Entertainment For Lively Minds
Stop FAQing about
Back in February I succumbed to the hype and bought an MP3 player: for the sake of argument, we'll call it a Pony Talkman. It's a nice little thing (much like me, really) - slim, elegant, charming, musically adept if a little quirky, and with a splendid little shuffle monkey that chucks random tracks at me like a hail of ripe bananas.
This weekend, however, things started to go a bit awry. The shuffle monkey was as fit as ever, but suddenly I couldn't select and play a specific album, artist or genre. Indeed, any attempt to do so caused the music box summarily to turn itself off. Frustrated and a bit annoyed (remember, this toy is barely 3 months old), I turn to the leaflet marked "Troubleshooting".
Hmmm! This seems to be written for the Very Hard of Thinking:
Symptom: There is no sound
Cause/Remedy: The volume is set to zero - turn the volume up.
Finally I find mention of a reset button. So I press it. Several times. Nothing happens. At least, nothing to fix my problem.
So I turn to Pony's so called "support Web site". There I find a "Troubleshooting" FAQ. This is basically the same as the aforementioned leaflet. Grrrrrr!
After a bit of ferreting about, I find a way to submit an email support query. Then I wait.
Two days later, I get this reply:
Thank you for your recent e-mail received on 10/05/2009 08.26 PM.
I am sorry to learn of the problems that you are experiencing with your
Sony WALKMANPony TALKMAN.Unfortunately, beyond normal FAQ's and troubleshooting found on our website, it is not possible for
SonyPony to offer diagnosis via e-mail and with this in mind, we would suggest that your product is forwarded toSonyPony Central Service who repair this category of product. For full instructions on how to do this, please go to www.sonypony.co.uk.Go to the Support section
Select Repair Service
Select the Relevant ArticleFor products that are repaired at
SonyPony Central Service, you will be asked to fill out the on-line Repair Registration form.This area on the website provides instructions on how to send your product in for repair and gives fixed cost repair prices where relevant.
I trust that this information is of some help. In the event of any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Yours sincerely
Blah Blah Blah
W!
T!
F!
The depths of wrongness in this email are so profound, I don't know where to start! Why the devil do they have an email enquiry function if they're not going to do anything with the damned query when they get it? And "fixed cost repair prices" - it's less than 3 month old, dammit: I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for it to be fixed, not to mention the postage to get it back to their Central "Service". Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
As I fulminate, Best Beloved remarks, "I had a prob a bit like that with my i-pod - think I had to press a combination of buttons together to fix it". Nothing ventured, nothing gained - so I press the "Back" and "Option" buttons together and hold them for a couple of seconds. Job done! Full functionality is restored. I am happy.
And Pony can FAQ off.
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I had one of those Pony machines
The player worked very well for a couple of years but the software to load music was absolutely awful. I was never sure when I was ripping a CD whether it would actually work. The whole process would just lock up as often as it would run smoothly. Like you, I found the support by email less than helpful and cured most of my problems by scouring the internet to find other frustrated owners.
When it finally stopped working for good, I bowed to the inevitable and requested an iPod for Christmas. Transferring music is now straightforward and there are loads of accessories available.
While I now feel I'm following the herd, I do understand why the herd is going in that direction.
Seeing red
Know what you mean - I shied away from the iPod because I felt it reckoned itself. But now I feel like I've cut my nose off to spite my face. Still, when the Talkman works, it's fine and dandy. And it's the same colour red as my laptop, which makes me quite happy.
Jen,
your Talkman does indeed sound as though it's a load of old pony.
Still, it's an ill wind....Welcome back, less-than-frequent visitor. (Brand still largely undiluted.)
NB I like your blog. Procrastination is definitely something I should get round to one day.
Ta very much
Why, thank you, nice Mr Nigel.
It's never too late to procrastinate, say I.
FAQing FAQs
I hate 'em. They are usually written in a peculiar idiolect - translated into 0nglesh from a provincial Romanian tribal language, deduced from the original Han dynasty heroglyphs.
Anyway, it's the infrequent question, the exception that doesn't prove the rule, that you want answered
FAQs on this site an honourable exception of course. Still can't work the image embedding thing. Not sure how hard I've tried mind
You can see how Ipods have come to rule the world though
You said it, matey!
Idiolect! Idiot-lect is more like it!
More rubbish customer service
I feel yer pain Jen. I sent the following email to what purports to be the Acer email help line thingy.
We have an Acer Aspire 5633WLMi. If the laptop is idle for more than a few minutes, an automatic screen saver kicks in, with music (it sounds like Enya, if that helps you know what I'm talking about). It starts even if there is music playing, for example through Spotify, so is very annoying. I've looked everywhere and cannot find a way to stop this happening. Can you advise me?
This is the reply I got:
The issue you have described is one of a software related nature. For further assistance, please contact 0906 706 8000. Calls are charged at £0.50p per minute from any BT landline. Please be advised that there is no queueing system in place, however, so if no advisor is available, the line will disconnect to save you from charge.
Regards
Paul
Acer Technical Support Team
Is it just me or is that taking the mick? It's probably a really simple problem - in fact part of the reason I'm posting this is that someone here might be able to help...
Bloomin screen savers
I used to get the same sort of problem when I was backing up to a pen drive - screen saver would kick in and, for some bizarre reason, halt the backup. Grrrr!
If you're running Vista, this info http://tinyurl.com/oj8zwb might help.
it's a settings change
In Windows XP: Control Panel - Display - Screensaver. You'll see a bunch of options in there. Also check the settings in Control Panel - Power Options.
Probably similar in Vista although peersonally I wouldn't touch that OS with the proverbial ten-footer. Mr Google will know, though.
Luv from A.Techie :)
Dabbing about
Years ago I bought a CD player/burner from DABS for my ancient PC. I installed it and found that version of the software was not compatible with the aged PC.
I e-mailed DABS and explained the problem and asking if an earlier version of the software was available. They clearly didn't read my e-mail and sent a standard response saying they couldn't replace hardware once it had been fitted.
I can't remember how many e-mails went back and forth with me getting the same response about no exchange.
I finally sent an e-mail with a demand in upper case that someone read my e-mail and answer my query. I stated in the first line that at no point had I ever requested the CD machine be replaced.
Their reply was they didn't have the software so just pack up the CD machine and send it back!
Luckily I mentioned my problem to an acquaintance who knew about these things and he gave me an easy fix by editing a couple of lines of code in the software. Problem solved.
Take it back
If the machine stops working, or stops working properly, you might have more luck with the retailer than with the manufacturer.
Our boy had an mp3 player from Argos that died, and they happily exchanged it for a new one. Even online companies like Amazon have decent return facilities.
Failing that, forget the manual, look instead at the warranty leaflet which should tell you how to get a (free) warranty repair - even if the repair turns out to be telling you that you did something wrong it should still be free.
Might be worth Googling the symptoms first though, or looking for a Pony forum either on their website or an independent one. I have used the equivalents for iRiver and Creative (yes - I also avoided buying iPod) so I assume Pony must have one too.
Substantial symptom googling
Substantial symptom googling had in fact taken place but got me bubkiss. Which is one of the reasons I'm widely posting this tale of woe, so that another poor unfortunate might benefit from my experience.
Sending it back to Amazon would have been my next move, had not the magic "two button press" not solved the problem. However, I'd be a bit cautious about saying Amazon have decent return facilities. If you've had the product for more than 30 days, their website is pretty cagey about how you send stuff back. Took me a good half-hour of toing and froing to find any usable instructions and, even then, I would have had to fork out for postage.
My vow now is (a) to put Pony and all their works firmly on my boycott list and (b) to only ever buy expensive toys from actual in-the-flesh shops, to facilitate ease of return when they break.
Either that, or to ditch technology in favour of wind-up gramophone on a small cart.