My AmigaOne Experience

[Tomas]

Alans response on ann.lu:

@joe aka Mike Powell

Mike

I don't usually comment on ann, but I must make an exception in your case to put the record straight, as you seem to have been somewhat economical with the truth in your frustrated need to find someone to blame for your misfortunes.

First we managed to get your A1 system to you for Christmas, against considerable odds and with a fair bit of overtime required, after some significant pressure from your mother. We explained the nature of the 'earlybird' systems to her, but she was insistant that you were a computer whizz and knew what you were doing. The system was fully installed and working when it left us.

Between Christmas and New Year I noticed that you were complaining on amiga.org that it was not working, but again under a psuedonym making it hard to track you down, particularly as you didn't bother to email us directly. After finding out who you were I rang you and arranged for one of our engineers to visit you, a 300 mile round trip, to sort it out, without any charge. Somehow the linux swap file had got corrupted and our engineer reinitialised it, showed you how to use it and left it in a working state.

During the year you asked about an upgrade to a XEG4 and we quoted you the cost, but heard nothing more.

Three weeks ago your dad rang up and I spoke to him. He said you had lost interest and wished to sell the A1, but needed to show the prospective purchaser that it would boot into Linux properly first. He asked what was the cheapest way to achieve this, and we discussed sending it back to us. I explained to him, and you when you came to the phone, that although we were perfectly happy to do this there is always a risk that something will come dislodged in transit, or worse, damaged. I said that things had moved on since you purchased your Earlybird system and that we were now shipping the systems with Debian Linux and updated firmware. We discussed would have to be done at your end to update your sytem, and that if it was beyond your or his capabilities it is somthing that any competant local PC shop could do in a matter of minutes. We agreed that we would send you a new firmware chip and instructions on how to remove it, a new set of Debian disks and the installer CD, and the latest Quickstart guide (all without charge). You were to either change the ROM and install Debian yourselves, or pay a local PC shop to do it for you.

If there were still operational problems after that then you were to send the system back to us for sorting and we would jointly work out a less harsh method of getting the system back to you than via a courier.

The new ROM's, instructions, disks etc were sent off to you as promised.

We received a phone call from your dad today saying that you had asked him to pull the ROM, but that he had not really known what he should be doing. He told me that he had attempted to - and with the aid of a small screwdriver used as a lever - succeeded in pulling the ROM socket off the PCB, complete with attached surface mount tracks. I told him that this in my view would not be a practicable repair operation on a multilayered board such as the A1.

I am sorry that you have had this bad luck, and can understand your frustration, but I believe that we have given you good customer service over the period of ownership of your AmigaOne. I think that it is grossly unfair for you to imply otherwise, or to imply that your lack of satisfaction with the system you purchased is caused by anything other than your own lack of ability with Linux. As others on this list have pointed out we clearly state on our website that 'if you want a switch-on-and-go system the earlybird offer is not for you'.

Alan M Redhouse

looks like pretty damn good customer service from the side of eyetech, they could not have done more.
I really believe this is the customers fault.

[Glaucus]

If you pay for the ticket I make sure the technician has a great time here. Beaches, beer and so many things more. They just opened my favourite beergarden on 1 minute travel away.

No, but I might take you up on that offer! I've never been to Bangkok before!  :-D

  - Mike

[Coder]

@Glaucus

No, but I might take you up on that offer! I've never been to Bangkok before!

No prob. :-)

Coder

[uncharted]

JoannaK wrote:
Jurasic Camper: *IF* Eyetech and Hyperion had listened to those of us
who have more experience on hardware and OS making this and many other
could have been avoided.

*IF* you'd offered your services in a polite manner rather than trolling the public A1 and AOS4 lists, Eyetech and Hyperion may have been more receptive to you suggestions. :-o

[MarkTime]

Of course Alan's response makes it sound like he gives A+ customer service, do you think he posted a response to make himself look bad?

Now whether he does give good customer service, our lousy, is still very much a matter of legitimate debate.

Fact is, I've witnessed these blow-ups, and Alan's vociferous counter responses, several times over the years.

The fact that Alan always has a vociferous response, that's not surprising, that is his personality, the fact that complaints keep coming, that part I find real concerning.

But listen, there is something not quite TRUE going on here.

Consider the interview with MR HARDWARE computers:

MR HARDWARE COMPUTERS, SELLER OF EYETECH PRODUCTS:

I think there will be a big shortage of AmigaOne's when OS4.0 is released at the end of October. If you think you want a system you can pre-order the motherboards now and decide on other parts later.

-----------------------------

This is a wonderful example, of what many in the community do, they repeated say OS 4 is around the corner...the implications are obvious, they want to sell AmigaONE hardware to the OS 4 crowd.

When OS 4 adverts first hit amiga.org, the Amiga campers were all over that, its safe to buy your AmigaONE now, cause OS 4 is just about to be released.

But time and time again, year after year, it isn't released....and yet they continue to market, and sell these AmigaONE's.

It just strikes me as INCREDIBLE and beyond belief, now the very strong language used in saying that everyone knows these are LINUX only systems that are for experts.

I've said that many times and been criticized relentlessly for being all DOOM and GLOOM and TROLLING.

Lets face facts...now I suppose I'm trolling for pointing out the truth of this two-faced argument.

I don't think I'm inclined to stop trolling, till I feel like people aren't being LIED to and manipulated out of their money.

Why can't we have THAT FIRST, then we can talk about a more peace loving community.

--Robert aka MarkTime

[DonnyEMU]

Please folks I used to work for an Amiga dealer and have swapped out chips etc..

You DON'T use a paperclip as a CHIP PULLER..

You can buy a chip puller at any radio or electronics supply shop for under $5..

This is such a ridiculous post. If someone really told them to do this, they really shouldn't be in business.

[Seehund]

JurassicCamper wrote:

I completly disagree. Those of us who took up the early bird offer are testing this hardware, ...
 

No. You bought a piece of hardware, using the licensed "AmigaOne" trademark, from a licensed distributor.

That these Teron motherboards are sold under the "AmigaOne" trademark means, among other things, that:

- It has passed AInc's extra strict quality assurance tests.
- It has passed AInc's AmigaOS4 compatibility tests.
- The support level as well production and distribution capabilities meet the extra high standards set by AInc.

Right?

You all do remember that the "AmigaOne" name is a CERTIFICATION, meant to BENEFIT and PROTECT us as consumers, right? It's NOT a market restriction imposed on us and third party hardware, just to fund irrelevant former "hardware partners" and get some quick rent money from short-sighted trademark licensing for a thousand or two mobos on an artificially limited market... Right?

Heh.

(BTW, "Earlybird" suffix or not doesn't matter. That's just a recent Eyetech campaign offer to buy Terons preceding the AmigaOS4 release. It never was meant to tell the customer that the hardware was not up to snuff. I hope.)

[Rassilon]

@seehund!  :-P  :-P  :-P  :-P  :-P  :-P  :-P

Oh how I laughed! I wondered how long it would take you to comment, as we all know how much you like Eyetech and the A1's.

I imagine we all could have guessed that you would refer to them as Teron's as well.

Face facts, no one takes you seriously anymore as you are just a caricature of your former self!


Before anyone mentions that this post is a personal attack, my point is that Seehunds post has nothing what so ever to do with the topic at hand.


Rassilon

[lorddef]

@ staticman

Bummer dude, I feel for you but there is no need to blame it all on Eyetech, from what I can gather it seems they have ben fair an honest.

How about we all go down to coders and get totally wasted in bangkock :pint:  :-D  :-D

[Crumb]

@sTaTicMaN
That wouldn't happen if you had an A2000 HD Professional with Military Chips like Doomy ;-P

-Well, seriously that's more or less easy to repair but... don't do it yourself please...

[Seehund]

Hi Rassilon!

Thanks for your insightful contribution to the discussion.

Oh my, is my face red now, having posted about quality and support in a thread about... quality and support. As if that wasn't enough, I seem to have posted my reply to another obviously off-topic post about quality and support.

I'm so devastated that I can't even seem to remember what the point of your post was, and what it had to do with the topic and my post which you replied to.

Maybe that "former self" of mine would have been able to keep up with you. Anyway, nice of you to keep tabs of my former and current self, and even telling everyone what I really think. I had almost forgotten that everyone's supposed to have sympathies or antipathies for certain hardware and hardware shops and base their discussion on such feelings.

Thanks for watching out for amiga.org and keeping things on topic, Rassilon!

[lempkee]

staticman: i feel with you on this one , i have a friend who seems to be as unlucky as you ;(

i can only hope that you and alanR figures out what to do with it.

[JurassicCamper]

Seehund wrote:

JurassicCamper wrote:

I completly disagree. Those of us who took up the early bird offer are testing this hardware, ...
 

No. You bought a piece of hardware, using the licensed "AmigaOne" trademark, from a licensed distributor.

That these Teron motherboards are sold under the "AmigaOne" trademark means, among other things, that:

Yeah Yeah Yeah how many time have i heard this.... Turn the record over mate its getting boring.
Nothing you say or the BGF's say are going to make me change my mind about my purchase. It works fine, I'm happy with it and I'm looking forward to OS4.

But if genesi bought a licence to call the pegasos2 an amiga or won got the trademark by default that would be ok would it?

Eyetech have got as much right to call it an Amiga as C= did. They just bought someones work after all, even the OS was metacombo.
Would you still be spurting off if the Escena board had worked ?

[redrumloa]

Face facts, no one takes you seriously anymore as you are just a caricature of your former self

IMHO the more time that passes, the more I realise just how right Seehund has been all along :-x

[Seehund]

JurassicCamper wrote:

Yeah Yeah Yeah how many time have i heard this.... Turn the record over mate its getting boring.
Nothing you say or the BGF's say are going to make me change my mind about my purchase. It works fine, I'm happy with it and I'm looking forward to OS4.

I have said nothing about your purchase, the Teron, or Blind Whatever Followers. Nobody's trying to change your mind. There's no conspiracy. You're happy with your motherboard, that's great isn't it? Who said that you shouldn't be?

You said that Eyetech's customers are actually testing the hardware. That's what I replied to.

I said that this can't be, as the Terons are already sold as "AmigaOnes", which supposedly should work as a certification that it's a tested and finished product and paying customers are not to be considered as testers or developers. The Terons are no longer "beta" or prototypes. There shouldn't be any need for testing when the product is already out on the market, and I don't think there is.

I think you read something into my reply which just isn't there. Nobody is attacking you or your hardware purchase.

[Rassilon]

@ Seehund

The point of your post was to re-iterate...  AGAIN! your view that AmigaOne's should be called Teron's. Which as you can see has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

My aim of my post was to point out the childish and boring reality of yours.

Hope that clears up any misunderstanding, and refreshes your devastated memory!

Rassilon