Ultimate Tech support Story

#1

Ok this is a good one: a guy I know bought one of those cheap Radio Shack ‘mega-pixel’ cameras, but had a Pentium 166, no USB. So he bought a cheap Athlon from me with Windows ME on it. The OEM software would not recognize the camera at all. Any other USB device worked fine in the ports, and the software worked in another system we had with ME.
He went back to Radio Shack in PG and they told him (hold on to your hat),
The software had been installed already and couldn’t be installed again. He had to remove it before he reinstalled it. He told them no, that was on the old computer with no USB, which he donated to our Africa pile* when he found out he had to add USB or get a new system. They told him he had to get back the old computer and uninstall the software from it first, before he could install it on the new one. No, it was either in Africa or torn apart for scrap. They said to go to the dump and try to find the hard drive, because he had to put that hard drive into another computer and uninstall the software or it would not install on another computer! :open_mouth:
BTW I forgot to mention they opened a camera pack off the shelf, took out the software and installed it on one of the models in the store * and it wouldn’t read the camera on the USB port* :confused:
So they wouldn’t take the camera back for refund or even as a trade for a different model because the software was no good anymore, you installed it!!! The guy is pushing 60, and started yelling at the two guys in the store telling them they were cheap c***suckers and ripoff artists in his thick Norwegian accent. (his command of English expletives is extremely good) and they called security. He ended up throwing the camera at them and yelling to the crowd about the BS he got from them as the mall guys hauled him away. He was told he was ‘lucky’ they didn’t want to press assault charges for throwing the camera.

I swear this is a true story. I know the guy and sent him to London Drugs to buy a decent camera. He threw away his $129 special and to this day sez he hopes they shoved up their arses like he told’em!!!

I go by the philosophy that I never bought my kids a toy there that was still working by dinner on Christmas Day, so only a fool would buy computer stuff there!!
:laughing:
*the priest in our town lives in Kenya. Whenever he goes back we give him some 486s and old Pentiums we’ve collected for his town’s school.

#2

The only things I trust buying from Radio Shack, are batteries, cords, blank media, light-up keychains, and a couple models of telephones. Anything else, I’ll either buy online, or at another store in town.

I put down Radio Shack computers all the time. I’d tell someone to go buy one from Creative before I’d refer them to Radio Shack. Now THAT’S sayin somethin!

#3

I find that their blank media really sucks. I’m not saying anyone in this town sells anything better though… These local shops should get over the $5 a generic DVD-R thing already.

#4

I’ve only bought Memorex from Radio Shack, so I haven’t run into problems with that.

#5

Radioshit sells Memorex? Thats pretty much all I buy now, but throgh futureshop. I wonder if their prices are the same.

#6

you buy brand name CDR? i looked at mine, I think they’re Eight Precious Cabbages Corp or Peoples New Glorious Path Ltd or something like that

#7

I bought a replacement battery for my 900MHz GE phone and it lasted 6 months. The original lasted 2 years.

#8

My light-up keychain didn’t even last a week…

#9

Yeah, some burners and some media are not compatible. Most generic CD-Rs work fine for me. I have had a few useless spindles of generic DVD-R media land in the garbage can after trying to write with it. Doesn’t everythign have a brand name though?

#10

[quote=“Soggybot”]

I bought a replacement battery for my 900MHz GE phone and it lasted 6 months. The original lasted 2 years.[/quote]

[quote=“Charles_T”]

My light-up keychain didn’t even last a week…[/quote]

My Radio Shack key-light has lasted almost a year, just had to replace the batteries for the first time, but it’s no match for my key-light I got on ebay… I’ve had it almost 3 years and only had to replace the batteries twice. Not bad for using it an average of about 100 hours a year.

#11

I haven’t really noticed any difference in CD brands except for one batch of crappy no names that passed thru last Xmas.
I have noticed that those Memorex floppies “Cool disks” (the transparent colored ones) are total garbage though. Every other one fails when I pull it out of the pkg. I’ve sold 25pks of no name “All Hail Glorious Chairman Industries?” disks for years and had more comlaints about Memorex and Sony.
Sorry I’m on this brand name kick. People told me I needed to sell a line of inhouse computers to compete with the big guys, so I sold about ten el-cheapos under the name ‘Wontee-Voigh’. And a couple in the same damn case except in silver as ‘Benz-Royce’ for $50 more.

#12

I’ve found the Radioshack brand of CDRs (Centrios) to be top quality. They said they were 48x certified, and every single burner I’ve put it in will do a minimum of 48x, if it won’t do 52x. I bought some “48x certified” CDRs from CompuSmart in Terrace, and it’s pretty iffy with them, actually. Some will record at 40x, which is respectable, but some will only do 24x.

So, when I buy blank CDs, I only buy Memorex’s ($25 for 50 from Walmart), or Centrios, which actually work at their rated speed.

#13

Must be nice to have a burner that goes faster than 12x :frowning:

#14

i had a spindle of maxell 4x dvd-rs from compusmart…around 1/3 of them were coasters, even when burning at 1x-2x. i use verbatim now for movies, and cheap princo or optodisc dvds for various files etc…

as for cd-rs…i always used to buy cheap no name cds without much of a problem, but i burnt them at slower speeds. then brand name media became cheap :laughing:

#15

“Centrios” that was the name of the camera in my story. It’s also on sale for $99 this week if anyone wants a horror story for their own…

#16

Isnt Centrios the same name brand the FutureShop sells? I seem to recall wandering around a FS a few weeks ago and saw a lot of Centrio branded gear.

#17

no that’s Cicero: for people to cheap to buy a Compaq

#18

Cicero haha… my girlfriends mother bought a cicero nic for her computer… the driver cd was non existant so i figured i could find it online. You wouldnt believe how many different times their nics have been rebranded and how many different nic’s have a few of the same chips/serials.

#19

Odd how you would have to download drivers for a peice of hardware that lets you access the internet.

#20

Would have made it an even bigger pain in the ass if that was the only nic in the machine.