Saturday, April 09, 2005

Loss of.21¢ generates 5 paragraphs of faux outrage

It's only .21¢ so no need to generate Emergency Outrage. I just wonder if the disk problem and the sale are related. We may never know.

KHypermedia Corp
7150 Patterson Pass Road, Suite F
Livermore, CA 94550

Dear Sirs/Ladies:

What a deal! At OfficeMax I found a 50 pack of DVD-Rs, for $19.99! Normally $49.99 but there was an Instant Discount of $30.00! Subtract my coupon for $10 off on purchases of $20 or more and add tax, that’s only.21¢ each! I was considering a name brand, but who could resist?

So, I bought. I burned. I was burned. It turns out that the second DVD I had pulled off the spindle failed. Why? The Ulead software burner didn’t give me much info on what caused the error, but I assumed a software problem. Pulling the disk out of the burner I noticed a splotch of white paint in the shape of bird droppings marking the spot of the error.

(Here's copy of my DVD. I don't see what the MPAA is afraid of.)

Lucky for me the disk failed in the burning process, not six months later while trying to restore my precious data. Finding such a sloppy manufacturing error doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the KHypermedia DVD product. The first disk I burned seems fine, but I’m going to reburn the data on another brand of DVD disk until I have find out what kind of QA process they go through and how it compares to other name brand disks. I’m sure OfficeMax wouldn’t have a sale just to dump products their customers have found are faulty, would they? Maybe you should check with them.

I’m sending you back this disk, as well as another disk I found in the spindle that has a smaller flaw in it. As per your warranty I should receive replacement DVDs. I just don’t know if I can trust them since I couldn’t find any data about your QA or manufacturing process on the web.

I’m also copying OfficeMax on this letter in case I’m one of many customers who are having this problem.

Sincerely,

Mr. Spocko (last name unpronounceable by humans), Star Fleet Academy, SF, CA, Earth. Federation Sector, 0,0,0

3 Comments:

Jeffraham Prestonian said...

Stick it to The Man, Spocko!

Heh. Btw, Sam's Club (a/k/a "Beelzebub Central") has Verbatim DVD+R spindles of 100 @ $44. I never have a problem with 'em.
.

2:00 AM  
spocko said...

OH YEAH. After postage, we're talking .04 pure profit!
(Not counting the envelope and about 50 minutes of my precious time)

9:55 AM  
Jeffraham Prestonian said...

btw... something interesting I ran across that I thought you might be interested to hear.

Did you know that the writers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine originally intended to visit the "gangster planet" instead of doing the neat-o green-screening of its characters into "The Trouble With Tribbles"? It's on one of the DS9 DVDs, in the extras...
.

7:30 AM  

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