I must admit that not all my stories are mine; there are some that I experienced them through the people I spend my life with. This is one of those stories.

Buying a new laptop is one of those consumer decisions that the buyer is involved deeply in the process, as the product is expensive, complex, it is not done frequently and the consequences can affect the buyer (buyer and user is the same person) deeply the next years of your life (depending also of the functions that it will support). In this case we have my girlfriend buying a very expensive laptop, top of the line, in order to support her Phd studies. This meant that she needed a powerful piece of equipment, 7 days of the week, for more than 12 days per week and for 6 to 7 years. High specifications and a large screen. Heavy yet powerful. Based on online data research, peer feedback and availability, she trusted a product from a well-known company, investing her hard-won cash (actually money from a scholarship), without willing to take risks with cheaper alternatives.

The reason I want to present this story is not the product itself, but what it is attached to it, which is the after sales service. Regarding customer service experience, there are many things that are of interest, such the buying process, the use, the after sales service and even the disposal process. In something in that chain is not designed and realized properly, it might damage the customer experience. And this is what happened in that case.

Shortly after a few weeks of average use, one of the keyboard keys, stopped working. My girlfriend contacted the local representative of the manufacturer; the malfunction was clearly within the warranty. However, they informed her that the whole keyboard had to be replaced (fine by us; we are not aware of the complexities of laptop technology) and that would take a whole month. I repeat: 1 WHOLE MONTH. They needed 1 whole month to replace a laptop keyboard, for a laptop that was within the first weeks from purchase, and for something simple as the keyboard. Our guess was that either they had no parts at all and that they were ordering them each time they needed something, or that they had no service at all and that they had to ship the laptop elsewhere to be fixed. Either way, she would spend at least a month without being able to work on her laptop and this meant further delays in research and paper evaluation.

We pushed for a replacement, as we were close to 1 month from purchase, however they denied this solution. Either way, the result was to wait for a month and to lose trust towards a company that seemed at least in the beginning as a very promising alternative for economic yet quality laptops. By the way, shortly after receiving the laptop, the battery died. Affected by the recent experience, we didn’t even try to make a claim of that. Imaging depending on an expensive piece of equipment on a professional level, and having to deal with this…Personally, I trust another company that at the time promised fixing their laptops within 48 hours from the call…on site, meaning at the customer’s place. This was very professional and affected a lot my consequent purchases.

Conclusion:

We understood that while the specifications of the product were selected to cater a professional user, the rest of the experience was not. No matter the importance of the purchase, or the perception about the quality of it, the services that are attached to the product, in this case the after sales service, can damage irreversibly the product and the customer experience. A good after sales service can upgrade the experience, correct issues of the product, or at least do some damage control. Bad service can make you believe that the brand does not care about the after sales experience, or that in other words they just want to make a non-repeatable sale (so the overall customer value is very short term and low, as there are no repeated sales) or that they do not have the quality that they claim they have. If they had, they should have imposed better metrics to their partners (shorter response time, or higher spare part inventory), at least to show that they can support what they claim. In any case, the result is the same…the customer experience was spoiled.

PS.

While the main point of this story was the after sales service, we realized that the products of that company were also not so good as they were presented to be in the first place. Approximately at the same time, I bought a laptop from the same producer, but with way lower specifications, just for my parents to play around. By far, the worst laptop of my life. Several software issues that through the years became even worse. And to be clear, I had my go with several laptops through the years, and I did not treat them nicely. This was the first one that I took care of, and the results were horrible. Additionally, my girlfriend’s laptop became also worse through the years, with both software and hardware issues, rendering it nearly unusable. As a result, we both advise our friends and family against choosing that brand for all the reasons, as it was not up to our standards for neither professional nor home use.