My last "warrantee woes" post was praise for a company (DGTech) who pleasantly surprised us by replacing a 6 month old product purchased elsewhere. This post is about a less satisfying experience, one that is more typical of trying to get service here. On November 03, 2011 we purchased from Octagon Computer in Robinson’s Mall Dumaguete a new Imation external USB DVD Writer, serial number 1107600LE07009. At first it worked perfectly, it would spin the disk normally, and played and burned CDs and DVDs correctly. Around February, 2012, we noticed that it no longer would “spin” freely, instead it would start/stop very fast, and make a noise like “thunk, thunk, thunk”. It still worked ok at this time, and we only used it once every week or two. Soon we started developing other problems related to our USB ports, the first thing we recall happening was USB hubs going bad. These were cheap hubs purchased from CDR King, so we thought it was just the cheap hubs. Then BOTH of our computers started developing erratic USB behavior, sometimes they would work correctly, sometimes not. Finally one of our computers USB sockets would no longer work at all. We purchased a PCI USB slot and installed in the computer. This cured the problem. About a week later the computer died completely, the Motherboard went bad. As a new Motherboard would cost upwards of P10,000 with memory, processor, etc., we determined it would be better to purchase a new netbook. We use these computers in our business and a new netbook made better sense than trying to repair a 4 year old computer. We purchased a new Samsung netbook from DGTech on 06/08/2012 . It was not loaded with software so the first thing we did is plug our DVD writer into it in order to load software. It did not work, just went “thunk, thunk, thunk”. I took the DVD writer to the house of a friend and plugged it into his computer. It went “thunk, thunk, thunk”, but otherwise seemed to work fine. We then took the new netbook along with the DVD writer to DGTech. The next day when we inquired we were told the DVD writer was bad, and that it had burned out the Motherboard of the new netbook, as well as another one they had plugged it into trying to figure out what the problem was. It was not until this time that I know for certain what had been causing all of our USB related problems for months, the DVD writer. DGTech being an establishment of high repute, replaced our damaged netbook free of charge, which technically they were not liable to do, as it was the faulty DVD writer purchased from Octagon that caused the problem, not anything purchased from DGTech. We took the DVD writer to Octagon, and told them what had happened. The person who waited on us (Andy?) seemed completely uninterested in our story, he plugged it into a high end computer, and it worked. He was uninterested in my story that this was an intermittent problem with the device, and that it had done irreparable damage so far to three computers. He kept pointing at the screen and exclaiming “It’s working fine”. He was rude and did not want to listen to what we were trying to tell him. He agreed to keep it for a few days and try it some more. We picked it up 4 days later, Andy still claiming there is nothing wrong with the unit. So now we have a DVD writer, still in new condition, in the original box, that is completely worthless to us. We are now of course afraid to plug it into anything. This device has already caused an estimated P30,000+ worth of damage to three computers. Surely Andy and/or Octagon is not going to be willing to pay for further damage done by this device, yet they will not acknowledge that there may be a problem. The manufacturer will replace this device for Octagon free of charge, I do not understand why Octagon maintains this stance and policy. Over the years we have purchased probably close to P100,000 worth of merchandise from Octagon, they will not be getting any more of our business. Larry
