So I'll admit up front this is an 'I'm severely pissed at one specific thing and having a rant' thread. But it does kind of loosely tie in to some recent arguments made about gaming and the entitlement complex gamers have.
When I pay money for a product, I expect the product to live up to what the company says it will do. When I pay for a videogame console, I want it to play videogames. When I buy a phone I want it to be able to make calls to people, and possible give and receive texts, based on what the company promises it will do.
Right now my dongle has crashed thirty eight times in the last two hours, and yes I've been counting. I haven't actually been able to log on to and explore an internet site for the last hour and a half, because after it stopped working I spent half an hour just trying to make it register on my computer.
This is not a new problem. My dongle breaks at least twice a day, and I can't go on the internet until it works again. It could happen at any moment, including the first second I put it into my computer and try to open my internet browser.
I paid the company who gave it to me money for one specific purpose, so it would give me an internet connection when I plugged it into my laptop. In the last nine months I have paid every single month for this service, but probably if I was to tally it up I would have spent more time trying to fix the dongle than I ever spent actually on the internet.
At this point it has already crashed my internet browser again (39). I will finish writing this post in Microsoft Word and copy-paste in so I can actually finish it.
So the gist of the argument is, at what point should you be allowed to make a complaint to a company and receive some form of compensation? Because right now my dongle is not doing what I paid for, and it hasn't been doing it reliably for some time. If I had bought a car and it had broken this much I would be expecting someone from the manufacturer to be explaining exactly why my car broke down so many times in under a year, but the most 3 will say is 'sometimes there are connectivity issues,' as if that makes it all okay.
Thoughts? Agreements? Attacks? Other rants about broken technology?
tl;dr: If a product you paid money for only works intermittently, or doesn't work as the company promised it would, should you still be allowed to refunds/explanations/ as though it had broken entirely?
When I pay money for a product, I expect the product to live up to what the company says it will do. When I pay for a videogame console, I want it to play videogames. When I buy a phone I want it to be able to make calls to people, and possible give and receive texts, based on what the company promises it will do.
Right now my dongle has crashed thirty eight times in the last two hours, and yes I've been counting. I haven't actually been able to log on to and explore an internet site for the last hour and a half, because after it stopped working I spent half an hour just trying to make it register on my computer.
This is not a new problem. My dongle breaks at least twice a day, and I can't go on the internet until it works again. It could happen at any moment, including the first second I put it into my computer and try to open my internet browser.
I paid the company who gave it to me money for one specific purpose, so it would give me an internet connection when I plugged it into my laptop. In the last nine months I have paid every single month for this service, but probably if I was to tally it up I would have spent more time trying to fix the dongle than I ever spent actually on the internet.
At this point it has already crashed my internet browser again (39). I will finish writing this post in Microsoft Word and copy-paste in so I can actually finish it.
So the gist of the argument is, at what point should you be allowed to make a complaint to a company and receive some form of compensation? Because right now my dongle is not doing what I paid for, and it hasn't been doing it reliably for some time. If I had bought a car and it had broken this much I would be expecting someone from the manufacturer to be explaining exactly why my car broke down so many times in under a year, but the most 3 will say is 'sometimes there are connectivity issues,' as if that makes it all okay.
Thoughts? Agreements? Attacks? Other rants about broken technology?
tl;dr: If a product you paid money for only works intermittently, or doesn't work as the company promised it would, should you still be allowed to refunds/explanations/ as though it had broken entirely?
