Am I the only one who is having major issues getting a satisfactory resolution to an order for Mandriva2007 Flash?? I placed an order mid-April and received an incomplete order - just a blank 4GB Flash Key.

Despite chasing Mandriva on more than one occasion to get this issue resolved, and going to Dane Elec, all my efforts have hit a "brick wall", just brush-offs.

I have been using commercial versions of Mandrake/Mandriva since v6, only ever downloading the freely available versions to trial, and then going on to purchase the commercial CDs/DVDs. This may now come to an end, and move to Ubuntu/Kubuntu which i am now trialing as an alternative.

I find Mandriva extremely swift to take your money, but extremely sluggish to respond to customer issues, and support. I may now be shifting to another distro....

Jos Joslyn


[moved from Software by spinynorman - welcome aboard ]

As far as I know, this is not an isolated incident regarding Mandriva and their (lack of) customer service. These companies never seem to get the message. It wasn't that long ago when they were in financial trouble, I like many I know heeded the call to assist in whatever way possible, but their poor service drove me away from forking over anymore money. Is it too much to ask for a little attention when as a paying customer I have issues to resolve?? I hope you are successful in getting your issue resolved!

heres what I did, mine was actually a case of a flash dying the day i got it.

look at your recepit email, the one they sent you after you placed your order. in the header text will be the email address of the salesperson who got credited with your order.

be polite, but email that person relentlessly, dont forget your order number etc.

it took 3 emails but I FINA::Y got a response, however I will say it was a fellow user here that helped me.

so if youre interested U2U me and I'll try and help you the same......

Yes, unfortunately, this has been a general problem: Dane-Elec had some kind of problem with their duplication run, and quite a lot of the initial 4GB Flash production run wound up being mailed out blank (I think it's around a couple of hundred). The way the Flash production works is that we send an image file to Dane-Elec, who write it onto the drives as they are produced and sent out to customers.

Dane-Elec has an RMA program and should be handling RMAs for any blank Flashes. Initially we had reports they were asking people to pay shipping to return the Flashes, we don't believe this is right and think they should be covering the shipping as it was their error. We did ask them to change this, I'm not sure what the current status on that is.

If you could mail me the response you got from Dane-Elec I'll try and take care of the problem. We're sorry for the trouble.

Firstly, let me say just how impressed I am with the understanding responses you have attached to my "posting".

I have been in communication with Mandriva & Dane Elec since the 25th April attempting to sort all of this out. Slow responses from Mandriva - sympathetic, but in reality unhelpful. As for Dane Elec ....... well, what can I say, just the one response to my RMA - in French despite it being clear on the RMA that I live in the UK. That was more than 2 weeks ago, when I requested that in future they communicate with me in English.

Through all of this, my main "bone of contention" has been with Mandriva, it is with Mandriva where the contract lies not with Dane Elec. Any contract with Dane Elec is between Mandriva and Dane Elec, and therefore the responsibility to resolve this issue is with people to whom I paid money.

Many thanks to Adamw for the offer, I will send you the communication I have had with both Mandriva and Dane Elec.

Best Regards to everyone

Jos

I am adding to my post, as my issue remains not only un-resolved, but it would seem now to be ignored. AdamW tried to get things moving, and to whom I am grateful for your efforts, but here we are in another month, and still Mandriva have yet to resolve this issue.

I have jumped through all the damn hoops they required of me .. contacting "Dane Elec" ... sending off my bloody RMA(30th May 2007) ...... I am still receiving NOTHING!!!! Am I fed-up with this ???? too DAMN right I am.

Contracts 101 - A contract exists between the party who placed an order(me), and the party who received the order, and payment for said order(Mandriva). Therefor my contract is with Mandriva - who were damn quick in taking my money in the first instance - incidently removing money from my account BEFORE confirming the order was being processed, let alone shipped. Then when I did receive a delivery all it contained was an empty 4GB USB flash drive and lanyard. Getting ME to chase Dane Elec, is NOT what I expect to be doing, my contract is with MANDRIVA ...... NOT WITH DANE ELEC. The compliance of all orders is a relationship between Mandriva & Dane Elec. At NO TIME did I enter into an agreement with Dane Elec, I paid Mandriva for goods, and therefore it is with Mandriva AND MANDRIVA ALONE that I expect resolution.

Now Mandriva are ignoring me ...... the order was placed on the 25th April 2007, and apart from an early e-mail advising me to chase Dane Elec - who have igored me from the start(apart from an automated - French worded - response to ackowledge my RMA).

I have now sent Mandriva a mail advising that I will be taking legal steps to recover.

Be warned ....... Mandriva it would appear still have a dire record in customer relations.....

Jos Joslyn

Pretty miserable.

As for Mandriva, they should be handling customer complaints themselves, NOT redirecting them to a company they outsourced production to.

James

Contractually Mandriva are liable, it is up to them to chase the sub-contractor not you, you should not need to have any contact with Dane Elec. It is a pity that linux as a whole will be tarnished by the negligence and bad business practices by one company.

Again I am heartened by the response of the "community", which continues to bolster my faith in the merits of Linux Distros. It is a real shame that Mandriva(Mandrake) are not able to remember that but for the faith shown by many people across the world(individuals and minor coporates) they would have sunk without a trace.

I counted myself amongst the faithful when I "stumbled" upon Mandrake in 1999 with 6.1, after some painful experiences for a "newbie" with RH and the - at the time appalling - SuSE 6. I found the mechanisms to get over the installation brilliant, and they helped me forgive some of the inadequacies of the interface and support ...... it at least got it installed to a point where I could start to understand. Since that time I have shunned ALL other distros as viable options, choosing to buy(yes BUY - and usually the "power pack") every release of Mandrake/Mandriva that was released. A small sum in the grand scheme of things but a financial commitment none-the-less on my part to the support and hoped for continued well-being of my favoured Linux Distro.

I still like Mandriva, I find it's hardware detection above average, configuration of new hardware also good. I also know that it has issues - show me one OS that doesn't(although my much preferred OS - Mac OS X - will spank just about any out there from a user perspective), they all have issues of one kind or another.

I work in Software Technical Support(and I'm not a "grunt" I have a position of a Senior Techie) for the worlds largest "3 letter acronym computing company" so I know how the swines view the "small fish" ...... but to see this from a part of the business that was developed on the backs of lone individuals in the "open source community" is saddening. We have to remember why the Open Source community was established in the first place, it was to give a voice to the "small people" to deny the large corporates strangle hold on how we use systems and have them develope. Well Mandriva .......... you have lost sight of your core principles

Regards to the community ...... and a big fat "raspberry" to Mandriva

Jos Joslyn

Incredible... really incredible.
If Mandriva doesn't make a 180 degrees' turn to its attitude towards its customers ASAP, then I do not see how it can survive, EVEN in the short run.

jos: the reason we set the return procedure up the way we did is purely for reasons of speed: we figured if you returned the product to us, we returned it to dane-elec, they sent us a new one, then we sent it on to you, that'd be a lot slower and more inefficient than you simply getting it straight from dane-elec. It wasn't intended to suggest that we don't accept ultimate responsibility for the problem you've encountered, of course that does lie with us.

It definitely seems like this is not being handled properly, though, for which I can only apologize :(. I will get in touch with whoever I can to try and have your situation sorted out as a priority matter.

Naivity and fanboyism!

That must mean then that I am naive and fanboyish.

John.

but this isnt a good idea. as it is, it seems that people deal with dane elec and you can only hope that dane elec fix it.

You've knocked people off your own support processes and onto another company's. In doing so, you should at least have some way of guaranteeing a reasonable level of support.

Either route their queries through you, or try to hold dane-elec accountible in some way. Otherwise, why should dane-elec care about your customers? Mandriva will end up with the bad reputation, and dane-elec lose nothing.

Mandriva really ought to start thinking about their customers once in a while...

James

I'll hold back from buying a flash then if this is how things turn out.

That depends on how much of your hard earned cash you part with and deliver to said company.

Again my heartfelt thanks to the community out there for your support on this issue, I know that to many it was ONLY a "piffling €89 euros", but to me it was definitely more an argument of principle, although .... I wasn't going to give my money without at least a fight.

I am glad to say that I hope this has been resolved now. Today I received a new "order #", and a promise that this is being shipped as a priority - which is a switch from the mail I received 3 days ago. I imagine that once again I have AdamW to thank for lighting a fire beneath someone, or some process. AdamW, I thank you for all your efforts, this time it hopefully will have paid off. I will keep this posting informed of the outcome.

For everyone out there my anger and criticism was centred around the "MandrivaStore" and the organisational processes. Which, together with the support element of any business - especially an IT business - is the means by which it ultimately lives or dies. The Mandriva distro is still a really great definition of a Linux platform, and is one of the best out there, yes it has quirks, but don't they all. One area where it still proves to be - in my humble opinion - better than the others(that I have tried), is in co-existing in a multi-platform environment. I use 2 flavours of Linux(well 3 if you count the interface differences between Ubuntu/Kubuntu & Mandriva2007), Mac OS X(my personal fav), eComStation(what used to be IBM OS/2 - now under a new lease of life), and - only for work purposes honestly - WindozeXP. Of the Linux flavours on my menu, Mandriva is the happiest right from the box in participating in that mixed environment, in file and print sharing.

It will be good to have a working USB Key with Mandriva2007 installed, so that I can more easily show-off the benefits of Linux over Windoze options to the many "ludite" friends I have, as an option along with Mac OS X.

My favourite quote, and one which I try to live by professionally(not personally - I'd have to be a Saint to do that, and a Saint I ain't) "we are what we consistently do, excellence therefore is a habit, not an accident" - Aristotle. It is a message I continually try to drive into my employer, I hope that Mandriva take it's meaning on board and strive to be "what they consistently do" and be an flag-ship of "excellence" for not only their product but as a shining beacon to the other distro's.

Regards

Jos Joslyn