|
Unfortunately I had to use customer service for my first Axim.
I received my first unit on Dec 30th and shortly discovered a serious issue with the power management system.
I left my Axim connected to the sync cable overnight the first night I had it and it drained the battery completely. I thought that this was odd, but oh well. I charged it for 4 hours before powering it up. When I pushed the power button it made the reset sound and I quickly found out that I had lost all information, apps and data I had stored in it. I was miffed, a couple of hours setup down the drain! Well, I reloaded everything and got it back to the state it was before the crash. I disconnected the power and took it home.
Surprise, surprise... When I tried to turn it on that evening it would not power up. Disgusted, I went the painstaking process of reinstalling everything yet again. I did learn a lot in this process, such as how to back up the Axim in case of such a disaster.
With my back up intact, I set out to find the problem. I looked in the system section under power and noticed that my backup battery was at 100%, obviously not the issue. I looked up at the main battery and noticed the level dropping right before my eyes (about 1% per minute). I thought that this could not be normal so I tried both a backup and main battery from a co-worker's Axim... Same result, basically a hard reset. I proceeded to call Dell tech support.
Before actually placing the call, I needed to locate my service tag (I found that behind the battery). I removed the main battery and wrote down the service tag. When I replaced the main battery and powered the Axim on... you guessed it, the set up screen... all data lost again. This is when I learned that the backup/restore works really well. Now, highly upset and ready for a fight I called 1-800-www-dell and proceeded to wade knee deep through the automated prompts. After entering my service tag at least 4 times and holding for 5-10 minutes, I finally got a tech rep on the phone. He promptly asked me for my service tag again (what’s up with that any way? I just entered it 4 times!).
I explained the issue to him and he asked me the obvious questions: Did you charge the battery 4 hours before use? Yes. Did you install the backup battery correctly? Yes... I then told him that I had tried both batteries from a friend's unit and experienced no difference. This seemed to satisfy him and he said that there had to be some issue with the way the Axim was handling, or not handling the power system. He said that they would send me a new unit and I could return the defective unit when the new one arrived. I asked him what type of turn around to expect and he said to allow 5 days (great, i thought). I gave him my info and hung up the phone.
The next day I was playing with my Axim plugged in to the wall when I got a support call. I had to go to the other wing of the building to take this call and thought how wonderful it would be to take my Axim with me but I did not have a extension cord that was 500 ft. long, so I left it on the desk. When I got back I noticed that one of the admins had placed a Fed-Ex box in my chair... What could that be, I thought... Yep, it was my new Axim! Wow, I wasn’t expecting that…
I have to say that even though I went through a tough time when I received my Axim and when I waded through the million prompts on the support call, my experience with customer support could not have been much better! Dell really came through for me.
After all that I went through with my first Axim, I have to say that my new one works like a champ! I use it for everything from task management to watching music videos. And to think I almost ended up with an Apple Ipod… but that’s another story…
|