emachines sucks rotten eggs

Do I sound bitter? I have owned four emachines computers over the past decade. Until this one, I've been perfectly happy with them. In fact, I've convinced family and friends to buy them. I'm the freakin' emachines chamber of commerce. So, I've been patient through this process. Well, mostly patient. But now, my patience is exhausted.

The second set of recovery disks finally arrived, and didn't work any better than the first set. Technician Karen tried all the same things that Amber, Elvis, Mary, Jody, John, Monica, Linnay, Theresa, and Walter tried. She concluded that something must be wrong with the hard drive, so I should pack up the machine and send it back again.

Customer Kelly politely refused.

I asked to speak to a supervisor (again). (Again) I got Supervisor JT. I told him that this was the end of the line for technical support, and I wanted either a new machine or a refund. Supervisor JT politely refused. He said I could either send the machine back to them, or take it back to the store to see what (if anything) they would do for me.

I might have graciously accepted this option were it not for one comment by Supervisor JT. When I expressed my concern that the store would not do anything because of the length of time since I purchased the machine, and further expressed my frustration that emachines has been (slowly, ineffectively) attempting to fix this problem since July (and, oh by the way, it's now October), his response was simple:

"We have been providing you with solutions all along, ma'am. They're just not the solutions that you want."

HA!

I almost laughed at that. Until that point, I was being respectful of the fact that it's not the fault of the technicians or supervisors that this is happening. That said, it is their responsibility to ensure that I, as the customer, receive appropriate service. So, dear Supervisor JT, I must point out that, by definition, solutions should solve problems, and none of yours have done that. I asked to be further elevated, and he said that there was nowhere further to be elevated.

So, I recruited my niece (who works at the store where I bought the machine) to find out the policy there for returning computers under these circumstances, and we will drive our patooties 400 miles to bring it back. Meanwhile, I will write a letter to Mike Zimmerman, emachines' Senior Vice President of Customer Care and Quality Assurance, and give him all the bloody details of this encounter. Maybe I'll include an itemized bill for the long distance calls and the gas required to get to the point where I should have been on July 16th.

Ack.