Ever had a customer service experience so good or so bad that your neighbors might want to know about it? What happens to good companies and bad companies? Well, in a Darwin kind of way, the dud companies will die off and the good companies ones will prosper - that’s also what free enterprise is all about. Fortunately, in America we have the right of free speech and can talk about it.

I will post items about each kind here from time to time so you can be an informed consumer.

I bought a TDK CD burner about 1+1/2 years ago. One of those "VeloCD" 40X types. The darned thing never did work quite right, but it would kind of work sometimes. Now I know and you know that every company makes a dud once in a while. The difference between companies is what they do about the duds that escape to the consumer. In the case of TDK, several calls and emails were sent - TDK did everything they could to convince me it was my computer, my software, my operating system, and my peripheral cards. In short "my problem", not theirs. I made sure there was a record of the troubles in their system, long before the 1-year warranty expired. The last customer "support" person at TDK guaranteed that they would support the unit beyond the warranty period.

After several iterations of OS rebuilding, peripheral card changing (and buying new!), I found a friend with the same drive. I borrowed the unit and plugged it into my system. PERFECT EVERY TIME. So TDK can make a good unit if they want to, the just can't support the bad ones they make. Of course by now the 1-year warranty had expired, but no big deal, because TDK gave their work that they would cover the unit if I could prove it was their unit. Now when I call, the answer is NO. I said that was not good enough, I wanted to speak to a supervisor. They said "maybe one would call, but that the answer would be "NO".

Several weeks have gone by. No supervisor from TDK has called. My unit still is crummy. TDK was unable and unwilling to fix their crappy CD burner. The only thing that was supposed to get burned here was the CDs, but in this case TDK burned me!

I will NEVER, NEVER buy another TDK product again, for the rest of my life.

Last updated January 18, 2004

© 2004-2004 David L. Pederson

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