Medion's Warranty and their after sales service

I have owned a Medion Titanium 8386 computer for 15 months and I would
have said that the machine was good value-for-money aspect, at least
until things started going wrong in early August, 2006.

At that point the graphics card failed and I managed to persuade Medion
to send a replacement by post that arrrived within a couple of days. I
installed it myself without problem. Medion originally wanted to send
out an engineer, at some unspecified future date but I wanted a quick
solution.

Not long after that, in late Sept 2006, the machine started seriously
misbehaving. If you have ever left a pan of water on the stove and it
has boiled dry then you will be famliar with the vile stench of burnng
metal. I'm thinking stainless steel pan here and that's the stink that
the computer was making. It gets on your clothes and it seems to hang
around forever.

I contacted Medion again and they arranged to have the machine collected
on Monday, 2nd Oct 2006.

It got collected and then they went quiet, unlike my noisy old back-up
system.

By mid October, after a fortnght with no word from Medion, I started to
get a bit anxious. I need not have worried, however, because that is how
they conduct themselves. It is perfectly normal for them never to reply
to emails or telephone calls, regardless of how often you phone or write
to them. You, dear customer, can feel free to phone their national rate
number and they will feel free to play muzak to you, for however long
you want to listen. Feel free to email them, dear cutomer and they will
feel free to ignore you completely. They have your machine and you
have... er... your frustration and your growing resentment at Medion's
cavalier attitude to your perfectly valid concerns.

But, not to worry, your machine is getting fixed, right?

Oh, yeah! Right! They are fixing it!

Time passes.

Er, they are fixing it, aren't they?

You phone them and got muzak.

Time passes.

In desperation you phone them again and got to listen to muzak again.
Eventually, someone from customer services might take your customer
number and then stick you back in another queue of people waiting to
talk to tech support. During this procedure, you are expected to sit and
listen to appalling jangly muzak until someone deigns to talk to you.
Silence, interspersed with occasional reminders that you are still in
the queue would be far preferable to that bloody muzak. It's not just
Medion, nearly all call centres torment ther cutomers in this way.

So now you would be happy just to have your machine back so you can have
it fixed professionally?

You email but they don't reply.

Time passes...

When I did eventually get to speak to tech support their excuse was that
they were waiting for a new power supply. Well, fair enough, computers
account for only 70% of Medion's business and a computer's power supply
is its most lkely problem component, so it stands to reason that they
wouldn't keep a permanent stock of them. Yeah, right.

It took them until 27th November to get my machine back to me. It
arrived out of the blue while I was in the process of drafting an email
to them to ask once again for a progress report on what was happening.
It arrived with a screw rattling around inside the (now scuffed) case,
so my first job was to get that out of there. But at least I had my
machine back and it seemed to be working properly, albeit more noisily
than before. The disk drives in particular have started to make their
presence known.

A few days later, the machine started burning again.

I first called their support centre on Tuesday, 10th Nov.

On Thursday, after a determined series of redials that began shortly
after 1pm, I eventually got to talk to Tom in tech support, just before
6pm. Yes, 5 hours.

Tom's solution was to tell me that he would have the m/c collected again
for testing. What he also said was that if Medion couldn't find out what
was wrong with the machine, they would bill me for labour! Can you
believe this? Their machine is a (possibly toxic) pollutant, fire-hazard
and Medion want to bill me if they can't find out why? I said as much to
Tom and then I got more muzak while he went "to see what could be done."

A quarter of an hour later, Tom passed me over to a tech supervisor. She
apologised for never having contacted me at all during the time they had
my machine. Then, believe it or not, she had the bloody nerve to offer
an extension of 1 month to the warranty period, in recompense for the
period they held my machine while I was going spare, just trying to get
them to tell me what was happening. Whaaaaa?

I told her "No. Your warranty is worthless."

Medion, if you apologise for your shoddy service, you can't assume that
your actions have been condoned, just because you have admitted
culpability. They haven't. Not in my case they haven't.

After talkng to her for a time it became clear that they were prepared
only to take the m/c back in again and, in the light of past experience,
that was definitely not on. I decided that I would rather take the
machine apart and use it for spares.

When I asked how to get the hard drives out of the machine she had to go
and ask someone and returned to say that "everything is accessible if
you remove the side" which it isn't, of course. She was no help at all
on how to take the thing apart (you have to see the machine to
understand the difficulty) and when I asked incredulously "You mean it's
welded?" she went into headless chicken mode, repeating that "everything
is accessible by removing the side." That became the only assistance
that she was ever going to provide with regard to disassembly.

She was, of course, almost certainly someone from customer relations.

After that, all she wanted to do was reiterate the spiel from her script
....I have apologised and offered to... and this is what we can do...
blah, blah. I felt compelled to talk over her and she threatened to
terminate the call as a consequence.

I was paying for the call and she would terminate it unless I let her
repeat her spiel?

I hung up on her.

Currently, the machine is set up in the kitchen while I transfer data
from it. I have to use it in short sessions so as not to stink-out the
whole place and maybe poison myself in the process. My plan is to buy a
bare-bones and then disassemble the Medion somehow and use whatever is
salvageable. I suspect that this procedure will reveal the cause of the
problem, which must surely have left its mark on some component or other.

So, folks, there you have an insight into the true value of Medion's
warranty.

Watchdog, here I come.
--
neb

"inebriate" wrote in message
...
I have owned a Medion Titanium 8386 computer for 15 months and

SNIP

I assume you didn't buy the PC direct from Medion. In which case, go back to
the original vendor and start making a fuss. Most Medions are sold through
supermarkets or other High Street retailers who are usually only too keen to
get rid of loud disgruntled customers. A PC should last longer than 15
months so you should have Sale of Goods Act on your side.

"inebriate" wrote in message
...
..

So, folks, there you have an insight into the true value of Medion's
warranty.

Watchdog, here I come.

Some companies that have a dodgy reputation can actually improve, Dell for
one. When my laptop screen went tits up, eleven months in, they picked it up
next day and i had it back within a few days after that, with frequent texts
to tell me the status of my machine, and update me when it was dispatched.

Gaz

--
neb