- Report: #93020
Complaint Review: TigerDirect/Toshiba - Internet
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TigerDirect/Toshiba
www.TigerDirect.com Internet, U.S.A.
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TigerDirect - Toshiba Lying ripoff salesman limitations of Toshiba P25 satellite laptop Internet
Last November I purchased a Toshiba Satellite P25 from TigerDirect.com. I ordered it by phone having checked that the TV tuner could handle PAL TV signals since I would shortly be moving to the UK. I checked this 3 times making it quite clear that I would be in the UK and a tuner which only handled NTSC would be useless and the salesman on the phone assured me that it could handle both.
I gave him my credit card number, the laptop was delivered in the US and everything was fine. I discovered the identical machine was available from Cosco for several hundred dollars less a couple of weeks later but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
In January, I arrived in the UK, hooked it up to the TV signal and got nothing. Absolute snow. I researched the tech specs carefully and found in the small print that the tuner was NTSC only.
I emailed Tiger Direct pointing out that this was one of the conditions I purchased it and so the product was unfit for the purpose it was sold for. The first reply stated that it was more than a month ago so they weren't going to do anything. When I pointed out that their salesman was the one who claimed it could pick up PAL and that I was hardly going to discover that until I got to the UK, they replied (via a non-return email address this time) that this was not what it was advertized to do.
The moral - beware of lying salesmen and the companies that employ them.
The P25 itself contains an aptly named Matshita UJ-811 DVD drive. This drive is one of the few with non-flash firmware which means, to the end user, that it is physically impossible to be made region-free. For this reason, I've recommended to several people who were impressed by the P25 to look elsewhere.
Mike
Sammamish, Washington
U.S.A.
I gave him my credit card number, the laptop was delivered in the US and everything was fine. I discovered the identical machine was available from Cosco for several hundred dollars less a couple of weeks later but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
In January, I arrived in the UK, hooked it up to the TV signal and got nothing. Absolute snow. I researched the tech specs carefully and found in the small print that the tuner was NTSC only.
I emailed Tiger Direct pointing out that this was one of the conditions I purchased it and so the product was unfit for the purpose it was sold for. The first reply stated that it was more than a month ago so they weren't going to do anything. When I pointed out that their salesman was the one who claimed it could pick up PAL and that I was hardly going to discover that until I got to the UK, they replied (via a non-return email address this time) that this was not what it was advertized to do.
The moral - beware of lying salesmen and the companies that employ them.
The P25 itself contains an aptly named Matshita UJ-811 DVD drive. This drive is one of the few with non-flash firmware which means, to the end user, that it is physically impossible to be made region-free. For this reason, I've recommended to several people who were impressed by the P25 to look elsewhere.
Mike
Sammamish, Washington
U.S.A.
4 Updates & Rebuttals
Mike
Sammamish,Washington,
U.S.A.
Another year later...
#2Author of original report
Fri, July 28, 2006
The hard drive died and had to be replaced (unfortunately with another Toshiba). So much for their "works for 10 years" claim on their site which they then back away from by saying it's an estimate, not a claim. The power supply cracked within the first few months. Finally, the DVD becomes unreliable as it overheats after 15 minutes of use. The only reason I'm still using this piece of junk is that I've got another machine which I use most of the time. Once the motherboard or screen goes, it's scrapped and replaced with a different brand - never again with Toshiba!
Mike
Sammamish,Washington,
U.S.A.
Update: 18 months on
#3Author of original report
Sun, January 30, 2005
The tv tuner died just out of warrenty (more interference and then the sound disolved into static) and last week the built-in wireless nic failed (stopped receiving packets). Plugging in a new PCMCIA wireless card worked fine so it's definately a hardware problem. Neither of these two items were excessively used, in fact the tuner was unplugged most of the time. This over-priced piece of junk is the last thing I'm ever going to buy from Toshiba. Spend your hard-earned money elsewhere.
Mike
Sammamish,Washington,
U.S.A.
No software solutions for firmware
#4Consumer Comment
Thu, August 12, 2004
First the PAL/NTSC bit. There is a difference between not being careful and careless. I emphasized to the salesman that I knew that the S-Video connection could handle PAL but needed to know whether the _tuner_ could do so. Once again, this was asked 3 times pointing out that the machine was useless to me without it. In future I will have to go direct to the manufacturers who are at least one step removed from having an incentive to say whatever I want to hear. As for the region codes, the OS is only half the story and unlimiting that is very easy. The DVD rom itself has it's own CPU, memory and OS (the firmware) with it's own counter limit as to how many changes to allow. Windows, or whatever OS is being used, asks the firmware for data from the DVD but unless the region code on the DVD drive itself matches then it returns an error. You can change the DVD drive's region code but firmware updates are needed to prevent the limit of 5 changes being reached, after which you are stuck. The final proof of this can be found on any region-free DVD player/copying software (eg http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm) which contains the warning: "DVD-RAM, Matshita XX-8xxx, SW-9xxx series DVD drives, and Torisan DRD-Uxxx series DVD drives are not supported". This is because there is no way to bypass these checks.
Yao
Vancouver,British Columbia,
Canada
In my opinion...
#5Consumer Comment
Thu, August 12, 2004
From my understanding, you can change the region for up to 6 times in Windows. It could be done in "My Computer." If you cannot flash the firmware, there are always software solutions. As for PAL/NTSC. What happened was the sales looked at the box, and the box probably did say PAL somewhere. The box probably had written down PAL, except it was PAL-J, not PAL-EU. You may blame the sales person for not being careful, but rarely people would care that much.
