[Moogs]

I don't know about you guys but I've noticed over the last year+ that Other World Computing's service quality has really declined. Example: if you try to get someone on live chat for tech support... the window will literally sit there for an hour sometimes. So they say 8am to 8pm but literally the last 4 or 5x I've tried it (at random times during the work week), no one answers. It's like they put the live chat there to appear responsive and whatnot, but they never answer it. Frustrating as hell.

When I emailed them once about a failing drive / drive issue, their answer was "shut down, start the drive, then reboot"... as if anyone with any Mac skill hasn't tried every permutation of that sequence before emailing. So you wait two days for novice advice. Like when you call the cable company with a modem failure. "Uh, have you tried unplugging the modem? huhuh." No dumbshit, I've been hearing people tell me to reset my modem since 1996 but not once before calling you did I attempt to reset the modem's power first.

Anyone else see a decline in service for OWC? Wondering if maybe they grew too fast and had to cut back staff or something during the recession, but they're not changing their availability on the web site to appear "always available".

[bonus: just spent 20 minutes in the phone queue with 2 people ahead of me. That's a good sign they're understaffed in a big way.]

[drewprops]

This is the first I've heard of it and it saddens me if they're not doing well - they've really done a good job of developing great hard drive products over the years.

They were an EARLY entrant to the Firewire market.

...

[_Ω_]

Don't tell me that. Just bought more RAM and a nice big 3TB HD for my beast.

[Maciej]

I'll second the chat support gripe, it sucks!

Once I got a hold of someone they've been pretty good - only once did I get a "well it's not really designed for that, so you're SOL" type of response.

[Robert Boris]

Dear Moogs,

Thank you for the honest feedback. I appreciate it. It is this type of feedback that helps us improve.
OWC sincerely apologizes for the live chat support delays that were experienced. I could certainly understand how frustrating it must have been and am very sorry that we did not help in a timely fashion. We will make sure to research what took place on our end and make corrections immediately.

OWC handles and answers thousands of live chats successfully per month and can assure you that we are doing our best to respond to each chat as soon as possible. I can also assure you that we have not cut back on staff and have in fact grown our staff over 20% in the past year and have stayed on pace with Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies. However, we do have chats that do go abandon. We will continue to do our best to improve service levels and answer each and every chat asap.

Our customers are extremely important to us. Moreover, our customer support is not declining and has been very consistent. I encourage all to look at our customer reviews at reseller ratings.com or Bizrate.com

In the meantime, your overall satisfaction is important to us.
If there is anything that we can do to assist, please contact OWC at 1-800-275-4576.
Thank you.

Sincerely,

Robert Boris
OWC Call Center Manager

[Moogs]

Originally Posted by drewprops This is the first I've heard of it and it saddens me if they're not doing well - they've really done a good job of developing great hard drive products over the years. ...

I agree in principle. I'm always eager to buy something from them vs. say New Egg because I like helping the smaller businesses that do a good job. I used to try to buy my Macs from Small Dog for the same reason, but they never allowed it because I missed the "internet customer cut-off date" back when Jobs was taking the helm again (I think).

Originally Posted by _Ω_ Don't tell me that. Just bought more RAM and a nice big 3TB HD for my beast.

See above. I almost always buy RAM from OWC when I get a new Mac. Not so much because the buy-back RAM prices are good but because it's high quality stuff by most accounts and a lot cheaper than Apple's. Never had much trouble with RAM (the one bad module I got a long time ago they replaced right away). Peripherals are another story; the stuff I've bought has been a mixed bag reliability wise over the years, but only in the last year (roughly) has the service time really gone bad.

Of course I don't call every single day or even every month so it's hard to know the trends.

Originally Posted by Maciej I'll second the chat support gripe, it sucks! Once I got a hold of someone they've been pretty good - only once did I get a "well it's not really designed for that, so you're SOL" type of response.

Glad I'm not the only one / imagining things.

Originally Posted by Robert Boris Dear Moogs, Thank you for the honest feedback. I appreciate it. It is this type of feedback that helps us improve. OWC sincerely apologizes for the live chat support delays that were experienced. I could certainly understand how frustrating it must have been and am very sorry that we did not help in a timely fashion. We will make sure to research what took place on our end and make corrections immediately. OWC handles and answers thousands of live chats successfully per month and can assure you that we are doing our best to respond to each chat as soon as possible. I can also assure you that we have not cut back on staff and have in fact grown our staff over 20% in the past year and have stayed on pace with Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies. However, we do have chats that do go abandon. We will continue to do our best to improve service levels and answer each and every chat asap. Our customers are extremely important to us. Moreover, our customer support is not declining and has been very consistent. I encourage all to look at our customer reviews at reseller ratings.com or Bizrate.com Sincerely, Robert Boris OWC Call Center Manager

Thank you very much for responding Robert. That's a good sign you're willing to address and acknowledge things. I don't know what else to say about the chats except that I literally never connect to anyone (in recent months), despite waiting 10-20 minutes every time. I either skip it in the end and try to find an answer elsewhere, or if it's really critical I get on the phone and wait in that queue (although normally the phone queue is not as long as it was when I posted this). Normally on the phone I can get through after about 3-5 minutes if the queue is small. But I prefer chat when I can for retailer support or provider support because I can set the stage quickly with my question and skip all the preliminaries, get right to the heart of the matter. Neither phone nor email support makes that possible IME.

FWIW, the prior help session I mentioned where was given noob advice, was not on the day I wrote this post it was several months ago, just in case you're looking into that date. I understand too that maybe there are policies in place to "ask the most basic questions first" but it's really frustrating when you have a lot of computer skill, something isn't working and after all the usual trouble-shooting and queue time you get advised to do the "reset routine". Maybe there's a way to separate the callers by problem type and status or something like that.

"If you're having a problem with memory or graphics card, and you've already tried x, y, z, press 4."

[Moogs]

I should add also that in the time since I started this thread I did finally get a hold of someone and got my problem resolved reasonably quickly (on the phone, not chat).

In fairness, when I talk to someone they're usually polite and professional, so I don't want to imply they don't care or something like that. Hopefully that 20% staff increase will help curb the wait times for chat and phone queues.

[drewprops]

EVERYBODY thinks they're an advanced user


...

[Moogs]

So what are you saying.... HUH?


I've been using Macs since before a decent percentage of the whippersnappers on this board were born. Why back in my day we had to make our own Macs from hub caps and copper wire!

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Moogs So what are you saying.... HUH? I've been using Macs since before a decent percentage of the whippersnappers on this board were born. Why back in my day we had to make our own Macs from hub caps and copper wire!

And in the snow!

[ironlung]

Originally Posted by Moogs When I emailed them once about a failing drive / drive issue, their answer was "shut down, start the drive, then reboot"... as if anyone with any Mac skill hasn't tried every permutation of that sequence before emailing. So you wait two days for novice advice. Like when you call the cable company with a modem failure. "Uh, have you tried unplugging the modem? huhuh." No dumbshit, I've been hearing people tell me to reset my modem since 1996 but not once before calling you did I attempt to reset the modem's power first. [bonus: just spent 20 minutes in the phone queue with 2 people ahead of me. That's a good sign they're understaffed in a big way.]

In their defense they have no real way of knowing their customer's computer expertise. So it's simpler to assume that the customer knows nothing.