|
01/05/2009, 08:13 PM
#132
 Originally Posted by rambo47
Sliders are tricky things as far as quality control goes. Nokia has had slider mobiles in their lineup for ages and it's still hit-or-miss with quality of the mechanism. With Palm operating at a zero tolerance level for mistakes, I find the slider form a curious choice. While the slide concept solves some problems, it opens up other issues and avenues for complaint. Wobbly sliders or loose ones can ruin the image of a mobile so fast it's scary.
Palm has a DISMAL track record for building moving parts and also of admitting manufacturing errors. This has moving parts? Scary.
Had a friend with a Tungsten 3 (that is, two generations of this device had been already been built - bugs should have been out). About 20-30 days into using it, the small screws holding the sliding case together began to FALL OUT. ON THEIR OWN. Looked like they didn't even use locktite or something to hold them in, just relied on torque.
He called Palm's crack squad of technical "support"; in Bombay or the Philippines or wherever, and through several calls they kept telling him that it was "user damage" when screws spontaneously fall out of their products. Hmmm, couldn't have anything to do with Palm not manufacturing it properly.... He asked them to just send him the friggin' screws and he'd fix it himself (ACE hardware isn't gonna have those tiny things), but Palm wanted (honest to God) $125.00 to send him screws to repair their own shoddy work. He was flabbergasted.
Anyway, for a few cents worth of screws, Palm managed to lose that customer for life, and I've steered many, many people away from trusting that Palm will stand behind their work. I rarely even bother with Palm's official tech support number anymore because it's a complete waste of time - exec support is marginally better but still couldn't help with my friend's screwed screwless T3. (There are a ton of pages devoted to this defect, including an online petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/t3flaw/petition.html).
Bottom line: if this baby has any moving parts, Palm had better not continue their policy of blaming their customers when Palm has a manufacturing defect. I'm surprised no lawyer picked this up for a class action suit, seems like a slam dunk! Charging $125 for replacement screws that fall out because you use the device doesn't seem ethical.
|
|
|