3XS Order

[mbirtwistle]

Invoice Number: 1738062

A bit of a long story, I’m afraid.

I was given a despatch date of 10th September for my 3XS system. In the days leading up to the 10th, I checked the System Tracking page fairly frequently (eager as I was to get my system) which was listed as Building. At some point on the 10th, I noticed the system had passed to the Memory Test. This struck me as odd; if the system was to be despatched that day, why was the memory testing only being done then, if it would still require the 24 hour burn in?

At 19:19 on 10th September I received an email stating that the memory had failed during testing, and that my new despatch date was set for the 14th. While this is perfectly plausible, it didn’t explain the fact the build was already running late as described above.

The System Tracking page remained at Memory Test until some point during the afternoon of the 14th, whereupon it then changed to 24 Hour Burn In. I called to change a small detail of my order unrelated to the system build (the screen model) and confirm whether it would be despatched that evening. As suspected, the burn in would require the night to run, so despatch was again delayed, this time to the 15th. The sales agent helpfully agreed to drop a line to the build team to get them to give me an update.

At 19:35 that evening (the 14th), I received another email from the build team, which resembled, almost word for word, the last email they had sent me. My system had failed the Memory Test and would be delayed until the 15th. Given that the system was already at the burn in stage, it struck me at this point that either the build team were being economical with the truth about build problems to cover their delay in building the system, or they were failing to communicate any actual problems until at least a day after they occurred on each occasion. Either is unhelpful and does not engender a sense of strong customer service.

At 17.57 on the 15th, I received confirmation that the system build was complete, had passed tests, and was being passed to the delivery team, who would be give me a call to confirm a time for delivery. Going by earlier conversations with sales agents, and responses from Scan staff on this forum, I was estimating 2-3 days for delivery, which would have meant either today (16th) or tomorrow.

I got an email the following morning at 9.30 stating:

“The estimated delivery date of your order was 16 Sep 2010 (unless you have requested a Saturday delivery). We apologise for the delay. Your order is a priority for us to ship, and be assured that we are also aware of the delay. We will update you as soon as your order has shipped.

We will aim to dispatch your order today. If there are any delays we will send further email notification.”

I received no call over the following two days, at which point I called the customer support line today around 12.00pm to enquire the delivery status of my order. I was directed to call one of the two numbers in the last email I had received, ending 4723 and 4743. With no exaggeration, I called both numbers dozens of times, and found that the first was permanently engaged, and the second would always ring through to an answering machine.

At around 2.30pm I finally got through to someone on the 4743 number. They arranged to call me back after looking into my file, and to their credit, did so ten minutes later. They agreed to pass my contact details on to the delivery team and arrange for them to contact me this evening regarding delivery for some time “early next week”. At around 5.00pm, having heard nothing, I tried to get through on the 4743 number to prompt them, but the line had reverted to ringing through to voicemail – I subsequently left a disappointed message.

It’s fair enough to be quoted a long build time (which seems a fairly common experience on these forums) – businesses go through periods of high demand – but it’s quite another thing to be quoted a build and then delivery time which is repeatedly delayed with misleading excuses. I feel I’ve been fair and understanding up to this point, but to reach the point where my system is finally built after a number of delays, only to reach a wall of silence from the delivery side of things is frankly pretty galling. I have read other posts and understand the situation regarding the necessity of having an engineer in the area, but the issue here is a desperate lack of communication, and the lack of facility for me to get in touch with the right people to sort it out (which I honestly shouldn’t have to be doing). None of this seems to reflect well on your much vaunted and promoted customer service. The reason I haven’t sought to cancel my order is I’m pretty sure that once it does arrive, it’ll work like a dream (fingers crossed).

I don’t want this to reflect badly on those I have managed to get through to on the phone, who on all occasions have been courteous and helpful, but please – get in touch and sort this out.

</rant>

[mbirtwistle]

I've just heard from the delivery agent, and made arrangements to have it delivered tomorrow morning.

[mbirtwistle]

After two days of perfect working order playing some of the most demanding games I could throw at it, my brand new 3XS system is freezing at the welcome screen.

I believe I have narrowed the problem down to a hardware issue with one of my graphics cards (there’s a smaller likelihood it is a driver issue).

The system first developed the problem yesterday (24 September) in the morning. As I didn’t have time to examine the problem then, I tried again when I got back from work, with the same issue – the system would hang at the welcome screen, with the animated circle freezing.

After doing some research, I booted the system in safe mode and disabled a number of devices including the DVD Drive, sound drivers and GFX cards, and tried booting up again normally, which the system then did. I then proceeded to enable devices to narrow the list down, eventually finding that it was enabling the graphics cards that caused the freeze.

I then tried every possible way of reinstalling the GFX drivers, from using the standard installer from the Nvidia website, to letting windows reinstall the devices, to deleting drivers when uninstalling the cards from device manager, to using beta drivers from the Nvidia website to determine if the problem lay with a specific set of drivers. All continued to hang on the welcome screen.

I then resorted to using the Acronis restore function on startup, to no avail. After trying some more with drivers after the restore, I did a second restore (which disappointingly, seems to have deleted the system image that I was restoring from!). Still the system freezes.

Given the system had been working perfectly on Thursday night with no major software changes since delivery (no new drivers etc), and the fact that a full system image restore is not resolving the issue, I can only conclude that there is a serious hardware issue with one or both of the cards.

I am extremely disappointed that this has occurred after so many problems/delays during the build and delivery of my system and only two days after delivery, and that the only resort I have to technical support is an answer phone; I have called tech support over five times, and each time it simply rings through. Your website clearly states technical support to have been open all morning.

[mbirtwistle]

It's now mid-morning on Monday.

- I can still not get through to technical support; it rings through to answerphone. I have left another message.

- I have received no contact from Scan regarding my issue, despite calling, leaving messages, these postings, and completing the technical support webform on the website.

- I have discovered this morning that calling Scan has been costing me 30p a minute; considering a) that this fact is not advertised anywhere on their website or when calling and b) that the reason I have had to call is to sort out repeated problems and delays at their end, I'm not very happy about finding an extra £15 tacked on to my normal phone bill.

This is quite frankly getting ridiculous.

[Mossy]

Please accept my apologies we are currently under heavy workload I have notified System Repairs regarding this post.

Best Regards

[redddraggon]

- I have discovered this morning that calling Scan has been costing me 30p a minute; considering a) that this fact is not advertised anywhere on their website or when calling and b) that the reason I have had to call is to sort out repeated problems and delays at their end, I'm not very happy about finding an extra £15 tacked on to my normal phone bill.

I agree, this is why I use:

http://www.saynoto0870.com/

Whack in the 0845/0870/etc and it'll give you the standard UK Phone number. I already pay handsomely for 100s of minutes on my phone contract and I refuse to pay any extra.

[mbirtwistle]

Reddragon - thanks very much, that's really useful.

Scan have now been in touch - as I've said before, once you actually manage to get someone on the phone they're very helpful.

After talking through the system's behaviour, we agreed that it was probably a hardware fault.

We agreed that tonight I should try removing the cards one at a time and seeing which is faulty. They'll then arrange to send me out a new one out tomorrow, and I'll return the old one in the new one's packaging.

I should mention that while the system was running, even Metro 2033 couldn't break it into a sweat...