VeeDubb Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 This is a rant. My first successful linux venture was with Mandrake linux 9.0. I was so happy, that I decided to purchase a retail copy of the power-pack from the Mandrake store. My order took more than 3 times as long to arrive as projected, and I got absolutely no support of any kind from anyone associated with mandrake while I was waiting. When I finaly got a response from somone, it was the day after my Power Pack had finaly arrived. All this was when 9.0 was the new hot thing. I have not bought any product from the mandrake (now mandriva) store directly since then. Fast forward to last week. I just turned 25, and my wife purchased Mandriva 2006 powerpack for me from the Mandrake store. Given the trouble I had in the past, I told her to buy the download version, and NOT have them mail me a disk. On my birthday, she had a URL I could download from and all the info for a stand alone FTP client. The url was in the form of ftp://username:password@download.mandriva.com for the ftp I was given a host name, username, password and port. For 2 days, I was totaly and completely unable to log onto the ftp server with any browser or ftp program. Yesterday, I was suddenly able to log on, and the ISO's are there, but I can't download them. The size is listed incorrectly in the download manager, they download in a quarter of the expected time or less and consistently fail an md5sum. One time the 2gb DVD iso hung and crashed mozilla when it reached 4gb. How that's even possible, I'll never know. I have tried to download from two different browsers and an ftp client on a windows XP machine and two browsers and 3 ftp clients on a Mandriva 2005ltd machine. All with the same results. I can log in, and start the download, but it simply will not download a proper iso. What's worse, is that there is no bittorrent for people who paid for the product directly, only for people who paid for the club. If I dont' have mandriva 2006 downloaded, burned and installed by the time I go to bed tommorrow, I'm going to best buy and buying a fresh copy of windows XP. I love linux and I especialy love Mandriva, but their store hasn't improved in 3 years. I could almost cry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 Sad... :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted November 7, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 I almost forgot. There is a link in one of the confirmaiton email they sent my wife. It says "direct Link for Customer Care" or something to that effect. when you click the link, a mandriva page opens with the following error: Module not found The requested module company could not be found. Possible reasons for this are: * The module name was misspelled, try changing the URL. * The module does not exist on this site. * This site uses siteaccess matching in the URL and you didn't supply one, try inserting a siteaccess name before the module in the URL . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 That's extremely disappointing and you can understand why people would not want to purchase the product for download, as well as wait for ages for it to arrive in the post. Hopefully, you can find a contact email address on their website, to try and get some sort of Customer Service complaint logged, to finally be able to download it. Certainly puts me off purchasing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 Unfortunately the way Mandr_____ treats its 'customers' is one of the major reasons I stopped using it. I bought a powerpack long long ago.......9.2) and heCD's were faulty. This wasn't the problem it was the faceless and rude replies I got from customer support. Basically suggesting I join Mandrkae club or pay mandrake expert... which is all a bit pointless whent he CD's themselves are faulty and visibly so. No phone number to call, no answer to emails etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reiver_Fluffi Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 I'm sorry to say, but i'm not surprised, not in the slightest! Mandriva have some serious issues with regard to private sales, it appears that the don't care, or as I believe, they have bitten off more than they can chew! Customer relations inside and outside the club are poor, but they survive because they keep the corporate customers happy (from what I can see, it's these guys that are keeping Mandriva alive at the moment!!) Here's a tip that usally works, ask for your money back, serious, they seem to jump thorugh hoops when people threaten to stop credit card payments or demand their money back on the basis of "non-performance of contract". I sympathise with you ma man, might be worth finding out who has a copy of the cd's you need and getting a copy and use the product key you got from Mandriva??? Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solarian Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 I agree with others - this is very sad indeed. Mandriva has no respect for private individual customers and they're left to their own fate which is a potential misery. That is why they for the time being won't see me as a custormer, I'm using public versions only. If it weren't for this forum then I would have abandoned Mandriva if favour of some other distro long ago. Alas I have to say that I haven't been needing much community support for 2005LE, it works great with next to no problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reiver_Fluffi Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 Mandriva has no respect for private individual customers and they're left to their own fate which is a potential misery. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Like I said in my previous post, if they keep wiping the backsides of the corporate customer, then they will keep them alive, well until Mandriva know that the they no lomger have club members and Joe Public to act as guinea pigs, so yes, I guess failure is an option here! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadowchaser Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 Yup great operating system crappy customer service that why i stop being part of the club. I too had problems with rude customer service reps, make you want to stop supporting them.. But i still hang in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jglen490 Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 I think the world of the Mandriva distro, but then again I get all mine from Edmunds Enterprises. Great catalog of Linux goodies, super service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grendal Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 That's just not right. You pay for something, they should FREAKING deliver the goods. It's outragous that their customer service is really non-existant (from what I'm hearing). I really like this distro, and have considered getting a boxed edition and/or joining the club, but everytime I think I'll fork over my money, I see another thread like this one. I guess if I want to get a powerpack edtion I'll still surf the web and find cdr versions for a fraction of the price, but atleast they deliver. Or maybe I'll go back to microsoft LOL (One of their reps actually called my dad to help him with streest and maps install (long story), now if they can do that what can't Mandriva?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reiver_Fluffi Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 The fact of the matter is, there's not a lot of the "extras" on the powerpack cd's, etc that you can't install without them! For example, the nvidia drivers are available from nvidia and install with no probs, acrobat can be obtained from adobe, etc, etc!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 If I dont' have mandriva 2006 downloaded, burned and installed by the time I go to bed tommorrow, I'm going to best buy and buying a fresh copy of windows XP. I love linux and I especialy love Mandriva, but their store hasn't improved in 3 years. I could almost cry. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Don't be so hasty... try another distro... At the end of the day, if you don't get on with any of them you can go and buy XP then... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uralmasha Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 Hi, VeeDubb This is a rant. [....] One time the 2gb DVD iso hung and crashed mozilla when it reached 4gb. How that's even possible, I'll never know. The 2006 powerpack DVD is ~4.4G in size. If I read you right, your download manager showed only 2Gigs, ergo it looks like a known problem for some browsers that doesn't expect files larger than 2 Gigs (i learned this the hard way about Opera, and you - about Mozilla). If you use wget, it will give you the file integer. If I remember correctly, wget supports resume as well (-c switch, see the man pages), so the first thing I'd try is to make a go and get those 400Megs in addition to the 4 Gigs you already have. After all, that's a 10% insuarance you don't have to download the whole thing again. Cheers, uralmasha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reiver_Fluffi Posted November 7, 2005 Report Share Posted November 7, 2005 Don't be so hasty... try another distro... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Why of course, linux is about choice, Vee Dubb, use it, you might just find something better suited to you anyway! (Good point phunni, difficult think out of the box at the best of times.....) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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