*Canadian eMachine RMAs :thumbsdown:
I have been following this thread for a while now. I ended up purchasing a M6805 laptop in Canada from tigerdirect.ca for $1632 cdn because of the good info on this board about these laptops. The laptop is a nice machine. :thumbsup: However the cooling fan started to die shortly after purchase (about a week). It would sound like a baseball card was stuck in the fan blades.
I thought I would post this info for unsuspecting Canadian customers such as myself on how eMachines RMAs are handled, as it is different from our US counterparts.
I called the Canadian emachines number supplied for warranty repair. I was advised it would take around 5-6 business days to turn the machine around via FedEx (laptop from me-emachines-repair-back to me). eMachines would send out a box for me to ship the laptop back in. I thought great, that?s not too bad.
The box did not show up for 13 days. It turns out they had the wrong ship to address and the courier company decided to try out different combinations of the address to see if they could find me. After 3 or 4 days they gave that up and called me to get the right address to ship the box to. (This was a sign of what lay ahead, thank goodness the laptop was not in the box already)
I shipped the laptop out as indicated in the kit supplied by emachines. As the courier picked up the package from my shop they said to my shipping staff you realize this will take 5 days to ship as the preprinted form has ground indicated not air. The shipping staff did not know any better so they let it go as is.
I called emachines to find out what the deal was. They did not quite seem to know and had to ?escalate? the RMA as Canadian RMAs are not apart of their US system. Canadian RMAs do not work via the emachine website either. After a few frustrating calls to emachines I decided to share the low down on Canadian RMAs:
- All Canadian RMA?s are sub-contracted out to a company called D1 (DecisionOne) in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
-The Canadian emachines support number is routed into emachines US support center. The US tech center has not been provided with any information on Canadian RMAs. The CSRs assume the Canadian RMA are handled exactly the same way as US RMAs and will provide US RMA information unknowingly to Canadian customers. This includes US turnaround times, procedures and ship times, Courier company information.
-The emachines website cannot handle Canadian RMA numbers and cannot provide updates on status via the website.
-The emachines CSRs cannot access information directly either as the Canadian RMAs are in another computer system because the repairs have been sub contracted out. The CSRs need to ?escalate? to a supervisor to have them login into the system to provide the CSRs with limited information. The ?other? system freezes quite often and is usually not accessible most of the time.
-eMachine customers cannot contact D1 directly. It must be done through the eMachines call center.
-The Canadian shipping is done through Purolator ground not FedEx as in the US. (basically it does not get any more ghetto than Purolator :thumbsdown: when it comes to courier companies) Shipping alone will take 5 days one way via ground. This cannot be changed even if the customer is willing to pay extra.
At the end of the day Canadian RMA?s will take around about a month to turn around.
The Breakdown:
5 Business days to ship via Purolator to D1
D1 has 10 business days to repair the laptop once received
5 days to ship the laptop back from D1
What is worse is if the laptop had a complete failure where I could not use it I need to tack on 5 extra business days to wait for the kit to be sent to me to send the laptop out in the first place
I thought 10 business days while a little long is acceptable; I think a whole month is totally unacceptable. I expect to get about 18 months of service life out of this machine and 1 whole month of it is being spent in the ?shop? while I have nothing else to use in the mean time. To top it off emachines is not really setup to provide information of the status of the RMA unless several calls are made and the infomation is limited at best.
I thought I would share the current status of emachines repair service for Canadians. I like the laptop but if I had known about this long delay in repairing them I would have given this purchase a second thought as a Canadian customer.