This guy should get FIRED!! - $1500 Gaming PC Secret Shopper Part 3
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
3,336 words · ~16 min read
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yeah i understand
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well the orders are in we're back at hq and it's time for us to review the most
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challenging portion of fifteen hundred dollar sipc secret
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shopper project secret agent magnum
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ti thank you forgot your name again
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this is how all of our competitors responded
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to a fairly rudimentary technical
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support request hi there um i just was setting up the
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computer i bought for my brother and i noticed that in the system it says
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there's only eight gigabytes of memory but in the order it's supposed to be 16.
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ifixit's protect toolkit gives you the tools you need to tackle any electronics
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repair challenge visit ifixit.com forward slash Linus at the link below to
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get yours today
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so
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so first it's our favorite alienware
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thank you for calling alienware the quickest way to get you to the right
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support agent is to get your products express service code this is different
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from your service tag or asset id
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i don't know what my service card would be system is listed under premium support
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warranty this is easy basically so i'm gonna need
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to transfer you to bring your support is this five
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minutes already of just pier about
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are we just sitting here in silence again
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hello hello is it me you're looking forward no you
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know you're not doing on hold right when you have to come back and say hello
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thank you very much for waiting are we 15 minutes into this call and they
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haven't even gotten as far as who are you
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and what do you have are we being asked for the order number
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again okay ma'am just stay connected i'll transfer your call to the technical
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department we're not at the technical department
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yet
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thank you for calling dell basic hardware warranty support where you have
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your system service tag or the expert service code do you just ask for all our
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information again oh my god we're explaining the problem again
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oh i'm extremely sorry to hear that
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man this should have not happened well you should not have happened yes okay
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thank you astounding observation skills
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i can just go ahead and connect your calls
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with the union weight apartment okay now are we getting transferred again
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we have had nearly half a dozen people that we've talked to at alienware in
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pre-sales and after sales support
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just put us on hold for a minute at a time
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why what we need to do is open a computer and just double check
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that you have two because it could be that one rom is not uh
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connect it's not um like it needs to be
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like reset or reconnected can you open
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uh this uh the aurora hard drive to check if you have the tuba
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um i could are you able to guide me through
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it i don't actually know that much about computers
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yes of course see she's a remote then and then she goes to youtube
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and shows us the video about how to access the memory
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okay all right well i'm okay with that on this video we'll teach you how to
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replace your RAM modules on the aurora r5
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nothing beats off peeling plastic covers off your new aurora again to alienware's
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credit this system is pretty straightforward to get at sorry is this
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the right video or are you looking for a different one yeah this is the right
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video so it says r5 but uh basically
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it's the same structure so basically you have to open
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that panel do i need to unplug it first
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no basically you don't need to uh okay so yeah you need to unplug the computer
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and turn it off but
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basically we're not gonna touch any
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we're just gonna check if you have the true world when you turn it no it's
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actually yeah
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there you go janice's first first RAM swap everyone
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ladies and gentlemen so in summary do i understand this
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correctly it took just shy of a full hour
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with five separate departmental transfers to
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diagnose a RAM stick that came loose during shipping
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hopefully the next one can do better here we go
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all right origen show me your leadership now before i proceed i do
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need to verify the information that i have on the account uh could you provide me with the address that we have on file
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okay so it took four minutes to get to the point where we verified the order
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and everything that's not terrible okay well yeah i definitely
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definitely see that the invoice uh says two eight Gigabyte sticks of origin pc
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ddr4 3000 megahertz RAM um
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it's possible that maybe one of the sticks uh got loose during transit
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possible uh given the vibrations that the machine undergoes during transit
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uh you know very possible that one of the modules came
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slightly loose enough uh you know to not be recognized
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this would require you having to essentially open up your machine uh so
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that you can double check on this um are you familiar with pc hardware to
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any extent like uh would you be able to identify memory modules on a motherboard
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um probably not would you be able to
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help me out with that final problem absolutely you got the email with the
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link to the to the dropbox video that's kind of weird why wouldn't they just host it on youtube
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i gotta say alienware's production values were a little nicer that's
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probably not the way that i would show most users how to do that ideally
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putting using both your thumbs to put equal force on each end of the stick and
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you'll feel a very noticeable click his video three out of ten his instructions
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solid 9 out of 10. i gotta say janice for someone who
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doesn't seem to have been doing this before you you you've done this a lot
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faster than some of the most of the customers i i'm on the phone with so
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smooth operator ah interesting so we've actually thrown
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an extra curve ball at origin pc here plugging the HDMI connector into the
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motherboard rather than our dedicated graphics card oh that big card it has a
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ribbon cable that goes from the card itself to the motherboard
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and um if that came blue slightly then you're probably not going to get a
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picture okay this is a good explanation but he's got the wrong diagnosis let's
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see how long it takes him and to clarify when you initially got picture um
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do you know whether or not you were coming out of the graphics card or the
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uh or the onboard video on the motherboard
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he's done this before 19 minutes including a detailed
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explanation and walk through of the pebcak with plugging the monitor
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into the onboard i o versus the GPU directly
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competence great job thank you for calling maingear
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manufacturer of award-winning pcs and workstations now this is the real test
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if they can manage to turn an order number into like
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um that's not the order number i'm not sure what that is oh
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really the order number would be
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five or six digits and start with an eight or nine okay at least that's clear
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instructions all right let me uh let me remotely connect to your pc and have a
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look at a couple things all right pops up device manager i don't know what
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he's expecting to find in device manager he's probably just kind of like oh i haven't done this in a little bit hold
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on there it is slots used one of two yep
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nope there's definitely only one stick in there that's crazy um okay let's make
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sure that one stick didn't get loose immediately nails the diagnosis um if
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you look inside your machine do you know where the RAM slots are
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so 10 minutes to diagnosis you should see
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a uh here let me go look through one as well so i can be more specific wow okay
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nice there should be four or it could be four or eight but usually it's four
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vertical slots oops it's two and it said that in task manager i guess they don't
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sell a lot of low-end stuff i would usually assume a main gear system
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probably has four or eight let's figure this out so if you could
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just shut down the computer shut down the computer
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i'm gonna have you open up the machine and we're gonna make sure those sticks
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are in there properly does he mention to unplug it though okay so with the
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computer shut down i want you to unplug all the connections from the back of it
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all right rock on main gear guy looks like that's all it was just a loose uh
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RAM stick but you're uh you're all set if you um run into any other issues feel
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free to give me a call back sure thank you so much that's it
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so excluding some six minutes random
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nonsense with our monitor not properly waking from an HDMI signal etc
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about 15 minutes
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start to finish
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dang one quarter of the time and so much less
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frustration like it was just friendly the voice on the other end of the line
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is crystal clear i mean you can't take that kind of thing for granted honestly like you could
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understand the guy
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for tech support straight to tech support like why
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doesn't dell have that feature doesn't seem that complicated if you feel
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comfortable looking inside of the pc remove the left side panel of the
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computer pull out the sticks of RAM and simply re-seat them to see if in case
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one of them is not treated properly got the diagnosis is that
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uh where would i find that in the computer
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on the motherboard excuse me did i even just hear you
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correctly uh the motherboard if you don't know what a
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RAM is i would advise you either seek
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help from somebody a family member who perhaps has a little bit more experience
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or have someone help you remove that stick around and receive them not
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everybody has a family member that can help them that's why they bought a pre-built smart guy um okay
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i don't really know who to ask so you you're not able to
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like tell me what i'm looking for
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i told you the sticks of RAM are on the rambar on the motherboard itself
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so is it those two vertical
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pieces on the upper right hand corner yes
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so your troubleshooting stuff would be to pull them out and put them back in but again
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be careful with that because if you don't know what you're doing and you break something you're going to avoid
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all your warranty on the system
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thanks buddy so i just should find someone else to
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help me if you have a family member or a friend
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who's tech diver yet
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is i bypower employing her friend or family member
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to provide their tech support
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so he's just waiting for her to hang up like
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hi yeah not not a problem to not be very helpful do anything
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unreal in dell's defense they got the problem
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solved an hour's investment in getting your new computer set up or whatever
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is not the end of the world given you're gonna run it for eight or nine years
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but to just treat the customer like an idiot
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and outright refuse to help them okay uh
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you're not able to help me through that not my ability to
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mimic your ability to look inside a computer if you're not familiar with the
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part it's going to be very difficult to do anything inside of the pc this
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requires more technical skill it's not my ability it's your ability
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completely unacceptable i'm ready it can't be worse than alienware
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oh so they don't even have an easy way to get in touch with them i actually
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don't even mind this form on one condition it gets best done
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when someone picks up the phone
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they have read and understood it hold on i'm
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transferring you to someone who can help you now who do i have the pleasure of
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speaking with today hi my name is janice
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and the last name toll camp so he doesn't have the form
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what is the purpose of the
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holy form he's asking for her phone number
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all right so what we're gonna do is we're gonna get a hold of the sales
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department
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why to get solutions for your hp product
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please hang up and go to www.support.hp.com
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where you can troubleshoot or get software and drivers when your phone
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support that you can only call by finding the number by navigating the
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website tells you to go to the website you done goofed
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sorry i still didn't get that just tell me what kind of product you're calling
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about desktop pc
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okay we make many types of desktop pcs you might say something like pavilion
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spectre presario omni touch smart or
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envy go ahead and tell me what kind you have
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omen have your product model and serial
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number ready for your agent hold on i'm transferring you now
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okay janice so yeah it looks like they did ship you out like the configuration
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they ship you out does actually have just eight i don't see a showing 16 like
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the one that you ordered we personally removed half the memory so
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unfortunately uh while i do tech support i'm unable to
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access like any of the sales software to look it up but i can't provide you the
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number if you'd like
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so here's the issue right now every company we talked to where the rep
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had
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an ounce of experience with pc hardware
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immediately identified the problem i'm not imagining
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that this is common okay um i know that
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we're trying to get you over to like the canada sales department did they send
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you back over to us yes
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okay uh what did they end up saying um exactly uh well they did confirm that
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like the order was for 16 gigabytes
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um and then i got transferred a bunch of times and i ended up here somehow
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interesting um let me
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let me see here
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you should have 16 gigabytes
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right yeah that's what i thought as well
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probably there's a um there's a setting that you need to
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check or verify that ma'am if it's security i can connect you to our
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technical support what setting makes RAM appear oh the shortcuts are downloading
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my app is he actually going to start trying to troubleshoot for us now
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is this is this the magic moment 20 minutes in or whatever let me put you on
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a brief hold while i do a little bit more research here it shouldn't be any more than about
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probably five to seven minutes or so i'll be right back with you okay janice
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thank you for that
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okay how long were we on hold 14 minutes
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14 twice as long the amount of time we spent on
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hold without nothing happening is the amount of time it took like main giant
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origin to resolve the whole problem and the amount of time that dell spent
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incomplete and utter silence
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i don't know why they ended up actually transferring you back over to us that
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should have been handled on their side of things in order to get that fixed because you just got the
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computer it's well before the 30 day mark and
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everything like that they should have been able to get that going to rectify
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the issue for you you had mentioned like looking in the case and checking or like
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seeing if i had the two sticks which i haven't done i don't know much about
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computers so i didn't dare do that um
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should i should i do that first again janice helping out tech support
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here what can happen while computers are
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being shipped and everything they do gets moved around and everything so it
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could end up being that it just needs to be unplugged and plugged right back in
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on both of them because we don't know which one could be unseated and then it
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might actually fix your issue right there as being able to detect that it
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has 16 gigabytes after that okay
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he knows see here's my issue with this guy
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because he has mostly come across as though he pretty much knows what he's
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talking about the issue though is seems to be a policy
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one if i had to guess within 30 days it's sales problem after 30 days tech
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support's problem he just was trying really hard
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not to have to do troubleshooting
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instead opting to send free product or push us back to sales
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like it's not like they weren't willing to solve the problem they just didn't
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want to diagnose it isn't that weird
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like eight gigs of RAM that's not insignificant that's like 80 bucks they
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were just gonna send it hp managed to be
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worse 72 minutes to get a stick of RAM unseated and
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reseeded and hp had the advantage of janice already actually knowing how to
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pull out and replace memory by this point are you ready to declare a tie
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origin in main gear
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with shockingly dell with that performance taking the bronze medal here
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followed by hp who ultimately did at least solve the problem with i buy power
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in dead friggin last they're not even the best they're like
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well they just didn't finish the mass drop control keyboard is constructed
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with a solid cnc aluminum frame with a
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built-in switch plate that makes it very stable and extremely durable it's fully
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programmable with RGB lighting and qmk firmware which makes it much easier to
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program and gives you more control and at checkout you can choose between
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cherry mx kaiwa and halo switches which
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will affect the price depending on your choice but gives you an incredible amount of flexibility in terms of the
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feel so pick it up today on mass drop for a limited time through the link in
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the video description stay tuned for the next part where ivan
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will be performing autopsies on all the systems looking in depth at how the
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preloaded software came and all that kind of good stuff in the meantime though if you guys dislike this video
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you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe
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consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description but not yet let us
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finish with the auto season performance okay also down there is our merch store
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which has cool shirts like uh not like this outward or this outer cool shirt
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like this inner cool shirt and our community forum which you should totally
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join