Category: the Rant Board
So let me begin by writing, I have products from all of the blindness related companies from freedom scientific, to Humanware, to Gw micro, to HIMS, etc, etc. While I probably shouldn't post this piece of useful information, I think it's becoming necessary.
Recently, I sent a product of mine to be fixed. As for which product it was, I will not mention the name, as I don't want this company to get any sort of bad name from me. I really think they have great devices, and help the blind quite a bit.
I live in a big house, with a big family, and something, I'm not sure what, got into my keys of this device. I was honest about it, and they said they wanted x dollars per hour, and then parts would also cost some as well.
I sent my product to said company on a Tuesday, and well, it gets there on Thursday. The quicker the better, right?
Well, on Friday, I get a very nice phone call at 8:00 am my time.
"Hello Paul, you're device is fixed and ready to use. It costs z dollars to fix."
"Great! How much for shipping?"
"Because of the state you live in, y dollars."
I hung up the phone and thought to myself, wow, they fixed it quick. It took some time for me to actually get that much money, as I don't have much around here. So I got it, and sent this company a check for the amount of money they needed.
A few days later, or let me change that, yesterday, I got my product back! I was excited! Finally, it's here!
Upon using it, I realized something was different. I couldn't seem to scroll down like I could have before. I realized that upon looking at my unit, the space bar wasn't adjusted propperly. You see, when I first got this unit, I encountered a strange problem where keys would tilt. Later, they sent it back to me, and much to my dismay, when receiveing it back, it did it again. I wasn't typing especially hard on this device, but the keys were tilting, and as you might imagine, made it very hard to type.
So this time, it's my fault. Yes, I guess I should have been more careful where I place my unit. But this being said, I would expect this particular company to do their job correctly. I don't really wish to go on without this device much longer, as I use all of my devices on a daily basis.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, as I can't afford to take it back in for repair.
Maybe I just got a bad unit and it hates me. I don't know. But this is seriously getting very frustrating to me.
Sounds like something is off with the keyboard?? If that is the case, is there somewhere local you can take it?
Sorry for your bad luck.
BTW, some of these companies suck. I have a particular product from one of the mentioned companies and was having trouble using the USB ports for transfering information. I called them and the guy told me the unit had to be sent in, there were no fixes I could do myself and that it would be $75 an hour with $150 just to look at it. So I got some compressed air and blew out the USB port and it worked fine. Greedy SOBs.
Yeah, I'm currently looking into seeing if someone might be able to assist me where I live, but I really doubt it. I live in a small community, you see.
Wish me luck.
Not the first time I've heard of this kind of thing, where you send something in for repair and it comes back in just as bad, if not worse, condition than when you shipped it. Humanware did this to me years ago with a BrailleNote mPower. Had to be shipped back to them thre times, the first one for the initial problem, the other two because they messed it up worse than it had been. I wasn't the only one who noticed it, even the tech people at my rehab agency could see that was the case. In the end they sent a whole new mPower, but it was stil inexcusable. Good luck!
Thanks for the good luck wishes guys, haha.
Don’t these companies warrantee there work?
If you send something in for repair, and it comes back not working as it should, don’t they cover the cost of reshipping?
A local shop will do, only if it doesn’t void any warrantees, so check on that.
If you are the cause of the problem, and you pay to get it fixed, the fix should be correct.
Wayne, I agree.
Right now Wayne, I know someone who is very good at electronics.
He said it looks like whoever tried to fix it shifted everything forward.
So he said he'll take it and give it a fix.
Nope, they don't. So, if they fix it, and break it again, worse, they'll charge you
again to get it re fixed. this is rather standard across the AT board. consumer
protections are not as good, because we have no choice in the matter. We're a
small group of people with expensive needs. companies realize they can take
advantage of that.
Yeah, you're telling me.
It's really frustrating.
My friend was able to do a decent job on the keyboard, but it's not exactly the same, must I admit. But I can't afford to get it fixed again, so I guess I'll have to settle.
I went through 2 focus 40 blues last year. The first, just flat out died on me. The second after leaving it over a weekend at work, refused to push the dots up that Monday when I turned it on. It would gently push them but not enough for me to feel anything. Tech stuff can be crazy at times and items surprisingly to me can just die.
I've actually had a lot of success with a lot of products. However, my jaws and my pacmate, I must admit, I have had issues with before.
I called up a certain assistive tech company to get an estimate for fixing the headphone jack on a gadget I use for my NLS books, and they said they'd charge over $100 to replace the darn thing, not to ention their ridiculous price for shipping and handling. Wonder where I could take itl ocally to have the headphone jack repaired. I plug in headsets, and there's no sound, but the built-in speaker works just fine. grrr.
Hey, I thought I was the only one with that issue with a product of mine. Good to see I'm not.
Good luck.