Troubled Times at Gateway

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at the future of Gateway in the light of the recent announcement of the departure of their CEO. The article revolves around the question: 'Will the sudden departure of Wayne Inouye and a slumping stock price leave the computer maker open to a buyout or takeover?'"

Re:Oh Boy, Oh Boy!

[lheal]

Over the past 15-20 years I've known many Gateway customers. Tech-savvy users, grandmas, University departments, small businesses, all have one thing in common: every single person or group I've ever known to have bought a Gateway PC has had to call their tech support line about something.

How do I know this? After the first two or three, I started to ask: "How was their tech support?" They'd usually answer matter-of-factly, "Oh, they were great. There was this little problem, but they helped me fix it right away."

Sometimes they'd say no, and I'd ask, "Really? You're the first." Then they'd respond with "Oh, well, now that you mention it, there was this problem with the [memory, hard disk, keyboard, missing item, whatever], but they helped me fix it right away."

Second time buyers didn't return to Gateway

[Proudrooster]

Gateway has been dead for awhile now as evidenced by the $2/share stock price. Remember the local Gateway store where you could go to the factory showroom and order a custom computer? The main problem that Gateway had was inferior parts and poor after-the-sale customer service, which resulted in customers not returning again and again for upgrades and second time PC purchases.

An ancedotal story. My mother-in-law wanted a new computer and I offered to build her one. She insisted that she wanted a large company like Gateway standing behind her in case of a problem. I groaned and let her buy from Gateway. The PC had problems out of the box, most noticably skipping when playing audio CD's. Grinning, I told my mother-in-law just to call gateway and they would take care of it. She called and they ran her through the reboot your computer, click this irrelevant non-related thing, then that irrelevant thing. To make a long story short, the CD-ROM drive was defective and Gateway refused to replace it, but gave her a code and 1-800 number to call periodically for more information regarding a fix.

I just laughed, and laughed and laughed. Yep, the big company was standing behind (sic) it's brand new defective product. Soon after than the video card died, but Gateway did replace that after 2 agonizing calls, and then close to the end of the warranty period the monitor died, which was also replaced.

So when it came time to upgrade to a better PC? Did my mother-in-law go back to Gateway? Nope, she called me to come and take care of it.

Gateway had a strong lead and should have spun itself off into a world-class service and support organization. They could have been the first "Geek Squad", but they chose substandard customer service coupled with the cheapest parts available to make margins. Shipping defective monitors around has got to cut into profit margins.

Because of this, everyone has already bought a Gateway and isn't going back for another. I wonder if I could sell a T-Shirt, which read: "Been there, bought that, Got the Cow-Box." :)

Re:I hate to be negative...

[Literaphile]

It's true -- I'm typing this message on a circa 2003 Gateway laptop, and people who hear the fan mistake it for an airplane taking off. Incredibly loud!

Re:Gateway has problems

[damneinstien]

Well, seriously, I have **never** had problems with Gateway for computers. I bought my first computer from them back when I was 12. As a child with non-technical parents, any "problem" we had was software-related (read Windows) and they were more than helpful in fixing that too. Recently, my hard-drive from a 4-year old computer died and they sent a new one after one call.

Last year, I bought a laptop from them. ALL their hardware is 100% non-proprietary (i.e. not their own; Pentium M, IPW2200 Wireless, etc). That means I can run Ubuntu Linux on it pretty much out of the box (had to configure volume keys etc.) That for me was a great plus.

I suppose this isn't really a "pro list" but is just my positive experience.