LITEON's dark secret?

No Longer a LiteOn Customer wrote:

"Jan Alter" wrote in message
...
Since you've not gotten satisfaction with Lite-on you might go back to
the original retailer and explain your story; no remedy to the problem,
poor communication, run-around, etc. I've had pretty good luck with their
products, but never had to deal with their service support. It is clearly
lacking from the details of this story.

Jan, thanks for your advice. I don't believe the original retailer
should be held responsible for the manufacturer's inadequate customer
service.



Yes they should. They sold you the product and THEY should stand behind it.
I bought a WD drive from a local store. It was defective and WD no longer
would warranty (without jumping through a bunch of hoops) it as it was a
rather old drive. I had no problem asking the store to deal with it and
sell me a newer drive for a few extra $.

--

Stacey

JonnyCab® wrote:

It seems that you were very lucky. VIA's "support" forums are full of
horror stories. For example:

You can show me all of the links you want, but I've dealt with literally
hundreds of Asus A7V133, Gigabyte GA-7VTXE and 7VTXH, Epox 8KHA+, Asus
A7V333, and Tyan Tiger 200 boards. I've never had any trouble with any of
them.

Plueeze. You're going to claim you've never had ANY problems with Via's
drivers? Even their own driver update list explains the problems they are
fixing when they rewrite the drivers. The KT133 chipsets have a known bug
with the PCI latency and it's KNOWN to cause all sorts of problems. To
claim you've never had the first issue is ridiculous.
--

Stacey

Sly wrote:



Not sure whats the case in the US, but when you purchase something in the
UK, your "contract" is with the retailer you bought the product off, NOT
the
manufacturer.Theres no reason at all that you should have to talk to the
manufacturer, The retailers contract is with the manufacturer. I couldnt
give a crap what the manufacturers do or say, if its broke, i take it
straight back to where i bought it.


I feel the same way, especially if the product is DOA. If it fails like 9
months later I'll probably try to contact the manufacturer but if that
fails, I'll be back at the retailer asking why it isn't being taken care
of.
--

Stacey

Plueeze. You're going to claim you've never had ANY problems with Via's
drivers? Even their own driver update list explains the problems they are
fixing when they rewrite the drivers. The KT133 chipsets have a known bug
with the PCI latency and it's KNOWN to cause all sorts of problems. To
claim you've never had the first issue is ridiculous.

Uh, no. Not with Windows 2000---and, come to think of it, even with Windows
98SE, which I had as far back as an Epox MPV3-GM and a K6-400.

And the KT-133 chipset, which I had on dozens of Asus A7V133 boards, didn't
give me any trouble. VIA had a patch for that that was very well
documented. Maybe you missed it. I even used one of these boards with an
internal Zip drive, which supposedly had all sorts of "problems" too. Why
didn't I? I dunno.

And for those of you that base your buying decisions on what people say in
forums, did it ever occur to you that fifteen people complaining about a
board means NOTHING when there are literally thousands or hundreds of
thousands of that board out there, and most or all of them are working fine?

rolling eyes. Give me a break.

I'll repeat. If you have problems, you're *likely* doing something wrong,
whether it's with drivers, patches, or simply abused equipment.

Finally, puuuleeeze don't tell me what I have or haven't had trouble with.
Maybe my stuff works because I don't throw it against the wall, hit it,
throw temper tantrums, or leave it for the cat to p*ss on. Ya think?

Yes they should. They sold you the product and THEY should stand behind
it.
I bought a WD drive from a local store. It was defective and WD no longer
would warranty (without jumping through a bunch of hoops) it as it was a
rather old drive. I had no problem asking the store to deal with it and
sell me a newer drive for a few extra $.

I'll be a little nicer in this post.

I *did* have what I thought was a defective OEM Maxtor 6Y080P0 last year.
When opening large files, it would make a sort of loud "clunk-DINK" noise,
stop opening the file, and then continue. It started doing this about eight
months after I bought it. It seemed to WORK fine, but the noise was
something I've just never heard in a hard drive before.

Within an hour of e-mailing Maxtor support, a very nice Maxtor rep (Cheryl)
offered me a brand-new 6Y080P0 as an immediate replacement. All I had to do
was give them a credit card number and ship the old drive back within 30
days, or they'd charge me for the replacement drive. The new one arrived in
two days. I can even use the Maxtor acoustic utility on it, and the drive
is SILENT when seeking. It might be a little slower, but it's a fast drive
already.

Anyway, after that, I *can* say that Maxtor is one company that stands
behind *their* products, no questions asked.

PS...did it ever occur to you that drivers are updated to allow the chipsets
to work with devices that were not on the market when the last drivers were
released? That's a big reason they're updated, too.

In article , JonnyCab® says...

Yes they should. They sold you the product and THEY should stand behind
it.
I bought a WD drive from a local store. It was defective and WD no longer
would warranty (without jumping through a bunch of hoops) it as it was a
rather old drive. I had no problem asking the store to deal with it and
sell me a newer drive for a few extra $.

I'll be a little nicer in this post.

I *did* have what I thought was a defective OEM Maxtor 6Y080P0 last year.
When opening large files, it would make a sort of loud "clunk-DINK" noise,
stop opening the file, and then continue. It started doing this about eight
months after I bought it. It seemed to WORK fine, but the noise was
something I've just never heard in a hard drive before.

Within an hour of e-mailing Maxtor support, a very nice Maxtor rep (Cheryl)
offered me a brand-new 6Y080P0 as an immediate replacement. All I had to do
was give them a credit card number and ship the old drive back within 30
days, or they'd charge me for the replacement drive. The new one arrived in
two days. I can even use the Maxtor acoustic utility on it, and the drive
is SILENT when seeking. It might be a little slower, but it's a fast drive
already.

Anyway, after that, I *can* say that Maxtor is one company that stands
behind *their* products, no questions asked.


I had a Maxtor 6Y120P0 go south on me after 4 months and the nice folks at
Maxtor replaced it with a 6Y160P0. Same deal, send the old drive back within 30
days and they don't charge your card.

Since the 120 didn't flat-out die on the spot I had time to Ghost the C (System
20g) partition to another Maxtor 80 that I had. When the 160 arrived I Ghosted
the D (Data 80g music and photos)partition to that.

Not a bad deal to gain 40g for the price of shipping the old drive back to
Maxtor and practicing my Ghost cloning skills while I showered and shaved.

Ed

"JonnyCab®" wrote in message ...
Plueeze. You're going to claim you've never had ANY problems with Via's
drivers? Even their own driver update list explains the problems they are
fixing when they rewrite the drivers. The KT133 chipsets have a known bug
with the PCI latency and it's KNOWN to cause all sorts of problems. To
claim you've never had the first issue is ridiculous.

Uh, no. Not with Windows 2000---and, come to think of it, even with Windows
98SE, which I had as far back as an Epox MPV3-GM and a K6-400.

And the KT-133 chipset, which I had on dozens of Asus A7V133 boards, didn't
give me any trouble. VIA had a patch for that that was very well
documented. Maybe you missed it. I even used one of these boards with an
internal Zip drive, which supposedly had all sorts of "problems" too. Why
didn't I? I dunno.

And for those of you that base your buying decisions on what people say in
forums, did it ever occur to you that fifteen people complaining about a
board means NOTHING when there are literally thousands or hundreds of
thousands of that board out there, and most or all of them are working fine?

rolling eyes. Give me a break.

I'll repeat. If you have problems, you're *likely* doing something wrong,
whether it's with drivers, patches, or simply abused equipment.

Finally, puuuleeeze don't tell me what I have or haven't had trouble with.
Maybe my stuff works because I don't throw it against the wall, hit it,
throw temper tantrums, or leave it for the cat to p*ss on. Ya think?

Jonny, you didn't convince me. I never "throw it against the wall, hit
it, throw temper tantrums, or leave it for the cat to p*ss on." etc. I
always handle my systems/components with the most professional care.

However, ***all*** the VIA based systems I built gave me trouble in
one form or another. With W2K and WXP included. Yes, I did manage
somehow to make a somewhat usable systems out of them (i.e. they were
not completely dead), but never could take 100% of their advertized
features (UDMA for example, front panel audio that was noisy beyond
practical use, etc.)

I **never** had any such problems with other mainboards. And trust me,
I built many. Maybe you never try to utilize each system to its
fullest, maybe you just lucked out but after 9 chances I gave to VIA I
am done with them. And now that nVidia supports AMD CPUs I really
don't miss VIA that much...

Silence Seeker wrote:



However, ***all*** the VIA based systems I built gave me trouble in
one form or another. With W2K and WXP included. Yes, I did manage
somehow to make a somewhat usable systems out of them (i.e. they were
not completely dead), but never could take 100% of their advertized
features (UDMA for example, front panel audio that was noisy beyond
practical use, etc.)



Exactly. I could always patch, disable or use an offboard controller etc to
make the system co-operate, but never seen to have to work around as many
issues with other chipsets. At this point in time, I see no reason to fool
with them anymore, what do you save using a Via chipset? $5-$10?
--

Stacey

I **never** had any such problems with other mainboards. And trust me,
I built many. Maybe you never try to utilize each system to its
fullest, maybe you just lucked out but after 9 chances I gave to VIA I
am done with them. And now that nVidia supports AMD CPUs I really
don't miss VIA that much...

Well, on my last system, an Asus A7V333 with a non-Barton XP2600, I burned
DVDs (using a Pioneer DVR-104), CDs (using a Plextor 48/24/48), created
music with Reason and Fruity Loops, used Win 2000 and Office 2000 Pro,
Delphi, MS Visual Studio, Borland C++ Builder, CorelDraw 10, Paint Shop Pro
8, Nero, Sonic MyDVD, and dozens of other apps.

No problems, and I do mean no problems.

My current system? Barton 2800, A7N8X-Deluxe (not the -E version, but at
least 2.0 with BIOS 1007), 2 sticks of Corsair XMS PC3200 C2 512MB (total
1GB in dual-channel mode), Pioneer DVR-106, Plextor 48/24/48, MSI Ti4200
128MB AGP 8X ViVo, and the same programs as above, and some updated---like
Visual Studio 2003, CorelDraw 11, Photoshop 7, Flash MX, and a bunch of
others.

No problems here, either.

And I'm not trying to "convince" anyone of anything. I don't work for VIA,
obviously, and I'm not really brand-loyal, although Asus usually gets my
first look.

That's my experience. I never seem to have trouble.

If yours is different, as much as I hate to sound like I'm starting a flame
war, you're probably doing something wrong somewhere.

And Stacey? You're doing something wrong, too. Sorry.