many of those Tandy seals could be peeled off in one piece and stuck back
later :-). And several manufacturers used generic seals (they were
intended to be initialed by somebody at the manufacturers, but generally
weren't) which you could buy anyway. Not that I ever did either of these
things ....
My own solution to this is simply not to bother with hardware that comes with
a warranty beyond the first few weeks. Warranties are, IMHO, just a
substitute for thorough testing. I've gotten defective boards from nearly
every major manufacturer, and, seal or not, warranty or not, if they arrive
dead or nearly so, they go back, if there is a "back" else they're bought at
a
price that is warranted by the lack of guarantee.
What interests me, however, is how you convince a merchant you didn't damage
the innards of his product. If he's determined to prevent you from claiming a
warranty replacement, I don't see much that you can do.
it didn't take long for the 90-day warranties
to expire, and when I was
more experienced with computers I knew I could fix anything necessary
inside one of my machines, so I didn't care... (just like my Tivo - The
Me too..... I just ignore the seals and dive in. If I break something
then I take full responsibilty for it. On the other hand, if there's a
defective part in there, then the shop who sold me the machine _is_
required to give me a refund whether I've broken the seal or not.
Provided, of course, I can prove I didn't do any damage.
As others have pointed out, the CoCo, C128, etc were not intended to be
taken apart by a general user. You could do all the expansion the
manufacturer intended by plugging things into external connectors.
But people do expect to be able to add expansion cards to their PC, fit a
larger hard drive, and so on. So the seal, while possibly justified,
might be bad marketing.
26 Jun
26 Jun
11:14 a.m.
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28 Jun
28 Jun
7:24 a.m.
"Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> said:
"Warranty? What's
that?"
> Tandy & others did this as well... My CoCos
always had one screw taped
over
> with a tamper seal - if it was punched, they
wouldn't warranty it.
Granted,
Many of those Tandy seals could be peeled off in one piece and stuck back
later :-).
Really? Without leaving a silver foil checkerboard pattern behind? Ugh,
I
hate those stickers.
Example: 1995-made PSU. "Warranty void if removed" label. I peeled off said
label and it left behind a tinfoil checkerboard pattern. I ended up using a
hairdryer, then some isopropyl alcohol, then some meths and finally half a
can of Electrolube Fluxclene. It still wouldn't come off! I just poked my
screwdriver through it and proceeded to fix the fault.
it didn't
take long for the 90-day warranties to expire, and when I was
more experienced with computers I knew I could fix anything necessary
inside one of my machines, so I didn't care... (just like my Tivo - The
Me
too..... I just ignore the seals and dive in. Mind you, I've seen PCs in the UK with warranty
terms that include
voiding said warranty if you install a different OS (or even a different
version of the OS).
[!!!]
That's just plain dumb...
"Hello, Computer Shop, x speaking..."
"My machine just broke. Hard drive won't spin up. Serial number yyyy"
"What OS are you using?"
"Linux" [swap for Solaris/BSD/whatever to suit taste]
"Sorry, we don't support that operating system. I've just logged this call
and your warranty is now void. Have a nice day."
I don't know about you, but I'd be fuming...
My guess is that this is really because the tech
support idiots can't answer questions about real OSes. I also suspect
that if, say, the hard drive had a headcrash 2 weeks after you'd bought
the system and installed linux (or whatever), then they _would_ still
have to replace the hard drive.
My trick for dealing with dead drives: RMA them.
Maxtor seem to be pretty
good at RMAing - I Advance RMA'd my 5T040H4 (failing to spin up) and ended
up with a replacement on my doorstep within the week. I then tried to copy
the 'H4 to the new drive and the 'H4 died during the copy. I powered back up
and the new drive was full of garbage and the old drive was stone dead. No
motor, nothing. I did eventually get it to spin back up, but it was
completely trashed, too.
I also found out my off-site backup service had dumped part of my
incremental backup. Their excuse - "You were near your quota so we deleted
some old stuff for you". Had they told me before they nuked four months of
my data, I wouldn't have cared - I'd have just told my backup program
(in-house custom app - written with Delphi using the Zlib library for
compression) to rebuild the backup files. Instead, they destroyed four
months of irreplaceable e-mails. I promptly closed my account and added my
backup files to one of my website mirrors in a password-protected area. It's
mirrored on two other servers, plus it's also mirrored onto one of my local
fileservers, Defiant (spot the Star Trek references - my laptop has the
nickname "Voyager", the fileserver is "Defiant" and the net access
machine
is "DeepSpaceNine"). Now that's what I call data security. Did I mention
the
CDR recorder?
Later.
--
Phil.
philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/
8:31 a.m.
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29 Jun
29 Jun
4:20 a.m.
New subject: anti-tamper seals was Re: [OT] Waddizzit??
At 08:24 PM 6/28/02 +0100, you wrote:
"Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
said:
Does anyone have a good way to clean off that checkerboard pattern that they leave
behind? It's seems to be impervious to most solvents.
Joe
> Tandy & others did this as well... My
CoCos always had one screw taped
over
> with a tamper seal - if it was punched, they
wouldn't warranty it.
Granted,
Many of those Tandy seals could be peeled off in one piece and stuck back
later :-).
Really? Without leaving a silver foil checkerboard pattern behind? Ugh,
I
hate those stickers. 
3:39 a.m.
New subject: anti-tamper seals was Re: [OT] Waddizzit??
> Tandy & others did this as well... My CoCos
always had one screw taped
over
> with a tamper seal - if it was punched, they
wouldn't warranty it.
Granted,
Many of those Tandy seals could be peeled off in one piece and stuck back
later :-).
Really? Without leaving a silver foil checkerboard pattern behind? Ugh,
I
hate those stickers.
8:17 a.m.
New subject: anti-tamper seals was Re: [OT] Waddizzit??
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24 Jun
24 Jun
2:55 p.m.
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Glen Goodwin wrote:
I don't sell motherboards any more, for the same
reason. Last one I sold
was a dual-processor Asus board (not cheap) and the customer returned it
one hour later with an area about 3" x 5" on the board *charred black* on
both sides of the board. He claimed I sold him "junk" and was in my face
when I told him I wouldn't replace it. Fortunately there was an off-duty
deputy sheriff in the store at the time . . . absolutely not worth the
hassle.
Then there's the other side -- I recently paid for a replacement m/b
going into a customer's machine because a BIOS flash failed. We specced
the box for hardware ATA RAID, and got the right board, but a BIOS
revision that doesn't allow reconfiguration of the initial RAID setup.
(Asus A7V333 w/RAID, firmware rev 1.04) I've flashed literally dozens
of motherboards and only had one failure [1]. Even though the dealer
knows me, knows I'm skilled, knows that that revision is notorious for
dying on updates, and agreed that that rev was useless for us, my
attempt at flashing the firmware voided the warranty on a 2-day-old
motherboard. Then he told me they would not have flashed it for me, as
"We just don't do that."
I usually stay religiously away from other peoples x86 hardware, for
all the above reasons, including Glen's. Plus, to use my favorite auto
analogy, if selling a car was like selling a PC, I'd have to:
Teach you to drive it
Tune it & do oil changes for the life of the car
Replace the carburetor with the Super Duper 8-Barrel 95 mpg $25
aftermarket part you bought at some flea market AND make it
perform to the sales spec.
Tell you exactly what's wrong with your auntie's car on the strength
of "It's not running right"
Call the state highway department and find out whether the road you
want to drive is closed or congested, or you're just taking the
wrong turn, at 3:00am (drunken voice "I've been dialing AOL for
20 minutes and I can't get on. What the hell is wrong with this
modem?")
And of course, all that for free.
[1] I intentionally pulled the plug on that one - a Gateway-rebadged
Intel board that wouldn't update with Intel firmware. It also had a
failsafe boot feature, so I interrupted a Gateway firmware flash, and
failsafe-booted into an Intel firmware image. It worked.
Doc
7984
days inactive
7989
days old
11 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
acme_ent＠bellsouth.net -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
doc＠mdrconsult.com -
edick＠idcomm.com -
passerm＠umkc.edu -
philpem＠dsl.pipex.com -
rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com -
zmerch＠30below.com