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Feb. 4th, 2008 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariDate: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:33:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Jenn Dolari <jenn@dolari.net>
To: sales@hauppauge.com, techsupport@hauppauge.com, jtucciarone@hauppauge.com, BriceJR@hauppauge.com, kenp@hauppauge.com
Cc: jenn@dolari.net
Subject: Losing a customer.
I have been a long time customer of Hauppauge products, recommending them to everyone who'd even needed good TV Tuner cards. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I
bought a WinTV Radio card for a friend.
Around the same time, I bought a WinTV-D card, which was terribly. It picked up interference that caused a lit of static to be sprayed all over he channels, with
he low end channels looking worse. The Win TV Radio didn't (and still doesn't) show this static, except on Channel 2. The Digital portion did not work, but that
was my fault - I simply live too far away from the antennas (upwards of 50 miles to the nearest one).
I just recently bought a new laptop with a Express 54 card. I wanted another TV card or it, and naturally looked to your products first. You have a HVR-1500
that would have worked perfectly - I could pull off QAM channels from cable, and still have analog as well. I searched your site, the HVR 1500 was the only
Express Card available. As you did not sell the 1500 direct from your store, which I found odd, I bought it from a third party site. All of which were labeled
as per your website, "Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2."
I bought the card, and was dismayed to see it didn't work. I called your technical support who gave me a six word response: "It's for Windows Media Center ONLY."
I wrote off a terse letter, complaining that I'd bought a card that your site specifically said, and I quote from
http://hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_hvr1500.html, "Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2."
Ken Plotkin, from your technical support has been great - rebuilding a lot of good will between us by offering updated drivers and software that should get this
card working once I receive them. In the meantime, the card works via the very very very finicky SageTV program (which likes to stop working in the middle of
viewing), and by manually pulling and pushing driver files from the latest CD into Windows (which now shows analog TV, splays the same static through all 70
channels the original WinTV-D did, and has a very bad 60Hz hum if plugged into any composite source). I eagerly await the latest drivers and applications to see
if this works.
All that good will, though, was pretty much destroyed when Brice Washington sent me an EMail today, which reads, "I've received your comment. I apologize for the
incontinence and we should make the changes to our site."
Incontinence.
Maybe it's a typo, but as someone who has been working in technical support and customer service for over ten years, this is not the kind of typo once simply
makes - and I've seen such "typos" from people who have worked with me, who were promptly either dressed down, or fired.
I've tried today, to call into your technical support, to speak with a manager - twice today in the mid afternoon. Each call waits for 10 minutes before can
leave a message. No one returned my call, and my third call told me the queue was closed.
I've not asked for a refund. I've not asked for a replacement. I've not asked for anything drastic. Just wished for my displeasure to be acknowledged, and the
website page changed so no one else would make the same mistake I did. Instead, (with a notable exception by Ken, who has really gone out of his way to help me),
I've been insulted and ignored.
I've not asked for a refund, I've not asked for a replacement, I've not asked for any compensation. I just want a product that works, and while Ken is working on
that, I've lost all my confidence in this company to care about it's customers.
I will not buy another Hauppauge product again.
Thank you for your time.
Jenn
From: Jenn Dolari <jenn@dolari.net>
To: sales@hauppauge.com, techsupport@hauppauge.com, jtucciarone@hauppauge.com, BriceJR@hauppauge.com, kenp@hauppauge.com
Cc: jenn@dolari.net
Subject: Losing a customer.
I have been a long time customer of Hauppauge products, recommending them to everyone who'd even needed good TV Tuner cards. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I
bought a WinTV Radio card for a friend.
Around the same time, I bought a WinTV-D card, which was terribly. It picked up interference that caused a lit of static to be sprayed all over he channels, with
he low end channels looking worse. The Win TV Radio didn't (and still doesn't) show this static, except on Channel 2. The Digital portion did not work, but that
was my fault - I simply live too far away from the antennas (upwards of 50 miles to the nearest one).
I just recently bought a new laptop with a Express 54 card. I wanted another TV card or it, and naturally looked to your products first. You have a HVR-1500
that would have worked perfectly - I could pull off QAM channels from cable, and still have analog as well. I searched your site, the HVR 1500 was the only
Express Card available. As you did not sell the 1500 direct from your store, which I found odd, I bought it from a third party site. All of which were labeled
as per your website, "Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2."
I bought the card, and was dismayed to see it didn't work. I called your technical support who gave me a six word response: "It's for Windows Media Center ONLY."
I wrote off a terse letter, complaining that I'd bought a card that your site specifically said, and I quote from
http://hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_hvr1500.html, "Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2."
Ken Plotkin, from your technical support has been great - rebuilding a lot of good will between us by offering updated drivers and software that should get this
card working once I receive them. In the meantime, the card works via the very very very finicky SageTV program (which likes to stop working in the middle of
viewing), and by manually pulling and pushing driver files from the latest CD into Windows (which now shows analog TV, splays the same static through all 70
channels the original WinTV-D did, and has a very bad 60Hz hum if plugged into any composite source). I eagerly await the latest drivers and applications to see
if this works.
All that good will, though, was pretty much destroyed when Brice Washington sent me an EMail today, which reads, "I've received your comment. I apologize for the
incontinence and we should make the changes to our site."
Incontinence.
Maybe it's a typo, but as someone who has been working in technical support and customer service for over ten years, this is not the kind of typo once simply
makes - and I've seen such "typos" from people who have worked with me, who were promptly either dressed down, or fired.
I've tried today, to call into your technical support, to speak with a manager - twice today in the mid afternoon. Each call waits for 10 minutes before can
leave a message. No one returned my call, and my third call told me the queue was closed.
I've not asked for a refund. I've not asked for a replacement. I've not asked for anything drastic. Just wished for my displeasure to be acknowledged, and the
website page changed so no one else would make the same mistake I did. Instead, (with a notable exception by Ken, who has really gone out of his way to help me),
I've been insulted and ignored.
I've not asked for a refund, I've not asked for a replacement, I've not asked for any compensation. I just want a product that works, and while Ken is working on
that, I've lost all my confidence in this company to care about it's customers.
I will not buy another Hauppauge product again.
Thank you for your time.
Jenn
