2 years ago I ordered my 2nd computer from gateway. I had previously enjoyed a superior product, and had never even had to contact customer service because I'd had no problems with my system.
I went to my local Gateway store and talked to a sales rep about my specific needs. He steered me towards an AMD athlon based pc, and stated that it matched or exceeded the Pentium.
Not only were they so incompetent that they screwed up my intial order, as well as 3 successive orders, they had the audacity at one point to tell me that it wasn't their problem. Everything from the wrong monitor, bad printer, no cd rewritable drive, wrong operating system, you name it. They repeatedly bungled my order and fought with me about their responsibility to me as a consumer. I spent over $2000 after trade-in on a system that was not anywhere near what I had spoken with a live person about.
Essentially they gave me what they wanted and did whatever they pleased in regards to my system. After almost a year of battling with them, I finally got them to send me a Pentium 4 pc that was shipped with (again) the wrong components (missing cd-rewrite), and I had to go through the whole routine again.
After repeatedly battling with them, I finally gave up. My system was servicable, but prone to lock-ups and freezing. But I had spent upwards of 40-60 hours in a 6-9 month span trying to get things sorted out, and to be honest I was tired of fighting them, so I dealt with my glitchy system. One of the conversations I had with one of their reps revolved around my putting games on the computer, and that being the cause of my problems (yeah, right), but as I pointed out to them, that's exactly what I had TOLD the guy I wanted when I bought the system, therefore, they sold me something that I didn't ask for.
Another time I was told that everything would be taken care of, and that they were going to transfer me to someone who would take down my needs and send me the proper system. When I was transferred, I was told by the rep that it wasn't his problem, and since he wasn't going to make commission on helping me correct their mistakes, he didn't think he was the person to help me. I asked to speak to his manager, at which point he told me "You don't need to speak to him", and he hung up. I almost exploded, or cried, it was just too much.
Fast forward to last night: My pc was running a little slow, so I restarted it, only to get the "Invalid system disk " message. So now, It's 2 years, 50 hours on the phone with them, and some 2000 dollars later, and all I have to show is a 50 pound paperweight and a whole bunch of headache. Even if I can get the system up and running again, there's no guarantee that it's not gonna crap out again and again and again. I'm so tired of big corporations not understanding that while the money is nothing to them, it's a lot to a small, 40 hour a week guy like me. They have made this purchase easily one of the worst decisions of my life.
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