The Consumer Complaints Blog

I was going to write an article on the Canadian banking system today. Or post an update to the false advertising article I did earlier, but I had to spend half my day trying to fix a problem with my crap Windows computer.

Today, it did some kind of automatic update which had the computer restart involuntarily. Okay? That was pretty bad. Good thing the work was saved. After restarting, I couldn’t get Outlook to launch at all. The computer froze and then restarted every time I tried to launch Outlook. Aaaaaaa!

Funny, Firefox works okay. Adaware seems to run. I wonder why this is happening? Oh I think I know. It’s another useless Microsoft update that just makes things worse. After half a day of fighting with it, enough was enough. I decided to do away with all non-essential Microsoft applications on the machine.

Extremely annoying, but the experience gave me the idea for writing this article.

A quick review of non-Microsoft applications that can be used to accomplish the exact same tasks as their commercial counterparts. You could of course do something radical like switch to a Mac; but we know that it is not always practical to change operating systems. Even Unix is not quite at the level a basic user would be comfortable with. Besides, Macs have their own set of problems and Apple is just a touch better than Microsoft at dealing with a complaint when things go wrong.

Let’s start with the web

You can do all your browsing with Firefox from Mozilla. It’s free. It’s open source and it works. For most things, you won’t ever need to launch Internet Explorer again. Did I mention that it’s more secure as well? The main problem is that web developers still have their heads jammed too far up Microsoft’s ass to make things cross browser compatible. But I rarely have any problems with Firefox so give it a try.

Need to check e-mail?

I just installed Thunderbird from Mozilla. I didn’t know about this ’til I was forced to find an alternative for Outlook today. I installed it and it is as good as (dare I say better than?) the mail program on my Mac. And I can tell you that it’s way better than Outlook. It has a good junk mail filter and is supposed to be more secure than Outlook. Oh yeah, it didn’t crash my system when running today. That was a huge bonus.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

Shouldn’t we be able to expect applications to run as kind of the minimum these days?

What about Office applications, you say?

Yes, yes. We all need word processors and slideshows and all that other good stuff. Thankfully, there is a free program for that as well. Yes, I did say free. OpenOffice has been around for a while. It’s a less bloated, open source alternative to the Office suite. I noticed they just released version 2.0 so it’s even more developed than when I first started using it. And it imports and exports to MS Office for your friends that don’t quite “get it” yet. Or at least that’s what you’ll be thinking when you see them paying for things they could get for free.

http://www.openoffice.org/

The OpenOffice Suite 2 comes with six applications. I don’t really know how they all work since I mainly use the word processor but here goes:

Write: http://www.openoffice.org/product/writer.html
A fully equipped word processor. Very nice and stable. Much faster than Word.

Calc: http://www.openoffice.org/product/calc.html
A spreadsheet program.

Impress: http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html
This seems to be like PowerPoint but probably better. I have no experience with this so please let me know what you think if you’re currently using it.

Draw: http://www.openoffice.org/product/draw.html
Used for drawings and diagrams. Again, no experience with this.

Base: http://www.openoffice.org/product/base.html
SQL database tool.

Math: http://www.openoffice.org/product/math.html
Mathematics equation editor.

Admittedly, for some users of Windows, these tools may not be exactly what they want. But for about 95% of people out there, these tools can pretty much take care of anything they need to do with their computer. Before shelling out money for software, (or pirating) try these out. They’re stable, fast, reliable, and you can’t beat the price.

The point of all this being that you do not need to put up with junk. As a consumer, it’s your duty to send a message and stop putting up with garbage. The only message corporations understand is the one coming from their bottom line. You can try screaming and protesting and whining. But if you want to change things, hit corporations where it hurts. Right in the dollar signs.
Thanks for reading and if you like these tools, spread the word.

Just a quick note about a manufacturer of computer monitors, among other things. They seem to be a Chinese company with offices all over the place.

I bought a used PC. Now I’ve been on Apple computers since the 80’s but I needed a Windows machine to do my testing. I’m a graphic designer and web designer so I have to look at alignment and colours and so across both platforms. And I like the games.

Having bought this computer I decided to get a brand new BenQ 19″ monitor to go with it.

No problems for the first 4 months, until all of a sudden, anything dark/black starts to appear as a kind of funky day-glo purple. You can imagine how this is very disconcerting for someone who relies on the monitor to choose colours for a living.

I then wasted the next few days checking settings, running diagnostics, installing and reinstalling drivers and I even changed the video card. All the time thinking that it couldn’t be the monitor. After all the monitor is brand new. Finally, I take my crappy monitor and hook it up to my trusty mac. (I know I should have done that earlier but I’m new to Windows so I blame it first for everything.)

Lo and behold, the now tormenting shade of purple.

I go to the BenQ web site. I fill out their contact form and give them my phone number and address and serial number of the monitor. I explain to them how important it is I get this resolved because I rely on it for work. I get an e-mail back telling me that I need to phone the service department. Okay, but why don’t they call me since they made me give them my phone number and all the other details?

Fine. I call the service department. I’m on hold for over half an hour listening to how important my call is and all the other irritating crap you hear on these systems when you’re on hold. I can’t help but wonder why they put those messages in. If someone says they care about you but obviously treats you like they don’t, doesn’t that just make you angrier?

Finally I get a rep, based in California. He tells me I can give them my credit card details so they can charge me for a new monitor, to be shipped asap, in case I don’t return my broken one. (WHAT THE…?) I just paid this company money. They gave me a monitor that broke within the first four months of using it 5 or 6 hours a day. Now they’re asking me to give them more money? Why?

Alternatively, I could send my monitor back and wait till they receive it, at which point they would send me a replacement. Or I could go out to Scarborough somewhere to pick it up myself.

Now I know how easily things can get “misplaced” whenever a company asks to have something sent to them. Either through the fact that they are too big to handle all these issues or just plain incompetence. So I went with the pick up option even though it would cost me gas money to go there and get it.

Oh yes. Did I mention that the replacement monitor isn’t new? I paid them for a new one and they have graciously offered to give me a “refurbished” monitor. (“Refurbished” of course being a marketing word for garbage. I’m in the field so I know these things.)

The rep tells me they’ll call me back with the pickup location and details.

Okay?

I wait all day. No call. I wait all the next day. No call but I had a barbecue. Finally on the following day they manage to call me. I don’t know what took them so long but fine.

I head out to Scarborough. I drive past the address they gave me. I didn’t see BenQ. Did I miss it? I turn around and very carefully creep up to the address on the piece of paper that I’m staring at just to be sure. Hey! No sign says BenQ but it has to be right.

I pull in following the signs that say customer service. They lead me around the back of the building like some secret gang hangout or something.

I go inside and speak to a woman that takes down my reference number. When you come to a secret gang hangout like this you need to have good references.

As she goes to the computer to punch whatever keys she needs to push I notice that the shelves are lined with all kinds of defective BenQ merchandise. Everything from CD Burners to Monitors to you name it. If BenQ makes it, and it broke the way they knew it would, it was there.

I took home my monitor in a box that proudly said “Refurbished” on the side in big purple official BenQ letters. Embarrassing.

I’d like to wrap things up by saying a big thank you to BenQ. Thank you for the lousy monitor. Thank you for giving me someone else’s used monitor when I gave you money for a new one and thank you for telling me that you have some third party servicing your monitors in Toronto. It made it really easy to find the building.

My advice is this. If you’re in the market for a monitor, save your money a little longer and opt for a better brand.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Just so the search engines can pick up this phrase, BenQ Sucks.