briancarper.net (λ) (Tag: Westinghouse)

Westinghouse: behind the scenes (the horrors of a call center)

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:03:50 -0700

Recently someone purporting to be a phone rep from a Westinghouse call center left me a comment. After the months of pain, I appreciate getting some more information from behind the scenes. Given how many times I called Westinghouse, chances are good I maybe even talked to this guy once or twice (so hello again, anonymous Westinghouse guy!).

The situation at Westinghouse is largely as I imagined. Here is the comment, and my response follows.

Heads up for everyone ever trying to deal with a Westinghouse RMA.

I ?currently? work for the call center for Westinghouse. It is not our fault the service center will not ship you a tv, or even tell us why. Our database only lists information that has been typed in by other tech support reps, and occasionally things like a logged reciept, tracking number, or RMA number. And yes, it is true that we cannot transfer you to a manager, they do in fact have to call you back. Also, we literally do not have access to any contact information for the corporate office or the RMA center in any way, and even if we did, we are expressly forbidden from given it out. You'd have a much easier time searching for the contact on Google. We also have no way to change any of the Warranty policies, or give you free shipping labels for RMA. Those don't even come from a ?manager? at the call center, that all is done through corporate.

Basically, 95% of all of the RMA issues arise from the fact that a)the Westinghouse corporate warranty policy does not allow us any deviation on our level and b)the RMA center is the slowest, shittiest facility I have ever dealt with. Last I heard, there were litterally 5 people working there. Also, the fact is, there are far more returned RMA tvs than there are available to ship back to customers, and that is causing most of the shipping problems. But please don't call us at the customer service and expect us to be able get you a tv faster. We are in NY and ME, and the service center is in TX, we cannot ?walk downstairs? like some people would like to think.

If you do want to buy a Westinghouse tv for some reason, please PLEASE purchase it at Best Buy. We have an exclusive deal with Best Buy that if your tv breaks during the warranty period, you can call us to get a return authorization and bring it back to the store directly and get an exchange/store credit, even 11 months 3 weeks and 6 days after you bought the tv. Other than that, DO NOT buy one online, and I'm sorry to say it but, even at Woot, E-Cost, or any other online discount store. ESPECIALLY if it is a refurbished television.

And also, please, everyone, read the warranty policy on ANY expensive item you purchase, especially TVs. You'd be surprised what isn't covered under most electronics companies warranties. Almost every major TV manufacturer requires you to ship a defective tv back to them at your cost.

For all I know I can get fired for posted this online, but to be honest at this point, I could give a shit. Sorry everyone who has had to deal with a Westinghouse RMA, but please remember that if you have to call the tech support line, it really is not our fault, and there is almost nothing we can do.

I worked at a call center too (tech support and general billing/service for a residential satellite TV company); I lasted about four months. I remember very well the horrors of that job. Working at a call center should be classified as a form of torture by the Geneva Convention.

The main criteria of whether we were doing our job "properly" was how fast we finished the calls. Call volume mattered, not making customers happy. The second criteria was how closely we followed the scripts. We were told to never, ever deviate from the scripts, even when the scripts were completely bogus, redundant, or insulting to the customer's intelligence. And the scripts ARE insulting; they are written to appeal to the lowest common denominator of customer, by necessity. If I as a phone rep knew how to fix a problem and it deviated from the script, tough crap. Deviate from the script at your own risk. If someone was monitoring that call, you're in trouble.

At any given time, there was approximately one manager per 15-20 phone reps. If a customer asked to speak to a manager, s/he often got put on hold for a good 10-15 minutes by necessity; this is because I was 30 cubicles away looking for someone to take the call. And yet putting people on hold was a HUGE no-no, per company policy. It was a lose-lose situation.

The company under-staffed the center to save money, so the hold queue was always filled to the brim. By the time the customer got to us, they had been sitting and fuming on hold for 15 minutes or more. We also had an offshore call center in general vicinity of India, and those reps were only trained to take the most basic of calls. If there was a tech support issue or anything complex, it was transferred to us (resulting in another 15 minutes of hold before they talked to me). THOSE weren't fun calls.

We had to take calls non-stop for hours, until we got a specified 15-minute or 30-minute break. Breaks were measured DOWN TO THE SECOND. Aside from your breaks, you couldn't stop taking calls even to go to the bathroom or get a sip of water.

Phone reps are hated by customers, because they are the voice of the company for the customer. They are also abused by the company; the pay is terrible, the people doing it are desperate (few people take that job if they can find any other), and the company knows they're replaceable. Attrition rates at call centers are through the roof. Even people how stay at the call center aspire to become managers themselves as fast as humanly possible, so they can stop taking calls, so at any given time, the person you're talking to when you call a call center has probably only been working for 3 or 4 months tops. Phone reps are seen as little better than cattle by their employers.

So I definitely sympathize. In all of my lengthy dealings with Westinghouse, I was always polite, and the phone reps were generally polite back to me.

One thing that absolutely IS the phone reps' fault, though, is when I'm promised a call back, and then I never get one. This happened to me many times when dealing with Westinghouse, and there's no excuse for that. Or when someone says "Call back tomorrow and we'll have more information for you!" knowing full well that they won't. This also happened to me many times. Once the phone reps determined that they had no information for me, I was often told anything that would get me to hang up quickly.

If one girl at Westinghouse hadn't finally taken 15 minutes to somehow track down my first (lost forever) monitor, I'd never have known what happened. I don't know how they did it, but if a phone rep had done that sooner instead of two months of dodging my questions, I may have been able to get UPS to track down the first package.

If someone is unable to help me, they should say "Sorry, I'm completely unable to help you." A little honesty goes a long way. If I'd have contacted the corporate office sooner I could've gotten things done a lot faster, without all the run-around.

But yes, this comment reaffirms what I already suspected. Don't buy expensive electronics online; the price savings aren't worth the disaster you face when it breaks. And remember you're taking a huge gamble when you buy Westinghouse or any other "bargain" (i.e. cheap) brand.

(Read the entire Westinghouse saga, if you dare: The beginning, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, VICTORY, aftermath.)

Westingouse: Victory

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:51:33 -0700

It only took seven months, a report to the BBB, 30 phone calls, a half dozen emails, and threats of reporting Westinghouse to the FTC and CA Attorney General, but they finally sent me back my monitor. It's the one on the right there (with the very slightly crappier picture quality).

I must say, 3840x1200 resolution is pretty much a dream come true. I can have Firefox and Vim/Emacs open and nice and big, and still have room for lots of terminals, and maybe even a file manager or two. Multiple that by eight virtual desktops.

As near I can tell, it appears to e a new unit, not refurbished. If it is refurbished, it's refurbished well enough that I can't tell one way or the other, which is fine. However I'm still expecting this one to die too. My first monitor died in such a way that it wouldn't power on at all. This one is running very very hot, which scares me. I give it 3 months tops.

It makes me sad every time another person posts to my blog that Westinghouse is giving them the same horrible treatment. But hang in there. Lessons learned:

Don't buy a crappy brand just because it's cheap. I saved $75 or $100 on this monitor compared to a better brand, but it cost me over seven months of anguish (and $25 in shipping fees to send it back to the factory, and I had to buy a replacement!) Cheap things are cheap for a reason: The company isn't paying anyone to support their customers, or it's cutting corners in the quality of the merchandise, or something similar. Is it worth the gamble?
Don't buy anything expensive online unless you have a very clear method of getting it replaced if it breaks. Manufacturer standard warranties are evil. Is the time savings of shopping online rather than going to the local big box electronics store really worth it, if you have to pack up and mail your stuff to Zimbabwe for seven months?
UPS sucks. Hey UPS, how about if you don't drop off $500 pieces of electronics on a random person's front porch without a signature next time? I hope whoever ended up with my first monitor is enjoying it. (Actually I hope they die in a fire.)

(Read the whole crappy story of Westinghouse's dishonesty and horrible customer service: The beginning, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, VICTORY, aftermath.)

Westinghouse: It Never Ends

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:40:00 -0700

(If you're just tuning in, long story short: I bought a Westinghouse L2410NM monitor November 2007, it broke March 2008, I sent it to Westinghouse (paying for shipping myself), they sent it back to the wrong address and didn't tell me about it for 2 months, I filed a BBB complaint, they didn't respond to that for another couple of months, and seven months and 30+ phone calls later, I still don't have my monitor back.)

My last post about Westinghouse's horrendous customer service and never-ending RMA process was titled "Westinghouse: Finally getting somewhere?". The answer to that is sadly "no".

I got a flurry of phone calls and emails from Westinghouse's corporate office, attempting to settle my BBB complaint. On September 12th, Westinghouse finally responded to the BBB, saying:

Company states, replacement unit shipped 09/10/08

Good news! I was looking forward to posting an end to this horror story.

However, today is September 24th, and guess what? No monitor. I contacted Westinghouse last week, asking for a UPS tracking number so I'd know when to expect my monitor. However, after being promised a phone call last Thursday that never came, and then sending an email Friday which was never answered, and then waiting three more days for good measure, it appears I'm once again being given the runaround.

So today I sent this email to my contact at Westinghouse:

Do you have access to Google? Please search for "westinghouse rma" and look at the top result. I believe it will be my website. I've been carefully documenting all of my adventures with Westinghouse for the past seven(!) months. On my website, many other people have related their own similarly terrible experiences being kept in the dark for months by your customer service departments.

You promised me a phone call on Sept 18th to provide me with a tracking number for my replacement monitor, but I never heard from you. I also never received a reply to the email I sent you since then.

The BBB was informed that a replacement monitor shipped on the 10th. If that was the case, I probably should've had it in my hands by now, given that it's been two weeks. Has it actually even been shipped? I suspect not. I feel as though I'm once again being given the runaround while nothing is done to resolve this issue. Please understand my frustration.

If I don't have a UPS tracking number by Friday, I'm filing a complaint with the FTC and the California Attorney General. They have a very easy-to-use form for filing complaints here: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/ and here: http://ag.ca.gov/contact/complaint_form.php?cmplt=CL

My website only has a couple thousand readers, but I'm also going to cross-post my story to every online tech news aggregate I can think of (e.g. http://reddit.com and http://digg.com), which translates to tens of thousands more potential readers. The story I would like to tell is "Westinghouse finally sent me my monitor after seven months", but I'll tell it either way.

I look forward to hearing from you, --Brian

Look for this story on Reddit and Digg on Friday if I don't hear anything.

UPDATE: Well, I got a reply already. That was fast.

Your Fed Ex tracking number is 772xxxxxxxxxxx, you can track the package at www.fedex.com/tracking to see the progress of your shipment. Please keep mind that there was a delay at our warehouse and your unit is going to ship tonight.

Just a little two-week delay, I guess those things happen. Hopefully if/when it shows up, the monitor actually works. I've burned through seven months of my warranty and somehow I doubt Westinghouse will courteously extend it for me if this monitor fails too.

Westinghouse: Finally getting somewhere?

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:43:15 -0700

I finally got not one, but two phone calls from Westinghouse today, inquiring as to the status of my Better Business Bureau complaint against their company. This is of course in connection with the big expensive L2410NM computer monitor I sent off for repairs in March and never got back.

I actually have three different people's names to get in contact with at Westinghouse now, two or more of which are apparently supervisors. After I returned one call and was told all the supervisors went home for the day, I then received an unprecedented second call back from a different supervisor, saying she was on her way out the door but that I should call her tomorrow, and she gave me a direct line to contact her.

Some supervisors must be rooting through old BBB complaints and responding to them all, would be my guess. A phone rep let slip that there's someone working on "all of these cases... er, I mean, your case". The LA BBB still lists 69 unanswered complaints against Westinghouse, so I'm sure there's plenty of work to go around.

After six months of bullcrap, I can't get my hopes up at this point that I'm going to actually have this resolved but hey, you never know. In spite of my 21 phone calls to Westinghouse (and counting) and many promises of a return call, this is the FIRST TIME I've ever heard from anyone at the company. I'll be posting the result of my phone call tomorrow.

Westinghouse BBB rating: CC and falling

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:07:30 -0700

Thus continues the ongoing saga of Westinghouse, their low-quality electronics, and their incompetent or evil (I can't decide which) customer service department, who likes to take your broken crap and never bother sending you a replacement.

I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in California, and Westinghouse never bothered responding to my complaint. The sort-of-good news is that Westinghouse's AAA rating has dropped to CC. There are 58 unanswered complaints listed on that site. I hope their rating keeps dropping until it lands squarely in the mud where it belongs.

Not that the BBB rating is going to do much good in the bigger picture, and it's not going to return the money I wasted on the monitor I'll probably never see again, but every bit of new business I can prevent that company from attaining is another victory in my mind. I've already cost the company far more money in new business than it would've cost them to just send me a fixed monitor to begin with. Plenty of people have let me know they aren't going to buy Westinghouse brand from now on. For every person that bothers leaving me a message on this website to that effect, there are likely many more silently avoiding the company, which is good.

I think another good idea would be for people to file some complaints with the California Attorney General's Office. Oh how I wish it was financially feasible for me to fly to California for a week and sue them myself. But maybe the AG can take action if enough people make a stink.

I'm going to be writing a letter to Westinghouse's corporate office, and I'm going to post their reply or lack thereof. I have little hope that I'll ever hear a response.

I've been getting a lot of people leaving comments describing their dealings with Westinghouse, and their encounters with Westinghouse's policy of making crappy broken electronics, then giving you the cold shoulder when you mail their crap back to them and try to get it fixed and returned. I feel bad (and angry) for everyone in the same boat as me, trying to get the people at this shyster company to do their damned jobs, so I'm not going to keep quiet about this.

Still no news from Westinghouse

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:46:38 -0700

I filed a complaint against Westinghouse to the BBB, but two weeks later they haven't responded to it yet. Can't say I'm surprised. The good thing is that if they don't respond to the BBB, they get a big fat stinking black mark on their BBB profile. Might not do that much good, but it hopefully will let others know to avoid them.

I've gotten some posts from some people in the same situation of Westinghouse blowing them off and not sending them replacement items when their crappy merchandise breaks. Some people want to file a class-action lawsuit. I don't know if I'd go that far. I may take them to small claims court though. Before that, I'm going to write a letter to their corporate office, pointing out the existence of my website.

In the meantime, conclusions:

Westinghouse doesn't give half a crap about its customers.
Never ship anything expensive via UPS. They're happy to leave $500 merchandise sitting on your front porch (assuming it even made it to my front porch and the UPS guy didn't just keep it, how would I know? I never saw it).
Beware buying things online. When they break, your options for getting them fixed or covered by warranty are limited, impractical, and prone to months of aggravation. Is it worth the time you save buying things online, when you have to spend six months going through the kind of bullcrap I went through over this monitor?

This is post is just a friendly reminder to everyone reading this, don't buy anything from Westinghouse, and tell everyone you know the same thing. I wonder if Westinghouse cares about all of the people whose business they flushed down the toilet by ripping me off?

Westinghouse, the saga continues

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:56:52 -0700

Friday a guy on the phone said he'd call me back Monday or Tuesday to give me an update on when / whether they're ever going to send me my monitor. Monday came and went with no call. Not really surprising.

I filed a complaint with the BBB today. We'll see how that goes. At the BBB Westinghouse has around 150 complaints in the past 36 months, but 133 of them were supposedly solved "satisfactorily" and Westinghouse somehow still has the highest possible rating at the BBB. I've read some things about the BBB not being an entirely neutral entity itself, but who knows. I'll start filing complaints with other consumer groups if I need to.

A good handful of people have left comments here at my blog saying they aren't going to buy anything from Westinghouse themselves, which is great to hear. I may mention my blog to Westinghouse next time I call them, if there is a next time. Is not sending me the monitor I paid for really worth losing a bunch of customers?

The sad thing is that I really do need a monitor with component and composite inputs, and they are somewhat rare (the local store had none except Westingcrap brand). However I have found a Gateway model that has them, so maybe that'll work out. I'd gladly take a refund from Westinghouse rather than a monitor at this point.

Westinghouse still sucks

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:55:28 -0700

Way back in March I sent in my L2410NM monitor for RMA to Westinghouse. This is June and I don't have it back yet. Last I heard they sent my case to their corporate office. I called again this week, call #16 or 17, I lost count, and I was told that they put in a request for a "status update", but having heard any update on it. I'm always promised a return call, but I've yet to receive even one of those. As of now they've promised to send me a new monitor and have given up hope of ever recovering my legendary lost monitor, and supposedly they even created the order in their system that will initiate the monitor-sending process, complete with a long string of letters and numbers representing my fates.

I almost wish they would say "Ha ha, just kidding, screw you customer, you're not getting anything from us" so that I'd feel justified in filing a complaint with the BBB. But no, they keep the carrot dangling in front of my nose, inching closer and closer to resolving this issue. Likely I'm going to do so soon though. Not sure if it'll actually help anyways.

I've already ensured that my friends and family will never buy anything from them, nor will my place of employment, and hopefully some people reading this will also refrain. The real problem is, what company is any better? I keep a mental list of companies that have screwed me over, but that list is becoming so large that I'm running out of companies I can actually buy things from. I can at least prioritize according to the level of suckiness. Westinghouse tops the list at the moment.

Westinghouse: FAIL

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:00:54 -0700

My ninth call to Westinghouse today, about my Westinghouse L2410NM 24" LCD monitor which I RMA'ed back in March, revealed that they did in fact shipmy monitor, supposedly to my house, on April 4th or so. A UPS tracking number confirms it. There are are a few things wrong with this.

In spite of the fact that I asked for a phone call to be updated on the status of my monitor whenever it was shipped, I received no such phone call.
During the four phone calls (or was it five?) I made to Westinghouse in April, AFTER my monitor was supposedly shipped to my house, no one at the company had any record that it shipped. I was told that by multiple representatives over the past four weeks that my monitor was "in processing".
I asked for my monitor to be shipped to workplace, not my house. My nice, safe, cozy workplace with human beings who can sign for large expensive packages. Not my empty house in a neighborhood full of drug addicts, in the property theft capital of the west. In addition to telling the phone representative this, I actually taped a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper directly to the monitor itself (as well as the outside of the box) specifying SHIP TO: and my work address. Even such drastic measures were not enough to catch the attention of whatever magical monitor-repair fairies work at Westinghouse, apparently. Perhaps I should've carved that information directly into the monitor screen.
I could possibly overlook the above, except that, as you may have surmised, at the present time, I do not, in fact, have my monitor.

After calling up UPS to ask why their driver left a $450 computer monitor, in a shiny bright blue and white box with pictures of a computer monitor all over it, sitting on my front porch while I was at work without getting my signature, I placed call number ten (yes, I've finally hit double digits!) to Westinghouse, and managed to escalate my issue to the Westinghouse corporate office. Supposedly in 7-10 business days they will send me a brand new monitor.

Oh how I wish I had any confidence that I'm ever going to see that monitor.

In the meantime, this guy was on sale at the local store, so I bought one. Time will tell whether LG brand is any better than Westinghouse. This time, I also bought the extended warranty, having learned my lesson that it can, indeed, be worth an extra $60 to save myself some pain and aggravation later. I'm also going to think twice about buying things like this over the internet in the future. There is something to be said about being able to drive 10 minutes down the road to have your property serviced or replaced by real-life human beings, rather than paying to have things shipped around the world for a month.

Westinghouse: the saga continues

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:31:08 -0700

I'm up to eight phone calls to Westinghouse now (about my RMA). (Previous Westinghouse enjoyment can be read here.) It's been almost a month, and no one seems to know where my monitor is, other than reassuring me that "they received it". I don't think I should be kept waiting in the dark this long.

When I first called today (call number 7), a fellow answered, then put me on hold for a while, then said "Please call back in 10 minutes, our computers aren't working!". This isn't what I like to hear from a supposed electronics company that's supposedly going to fix my huge complicated LCD monitor. When I called back in a half hour (call number 8) their computers apparently were working again, and they put me on hold for a while longer and then said essentially "Dunno. Call back tomorrow between nine and noon and we'll have more information for you." At this rate the number of calls I've made will hit double-digits by Friday.

I can now safely conclude that Westinghouse = suck. The next rank beyond "suck" is "shyster". I'm hesitantly confident they can achieve that lofty status, given their track record so far.

(P.S. it's still a Westinghouse L2410NM 24" LCD monitor.)

Westinghouse: Closer to sucking every day

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:36:13 -0700

After my monitor's sudden death, I sent it off to Westinghouse to get it fixed. Westinghouse got my monitor on March 20th. I called them last week to see how it was doing, but after a good 10+ minutes listening to hold music I hung up without ever having spoken to anyone. I called them back the next day in the morning and asked them if they got my monitor. The nice lady on the phone said that she couldn't tell me that unless I gave her the UPS tracking number I used when I sent it.

(As per my first entry on this subject, if I hadn't Googled extensively before I sent my monitor, I'd never have known to send it UPS to begin with. My first plan was to send it via US Postal Service. But I've read at least one website that indicates Westinghouse rejects shipments by the postal service; God only knows where it would've ended up then. Similar to Nate who recently commented on the above entry, Westinghouse claimed they emailed me RMA instructions, but I never got them and had to call back. They blamed my "spam filter" just like they apparently did for Nate. When I called back originally to get the RMA instructions, no one ever mentioned that I needed to use UPS.)

In any case, I dug up the UPS tracking number and called back Westinghouse yet again. That would be the sixth time I called Westinghouse about my monitor. The lady I spoke to this time wasn't so nice as the first, but she tried to be helpful. She confirmed that they did get my monitor, but could give me no update on its status. She said it "must be still in processing". I don't know what "processing" means, but I hope it means they're fixing it and not that it's sitting in a box in the back of a warehouse under a pile of mouse droppings. She also said she'd put in a "request for information" at the RMA department, and that someone will call me when there's an update, to let me know the monitor has been shipped back to me. If I actually get that phone call, honestly I will be pretty amazed.

So this makes four weeks without my monitor, three weeks of which I have solid proof that the monitor has been in the hands of Westinghouse. Even if they shipped it today, I won't get it for another week. For some reason I have this funny feeling that I'm going to get it back and it's either going to be still broken, or break again in another week or two.

Why couldn't they immediately send me a new or refurbished monitor of the same model to replace my broken one? Many companies do this. Instead I've been without a monitor for nearly a month now. I don't own a TV, so that monitor was my only interface to digital entertainment of any sort. This does not a satisfied customer make.

I'm already certainly never buying another Westinghouse product. In another week or so, Westinghouse will officially cross the threshhold into massive suck territory, if they haven't already. As I planned, googling for "Westinghouse RMA" now shows my blog on the first page of results. Having a blog does come in handy sometimes.

(P.S. it's a Westinghouse L2410NM 24" LCD monitor. Hi GoogleBot.)

Blah blah blah

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:25:47 -0700

My Westinghouse L2410NM LCD monitor arrived at Westinghouse's factory, according to UPS tracking, on Thursday at 10AM. Thus the clock starts. In one week I'll begin periodic phone calls to Westinghouse requesting updates on the status of my RMA. I know that every phone call you make to a call center costs the company money; it's in Westinghouse's best interests as well as my own to give me good information and satisfy my curiosity.
Yet another reason Vista sucks: trying to get VPN to work. Took me a week and the help of many people from my company's IT dept. before I even got close. The Control Panel UI philosophy of Vista seems to have been to take the XP Control Panel and scatter the options to the four winds; then build an insultingly dumbed-down GUI that has lots and lots of links to all those scattered pieces. Any kind of network configuration takes twice as long and twice as much navigation through a maze of windows and tabs and icons and links than it did in XP. And XP wasn't all that great to begin with.
My Ruby on Rails project for work is turning out well. Deploying Rails is a bit easier than the last time I had to do it over a year ago. Apache's mod_proxy + Mongrel makes things pretty easy. Getting it to work with SSL is also doable; as per these lengthy instructions you have to put
```
RequestHeader set X_FORWARDED_PROTO 'https'
```
in your Apache config (this line requires Apache's mod_headers).
Ruby on Ubuntu / Debian still sucks. I don't like how they break standard Ruby up into many parts and different packages. You kind of expect Ruby to come with rdoc and ri, not to have to install them separately.

Westinghouse: Do they suck?

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:27:28 -0700

Does Westinghouse suck? Time will tell. As I recently pined, my beloved 24" monitor died. Since then I've been going through the deeply unsettling process of getting it RMAed.

I've had to call Westinghouse three times already, just to get a number to write on the box before I mailed it to them (at my own expense). The first time I called them, the guy on the phone said I needed to troubleshoot it with him before he could do anything for me, even though I told him I'd already done all the troubleshooting myself. How much troubleshooting does it take to determine that the power light won't come on, and the monitor won't light up? I took it to three rooms in my house, tried different power cords, etc. I'm not an idiot, and I wouldn't send my monitor away in the mail if there was any chance I could get it working myself. But I was at work, and he was insistent that troubleshooting was necessary, so I had to call back later.

The second time I called, this time from home, the new guy on the phone didn't actually bother having me do any troubleshooting, he just took my word that it was broken after I explained the problem, and put me on hold while he tried to set up an RMA for me. (I saw that one coming from a mile away.)

Apparently the RMA department wasn't available at that time, and the gentleman said someone would email me the RMA number in a day or two once it was set up. Note: This gentleman was the most depressed-sounding person I've ever spoken to. Having worked at a call center myself for a few months, I understand totally.

Two days passed with no emails, so I called for a third time, and had them give me the RMA number and some instructions for sending it back. Then I did some web searches just in case the instructions were wrong. I did read that Westinghouse only accepts UPS, not US mail, which the lady on the phone failed to mention. Correct or not, I went with UPS just to be safe.

(One good thing I can say about Westinghouse phone support is that they all spoke fluent English, and they were all friendly and helpful. I know firsthand that poor tech support is often the fault of management, who set ridiculous standards (e.g. mandatory troubleshooting) and demand that their CSRs read scripts rather than use their brains, and actually punish workers who value customer service more than getting through X calls per minute. Whether Westinghouse does this or not I don't know, but it's been common in my experience and my three calls lead me to believe it's likely the case here. But becoming angry with the people on the phones is counter-productive and is only hurting people who are already working one of the worst jobs imaginable.)

So in any case today I sent my monitor off to California (at my own expense). I wrote down the serial number from the bar code on the monitor so I'll know if I get the same one back or not. Then I wrote the RMA number on every side of the box, then wrapped the box in brown mailing paper, then wrote the RMA number on every side of the outside again. I put multiple copies of all my contact info and my receipt in the box, and taped a copy of each directly to the monitor just in case.

Yet I can't shake this feeling that I'm never going to get a working monitor back again. I hope Westinghouse proves me wrong. Google around for "Westinghouse RMA" and you'll see nothing but horror stories. This may not indicate a problem; people who rant about customer service self-select themselves, so all you hear are the bad stories, never the good. Nevertheless I'm worried. I'm tracking the package by UPS. It should be there Thursday; then the clock starts.

One good thing about having a website is that if anyone happens to search for Westinghouse L2410NM LCD monitor purchased from newegg.com, they may eventually read this post (and the many, many other posts I'm going to make on this topic until I get a working monitor back.) Whether this story has a happy ending or not is up to Westinghouse.

When good hardware goes bad

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:28:34 -0700

"Goes bad" meaning "breaks". My beloved 22" monitor has died on me. I've gone from 1920x1200 pixels of widescreen goodness to an old 1024x768 CRT that they were going to throw in the trash at work.

The good thing is that now I can see for sure whether all of my web sites look OK in 1024x768 resolution. The bad thing is EVERYTHING ELSE. Oh god it burns. I can feel a headache coming on from squinting. Already I miss having 3 terminal windows right beside my Gvim. My conky display runs 2 feet off the bottom of my screen. Short of my HD exploding and losing all my files, this is my worst nightmare.

I'm debating whether I should format my laptop and dual-boot some Linux distro on there or something. Vista is such a dog. The only time I touch Vista is when I have to do something for work or when I want to play a game, which is very seldom, and I feel so unclean afterwards.

(Read the entire Westinghouse saga, if you dare: The beginning, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, VICTORY, aftermath.)

Expert hardware reviews: worthless?

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:20:12 -0800

Today I got this Westinghouse L2410NM monitor delivered by UPS. It's insanely nice. 1920x1200 resolution, 24 inches. It was only $400 from newegg, or $350 if you mail away your soul for a rebate.

On one hand, the internet is invaluable when buying something. I can't imagine what people did in the olden days. Wander into a store and pick something off the shelf and buy it blind? Perish the thought. Nowadays I read hundreds of reviews written by people who already bought what I want to buy, before I even consider getting it.

On the other hand, having too much information can be a double-edged sword.

This monitor got overwhelmingly positive reviews on newegg. People like the large size, the brightness, and the berzillion inputs. It has VGA, HDMI, S-Video, RCA, and YPbPr. No DVI, but a DVI to HDMI cable is $9. I very much echo those positive sentiments (given that I've only had the monitor 3 hours). It has built-in speakers which don't sound too great, but for built-in speakers what do you expect? It looks very nice too. Glossy black, with a clear plastic base and a clear plastic strip under the monitor where the Westinghouse logo is sort of illuminated. It looks great.

Contrast this with a review I found on a hardware review site. This site gave it a 4 out of 10, i.e. a pretty poor rating. This was because the on-screen menu wasn't easy enough to use, the base wasn't adjustable enough, and it doesn't go to sleep when in HDMI mode. There are also some posted graphs which I can't understand in the slightest, describing color ranges and monitor "performance".

This second review is obviously written by someone with much more technical knowledge than the average "OMG MY XBOX360 LOOKS AWESOEM" review on newegg. On the other hand, 103 of 135 people on newegg gave it the highest rating possible and were obviously very pleased. I consider myself fairly technically savvy, but when I'm making a hardware purchasing decision, which is more important, technical concerns, or other concerns?

Which is more important: That I'm now going to have four or five 1920x1200 virtual desktops in Linux (which will be, by the way, awesome indeed), or that, to quote the expert, "The color temperature tracks very close to 6500K most of the time. It's just a bit on the cool side through most of this curve. Once you get below about 15% intensity, the color temperature goes very red indeed"? What the heck does that even mean? Which is more important, that I can have my PS2 and laptop and Gentoo box all hooked up to the same monitor, saving me from having to buy a TV, or that the OSD has difficult-to-use buttons?

Had I listened to the "expert", I may have passed this up and missed out on getting something I really enjoy. I've had the same experiences in the past. I spent a month researching which MP3 player to get. Same thing last time I bought a watch. Was it really worth that much research time? Did I end up passing up something I would've enjoyed because the technical specs weren't top-of-the-line? Did I end up with anything better than I would've gotten with much less research and review-hunting?

I saw a TV show (Penn & Teller's Bullshit!) recently about how always trying to get the BEST of everything will often result in people being very unfulfilled. That's probably very true. There's a point where expectations are simply too high, and where the cost of doing more research and putting more effort into finding the BEST of something outweighs the benefit you actually receive when you end up buying whatever you end up buying.

There's a balance to be struck. Sure, you don't want to pay money for an inferior piece of technology or something that's going to break in a week. On the other hand, enjoyment isn't something that can be entirely quantified and rationalized. Sometimes it's nice to buy something that may not be the BEST product ever made, but which brings you plenty of enjoyment, and leaves you plenty of time to enjoy it. Sometimes it's nice to buy something just because it's nice and shiny.