Avoid this company!
Bay Area Laptop Doctors
To anyone with laptop hardware issues. Do not send your computer here. They were temporarally contracted with the company who sold me my Clevo D900T, and after recieving my suppossedly fixed laptop back from them, it promptly began smoking. This was on top of the fact that they had my computer for over a month and did absolutely NOTHING to it.
Just a heads up.
To anyone with laptop hardware issues. Do not send your computer here. They were temporarally contracted with the company who sold me my Clevo D900T, and after recieving my suppossedly fixed laptop back from them, it promptly began smoking. This was on top of the fact that they had my computer for over a month and did absolutely NOTHING to it.
Just a heads up.
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Comments
Don't know of the company of which you speak, but you need to realize several things:
1: No-one is going to stock parts for xyz machine, Most all parts are going to have to come from the mfg which is going to take a while. In allot of cases it will appear to the customer that nothing has been done, when in fact the tech has called the mfg and the parts order has been placed. Note that allot of times parts may be on backorder, especially if the unit is a "hot" seller, the mfg shipping say 999 motherboards to the factory to be installed in "shipping" product, and (1) spare motherboard going to 20 shops that need one, so that's going to add some time.:mad2:
2: If an extended warranty company is involved, it's going to add addtional time.
3: Once the parts are received, and say the part is defective and it begins "smoking".... If it wasn't some kind of screw-up by the tech the blame falls on the mfg...
4: When bad mouthing someone, please give more detailed info.... Please expand of "what" the orginal problem was, what parts were replaced, and what parts began "smoking" after you received the unit back... And what the offical word was from the company that repaired the unit in regards to the "smoking" and what they are going to do about it.
If it was me I'd contact the mfg directly. If they don't accept repairs directly they should have a database of other repair shops in your area.
That would be your best bet, contact the manufacturer of the laptop direct. And take it from there.
Good luck.
Point taken. I'll provide some more info.
The delay was understandable, however, during that time, I called twice (got a message machine both times. Left messages, never got any answer.)
Sent 3 emails. I recieved a single 1 line response promising followup that never came.
That's the gist of the issues with actually communicating with the company.
Now: on to the hardware issues.
The first sign of trouble was a quick cycling of power source from battery to wall current and back, several times in a second, until the plug was "tweaked" a little bit. This would cause the problem to stop. The battery was also draining while connected to wall power. The only time it would charge was when the computer was plugged in, and the power off.
From phone conversations before sending the unit in, it was determined that there was a problem with the power connection from the rear connector to the mobo itself. When I recieved the computer back, the claim was that the mobo had been replaced and the problem fixed. That is what my repair ticket said. Also, my bios was completely reset, and had to rebuild my hard drive array to get my information back, so the signs were that a new mobo had been installed.
After running the computer for about 1 hour, the same cycling issue came back up. After about 3 hours of opperation, smoke began issuing up through the keyboard from the mobo / video card. It was horizontally centered on the keyboard, and issuing from the neighborhood of the t and y keys.
Also, since the smoking issue, the wireless, power connected, and power on LEDs stay on, even when the computer is completely disconnected from all power. This to me indicates a failure of the mobo, because the only other component in that neighborhood is the video card, which has nothing to do with status LEDs.
I immediately called the company through whom I bought the notebook. Since my computer was shipped out for warranty repair, ( the retailer of the notebook contracts their repairs out ) they have recieved numerous complaints about the quality of work, and have terminated their contract with this particular repair facility.
In addition to the fraudulent repair claim, there were also screws missing and or stripped and damaged from 2 of my access panels. A total of 6 screws were missing, all of which were in place and intact when the machine left.
I think it's safe to say that I'm justified in saying that this particular repair contracter is crap. I'm not ignorant of what goes into fixing a computer or the parts involved or the definition of "smoking." When a vaporous, foul smelling puff of white substance issues from beneath your computer keyboard, the generally accepted term for that is smoking.
I only post this because there are lots of people in the world with broken laptops that need fixing. This situation could have easily been worse had I not immediately shut the machine down, and I don't want anyone else's data, hardware, or even lives at risk from a crappy "repair" facility.
The retailer of my notebook, who has always been extremely fast to help, get RMAs out, and get things handled, is paying for shipping to an in-state repair facility, along with sending screws to replace the ones lost. I have nothing bad to say about them. Only the repair facility to which the computer was originally sent. Warranty remaining on the machine is ~1.5 years.
The chassis is a Clevo D900T running
3.4 Ghz P4 (Prescott)
ATI Mobility Radeon X800 256 MB GDDR3
2 Gigs of DDR2 533 MHZ RAM
2 7200 RPM Hard Drives
1 DVD Burner
1 CD Burner
Internal b/g Wireless
Devices connected at time of failure:
external mouse
20 GB IPod
Yep...
Wondering what was done, what was replaced...
Repair Contractor sounds a little dodgy, and sloppy (not surpising)
"Jack of all trades, Master of none"... While they may "work" on laptops I bet they don't do many Clevo D900T's, compared to say HP's, Or Dells.., etc...
PS: ZacMan1987, Thanks for the addtional info, I'm sure it might prove of use to someone at a later date.... The addtional info makes that repair contractor look bad also... stripped screws and such isn't cool....
BTW: I would assume that Bay Area means San Francisco, USA?
One last thing, Not a big issue, but the term most techs use is "smoked" when refering to a component which has burned up /shorted...
Sorry if I jumped on you there. I guess we missunderstood each other a little. The part was smoked/burned/shorted, and tt was literally smoking. That's what I was meaning. When you put the "smoking" in quotes, I thought you were implying that I didn't quite understand what was going on, so I apologize for jumping down your throat, but yeah. The component cooked/fried whatever you want to call it, and the result was a substantial volume of smoke coming from my keyboard. i do believe it was the mobo because of the aforementioned ( and new ) issues with the LEDs. The mobo was obviously not replaced as claimed, and aparently, when I started putting power to it with the new PS, it finally gave up the ghost.
On the bright side, free shipping, new internals except for HDs, and free shipping back. :celebrate
Thanks for posting back... I understood the unit after you got it back to be "smoking", Smoke coming out of it... Which is a bad thing... either a defective replacement motherboard (if they replaced it), or maybe something was assembled wrong (unlikely, but since they stripped /lost 6 screws, and sound sort of sloppy it could happen)
Wonder if maybe (1) of those 6 screws is inside the case, and it shorted out something....
.
Good thing you were there when it happened... Could have burned your house down...
Glad to hear the vendor is taking care of you.
RE: Original mobo was never touched or removed from the machine.
Make sure you forward that info to the mfg directly.... I'm sure they'd be interested to hear that in case they at some point take legal action... I see where you posted the mfg terminated their contract so it's sort of a done deal, but it doesn't make the mfg look good to have shops doing that.... If nothing else the mfg might be able to do a charge back...
With embedded serial numbers, computer tracking systems and everything a shop that does that is not only being run by sleazballs, but fools as well... (assuming the mfg tracks repairs)
We hooked them up in the back room where they sounded just fine. My manager came to the back of the store where the repair bench was and said that the guy probably just wanted to get an upgrade before his warranty ran out. (Which was no doubt true.) The service tech asked the manager what he should do, since he didn't want to be the one to tell him that nothing was wrong and have the guy get mad at him. My scheming manager wrote up a phony repair bill saying that both woofers had been replaced, listing an expensive part as being installed at no charge. Since it was a warranty "repair", I'm sure he figured if the guy thought he was getting several hundred dollars worth of free speakers he would be happy and go away.
Then the customer came back to pick up his speakers. He looked over the repair bill and asked a couple questions about his new woofers. My boss gave him a line of bull about how the old ones were no longer made and that the new woofers were twice as good as the ones that were replaced. The customer then pulls a screwdriver out of his pocket and says "Cool, I want to see them", all the while with this sly look on his face. Once he got the back off one of them he checks the housing of one of the woofers and says "Gee, you guys even engraved my Social Security number on them for me". (That was a common practice in those days, since it would help identify them if they were stolen.) At that point, my boss ended up giving him a much better pair of brand new speakers at no charge, just so he wouldn't have us charged with fraud.
Sooner or later, this kind of thing catches up to you.