These were the words that finally got me some attention from Lacie after 8 frustrating weeks of trying to get a replacement power supply for my external hard drive. Their approach to customer service – and I use the term loosely – is to create a web interface where you type out the details of your support case. They respond. Or not. You are then sent an email notification telling you to check the web page to see what words of comfort and support they have offered you. It’s all terribly impersonal, nothing close to real-time, and takes significantly longer to type things out than it would to simply explain the situation to someone in the know.
But let me start at the very beginning.
I keep my 1TB drive attached to my laptop permanently. Yes both are supposed to be portable, but actually they have barely moved since I got the office set up. Anyhow, on the 9th of June I was about to drop and drag a file to the drive when I noticed that the G-drive wasn’t mapped. Odd. Perhaps it had been turned off, so I turned it on. It gave me the electronic equivalent of the little engine’s “I think I can, I think I can” before conceding that actually it couldn’t. Things were attempting to start and whirl, but not much was happening despite the fact that the blue power light was on, suggesting that the power was fine.
So I search out the details for logging a support case with Lacie. I am confronted with a web page. How does one spell “whheeeeegggrrrruuunnntttweeeee” sounds coming from a hard drive I wonder to myself. But I explain that the blue light comes on, it attempts to start, and then fails.
Two days later I get a response. My favourite line was “When you power the drive on, does the drive have a light on the front?”. Oh dear. I can already tell that I’m in for a splendid experience. So I reply, answering the questions, sometimes having to thank him for his suggestion but as my model doesn’t have that feature, I can’t look/test as he has asked.
He concludes that it could be the power supply unit and says that he will arrange for a replacement. Excellent, what a relief. An envelope here, an envelope there, and Bob’s your Uncle as some might say. I ask what information Lacie needs from me in order to replace the power supply. 6 days later comes the response. Break neck speed. Don’t hurt yourself.
I reply same day and then have to wait 12 days for an RMA to be raised, and to be given the Lacie address where I need to send the potentially faulty PSU off to. 12 days. To raise an RMA. I have gone from irritated to angry at this point. Almost an entire month has elapsed and all I have is an RMA number and an address. So I mail off the item and state in my response that 12 days is dismal and, given the nature of the task, inexcusable. You can imagine the response. “Thank you for your patience.” The web equivalent of “your call is important to us, please continue to hold and we’ll be with you shortly.”
Three weeks later I contact Lacie again. Naturally through the web page. Because that is just ideal. It cannot possibly take three weeks for the mail service to deliver the part to another UK address, have Lacie acknowledge receipt and then ship out a replacement. Can it?? Well it takes 12 days to raise an RMA, so at this point I’m not sure. So I ask the question. Apparently the replacement part was sent out two weeks prior, i.e. within a few days of me sending mine off. There are obviously no SLAs around case closure time as Lacie didn’t tell me that they’ve received my failed PSU, didn’t tell me that they’d sent a replacement, and didn’t contact me to see whether that solved the problem. So, as best as I can tell, they don’t much care either way.
So, the replacement was obviously lost in the post. And here, good reader, is where we really come unstuck. They send it via regular post so they can’t track it. So I suggest that they send another replacement. Silence. No response. Four days later I advance from angry to ‘red hot with rage’. So I ask again for them to get back to me with an update. Or a replacement. But my expectations were falling with every passing moment. So then I decide to reach out to their COO. I email him. No response. Wonderful. I see that we have a massive cultural problem with apathy that starts at the top and goes all the way down.
So then I take to contacting Lacie – by that marvellous web page, naturally – every day. Another week passes. And then I move in to my final anger phase: white. hot. rage.
It has been two months. For a simple piece of kit to go from one street in London to another. Pigeons manage it. So I post one final message stating that after seeking (free) legal advice – true – they are in breach of the test of ‘reasonableness’ with respect to honouring their warranty agreement, and that I would be progressing through legal channels unless the case was resolved within a week.
Silence.
So I track down Lacie’s phone number, and ask to speak to their legal department. I get put through to Finance. The lady on the phone sounds sweet. Pleasant. I explain my situation and the fact that I will be taking Lacie to small claims court. A bluff, of course, but when the stick didn’t work I had to upgrade the weapon. Yes, I could have purchased a replacement myself, but this is hardly just or reasonable, and having spent money on the drive and subsequent postage, I’m not feeling inclined to inject one red penny more into their dis(organisation).
Bless her, the Finance lady put me through to the UK Country Manager. Who couriered out a replacement that same day. Only it was for a different unit and wouldn’t fit. That was a fun phone call. They sent out another power supply unit. For yet a different hard drive. Variety is the spice of life. Third time is the charm and I finally got the appropriate power supply to add to my nursery. Only – and here’s where you reach for a stiff drink – the underlying problem wasn’t caused by the power supply unit as the drive still won’t power up.
So then I trot over to their offices myself, hard drive unit (and power supplies, plural) in hand. The technician attaches the devices to a power supply and his computer, turns it on and then hits Refresh on My Computer. Again. Again. It has been a long time since I did my A+ Hardware certification, but I still remember that there is more comprehensive troubleshooting available than this. But I watch with broken bemusement.
Looks broken he assures me.
Yes, thanks for that.
Can’t you try a different enclosure and see if that’s the problem? Rather than just throwing the unit – and my data – away and giving me a replacement. Which is, of course, a refurbished disk. Excellent.
“I suppose I could”, he says.
“Having waited for 8 weeks for a replacement power supply unit, I’m afraid that I must insist on more troubleshooting than this.” I say, maintaining stready eye contact.
Begrudgingly he sets about trying to find another unit. At this point I am told that they will do what they can and call me later that afternoon. When they did, it was to report that the drive still wouldn’t power up, so therefore it’s an issue with the disk unit itself, not the enclosure, power supply etc. I can only trust that the full troubleshooting was done. They don’t usually troubleshoot; if it’s not the power supply they simply replace the unit. Which seems like a no-muss, no-fuss solution (except in my drawn out case) but hardly seems like they’re doing much to keep their customers happy. After all, it’s not like a printer where any printer will do. Data is data and may not be stored elsewhere and you’d think that there would be some kind of data recovery option. But, no.
Right, so they now have my drive, the power supplies, and I have nothing. On Monday I received an email stating that the disk was being sent off for repairs and that it would be delivered back to me after the repair. I reply immediately seeking clarification, as I had already been told that it couldn’t be repaired and that it would be replaced. Four days later I’m still waiting for a reply.
So, where in the world is my drive unit? Somewhere in France, apparently. And after calling the UK Country Manager I am told that ‘repair’ means that they are installing another hard drive into my enclosure. Or I might get a different enclosure and hard drive. I am, of course, fully expecting that they will insert a new hard drive into my old enclosure, not test it, and it will arrive dead because the problem was in fact something to do with the enclosure after all and my original drive was fine and yet destroyed (securely, one hopes). That would be just my luck.
I am never buying Lacie gear again. The UK Country Manager has been very helpful indeed. But I refuse to do personal business with a company where either of the following is true:
1. I only get something resembling service if I happen to speak to *the* right person in the entire company.
2. The culture of customer service is so lacking that people dealing with customers don’t escalate issues and follow through. Ignoring customers is not a solution. It simply means that I’ll ignore you, too, in the future. It’s not like there aren’t dozens of other manufacturers to choose from.
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