Poor Service and Quality at Creative Labs

This complaint is against Creative Labs Inc. I bought a Zen Micro back in July 2005 and it stopped working in December 2005 less than 6 months from purchase. I tried phone calls and several e-mails to their technical support in order to get it working and after wasting much of my time they told me to send it back. I did this and it cost me $35.00, repairs are only covered for the first 3 months after that its on your own.

Technical and Customer Support is terrible there and is "canned" or scripted. The unit I have froze up and would not start working, even after going through the recovery mode. I told them this several times in e-mails and one response was to back it up and send it back for repair. I contacted them again and explained to them that if it was "frozen" how was I to back it up? This indicates they never looked at the email and instead were following the scripted protocol rather then dealing with the issue. This is generally the type of help you get with their Customer Support.

They also told me it would be about a 10 day turn around yet here it is 10 days after they received the unit from me and according to their website RMA page the unit has not even been looked at yet. They were willing to to take my money but not willing to uphold their end of the deal. The last response I got was to "check back again later" even though I wrote a detailed letter indicating my displeasure. I even told them to "Please read the entire letter" yet still got answer indicating either they ignored this or gave scripted answers.

As I see it there are three possibilities fro the long wait--1. this happens frequently indicating poor product quality, 2. lack of personnel to fix the units or 3. lack of caring for the customers. I held up my end of the deal it's time for Creative Labs to do the same.

Original Complaint letters to Creative Labs below along with "poor reply"

Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 11:43:38 -0800 (PST)

From:

Subject:

To: Email User

AGAIN PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE MESSAGE--AS ALWAYS POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE--PRODUCT STILL NOT LOOKED AT. SEE ORIGINAL MESSAGES BELOW.

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:20:11 -0800 (PST)

From:

Subject:

To: "Creative Americas Customer Care" <Email User>

This is exactly wht I am talking about--a reply that is scripted--I dont believe the original message was read entirely--see original message below.

Creative Americas Customer Care <Email User> wrote:

Dear William

Thank you for contacting creative tech support.

In regards to your rma

I checked the status of your RMA and it indicates that we recieved the

rma on 1/19/2006, and there is an (approximate) 10 business day

turnaround time.

Please check back in a few days to see if the status has changed, and

thank you for your patience.

For faster service please reply with previous correspondence when

replying to this email.

Best Regards,

Jay (15580)

Technical Support

Creative Labs Americas

Original Message Follows:

------------------------

=======================

Subject: CLI - Customer Service Request

Inquiry Type: RMA Status Check

Product Purchased:

Detailed Description of Inquiry:

Please read carefully as much of the time answers I receive indicate the

e-mails are

scanned over rather than giving the full attention they deserve.

Sent back a Zen Micro which arrived at the Stillwater, OK site on

January 19 2006.

Checked the RMA status this morning which indicates the unit has not

even been looked

at yet. I sent the unit on January 12, 2006 and that indicates a week

transit time by a

ground carrier. In several e-mails with tech spport they indicated about

a ten day turn

around--it is now the 27th and I cannot see how this will get back in

this ten day time

frame. The RMA number is ********* and the serial number is

******************.

I have been without the unit since the problem occured in late December

and had to

spend my money( and time) to have it fixed even though all I did was

listen to it. You

are always willing to take my money but always reluctant to provide

prompt customer

service. What I tend to hear when I talk to customer service is "we are

working on it"

or "we fix them in the order we receive them". If you have not even

looked at it yet it

indicates one of three things to me--1. you have many defective units

which indcates

poor product quality, 2. not enough personnel to fix or repair the

units, or 3. a lack of

caring for the customers. I have held up my end of the obligations yet

you have not held

up yours.

I have had the unit since July 2005 and payed $200 for it and the unit

is bad already. I

also had to pay $25.00 for the repair and $10.00 for shipping. What

happens when it

goes bad again in 2 weeks, I pay another $35.00 dollars? This would

bring the the cost of

repairs to almost half the value of the unit. I would like to see that

this e-mail gets

forwarded up in the heirarchy of the company and certainly up in the

customer support

structure. Customer service tends to be scripted as when I request

technical help they

tend to go through a "canned" or scripted protocol which for the most

part causes delays

in getting the unit fixed. It's always did you try this or did you do

this, when I correspond

through e-mails its as if they never read the e-mails. A recent example

was an e-mail

stating the unit had froze up yet tech support wanted me to back the

unit up--how can I

do this if it is frozen up?

At this point I have lost fatih in Creative Labs and if prompt action is

not taking I intend

to do business elsewhere along with filing complaints with several

organizations and also

getting the word out on the quality of the product and the lack of

performance by

Creative Lab personnel both technical and Customer support. The fact

that I have made

good on my end ( the purchase, the emails, the repair cost. the shipping

cost etc,) and

that Creative Labs has not made good on theirs is a big deterent for

doing future

business with them.

Chris S