Terrible Service, Unreliable Product

[arglebarg_fooferar]

I am amazed by the disgraceful level of service offered by QNAP. I would suggest that anyone who shares my anger adds their stories to this thread so that potential purchasers know hat to expect. I include my original customer service inquiry followed by their response and my reply. I will add more detail as it arrives:

Initial contact submitted via customer service link:

I recently (Monday 7 May) submitted this same form with details of the failure of my recently purchased ts412, and I am somewhat disappointed to find myself having to do so again.  To reiterate - last weekend I finished uploading photos and music to the QNAP from my old STORA and all appeared to be running smoothly. I also set up timemachine backups for two networked macs, both of which also appeared to running correctly.  Then music playback on one machine began to stutter for no apparent reason. I checked the CPU status on the QNAP and saw that it was maxxed out at 100%. Having disconnected all but my computer from the network (it uses a separate firewire drive for backup as I have yet to transfer its backup to the QNAP, so it wasn''t making use of any QNAP resources) , I checked again and found that the CPU remained maxxed out and music playback remained jittery. Since the problem didn''t appear to be resolving itself,  I used the web interface to restart the QNAP. When the counttdown had completed for the restart the unit did not reappear on the network and could not be found by QNAP Finder. I confirmed this by checking the connections to my router which showed no sign of the QNAP but was otherwise functioning perfectly. I then shutdown the QNAP manually using the power button, disconnected it from the mains, unplugged and replugged all network connection, swapped cables, but nothing worked.

Following trouble shooting advice and FAQs I then attempted to perform a firmware recovery as per the instructions here: (http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Firmware_Reco ... _based_NAS). When starting the QNAP as instructed by holding the reset button and then powering on, the LAN lights up solid orange and the status light blinks red/green, while I hear two short chimes and then a longer chime about 15 or 20 seconds later. After that nothing happens, whether I startup from a DVD or using VMWare. I get the same result connecting  my computer to LAN1. I have also tried with a second computer as well as different cables. In all cases nothing happens, and logging in root/root and using "ifconfig" shows no increase of TX on eth0 no matter how long it is left for.

Since the QNAP is less that a month old and this problem occurred as a result of simple restart, you will understand that I am somewhat concerned, not to mention irritated and angry, that a product that is marketed for precisely the uses I put it to - a network multimedia station and timemachine shared by Macs on a home network - seems to have failed for no apparent reason. Whilst I hope that none of my data has been lost, there is no way for me to check this until the unit is recovered, so you will also appreciate that I am somewhat vervous that the several days of effort that went into transferring terrabytes of data may have been lost, a particular irony since part of the purpose of investing in a second NAS was to provide backup in depth at two locations.  I am equally annoyed that a request for assistance to your company appears to have fallen on deaf ears despite the promise of a response within 24hours; allowing for a public holiday on the 7th, we are now some 56 hours after someone should have noticed my original message. I would therefore expect to hear from you ASAP with advice on how to proceed.

The response:

hi ***

i'm sorry for your inconvenint, according your description, i think this unit hardware was corrupted, please contact your re-seller for repair/replace this unit.

My reply

Dear Mr Chang,

As I hope you will appreciate, this is a rather disappointing response which raises more questions than it answers. In short, you answer seems to amount to little more than saying "bad luck, sh*t happens, not my problem. Sort it out yourself." 

So perhaps you could consider the following questions:

1. Given that the unit is les than a month old, why would this have happened?
2. Is my data lost? 
3. The unit was purchased with drives pre-installed; should the whole thing be replaced including drives or simply the QNAP? 
4. Was this a faulty unit that was destined to fail no matter what? 
5. Can I trust a replacement to actually do the job without failing in just the same way?
6. Will you liaise with Amazon.co.uk to explain your liability in this and to facilitate the exchange or do you expect me to sort this out myself?

Frankly, as it stands your response is insultingly brief and unhelpful and leaves me as a consumer wondering how you or your company could possibly consider that this merits the name customer service. Indeed, I think it is a disgrace that you should be so blasé about the failure of a brand new piece of very expensive kit when you consider just how profoundly inconvenient this will be for me as a customer. 

So, please can you get back to me ASAP with answers to my questions as well as some suggestion to how I might retrieve the data. I would also encourage you to think very carefully about how you plan to deal with this complaint going forward since at this rate I will seeking legal advice as well as seeking to publicise what I can only say is the absolute worst case of customer service I have ever encountered. 

I will expect to hear from you within hours rather than days.

Yours sincerely

***

Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has received less than satisfactory service from QNAP. The more of us who can unite to pressurise them the better, so please add your stories and maybe they will actually take note.

[doktornotor]

So, you have a defective product. Well, normally when that happens, you return to the reseller in these parts of the world. Either for repair or replacement. As for your questions, I suspect you will not be impressed by my answer but anyway:

1/ Because is is all cheapo Asian stuff produced in millions of pieces. Some of those pieces are simply defective from the beginning. Things may have defects which is a consequence of basic laws of physics.
2/ No - unless the HDDs failed (as well) or the firmware corrupted the data on it.
3/ Again, in these parts of the world where I live you usually take the whole product as purchased when found to be faulty and return it back to the reseller. You do not rip it apart or anything, returning only the parts you think to be faulty. At least unless told otherwise by the reseller.
4/ You seriously expect an answer to this?
5/ Ditto. Maybe something like Maths 101 would provide an answer? If one out of every 10000 units that have passed the initial QA testing is defective, a chance of receiving a faulty one would be 1/10^4 == 0.01%.
6/ Again, in these parts of the world where I live you have no contract with the manufacturer, you have a contract with the reseller. It is resellers problem how will they solve that with the vendor, none of your business. Maybe it is different in the U.K., though as I recall the sales of goods law course, it is exactly the same there, not to mention the EU regulations that apply.

http://whatconsumer.co.uk/what-are-my-statutory-rights/
http://whatconsumer.co.uk/shops-responsibility/
http://whatconsumer.co.uk/mail-order-go ... e-selling/

[arglebarg_fooferar]

I apologise for offending you by being so irritated with a company which, so far as I can see, you do not represent. As you will see if you read the post, the questions are not directed at the forum but are copies of the correspondence with QNAP, and while I do understand my rights as a consumer and with whom I have a contract, QNAP offer customer service themselves, as well as a manufacturer warranty. Now there is a clue in the name there. Perhaps you could give some thought as to what it means.

Thanks for your constructive contribution to the thread.

[doktornotor]

I do not feel offended at all. I simply have way too much experience dealing with "support" based/oursourced in/to Asia to waste any time on that any more. The people get paid $2/hr. or so, have at best very basic command of English - and will rarely provide any useful support whatsoever until you have managed to escalate the case couple of levels up. By that time, you have wasted days, if not weeks of your time. Simply not worth the trouble. Consider yourself lucky that they do not charged for this "support" - there are vendors who will happily charge you $$$ per incident to provide you with similar "support" services - such as the unnamed yellow company which has managed to totally ruin the reputation of Peter Norton.

[schumaku]

We're just a Community Forum here...

The manufacturer warranty is handled by your reseller, not by QNAP direct, as in most parts of the world. Most likely the only part of the world where this is different is North America. The reseller decides if they are going to repair or simply exchange the failed product.

Please try to understand, that the two year manufacturer warranty by QNAP is valued much higher than the EU standard warranty terms. In the EU, after six months of sales, the customer has to proof the goods were broken from the beginning. QNAP does repair or replace (at their choice) for two years. Even if your favorite reseller goes bust, QNAP does still honor the two year warranty terms, the customer has just to cover the shipping costs.

3. The unit was purchased with drives pre-installed; should the whole thing be replaced including drives or simply the QNAP?

One reason more you must go though your reseller or system integrator: QNAP does not offer or sell NAS devices with preinstalled HDD.

6. Will you liaise with Amazon.co.uk to explain your liability in this and to facilitate the exchange or do you expect me to sort this out myself?

Amazon does perfectly know on how to deal with failed hardware returned from a customer for a warranty claim. They don't need the manufacturer liase - certainly not for a consumer device - to sort that out. As QNAP support does agree to RMA the unit (to Amazon of course), just add the print-out of the e-mail with the warranty claim.

Technically it's hard to say what went wrong. The boot Flash is not accessible or mounted while normal operations at all - so even a system running wild should not be able to destroy the boot loader, requiring a recovery. Prolly really a hardware failure - so one of the 0.01% or less? I don't know, too. Every now and then, I have the chance to enter a warranty-returns storage room (you know the stuff that will be simply exchanged by new part), ie. to collect material to set-up temporary network infrastructures in the field. Rarely see annything from there beeing not working or not recoverable.

When starting the QNAP as instructed by holding the reset button and then powering on, the LAN lights up solid orange and the status light blinks red/green, while I hear two short chimes and then a longer chime about 15 or 20 seconds later. After that nothing happens, whether I startup from a DVD or using VMWare. I get the same result connecting my computer to LAN1. I have also tried with a second computer as well as different cables. In all cases nothing happens, and logging in root/root and using "ifconfig" shows no increase of TX on eth0 no matter how long it is left for.

We need to understand, that this process was created more for field service, system integrators, or regional service centres. The recovery CD might not support some modern or special network chipsets, the VMware approach can be tricky and cumbersome.

Regards,
-Kurt.

[P3R]

@arglebarg_fooferar,

In your posting history I do notice that your NAS is equipped with 4x2TB Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM001). Several bad customer experiences, that you can read about here in the forum, have unfortunately proved that disk model (along with other new Seagate models) to be incompatible and it is now listed as not recommended on the Qnap disk compatibility list.

When you return the unit to Amazon for a warranty claim I would recommend that you inform them about the bad product combination they've put together. Don't accept the same incompatible disks in a replacement unit, it won't work either and will only give you more problems.

[arglebarg_fooferar]

@arglebarg_fooferar,

In your posting history I do notice that your NAS is equipped with 4x2TB Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM001). Several bad customer experiences, that you can read about here in the forum, have unfortunately proved that disk model (along with other new Seagate models) to be incompatible and it is now listed as not recommended on the Qnap disk compatibility list.

When you return the unit to Amazon for a warranty claim I would recommend that you inform them about the bad product combination they've put together. Don't accept the same incompatible disks in a replacement unit, it won't work either and will only give you more problems.

Thanks. Very useful info. Indeed, if you don't mind I would like to PM you ask for some specific advice on how to recove data since you seem to have a clue which is more than might be said of QNAP support.

[arglebarg_fooferar]

@kurt

Thanks for this; it's more than QNAP have managed so far. To reiterate the purpose of this thread, however, I am really not confused as to my rights as a consumer. I am a little confused as to what went wrong, and your response is helpful in that regard. What I am supremely ** off about is the level of customer service.

Thus the reason for this thread is not so much to get help but rather to gather complaints about them in a place where they might be noticed by other consumers and potential consumers who should consider their options when purchasing a NAS. After all, when I trawl this site I come across thread after thread complaining of this kind of incident, many of them relating to the same hardware issues or to failures after firmware updates. Since we, as users, have very little ability to influence the producers, the one thing we do have is the ability to make a noise, and loud noises impact the bottom line. If everyone who has had similar problems with both hardware and customer support adds their voice to this then we might actually have an effect and they might even realise that better customer service is actually worthwhile.

To put it another way, customer service may be routinely awful, but that's no reason not to get angry about awful customer service.

Best

AF

[P3R]

Indeed, if you don't mind I would like to PM you ask for some specific advice on how to recove data...

I'm sorry but neither my skills, nor my time the coming weekend is enough to provide you with that assistance. There are several other community members that are much more knowledgeable with those things than me but I don't want to expose them as they may be too busy. Let's hope somebody steps up to the plate...

[Allanm]

You certainly seem to have had problems, but if the unit is faulty then sending it back for replacement or refund is the only answer. I can't think what else Qnap could have done. They make them, the reseller is Amazon so they are the people you should deal with now.
In defence of Mr Chang, I contacted my reseller who put me in touch with Mr Chang. He suggested a list of things to try, which I did, but that didn't solve my problems. ( System hanging)
His next suggestion was to remotely access my Mac and try to sort it out.
We arranged a convenient time following a few exchanged emails and he sorted out my Qnap for me.
I certainly felt like a valued customer and would like to thank David Chang here, for all the time he spent sorting my NAS out.

I would suggest you contact Amazon and sort out a replacement. Amazon will sort it out for you and pay for collection and delivery of a new unit. I also suggest you specify different drives as there are issues with those, as someone has already said.
Then, I suggest you google " Betaris box ".
Maybe if your emails had been a little less aggressive you would have received better service!

People are only human!

Allan

Oh, by way of a PS, after a couple of weeks of the NAS working fine, and after fitting the same drive as you have, in my TS-119p II, it started playing up and I was told it was faulty and to send it back for a replacement.
I actually sent it back for a refund. Not impressed with the product, but excellent customer service from QNAP