ArtisticallyChill

It’s been about 2 weeks since my Dell 26″ LCD TV died due to some defective piece of hardware within. I haven’t thrown it out yet. So I decided to research my problem to see if it can be fixed or if others had experienced the same thing. I found this forum site called FixYa and was led to this forum talking about the Dell W2600 LCD TV’s power issue.

I read through all those who posted that they had the similar problem and read through all the submitted solutions. Some said that they were able to get their LCD TVs replaced by Dell even if the warranty had expired. With some renewed hope, I called Dell’s Tech Support.

Even though I was hesitant about dealing with customer service people (see old posts about ‘Circuit Shitty’), if I could get this LCD replaced like those on the FixYa threads, I had to give it a shot. Of course, I was on hold for nearly 20 minutes. After giving all the pertinent information regarding my Dell 26″LCD/TV, the operator (in very broken english, I might add) guided me through all the troubleshooting steps I had done already. Though it was a waste of time, I did it follow her instructions as a long shot that it might work this time around. But it didn’t. So she put me on hold for a few minutes to speak with her supervisor (which means she needed to consult her script).

When she got bak on, she tried pulling the old “contact your cable company” line, but I told her the cable is fine cause it’s also plugged into a second tv. She then tried to explain that since it was out of warranty it could not be replaced. I didn’t leave it at that and began to explain how Dell sold me a defective product and that I have had LCD monitors and TVs last longer than 2 years and how it was unfair for a loyal customer to be treated in this way. She then tried to send me off to another tech support service, but the only difference is that they were gonna charge me. I said ‘No’ and then asked for her supervisor. A few minutes on hold and I was then greeted by a man, with much better broken english.

He tried to give the same line about ‘out of warranty’ and I told him that this is not an uncommon problem and that if he goggled ‘Dell 26″ TV not powering up’, he’d see that there are a lot of consumers out there with the same problem as me.

He then said, “Oh but the problem you speak of is with the 2600 series model not yours, yours is the 2607C.” I replied, without hesitation, “But it is still part of the same series, is it not? And it looks like the same problem was overlooked when they made the one I bought.”

After that he apologized for all the trouble my TV, and Dell have caused me and said that he would forward this incident to someone of a ‘higher’ authority and that I should expect a call within 72 hours. I thought to myself, “Way to go! I might be getting somewhere with Dell!” I told him I was grateful for his help, that I didn’t expect him to replace it right away, that all I wanted was for him to understand my predicament and to forward my plea to the higher powers.

Though the call took about an hour to get through, it was a lot easier than my those past customer service calls to those complete assholes at Circuit City. I kept a much cooler head and not once did I scream anything bad on the phone. I even received an email with a case number as soon as I got off the phone too. Maybe my TV will be replaced after all.

Here’s hoping. *knocks on wood*

~ LoneWolf

Last night, I encountered a severe glitch in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I happened on my second visit to Felucia. I started playing and about halfway through I checked my stats. I noticed that the first bonus objective just said: *DEFAULT TEXT and then that the 2 and 3rd objectives were not being tracked. I was hoping that by the time I finished the stage that everything would unlock. But after beating the stage, my stats didn’t register. I had 0 kills counted, no holocrons collected even though I got them all, and no force points earned for each kill I had throughout the stage. I didn’t even unlock the achievement for beating the stage. I searched the forums and found that I was not the only one with this glitch. From what I’ve read, there’s no definite trigger to the glitch and it can happen at any level. One guy got it at the second level while someone else got to the last level and it glitched. The glitch even carried over to the next stage. After the cutscene, I check my objectives and sure enough the glitch was still active (see the above pic).

It’s obvious there something wrong in the actual code of the game. I just don’t understand how Quality Assurance at LucasArts could miss this. Didn’t anyone playtest this game thoroughly before going gold? I understand that every game can’t be bug free, I can deal with minor bugs. But a glitch like this is seriously ruining the play experience for me.

I’ve emailed tech support at LucasArts and even included a link to one of the forums that discusses (rants) about the glitch. Hopefully this will force them to expedite a patch. Otherwise a lot of gamers are gonna be trading this game in as quickly as they bought it.

~ LoneWolf

• I could have gotten some errands done earlier this morning, but I slept in. Oh well. ;p Gonna load up a few minor programs on my laptop. #
• blogPost: It’s New Comics Day! http://tinyurl.com/3esfpk #