I am really excited for part three. Our secret shopper, Shay, called up every
one of our seven system integrators with either a very real or at least a very
really manufactured problem to see if
they can help her through it. Take the screws out of the back of it.
Now, we did have a couple legitimate problems due to failures in shipping.
But for the rest of them, we're going to be conducting the same experiment we did
last time, finding out if the support folks at our system integrators can help
Shay troubleshoot a computer that won't boot due to a loosened memory module.
Given it's the same as last time, there's no excuse for them to not have
tightened up their processes. But based on that, I'm looking at 3 hours of
footage for us to go through here. I think it's safe to say this is going to
be pretty interesting. Interesting. Like this message from our sponsor, you green
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in just 30 minutes. Oh, good. We're starting with Star Forge. You know, I don't think anyone
from One True King is going to talk to me ever again. This is twice now that
we're showing their computer shipping to us broken. But hey, maybe they did a
great job of fixing it. I am about to message Star Forge because
they don't have a phone line. So, we're going to get the emails correspondent
started with them. You know, I saw people talking about that in the comments on part one. But
now that we're on support, the fact that they don't have a phone line or at least
a live chat for that means that this computer doesn't work. I go from mildly
frustrated, but someone's helping me to I gotta wait. I gotta wait. All right,
so we are reaching out. Hi, I ordered a computer. That computer doesn't display
anything when I turn it on. I heard something rattling around when I unboxed
it. Is that normal? We have a call scheduled later with Star Forge.
At least their email response is to schedule a call with you. Okay. So, uh,
the last email that we had sent over was relating to the presence of the easy
debug LEDs. To Star Forge's credit, they read the
email before calling her. The lights that you circled are not on
currently. Um, but the RGB ones are. Has he actually asked her if it works
yet? To be fair, she said it wasn't, or at least she did in her email. What
might have happened is in shipping uh
UPS can be a bit rougher than we would ideally like.
They went straight to blaming the courier, but I identified their
deficient packing materials before I even opened them. The PCIe slot might have sustained a bit
of damage or it simply might just need to be receated. Uh because in transit if
it starts to bounce around a bit, it can cause those pins that make contact to
come undone. This is a good, albeit
deflecty explanation of what could happen and
what can cause things to come loose. Go ahead and power your system off and
unplug it completely from the wall. All right, unplug standalone machine.
Um, it'll be that rectangular piece of hardware that's plugged toward kind of
toward the bottom. Uh, there Well, there's a lot of
rectangular hardware pieces. Um, okay.
It's all rectangles. If it's not part of your standard operating procedure to just jump on a
video call with people at this point, you are doing it wrong.
There should be a pin on the bottom like a retention pin.
Ooh, that is hardly described that.
Oh, the cables. Yeah, with the motherboard facing the ceiling
just for ease of access. Motherboard facing the ceiling. That is
really good explicit instructions. If you take a look toward the left hand
side of the graphics card, see he sometimes does a really great job
of helping her with orientation. Motherboard facing the ceiling and other
times he really loses it to the left of the graphics card. You are not going to
lose those screws, Shay. You have a magnetic screwdriver. Darn it. ltstore.com.
I got it. I think. Yes. Oh my god, it's out. Go. You did that way faster than like
half of the people that I talked to on the phone. I'm impressed. Well, little hint for both of you. It
was so fast because the clip she was feeling for when trying to release is no
longer there. That's what broke off and was rattling around in the case during
shipping. Look at the slot on the motherboard that we just pulled your graphics card out.
Check the board any like visible damage.
That damage is not going to be obvious to a novice user. But if you're looking at the other ones
and you see that this one doesn't have that same Yeah, but he told you it had a lock and
stuff. Oh god. Okay. Yes. Okay. There it is.
I like that they stay on the call. Yeah. While she takes the picture. They don't
like, "Hey, send that to me. We'll get back to you." Whatever. Yep.
Okay. All right. So, that was loose within the system.
Yeah. Found it inside.
He's not happy about that at all. It might have been the reason as to why
the graphics card was able to be pulled out so easily
is the retention clip itself. But there's two paths we can go down at
this point. They will either say, "We
need that system back, so we can swap out that motherboard." Or they're going
to go, "Eh, it doesn't really affect the
functionality. As long as you're not moving the system around, which is true,
we can immediately get warranty support established for such." And um have the
system sent back, promptly repaired by our technicians,
and sent your way. Cool. Okay. Okay. And the guy knows what he's
talking about. Yep. having our warehouse team send out
uh separate packaging materials for your graphics card.
That graphics card probably still works. This is a really smart move that tells
me they do not want that graphics card to die on the way back.
So that way when our technicians are able to check in your system,
if I was them, I would seriously be trying to offer her $150 off this system
or something to use it with the slot like it is. Yeah, cuz they've got to ship it back
and then they've got to ship it back again. That's expensive. If it's 300
bucks each time eating it. I don't have a clear rubric,
but she's on and off the phone in half an hour with a satisfactory resolution.
I give it an A. Yeah, that's pretty good. She seems happy. He was nice, friendly.
The way he cheered when I got out that GPU, like granted, yeah, sure, it was
because something was broken and that's why it was so easy, but victory
nonetheless. So, they offered to send us a box. They
sent it. We accepted that. They then emailed us saying, "Hey, here's the
box." whatever. Um, and what we responded with because we need to keep
the computers for the testing and everything. We told them, "Hey, a friend of mine came by, popped the card out, put it
back in, and it seems to be working, so we're just going to keep it.
All seems good." We presented them the option of just keeping it with the broken slot.
We offered to do that. We have a motherboard with no warranty.
They should at least be accounting for that, and they should offer us a token. Even though they didn't offer anything,
we are still basically good to RMA and return this at just about any point.
We're not waving anything. That's not better than nothing. That is
nothing. So, this was October 4th. They followed up again um around October 10th, a week
later, saying, "Hey, just wanted to check in. Make sure it's all good." So,
they're not offering a token, but they're following up
and making sure it's all still kosher. A minus.
17 second wait time. Let's go, Main Gear.
See the lights and the fans coming on? Yeah, I feel the fan and the pretty RGB
lights are indeed on. Have you plugged in a display cable?
I think the call just ended. Um, he went to look at motherboard stuff. Oh, we're
getting a call back. Hello. Drop calls happen. I can hear me.
Yeah, I can hear you now. Full credit to Main Gear for realizing
the call dropped. Kind of going caller ID exists. I'm going at least try and
make sure that everything's okay. Yeah, if you look to the right of those,
there's going to be a big connector. Uh, it's a 24 pin power connector. And then
right above that, there's four small LEDs there.
Ah, we're landmarking. That's good. Landmarking is good. Referring to things
as 24 pin ATX connector not as good.
And are any of those four lit up? Uh, one is orange, an orange, yellow, a
mustard yellow, a sunrise. If it's the DM, that's probably going to
be the easier one to check out first. Okay. Um, so we can try and receat the
RAM if you're comfortable doing that. Uh, yeah, sure. Glass, uh, panel
is off. Um, something else. It's It's good. But I have We're good. Okay. What
am I looking at on the inside of this?
Those T4 sticks there. We're going to want to just take each of those out and
then place them back in. So, if you look at the top of where slotted into,
she was not excited about taking a part out. Yes, I see. So, if you press that down like toward
the board, it should unlatch that down toward the board. That is not the
way that I would describe pulling open a RAM slot.
Once you get them out, then you can just place them right back in. And, uh, when
you're putting them in, you'll want to make sure that you put them the same way. Uh, just cuz they're going to be
keyed. That's correct. I would have liked to
see some face the motherboard toward the sky instructions here, though. I don't
want people installing RAM with the system right side up if they don't know
what they're doing. I did it. Great. Let's plug the power cable back in and
try and turn the system back on. Honestly, he's only getting a better
result because the user is evolving, not because his approach evolved.
Ooh, both are lighting up. Now, we should probably explain at this point
why we used a loose RAM stick as our troubleshooting scenario for the systems
that didn't have anything actually wrong with them. And it's just because it's so
common in shipping. These systems get dropped, rattled around, vibrated, and
RAM sticks can come loose. If they have good processes, they should be able to
diagnose this and help a user troubleshoot it in a very short amount
of time. This is probably their most common problem. If they don't have good processes,
though, it could easily drag out, which I can clearly see from the timeline is
going to happen in at least some of these scenarios. It doesn't cause any
permanent damage to the computer. So, we're not costing these companies any
money other than, I guess, wasting their time with an unnecessary support call.
Whatever you told me to do worked. So, thank you if you can still hear me.
I keep for some reason this the uh
So, we got disconnected from Main Gear. Uh we think we figured out the technical
issues. Uh but from Main Gear got back to us. Uh great chatting with you.
Apologies for the call quality/ drops. Um, nonetheless, it sounds like your PC
issue was resolved before the call ended, but wanted to follow up and ensure that you're all set.
This is easily an HP. I'm transferring you to someone who can
help you now. Say English or French. It said it in it hung up on me.
This is not a good start, which is unfortunate because right now
HP is my front runner both in terms of the sales experience and in terms of the
shipping and spec. Or say it's something else. Desktop PC.
Look at the look on her face. Oh yeah, no one likes using these.
You got to give me an ETA, man. Offer me a call back. It's 2023.
Sub 10 minutes, though. Yeah, but we were off the phone with
Mang Gar in 20. And if this call becomes disconnected for any reason, can I reach you back at
the uh 604? Body seems professional so far.
While the computer lights up, I am not
getting anything on my desktop monitor. If you hit the menu button on that
display, do you get like the onscreen menu to come up there?
Did you make sure it's on HDMI instead of DisplayPort or vice
versa? You can tell buddy here 90% of his
support calls are my monitor is not on. Yeah, cuz I mean the last thing he
probably wants to do is have her open the system. Yep. This is a big advantage to using a
DIY grade motherboard though for your support agents.
they had these post indication LEDs.
That's not because boutique builders like spending more money on motherboards. That's because it's
legitimately a useful feature when you're trying to figure out why a
computer's not turning on. If we can, let's uh hold down the power
button till the power uh or till the entire computer just powers off there.
He's the first one to give proper instructions for how to turn off a
computer that hasn't correctly posted. Everyone else just says turn it off.
Unplug the cable. Just assume you know how to do that. Yeah, it may take a minute or two of tapping
to reach the startup menu. Oh, he wants her to go into the BIOS.
Just to confirm the RGB lights inside. You can tell he really doesn't want to
open up the system, whereas everyone we saw so far couldn't wait to open up the
system. Check it out. It's probably RAM cuz it usually is. I think the correct approach is probably
somewhere in between. Hold down the Windows key and the B is
in Bravo key. And while you hold those
down, you're going to press and hold the power button on the tower.
But we're not getting an output, brother. For a maximum of 1 minute or until the
computer beeps at you. We have to hold this for 1 minute. Why
would anyone accidentally hold Windows B and hold the power button? Why do I have
to do that for 1 minute? That's not something that can happen by accident.
I think you're good to go ahead and release those keys. Are you seeing anything on the screen?
Nothing on the screen so far. Please hold the power button down till
it powers off again for me. Okay, I guess I'll just do this
pointless stuff again. All over again. Oh, we got to fast forward for another
minute cuz he tried to hold a different key combination cuz that's going to fix
everything when she's not getting any. You're You're good to go ahead and release those keys.
Are you uh comfortable opening up the unit?
Sure. Here comes the side panel. She didn't turn it off though first. Are
you familiar by any at all, Shay, with
the makeups of an of a computer on the inside? I love this question. You should always
ask. No, but I am a quick learner. Um, and
I'm eager to help. So, I have a tool here on my end that allows
me the ability to see whatever the camera on your cell phone.
Oh, that's cool. They have video calling.
The GPU has the power hooked up to it. All of that looks correct. 24 pin power
connectors connected. Can you go slightly to the right for me?
This is great. Just making sure things didn't come loose during shipping. This is the first A+ experience that I have
seen, honestly, out of all of this. The other guys got there, but this is great.
He can visually verify and clearly knows
what he's looking for. I think he took a little too long trying all of the like,
oh, Windows B and whatever. I'm not saying HP is getting an A+.
Okay, this segment is an A+ experience.
We didn't get there yet. Well, he hasn't asked us to receat the RA.
I definitely think that we may want to actually send this unit into our repair
depot. It's not failing.
It's passing the post sequence. It is not.
My biggest concern is the graphics card possibly being bad. And if you'd rather
return to the point of sale and exchange this unit, that's also well within your
rights. HP, this is not the first time we've
done this dance. There's the phone tree. There's the general just kind of lack of
energy in the whole experience. Forgot about the phone tree.
But he pointed us to a very costly option for HP, which is just exchange it
for a whole new back. Yeah. C++. Okay. I I'm okay with the C++. Sure.
Cyberpower. 21 minutes on hold. Are you kidding me?
Hi. Um, I just plugged in my
computer to my monitor and it's not
turning on. I love how Shay starts every single one
of these calls as if she has absolutely no idea what a computer even is.
The monitor. It's The monitor won't. There's nothing on the monitor.
It won't. Yeah, it just won't. The monitor won't. It's trying. What do you do when your
monitor won't cry? Where did you plug in your HDMI? Is it
plugged in above your pink, green, and blue audio ports or is it plugged in
below? Below. Interesting. Yeah. Uses the colored audio ports as a
landmark. Is it an HDMI cable or DisplayPort? That's a great question. How would I
know the difference? Check your plug. Does it look like a
rectangle with a corner folded in or is it a slant on both sides?
That's a good way to describe it. I like that. That rolled right off his
tongue. You can tell he uses that all the time. Yeah. And does your keyboard light up?
Did I by Power ship us a backlit keyboard? Give me a second. I'm gonna have to find
it. So, as Cyber Power was asking me to
take out the keyboard, I pushed the the
lightest cardboard box off of the table and turn everything off. We were hoping
that he's going to call us back, but he hasn't so far. So, we're going to wait
on hold. 8 minutes. Okay. If the customer gets unexpectedly
disconnected, it is not weird to call them back and say, "Hey,
I mean, or email them back at least." They should have emailed you.
They should have done something. S H E A.
Why don't you know my email? I ordered online. Uh, can you do that again, but slower?
I'm so sorry. No, it's apologize. You didn't catch it.
Okay. I have FH EA. He said F. Pay respects to this poor
support rep. Well, I'm just going to send you an article so you have something to look at as well.
Quest receive receding GPU. I can walk you through it with the
guidance of that article. Wait, he wants to reset. We're going to receat the GPU first. I
strongly oppose this. Just because you're not getting an output doesn't
mean it's a problem with the GPU. He didn't even have her try the onboard graphics yet. Then he would know that
this is not the GPU being broken. It hung up again. And even though they
had my email, not a single follow-up email or anything.
Are you kidding me? We got disconnected again. They don't follow up.
Thank you for calling Sur Power PC tech support. My name is How can I help you?
Basically, my my computer will turn on, but the display won't.
All right, we can take a look at that. Can I have the serial number on the back of your computer?
What I don't like is reading out my serial number over and over again.
Give me the order number or something. Look me up my name. Look me up my email.
I don't care. And just a few quick questions just to
double check on a few things cuz there would be two different um DisplayPort
or HDMI connectors on the PC. One on the top, one on the the bottom on the not
bottom towards the middle on the back. More than two. That's not a great way of
describing that. Yeah. This person just doesn't sound
like they want to be there. And I can't say I blame them. It's a call center job.
Do the keyboard and mouse light up when you turn on the computer?
No. And that's connected to the top or the back?
To the back. Double check. Okay. This is a good troubleshooting step
though cuz this tells us that it's probably not just a display output
issue. This tells us that this is a post issue.
And she checked if it was to the front IO which could just be a bad cable on the
board or to right directly to the motherboard.
Yeah, I would recommend go ahead and try to receat that. If you can go ahead and
bring up those instructions, we can try to walk through that together. Dang it.
She had the opportunity. She asked the right questions and she's still having
us receipat the GPU. But you will need a screwdriver for this
cuz we will need to take the screws out of the back of it so that way you can
release it. But at least Shay is covered there. She
has a great screwdriver. LT from ltttore.com.
You need a smaller one? Get the stubby. Also from ltstore.com.
That's the one silver lining here. Thank you so much for your patience. Uh,
I have found a screwdriver. What is that?
Dang it, Shay. She had one earlier. Where'd it go?
It might be easier if you lay the PC on its side. Ooh, good move. I like that.
Uh, I'm just realizing that there's a bunch of screws on this little back
panel I'm looking on. So, am I doing like You said the tiny ones below the
DisplayPort. Yes, each of the tiny ones under the the
ports. Those are those are to take the card apart.
That's to take the the plate on the port off of the card when you tear down.
David, is this what you knew was coming? Are you kidding me? No, I see what we're
supposed to be removing. No, that one thumb screw. Yeah, at the top.
And then slide the thing up. No. Why are we taking apart our GPU?
Use the PCIe clip on the motherboard,
which is you can say towards the middle of the graphics card on the motherboard
itself. Joy would be on the bottom kind of underneath it.
What kind of instruction is that for someone that you Yeah. Do you see where she
obviously have identified as a novice user? She tells her where it is
on the bottom kind of underneath it. She didn't tell her to unplug it either.
Also, did we ever even unscrew it? No. We got the clip halfway through.
Oh, this is a disaster. If you're not sure, you can take a
picture of what you're looking at and send it to the email that was sent over
to you. Just send her a picture showing her where the lock is and what it looks
like. This is a truly awful experience
so far. And part of it is not this agent's fault. We already had to talk to
a previous agent who didn't call us back. I mean, the overall awful experience
too previously. That is really hard to see.
This is hard to see. And what's really wild is that this has been our
experience with now multiple Cyberpower
reps. Yeah. If you look at what that other PCIe slot looks like at the end of
it, how it has that little that PCIe slot is. I'm not sure what a PCIe slot is.
See the You can't jargon. All right. I sent you a screenshot with
two little circles on it. The first one. Cool. But tell me
the attitude's back. And tell me you're doing No, man. The attitude's back.
The blue one is circling where it looks like that little tab is on that one.
I I I pushed it and something moved. So,
it sounds like that released. Make sure that as you're doing that, you pull up
on the card. Yeah. And we also haven't released the screws at the back of the card. So, that
thing ain't coming. Oh my. Oh my goodness. Oh, stop pulling on it. Shake.
Uh, it's not. Oh, please. Oh, it seems like it's still stuck to the
back panel. Got all the screws out of that.
Yeah, you said it was the one It was the tiny ones that were right below the um
display ports, right? Yeah. I took the Oh, yeah. You took out all the screws,
buddy. Yes, we might need to take out some of the expansion screws, too, cuz
you know what? That is a valid step. Sometimes you can have a two slot card
and the third one overlaps a little bit. I know, but why didn't like why did she
realize that that's not what she was taking out to begin with? Cuz she said
we need Yeah, that milk is That milk is spilled. Okay, that milk is spilled.
Oh, did she just do what I thought she did to that poor graphics card?
Is she taking out all of them? It kind of looked like it cuz I've seen her go.
She's going ham, man. If only she had an even better screwdriver.
Yeah. With nurling on the shafts.
Get those screws out. It could be ratcheting right now. Yeah.
Oh. Oh. Oh, she The lock still engaging.
take out every. So, that's something that can happen is you can release the lock and then pull
the other side and it can rock the lock back down and then you can I'm surprised
she didn't rip the lock off that PC slot.
Okay, graphics card out.
What? What? What's the next step? I'm holding it in my hands.
All right, go ahead and leave it out for about 30 seconds. Then you can go ahead
and put it back in. What? Why are you leaving it out for 30 sec? What are you even talking about?
You can also try testing it on a different slot on the motherboard if you
feel comfortable doing that. She's like, I just got it. I just What
do you mean? I got to wait 30 seconds and put it back in.
There's no other slot that looks the same. Yeah, cuz they're probably color coded.
Oh, I Yeah, cuz one is silver. Yeah.
And then the other ones, like the screenshot you showed me, those are black. Does that matter?
Kind of. It'll work for troubleshooting. Okay. Performance is going to
There were such easier troubleshooting steps that we could have take. is I just
shove it. Are you going to provide her any instructions on how to put this card
back? I just shove it. Okay. Skater's guide to how to reen GPU.
Am I supposed to put all the screws back now?
Yes. Go ahead and put the screws back in as well, just to make sure that it's
She doesn't have to. You don't have to do that. You already got the system lying flat.
I did lose one in the case somewhere. Oh man, I'm like
agitated right now. Hold on.
Right there. That's the customer experience right
now. That's what you did to Shay.
Poor Shay. I'm just going to take a second and try to find the the the screw that I lost.
Adam, don't help. Oh, he's saying you could break the whole
No, he's right. He's right because if that screw is shorting something, the
rep should not be letting her turn the system back on with a loose screw
somewhere. Is it underneath the graphics card? Dear God.
Oh my god, her face.
Thanks for your patience. This is just going to take a moment. Okay,
I got to Okay, who's the support rep? It's pretty weird that you didn't bring
me a screwdriver from ltstore.com.
I DON'T JUNK in this in this facility. I
understand why Adam stepped in here. Oh, yeah. This could have easily taken all
day. Oh, 100%. Are you sure you don't want to rethink
the HPC Plus rating?
Well, what's this like a a D minus?
Nothing is coming up on my monitor. And the CPU does not have onboard
graphics support. I don't think she is checking if if uh it's got
onboard to try the onboard. So, yeah, the time to do that was an hour
ago. When did this start exactly? Was it just completely at random? It just
started or was it happening from the very beginning? That's a great question for right when
this call started. From the very beginning. This is the first time I've tried to uh turn on the
computer with my monitor plugged in. And the screen itself says no signal or
is it just a blank screen? Blank screen. Question.
How many times we got to tell you it's a blank screen. Okay, let's try one more thing. Shut it
off again. Go ahead and take off that glass panel again and then receat the
RAM, which is the two thin little
sticks. You only have one. My bad. It should say Tforce on it.
But will you be able to get Shay through the process? Where was this version of
this rep at the beginning of this call? I don't know.
Go ahead and take it out and then put it back in. Same thing you did with the
rim. I mean, go ahead and take it out.
Yeah. Don't Nothing about clips. Put it back in the same one that it was
originally in to start with. Make sure that you hear it quicken. What if she can't remember what that
was? Uh, I don't quite remember which one
that was, so we're going to guess. Oh my god. It would probably be one, which is the
one closest to the CPU. No. No. It' be two.
Yeah, it'd be one over. Okay, I put it back on. Um,
Shay, stop. Stop. It's definitely not in. Anything on the
screen? Still a blank screen, unfortunately.
Offer an RMA. I would give up if I was the rep at this
point. And I would ask to just send it back.
Even if you think a supervisor could help troubleshoot this better, at this
point, the customer's experience has been so long and dragged out and awful
that it really is just time to
say, "Forget it." Yeah, with HP I didn't feel that way yet just
because it hadn't been that long and we were it was such an easy troubleshooting
step. But now we've like we've taken this thing apart. We put it back
together. We've taken the thing out. We put it back in.
Uh there's just like little tabs that I can move. I'm just starting to like
wiggle stuff. Oh, well it's on. Shake.
It won't break it. It won't not break it.
Well, she's told her to push down until it clicks. Yeah, but like
what? You better be careful telling a novice user to push down till it clicks. Just
like I'm careful to make sure I don't forget to tell you about our sponsor,
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the video description. Oh, and we got disconnected.
You have got to be kidding me. Are you kidding me?
And this was definitely not us. We did not bump the phone.
That was a 50minute call. I was on that phone call for an hour. I'm just like so
sweaty. It was working for so good and then I figured it out at the end. She told me
she put she told me to put it in the wrong slot. I'm stressed. Oh my god,
it's pretty chilly in here. And I'm like
at this point they're just getting a failing grade if they can't
if they can't reconnect with us in like 5 minutes. And like she has my email. Yeah.
The latest person we were talking to, she sent me we we sent pictures back and
forth. He gave him 5 minutes. I would have given them two. Well, Cyberpower finally emailed for a
tech support survey. That's the one that we lost the call with them twice.
They had the audacity to send a survey
but not actually follow up the experience.
Please fill out our survey. Uh so we clearly have a way to contact you, but
only for the survey, not to double check that your problem was resolved.
I don't know if that was the longest support call we've ever seen on Secret
Shopper, but I think it's fair to say that that was the worst. It was pretty rough. They would have
been better off not participating at all. Oh my god. Sorry, who are we talking to now?
NZX. Order status increase. We appreciate your patience. We'll be
with you as soon as possible. 59 minutes. As soon as possible. They
waited an hour on hold. And what's really frustrating is that we
didn't wait a long time to talk to someone when we wanted to buy something.
Did he apologize for how long she was on hold? I don't think so.
Thank you for calling NZXT. My name is How can I assist you today?
Uh, are you using the HDMI port that's located up by the USB ports or you may
have a second one that's going to be lower below the audio jacks? Uh, below
the one below the audio jacks up. She's getting a little too seasoned now,
though. You can tell she knows what she's talking about now. Do you happen to have a cell phone
number I can send a text message to for a video call service that we use?
This is great. Immediate. If only we hadn't waited an
hour to talk to him. Then he would be way ahead of the game.
I have got to just double check the motherboard on this real quick. Yeah, that might already point me in the
right direction to what's going on with the PC. Uh, you can go and power it off real quick.
What? What the LED? You look at the LED. She's using her phone to show them what
LED is on, which Yeah, it probably says DRAM. Okay. All right.
And I'm trying to get like the exact model on the motherboard, and whoever put it here just put uh
Gigabyte G uh B760 temp doesn't have the
exact model number. I'm like, you guys suck. Did he just say that?
Uh just my guys, they they really do need to when I when I asked them for
this kind of info, like I needed Is he airing internal process
frustrations? He just crapped on his own support with a customer
in the middle of a customer support call.
I have my ways working around it. We're utterly incompetent, but don't
worry, I got you. That is a weird message.
Yeah, I believe that particular light is DRAM. I just wanted to be sure on here.
Knowledgeable though, buddy. Here he is. He's not even looking at
He knows it cold. Let's see. And this one's configured
four sticks. Okay. wondering if there might be an issue with one being loose.
Just to start, um I want you to go ahead and we're going to remove two RAM sticks
just to start on here. Uh first and third, that's good because four even at lower
speeds. First and third, counting from left to right. So, and
then to unlock them, there's going to be little tabs at the top and bottom of each stick.
He knows what he's doing. Uh is it okay if I put the phone down
for a second? Absolutely fine. It's too bad it took so long to get here.
Yeah. What a just crap stain on what is
overall pretty good a pretty smooth experience. Let's try and start the PC with just the
ones in slots two and four. See what what result we get. That's a good that's a good start. I
would try that too. I would 100% try that. If you actually look at the pin like the
the pin end of it. So the site the slot that goes into the motherboard. One
slide is uh one side is slightly longer than the other. They're pretty in the middle on DDR4 and
five. It's slight might be easier to put the PC on its
side as well. Boom. There it is. All
right, let's try and start the PC up now. See what uh see what result we get.
She's removed everything at this point, too. So, it should work. Like, as long
as she's slotted it back in correctly, it should work. At this point, though, I do think they
get at least some credit. Even if they ultimately don't solve it because they
went through the right steps and Oh, yeah. Uh, go ahead and power it off. We're
going to take all four sticks out at once, and we're just going to try and start it with no RAM to see if we get a
different error. I actually like that. I don't know if I would have thought of
that. Try it without any RAM at stick number one one and we'll just install it
in the fourth most slot. Okay, we really need to make sure she puts that RAM stick in properly though.
Come on, man. Oh, there you go. Okay, click.
That's a good click. Beautiful. Oh my god. I think this time it's okay. One one is in fourth slot.
All right, let's start with just that single stick around. Yes, good troubleshooting step.
Yeah, we're going to turn it on with just that one stick. He's not having her turn off the power
supply in between. Okay, so it's gone right back to the
regular setup, which is a good sign. So, it was probably in recovery setup. Now,
we're in actual setup. All right. Um, at this stage, let's go
ahead and just press the power button on top of the PC to shut it down. Let's see if we can get we can figure out what's
going on with the rest of the RAM. Doesn't matter which ones for these ones we put in. So, we can do like uh 13 and
1 and 14 and three. Wow. He's going to actually guide her successfully to put in all four sticks.
I bet you love it. And he's asking for the full click.
So, yeah. From here, we just got to go ahead and set up your account. Uh just use your standard login for that if you
happen to have like a I'd give them the full mark. She's going to keep walking her through
this. That probably explains why they wait an hour for people to talk to them.
I But then they should hire more support if people are on hold for an hour.
It's not always that easy. What we liked about it was that we had a great
experience once we talked to them. But like you said before, I just don't think
they can be higher than a B based on how long we waited to talk to them. An hour is a pretty long time.
Otherwise, he crushed it. crushed it. But that's that's an A to an A+ with
Demerits for how long we waited. Oh my god. An hour on the hold. But to
fix it in 20 minutes, not bad. For order status on new product
purchases that you have not yet received, say order status.
No. To get you to the right engineer, I need
the 10 or 11digit express service code from the bottom or side of your product.
X3.
Sorry, I didn't quite get that. Okay, of course it didn't work. Why would that
work? Thank you for calling, D. You've reached
a call routing operator. No wait time, though. May I have the service tag or the
express service code of the system? Why does he Why does he need the express
code to sharing? I want to put my fist through the screen. So that's going to be G as in golf and
that's in November. How much of our precious limited time on this earth has
been spent redundantly reading out strings of characters?
All right, please bear with me while I get you connected to the basic warranty
technical department. So, not only did the information she
provided not get passed through to the rep, the entire phone tree was
completely unnecessary because we still
had to go to an operator to direct our call to the correct place. Why don't
they just have her go get a hula hoop and and jump through it three times?
Shay, I can see here you're calling for your XPS 8950.
Yes. Oh, thank goodness. I he actually
the number of times that I have had to
give it three times. It's more than I would like to say.
Nothing will show up to the monitor. I'll definitely help you with this.
Okay. Okay. Hey, that gives me confidence. Me, too. Actually,
the monitor that you're using, is it a Dell or it's a nondell?
I think it's a nondell. Can you help me with the model number of your monitor, please?
Oh, he's trying to find out product information. That's You know what?
It's fair. It shouldn't really matter, but No. No. I actually like it.
Collecting information, not bad. And if the problem is that
there is no output, well, there are three potential causes.
The computer, the monitor, or the cable. I can see you have a NVIDIA 3060
graphic card. Okay, he's looking at our system. Is
there any kind of obvious incompatibility? You have matching ports in uh both
monitor and the desktop. Okay. You know, he's the only person who's
actually done that. Made sure that we have matching ports. A lot of people are
still using pretty old monitors that only have HDMI or VGA and DVI. Yeah.
So, what we need to do here, we need to perform a hard reset. Okay.
He's the only one who's tried a quick turn it off and on again.
Like that's almost always good point, right? Nobody else has done it.
Yeah. And that's like the first thing you always try when troubleshooting is just try to power cycle it once. Also
unplug the monitor as well and unplug
everything uh from the monitor as well like the power cord.
Wait, what? He doesn't she doesn't Yeah, she doesn't need to unplug the monitor.
Uh also from the monitor. I wonder if he's trying to just power power. I think he's trying to power
cycle it. Okay, thank you for doing that. Yeah,
thank you for your patience. This is good customer service. Doing good. I do need to see and
actually solve the problem before I give him a good grade. But
also, you will be able to see uh some buttons on your monitor.
Input select is one of them. Yep. Yeah. Make sure it's set to the right
thing. Can you check on your keyboard uh caps
lock key is lit up or not? That's a good troubleshooting step that
we should have done a thousand years ago. Power button of the tower. Is it solid
white or is there any flashing code that
you can see? They do have an indicator. He just
hasn't been using it.
No. Why did it Why did it take him like 20
minutes to get here or three times with a white and then
there's a pause and then it flashes twice with a yellow orange light.
I want to know what that code means. I want to look up that code right now cuz
I bet it might issue. For example, the power and battery
status light blinks amber two times followed by a pause and then blinks white three times followed by a pause.
This 23 pattern continues until the computer is turned off indicating no
memory or RAM is detected. Oh my god, that's
you. That's from dell.com.
So there are two covers. One is left side cover, one is front cover. Okay.
So, you need to remove the left side cover. Is this system powered on?
Yep. This lights on the GPU. Oh, good. Looks like. Yeah.
Okay. Um, you got it. Yeah. Victory. The computer's still on.
Just a Oh, you need to you need to turn it off, actually.
He's been so calm and collective this whole time. You need to turn it off.
There are clips securing that. You need to like uh spread the clips.
You know, spread the clips is actually a sooner description than I've heard from
some of the other reps. Yeah. Yes. And they are two same uh things
like they're two uh 8 GB each.
Okay. Yes. I I I got them out. I almost dropped one of them. I hope that's not
important. Uh but we're good. Start the computer. still flashing the
same pattern. So, unplug the power cord.
Unplug the power cord.
Unplug the memories back to the tower.
Oh, yeah. So, he tried with nothing in. That's fine. Got a new code.
Yep. Let's see if we end up with dual channel memory at the end of this.
Oh, okay. There you go. Done.
A satisfying click from all of them. Okay, I think this is it.
Yeah, cycle. All right, powering the computer up.
Great. Um, yeah, it's asking me to sign in.
Okay, here we go. It It took like a half hour. I have to dock points for wasting our
time when he had a postcode. I think it's a B+. I can't give him an A
for not catching that most obvious of diagnostic steps.
Keep my email handy for future reference. And if you need any help or
if you have any questions, if you ever need more help, don't worry.
We're here for you. B+ B. And with one and a half pluses.
Okay. I felt taken care of at least. And I
never felt at any point like I wasn't going to get it resolved.
No. And he wasn't frustrated uh or anything. He was very patient. It felt
uh very a little slow double-checking things a billion times, asking me if I
have the same chord like six times. But I will say I'd rather someone be
thorough and it feel like I'm it's taking a little long for me than uh than
to be like assuming all of these things and all of a sudden he's like somewhat
the technical support is like five steps ahead and I'm still seeing what step one
is. It's interesting hearing hearing Sha's take on the slow methodical pace
versus the like quick everyone's techsavvy right pace where yeah it felt
slow but at least people weren't five steps ahead of me. Yeah I buy power.
Hello and thank you for calling I by power. Thank you for purchasing a system
directly from I by power. Regarding your I by power system. Press one for issues
with game codes or gift cards. When turning on your PC for the first time,
it can take several minutes for Windows to load
to check for loose cables, make sure the computer is completely powered down and
unplugged. Then remove both side panels.
On most builds, Windows will be installed to the solid state drive or
SSD, which is a thin rectangular component roughly the size and shape of
a smartphone. Is there a robot telling us everything
we could possibly need to know about troubleshooting our computer? Plugging into the SSD,
even if both cables appear to be plugged in. This is like a game loading screen that
has like game chips. Are we in the FAQ? Is this
just an audio version of the FAQ? I have no indication right now that someone is
going to come talk to me. Yeah, I don't know if she's actually on hold. Please remain on the line and an agent
will be with you shortly. Great. But it would have been really the SSD might be unplugged is
something that has to be. Thank you for calling out about power
tech support though. The display turns on, but it's coming up with a little box
that says uh install Windows. The computer restarted unexpectedly or
encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed to install
Windows. This was a system that had an actual problem with it.
This is the one. It got messed up on the Windows install. I just tried a few
quick fixes. It could happen to anyone. Go ahead and press the shift and the F10
key on your keyboard. M get that command
prompt open. Okay. Re E g. What was next after that?
Reedit. Regedit. That's crazy. We're going straight to registry
editing. This is a little dangerous to be honest. Wow.
Like I He's going to tell her exactly what to type, so it's probably fine. But
I don't know. I don't know if I tell a new user to use regedit
like immediately. First step. Let's go.
Yeah, I got it. Okay. All right. So, let's go look for the
drop down. And now, he's lucky he's talking to a user who's savvy enough to just immediately find a
drop down. When you click on child completion on the right hand side, you're going to
have setup.exe. Yes.
All right. Go ahead and double click on setup.exe.
The value data should be at one. We're going to change it to three.
Oh, I see what happened. It's not that the Windows install is corrupted. It's
that the Ubie, the outofbox experience, somehow got corrupted or bypassed or
disabled. So, we've just restarted it.
You can tell they've dealt with this before. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was like, "Oh, it's
this." Once the computer restarts, you should be greeted with the Windows welcome
screen. Yeah, it's asking uh my country and Yeah, it's the whole Windows setup
thing. So, great. Okay, cool. Uh anything else I
can help you with today, miss? No, that's everything. Thank you so
much. So, we are calling back uh I by Power to with uh the RAM issue that
we've given the other ones. Uh we're going to try the RAM on I by Power
to make sure we have an apples to apples. Uh-oh. They were pretty fast with the other
one. They were fast once we've made it through their lecture about how to
Yeah, that was okay. So, you're just getting like a
black screen. Yeah. Different rep. Yeah, seems like it.
Is this a new computer? Yes. Do you have the order number?
Um, yes I do. Looks like you have a MSI motherboard
which will have a couple of debug lights inside. So if you look at the glass panel
to the debug lights on the top right of it, you see a small
LED light there. I do see a small LED light there. Yes.
Uh, what color is it? Uh, it is mustard yellow.
Two issues cuz I get I bet you he's
going to solve this. Like look, he's already got the debug light figured out.
So far ahead. Yellow's going to represent your RAM.
Would you feel comfortable taking the RAM out of the computer and putting it back in?
I by power might have solved both of these issues in about the same time as
our best resolution of the one issue with the others.
Yeah. And it's two different reps, too. So, we can't even just, you know, tie it
to like, oh, we had a good guy. Nope.
So, above each one, you guys see a plastic tab. I do see a plastic tab.
That tab away from the stick of RAM.
Away from the stick of RAM. That's good. That's great instructions.
I like that. Yeah. Ah, that makes sense. Oh, I got one out. Would you like me to
do the same thing with the other one? Yeah. Yeah. Let's take both of them out.
No, not quite the same thing, but sure. The only thing he could have done better
is have her put the computer on its side. Yeah. and help with the orientation of
the rim. Sure, she's done this a few times and she kind of knows what she's doing at
this point. They feel secure. They feel clicked in.
Crushed it. They crushed it. Knocked it out of the park. I see a Windows logo. Yay.
Perfect. Easy. A Yeah, no problem. No question.
Honestly, A+ two completely different reps crushed it almost instantly. They
figured it out. They knew exactly where to go. Six and a 7 minutes. Just under 7
minutes. What makes it not an A+? the
weird tutorial. Okay, fine. I would be mad listening to
that thing, too. Trying to pawn me off on the FAQ so
hard. The actual service was fantastic. I agree with you. A+.
That was awesome. Awesome. Just like this. Awesome. Segue
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guys enjoyed this video, you can check out the previous two parts of Secret Shopper 3 where we looked at the
ordering process and what arrived in the mail. Or if that's not enough for you,
you can check out the previous two complete rounds that we've done in the
past to get some of the inside jokes
about Dell warranties and financing and whatnot. The previous ones haven't gone
great for Dell.