07-05-2020, 01:48 AM
Hey there,
I'm sorry to put the community in a bad mood but the customer support is just abysmal. Here's my story:
I've ordered the Pinebook Pro on January 19th and received it damaged on March 17th. Of course it gets damaged because the packaging is just a joke! there are two very thin cardboard boxes in a plastic bag!!! I can't imagine anyone got it undamaged, there is near zero edge protection!
I've contacted support and provided them with photos of the damage.
They accepted to send me a replacement display, which took until June 27th (!) to arrive.
After replacing the display, the USB seems to have failed. The input devices won't work internally or over USB I requested to send the notebook in for repair but the customer support just keeps asking for new videos. For example I've showed them how the internal keyboard and trackpad won't work, and I told them that I tried external ones.
Then they ask me to connect USB devices and show them that this doesn't work either, surely after that they want me to show how Bluetooth devices work or how serial devices don't work and so on. I'm sure they take their fun out of people getting their videos done!
I really don't like how they treat a patient customer who waited over half a year for a working product and not move their finger to really help to sort things out.
I suggest anyone who wants to get a linux laptop to not buy this but instead chose another manufacturer because here you will struggle if your hardware is not working from the day it gets shipped.
I'm pretty sure the whole laptop was damaged when I got it and should've been replaced completely. It seems to me that they just buy time until I give up.
Contrary to the claims on the shopping page, I will request a refund from PayPal, I really can expect a better support than what I've received in this case.
I'm sorry to hear that. Granted I've only ordered and received one, but I was impressed by the way it was packaged and arrived. I've been nothing but impressed by everything with the one I received. Though I'd be pretty miffed in your situation, too. Mind you, based on what you wrote, that's just not the worst support ever. I've had far worse from other companies in recent years.
Sorry to hear if your shipping woes.
Mine arrived just fine in the packaging.
Have you attempted to file a complaint with the carrier?
-Happy Testing
(Posted from my Pinebook PRO Mate)
Getting Paid to break your product (and make it better) since 2005
Yeah, you're good to get out now. The pinebook pro has been a failure.
1. NVMe adapter does not work with most drives due to power limitations https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebo...SSD_drives
2. NVMe adapter was shipped untested, does not fit, company lies saying the problems are solved for months before they supposedly fixed them in the latest revision https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...5#pid63725
3. Booting from NVMe is unstable, possibly due to buggy implementation of the PCIe driver? https://git.eno.space/pbp-uboot.git/commit/
4. Long transfers over wifi cause the laptop to crash https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#Issues
5. Pine64 shipped uart adapters that were 5v instead of 3.3v, overvolting the uart interface and crashing the laptop https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...2#pid54272
And thats all assuming you don't get a damaged device in the mail. #2 was my personal experience from customer support and it was terrible. Its a real shame because I love the idea of this laptop, but everything is so terrible I have to recommend people not to purchase it.
My experience with support has been abysmal as well. After diagnosing a hardware issue with my unit (even going so far as to write a kernel patch to diagnose the fault and work around it) and presenting all the information to support, I was met with patronizing responses telling me it was user error and requests to send videos which they then proceeded to doubt.
After finally convincing them to replace my unit, they have now stated that they will not provide a shipping label! I already spent $33 on shipping when ordering the unit and now they want me to spend more to get service for a hardware fault. At this rate I'll end up spending 1/3 of the laptop's price on shipping alone.
I'd say Pine64 support is practically non-existent. My PBP was shipped in the first two batches in June 2020, the ones that had an "abnormal" number of issues reported. Lucky me, I got my PBP relatively quickly, but with a broken webcam and a nasty coil whine.
After spending almost a week trying to figure out if it was a software or hardware issue I finally opened a support ticket with Pine. Initially, support team responded to my ticket and asked me to check if webcam works in the Android OS image, and after I confirmed it wasn't working they promised to forward my issue to their engineering team.
A few weeks later I still haven't heard anything back from the support team. Also, even though Pine64 admitted there was a higher-than-usual number of faulty units, there was absolutely no word on what, or even if, they were going to do something about it. Meanwhile, the 30-day warranty on my PBP was about to end, so I opened a PayPal dispute.
Another week later, and they still haven't replied to my support ticket OR my PayPal dispute... So I escalated it into a claim.
5 days after I escalated my dispute into claim Pine support finally woke up and replied to my ticket... They were finally looking into the webcam issue, blah-blah-blah, they would send me a replacement screen if they found it was at fault... But first, they wanted me to cancel my PayPal claim.
Of course, this might have been a coincidence and they would've replied to me regardless of my PayPal dispute and eventually made things right... But I've been scammed like this once before, so now I'm not going to cancel my claim given that once you close a dispute/claim you can no longer re-open it if something goes wrong later or seller decides to continue ignoring you.
Not only Pinebook Pro, but PinePhone too. Have you seen the video on one of Louis Rossmann's YT channel with "unboxing" of a PinePhone? Spoiler alert: the battery didn't blow up but it was an "unique" Linux experience.
Thanks for the warning about the serial console adapter. Does it have a jumper to set the voltage? It came in a nice casing and I didn't break it, yet.
(07-05-2020, 01:48 AM)gentux Wrote: Hey there,
I'm sorry to put the community in a bad mood but the customer support is just abysmal. Here's my story:
... I suggest anyone who wants to get a linux laptop to not buy this but instead chose another manufacturer because here you will struggle if your hardware is not working from the day it gets shipped.
I'm pretty sure the whole laptop was damaged when I got it and should've been replaced completely. It seems to me that they just buy time until I give up.
Contrary to the claims on the shopping page, I will request a refund from PayPal, I really can expect a better support than what I've received in this case. How can you dare to wine here about your woes?
If the down-voting possibility still was active you would have been put to minus 20 by a gang of rowdies blindly killing anyone daring not to praise pine64.org
You really should not keep forgetting the "/s" tag
Or, maybe you are serious........
With the device costing "only" $200, there is not a lot left for support, poor planning
09-27-2020, 09:44 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-27-2020, 10:03 AM by lot378.)
(07-05-2020, 01:48 AM)gentux Wrote: Hey there,
I'm sorry to put the community in a bad mood but the customer support is just abysmal. Here's my story:
I've ordered the Pinebook Pro on January 19th and received it damaged on March 17th. Of course it gets damaged because the packaging is just a joke! there are two very thin cardboard boxes in a plastic bag!!! I can't imagine anyone got it undamaged, there is near zero edge protection!
I've contacted support and provided them with photos of the damage.
They accepted to send me a replacement display, which took until June 27th (!) to arrive.
After replacing the display, the USB seems to have failed. The input devices won't work internally or over USB I requested to send the notebook in for repair but the customer support just keeps asking for new videos. For example I've showed them how the internal keyboard and trackpad won't work, and I told them that I tried external ones.
Then they ask me to connect USB devices and show them that this doesn't work either, surely after that they want me to show how Bluetooth devices work or how serial devices don't work and so on. I'm sure they take their fun out of people getting their videos done!
I really don't like how they treat a patient customer who waited over half a year for a working product and not move their finger to really help to sort things out.
I suggest anyone who wants to get a linux laptop to not buy this but instead chose another manufacturer because here you will struggle if your hardware is not working from the day it gets shipped.
I'm pretty sure the whole laptop was damaged when I got it and should've been replaced completely. It seems to me that they just buy time until I give up.
Contrary to the claims on the shopping page, I will request a refund from PayPal, I really can expect a better support than what I've received in this case.
March 17, 2020 to September 27, 2020 is 194 days.
PayPal needs a dispute to be opened within 180 days and a claim to be made within 20 days of opening a dispute. My thought reading the description you gave was that Pine64 support were intentionally wasting your time in making you senselessly jump through hoops in order to burn down the 180 days. Still, you could go through the returns policy try to get Pine64 to directly refund you, then try asking PayPal to make an exception and finally your CC company if none of the previous works. Or simply bypass it all, contact the founder of Pine64 here on the forum and try prioritise a refund with him.
Returns policy is that support test the device themselves after receiving it and when they found the same as you provide a full refund. It's what they should have been doing, if they were following policy. I'd say from the date they began interacting with you to try to resolve the issues is the de facto date of opening a claim.
Finally, it took you long enough to join the community forum to talk about this! ... welcome.
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