I forgot to mention that yesterday I was also unable to submit a question to the company from the "My Account" function after signing in there. The "Question" function/icon was there, but clicking on it did not generate activity - I attempted it several times. What a waste of time.
I went to the Iomega site and found an opportunity to submit general "Feedback" to the company. I informed it of this blog and received a response with an apology and an offer an hour of technical support with the fee waived. It was too late. The offending hard drive had been disassemble for parts (not much of any value) and the remains were in the trash. But, more than anything, I just am not interested in doing business with a company whose products don't last and whose technical support is that horrible.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Iomega's Mysteriously Bad Technical Support
Last weekend my 1TB Desktop USB Hard Drive ceasing functioning. It was my primary backup drive and was less than two years old. Suddenly my computer could no longer see the drive and the drive letter disappeared from my "My Computer."
Proceeding to www.iomega.com/support, I found myself unable to communicate with the company. It is true that my drive is no longer in warranty and that I did not purchase an add-on warranty, but two things occur to me: (1) A drive of that nature should be manufactured to last more than one year; (2) if it was manufactured to quality specifications, it would have lasted longer than that.
Well, upon arriving at www.iomega.com, creating an account, and drilling through the various pages of anti-support obfuscation and obstacles, I discovered that I was entirely unable to communicate with the company. Despite the fact that the site claimed to offer e-mail, live chat, and telephonic support (for a fee), I could not find any way to communicate with Iomega.
I did find an instruction sheet that addressed my problem, but it was less that useless -- following the instructions was very time-consuming and, in the end, fruitless.
I attempted to pay for telephonic support, but, after entering my contact data and credit card information, the "[lack of] support" site would not proceed to process my card -- it just stuck there (eight times) without reporting any error message or providing additional instructions.
After clicking on the live chat icon several times and being routed through a labyrinthine series of pages, only to be returned, repeatedly, to the original "[lack of] support" page, I moved on to the forums. As it turns out, being logged in to my customer account did not allow me full access to the forums and I learned that I would be required to create yet another account for that purpose. I was able to view, though not submit, a forum that turned out to be the relevant one. There I found that several others had the same problem. The moderator responded to one of the posts with an inanely erroneous and unhelpful response and then ignored the remainder of the posts.
One of the posters noted that he no longer needed Iomega's "[lack of] support" because he had thrown the offending drive, a brand new, never-used one, out the window and had purchased a replacement -- presumably NOT an Iomega product.
My Iomega 1TB Desktop USB drive has gone in the trash and I will never purchase another Iomega product in my life. (Interestingly, the two 500MB hard drives that comprised the 1TB drive were manufactured by Seagate, not Iomega, so I may not purchase any of their products, either.)
Proceeding to www.iomega.com/support, I found myself unable to communicate with the company. It is true that my drive is no longer in warranty and that I did not purchase an add-on warranty, but two things occur to me: (1) A drive of that nature should be manufactured to last more than one year; (2) if it was manufactured to quality specifications, it would have lasted longer than that.
Well, upon arriving at www.iomega.com, creating an account, and drilling through the various pages of anti-support obfuscation and obstacles, I discovered that I was entirely unable to communicate with the company. Despite the fact that the site claimed to offer e-mail, live chat, and telephonic support (for a fee), I could not find any way to communicate with Iomega.
I did find an instruction sheet that addressed my problem, but it was less that useless -- following the instructions was very time-consuming and, in the end, fruitless.
I attempted to pay for telephonic support, but, after entering my contact data and credit card information, the "[lack of] support" site would not proceed to process my card -- it just stuck there (eight times) without reporting any error message or providing additional instructions.
After clicking on the live chat icon several times and being routed through a labyrinthine series of pages, only to be returned, repeatedly, to the original "[lack of] support" page, I moved on to the forums. As it turns out, being logged in to my customer account did not allow me full access to the forums and I learned that I would be required to create yet another account for that purpose. I was able to view, though not submit, a forum that turned out to be the relevant one. There I found that several others had the same problem. The moderator responded to one of the posts with an inanely erroneous and unhelpful response and then ignored the remainder of the posts.
One of the posters noted that he no longer needed Iomega's "[lack of] support" because he had thrown the offending drive, a brand new, never-used one, out the window and had purchased a replacement -- presumably NOT an Iomega product.
My Iomega 1TB Desktop USB drive has gone in the trash and I will never purchase another Iomega product in my life. (Interestingly, the two 500MB hard drives that comprised the 1TB drive were manufactured by Seagate, not Iomega, so I may not purchase any of their products, either.)
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