Friday, July 11, 2008

Iomega StorCenter 1Tb 150d woes: 10 July 2008

The earlier part is here:

8:37 AM - Mr. Iomega calls up
a.  "Why did you put my name on the blog?"
Oh! Someone is really scared about his name on the blog and not worried about the customer woes. You have a broken product Mr. Iomega, and your only responsibility is to solve the problem.

b. "Would you take my name off the blog if I solve the problem?"
Iomega must move from IT products to street politics -- kudos for cutting a deal with the customer for providing service on a faulty product.

c. "I didn't call you an Idiot, why did you say so on your blog?"
You made me feel like a big one -- isn't it the same? Anyway, this clearly shows how much Iomega India is committed towards solving customers' problems. Make a customer feels like a big idiot is absolutely rude and unpardonable. Is anyone at Iomega India listening? Is Mr. Bhaskaran listening?

d. "Why did you go public? its not even a day since we know about the problem"
Based on Iomega India's history with us (2 months non-availability of product and without a backup), and the previous peace-talks with Mr. Iomega, it was foolish for us to wait for any service.

9:01 AM - Mr. Iomega calls up once again
a. The neoteric engineer will come to your office, will bring all firmware updates, and a 500 GB backup, and will back up your data, and update the firmware to complete the service.
Ah! That sounds good! Why didn't something like this come up earlier? Why was Iomega India so hostile earlier? Okay, Kern will give the service engineer a place to sit with an expensive revolving chair, a laptop computer (chances are that he will fail to bring one!), network access, tea/coffee, food during lunch time. And, anyway Iomega will levy service charges even during warranty period -- which we would have to pay up, isn't it?

The earlier response by Mr. Srinivas, service engineer of Neoteric was "Get the box here, whatever the problem is -- the box has to be replaced, it can't be repaired. We will charge you for replacement, and your data will get destroyed!"

10:02 AM - Neoteric Service Engineer calls up
Saar, there is no light (electricity/power) and I am trying to issue a 500 GB box, I will come surely saar.

1:45 PM - Neoteric Service Engineer calls up
I am finishing my lunch, I will come after 2:30 PM

2:40 PM - Neoteric Service Person Arrives
As expected the service person arrives with just a Lacie 500 GB new hard drive, without any diagnostic tools, and no computer -- how does he plan to go ahead with the service? Kern spared an old laptop. 

3:39 PM - Mr. Iomega calls up
Iomega India will replace the 150d box within 2 days -- but will not take care of data.

4:45 PM - Neoteric Service Engineer could finally connect to the drive and start copying our data to Lacie 500.

6:45 PM - The copying stopped, Iomega threw up an error "Unrecognized file name or too long a file name"
Excellent -- when it saved it had no problem, now it has! This game is addictive.

7:00 PM - Neoteric engineer leaves after we gave in writing that we will take care of "his" Lacie 500. 

7:45 PM - Kern starts data backup again from the beginning.

11 July: 10:00 AM - The data had stopped copying in the night. No errors! Restarted the whole process -- now by copying individual folders one by one.

All this just to update a silly firmware? Wake up Iomega and design good products. You have lost a small business that has growing needs.

1 comment:

Archana Narayan said...

The things you have to do to get work done immediately.... Now, Mr. Iomega is ready to take up responsibility huh? They want to solve it immediately but their inefficiency is coming in their way.