Companies that should know Better

Well it time to name some of those companies that should know better than produce defective and untested products. Especially those that then refuse to take the blame for the defects they have manufactured into the them in the first place. Especially when some of these defects should have been picked up during the product testing phase.

So starting with the most expensive first we have the Renault Scenic Mark Two. A lovely car to drive, mechanically sound and very safe. Electrically however it is a pure nightmare of a car. Here is just a few  of the electrical problems people have this car:

• Speedometers/Dashboard failures 
• Electric Window failures
• Electrical failures with the Heating system because of poor wiring

This is to name but a few, trust me there are many more on the web. The list goes on if you look on any of the independent Renault forums. What is worse is the company are making no effort to offer any cost effective solutions to some of the problems they have built in to the design of the car, although they are happy to take hundreds of pounds from you because only they can do the reapirs. Clearly they are not interested in making sure we buy another of their cars despite what they say when you phone up and complain for thirty minutes after waiting for ages at your own expense, it's not even a free call. They really need to look at their customer relations and their basic car design.

The next company is Hewlett-Puckard, a internationally well known computer manufacturer. They are in this post due to the poor design and testing behind a whole range of laptop computers manufactured a few years ago, all of which have display problems. Basically these high end computers were fitted with Nvidia 8400 series graphics processor. It would appear that what happens is these chips overheat and then they melt the solder that holds the chip in place on the motherboard. This causes them to malfunction, generally soon after the warranty runs out making the machine unusable. 

Like Renault although thousand of people have the same problem who brought the machines they have washed their hands of the problem. What is makes it worse is the fault should have once again been picked up in testing. The company should have known what the temperature the Nvidia 8400 series graphics processor was running at. Placing a simple temperature probe on the chip or looking at the information from the probe on the motherboard would have told them the solder was approaching a point where it would melt. It doesn't take a lot to conclude from this information that the computers would fail unless the chips had better cooling. 

Clearly like Renault they don't want us to be returning customers or they would do more for us. They think they are a big enough company not worry about what we think of there products. The fact is we didn't speed hundreds of pounds on computers that should last at least five years or more to have them fail just over a year after they were purchased. 

Finally another of the great names in electronics. this time it is the turn of the electronics and electrical giant Samsung. In this case it is their range of American Fridge Freezers. These have a number of well know faults that seem to crop up again and again. For example there are the cooling fans. These are fitted with a thermal fuse and this fitted with good reason for the fans seem to overheat because of bad design and burn out. At least the fuse stopped the house burning down when it went on my fridge. The other problem is when the light bulb blows it take the whole control unit it with it. A one hundred forty pound part and that is without all the food that gets ruined in the process because the whole thing fails. How much more would it have cost them to fit a surge protector to control unit to stop this happening in the first place. 

The Fridge Freezers are clearly not fit for purpose. You would expect them to last in the region of eight to ten years before they need replacing. Clearly with the number of people complaining about them this is not the case. Although reparable these sort of design faults shouldn't be there in the first place. Once again they must have known there was a potential problem with the fans and surly they should have checked out what happens when the bulb blows. They must have know about about the power surge, that is just basic electronics and that is their business. 

Time will tell what Samsung customer service are like. They will be getting a call in the morning and I will let you know how I get on. The bulb went in the freezer today and took the whole thing with it. It never even blew the fuse in the plug or tripped the power breakers in the house, it just all went dark when the control unit failed and took with it all the food in the freezer.

A know some of you might have had dealings with these companies and say how pleased you are with them. These might seem like isolated examples but in many, if not all, case these problems should have be resolved at the design and testing phase of the products. They are problems that should have be thought of. These are big companies and unless they want to be little ones they need to address the short comings of designs and show the customers some love and admit there mistakes.