Stay Tuned For: Christina v. German Customer Service Reps, Round 200

August 28, 2006 · Filed Under Uncategorized 

So I picked up the memory and it doesn’t work. My computer boots up, recognizes there is more memory, waits five minutes, then crashes. It works fine once the new memory is removed. Now I will have to do battle with an evil Customer Service Rep. I usually lose these battles here in lovely Deutschland.

And if anyone is into error messages, here are mine (after a quick google search produced nothing helpful, I just assume they say, “something is wrong with this memory, ack!”):

STOP: 0x00000024 (0x001902FE, 0xF21965A0, 0xF219629C,0xF74A5B0F)
Ntsf.sys - Address F74A5B0F base at F74820000, DateStamp 41107eea

-and a variation-

STOP: 0x00000050 (0xFFFFFF8B, 0x00000001, 0xF74853B7, 0x00000000)
Ntsf.sys - Address F74853B7 base at F74820000, DateStamp 41107eea

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6 Responses to “Stay Tuned For: Christina v. German Customer Service Reps, Round 200”

  1. vailian on August 31st, 2006 8:12 am

    you have probably checked these factors, but:
    check the memory type (they all look the same)
    some computers only accept chips in pairs

  2. Christina on August 31st, 2006 4:48 pm

    Yeah, there are two slots and I bought exactly the same type that was already in the first slot to put in the second.

    By the way, three days and no answer (by email). It looks like I will have to call (unless I can talk Rainer into doing it for me). dum-dum-da-dummmmmm…

  3. J on September 2nd, 2006 5:02 am

    I feel for you. Customer service is dreadful at best here.

  4. Christina on September 2nd, 2006 8:12 pm

    Okay, so I got Rainer to call and they just said to send the stuff back to them with a letter explaining the problem, which I did on Thursday evening. Now we wait to see what happens. Could this exchange actually go smoothly? I shouldn’t get my hopes up yet. I did once have a positive experience with customer service here. I ordered some CDs from Amazon.de and I got an open, empty Amazon box delivered to me in the mail. I sent them an email and they promptly resent the CDs.

    Of course, there was also the time we got German bedsheets as wedding presents, but we have an American bed, so we took them (with the original receipt) back to KaDeWe (an upscale German department store), who refused to exchange them and said the purchaser would have to make the exchange. I told them this was awful customer service and the guy just shrugged. That was still during the time period when I was boycotting places that had bad customer service, then I ran out of places to shop, so now I guess I just expect them to not care.

  5. MountPenguin on September 3rd, 2006 4:51 pm

    Hi! That certainly looks like bad memory you’ve got there, but RAM has a surprisingly high failure rate, so it’s not too unusual.

    Customer service here is a bit hit and miss, though compared with how it was at the start of the Nineties the customer is now almost king (if only of a small tinpot republic). As far as computer stuff is concerned I’ve found it’s cheaper in the long run to find local suppliers who know their stuff, it may cost a few € more but saves a lot of hassle when it comes to the inevitable returns. With recalcitrant stores in general I try to make them aware that it will cost them more effort to try and wave me off than it will to actually deal with the problem.

  6. Christina on September 4th, 2006 2:03 pm

    Customer service has noticeably improved in even the last four years since I’ve been here. Or maybe it’s just the fact that I moved out of Berlin-Mitte.

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