consumer report: worst of 2006

Here's my review of the worst experiences I've had last year with products and/or services. To potential consumers, I urge you to avoid these companies if you can, or at the very least, shop around a bit more. These are ranked in order of evil-ness (1 being the most evil):

1. Verizon - Phone service

My experience with Verizon cell phone verges on the incredible. For the past few years, Cingular was my cell phone service provider. When I moved to my new address, my apartment couldn't get Cingular service, so I had to apply for a land line. I first used Time-Warner's digital phone service. After a few months, I found out that Verizon also had a digital phone service that was cheaper. So, happily, I asked Verizon to port my number over so I wouldn't need to tell people I had another number.

After using Verizon's digital phone for a few weeks, I noticed that it would frequently drop calls. There were also long periods when I wouldn't get a dial tone. I tried calling technical support (whne the phone working). Tech support helpfully told me that they can't help me unless the problem was occurring at the time of the call. Since I can't call using my cell phone, and since I can't call customer service using my Verizon service if the service wasn't working, the customer support agent told me I had a "Catch-22" situation. Oh, yay.

So, I tried to get Time-Warner to take back the number. At this time, you should know that I live in Manhattan, and for some reason, Time-Warner gave me a 718 number, which is usually for Queens and Brooklyn. Verizon had no problem taking that number. However, when I asked Time-Warner to take it back, they said they couldn't. Go figure.

Okay, so I went back to Verizon, this time asking for a non-digital landline. I waited for about six weeks for this to go through. During this time, I had to call Verizon over five times, talk to over ten customer service agents, each of whom gave me a different answer. Every time they transferred me to a new agent, I had to repeat my problem again, and they'd give me a different solution, and to wait two weeks before the service can be turned on. Finally, they said they would send in a technician to complete the procedure. When the technician came, they spent about 30 minutes with the wire before informing me that I can't use a 718 number at a Manhattan address. After he left, I called Verizon again. They told me they'd send a technician again. A few days later, the same techician came, and told me I had the same problem about the 718 incompatibility with Manhattan.

Finally, I gave up and asked Verizon to give me a new number. The technician came a third time. Everything seemed fine, except that the phone never worked. I never got a dial-tone, even for the new Manhattan number.

By this time, my contract with Cingular had expired so I was free to change service without penalty. I switched to T-Mobile, which does work in my apartment, so I didn't need a land line. So, I cancelled my Verizon service. They charged me a penalty for early termination. On top of that, I'm still receiving charges for the phone that was never turned on. I called in January 2007 about this, and they said they would take off the charges. As of March 2007 I am still receiving noticed for payment.

By the way, this whole episode started in August. My Cingular contract ended in mid-November. During all this time, Verizon was giving me headaches.If you're considering any kind of phone service, my suggestion is to stay away from Verizon, especially if you're in New York.

2. Toshiba - Laptop

I bought my first Toshiba laptop in 2001. It was a Satellite S105 notebook. Even though that model had overheating problems, and would shut down without warning when it got too hot, for some reason I still liked Toshiba enough to buy a second laptop. This time it was the Qosmio G15, which was a sweet 17" widescreen. Everything was great about this laptop and for the first few months, I was quite happy with it.

Then I started hearing a strange clicking noise. It was sporadic, but when it happened, it was really loud. Since I leave my laptop on all the time, this was getting really annoying. I called up tech support, who told me that I needed to send it to the authorized service provider (ASP). When I did, they told me that all Qosmio G15s had to be sent to Los Angelas for an upgrade. About two weeks later, they sent it back. Lo and behold, the clicking noise was still there! I called the tech support again, who told me to go the the ASP again, who sent it off to L.A. again. I told them that it's already received the system upgrade, but they said Toshiba was asking them to ship all Qosmio G-15s to L.A. regardless of the problem.

Not surprisingly, when it came back two weeks later, the noise was still there. Finally I got them to send me an onsite technician. When he came, he told me it was a problem with the hard drive, and that he had to wait for Toshiba to send them a replacement hard drive. He came back again about a week or so later with the replacement hard drive. However, my laptop had two hard drives (a 60 GB and a 40 Gb), and he got the 60 Gb. So, he replaced that, and I had to reinstall the Windows and all my programs. And, of course, it wasn't the 60 Gb that was making the noise, it was the 40 Gb.

By this time, a second problem had occurred. My laptop could no longer burn DVDs. So, I had to call up tech support again and the technician came yet again with the 40 Gb hard drive replacement and the DVD-drive. I should note that, one time, he was on the phone with his girlfriend the entire time he was here.

When he finally installed the 40 Gb drive, he found out he didn't know how to get my laptop to recognize it. He told me I had to take it to an ASP to do that. After he left, I spent about 15 minutes on the Internet and found out that all he had to do was to go to Disk Management and do a Disk Partition. I'm not a techie by far, and this goes to show that whoever they hire to do these tech support things are even more incompetent than I am.

Maybe a little over six months later, my DVD-drive stopped working again. Once again, I had to ask for an onsite technician. I should mention that Toshiba, thankfully, had extended my warranty another year. However, this was apparently not readily available in the system because the tech support people on the phone would always tell me my warranty had expired, and I had to fight for it before they would see it. Anyway, this time they sent another technician, who didn't really know how to put in a DVD-drive. He pried open the top part of it quite violently, and even broke up bits of it. But he finally did get it working.

The latest problem I'm having is with the fan cooler. I got a message saying that it was not working and needed to be repaired. Again, when I called tech support, they told me my warranty had expired and that I needed to send it in to an ASP. Finally I got them to sent an onsite repairperson. I can only imagine what they'll do to my laptop this time.

If it isn't obvious enough, I just want to say that I will never ever buy another Toshiba laptop and I will urge everyone who's considering to do so to reconsider.

3. Cingular - Cell phone provider

My gripe with Cingular is not as bad when compared with the previous too. Originally, I had signed up for AT&T, which eventually merged with Cingular. For a while, they had two networks and were operating separately. When I moved to my new location and found that I wasn't getting any service, I went to Cingular to see what the problem was. They told me I needed to upgrade to a GSM plan, which apparently gets a better service. I spent about $100 on it, and found it didn't improve things very much. On top of that, they renewed my contract, so I was stuck with a cell phone that didn't work. I eventually had to sign up for a land line (see #1), which led to all sorts of problems of its own.

I added a friend to my network in order to share costs. The phone worked fine in her apartment (which was maybe six blocks away). But suddenly, around July 2006, it also started getting no signal. She decided to abandon the contract, and was fined like $200 for it. During this time, Cingular was offering another new kind of network, which we could test for a month (I think). But since we were on the old network, we couldn't go back to it if we decided that the new network also didn't work.

What annoys me the most about these companies is that they hold customers to rules that they can change any time they want. I always thought that customers were supposed to be the most important people to these service provides, but these companies have demonstrated that they're run and managed by a bunch of incompetent idiots.

Runner-ups

Sony - PlayStation 3
Amazon.com - Electronics
eBay - Fraud complaint