"As with almost every other person here who's ordered a custom notebook from Toshiba, I've had major issues with my order. I initially placed the order on June 3, 2008 using my debit card online. I was not aware that my bank has a daily limit on debit purchases, which kicked back the charge. I just happened to check the status of my order a week or so later only to find that it had been canceled by Toshiba. I realize that my bank's policies have nothing to do with Toshiba, but at a very minimum, they should have contacted me as soon as they realized the charge didn't go thru. I have ordered 2 notebooks from Toshiba Direct in the past year and this has happened both times. It is inexcusable for any company doing business online to have such poor customer communication, especially since it's as simple as an email. I won't likely do business with them again."
"Last year I purchased a Toshiba 42HL196 FULL 1080p LCD TV through Amazon, or at least I thought so. My issue is not with Amazon, they are great, rather with Toshiba! Toshiba advertises this TV as a full 1080p TV, when in reality it is not! What it does do is up convert a TV 1080i signal to a 1080p, supposedly. But when I hooked up my newly purchased PS3, which gives a native 1080p signal through HDMI cables, NOTHING! In short, it is not a FULL 1080p TV as Toshiba advertises. I called Toshiba, and got many apologies from customer service reps! You should hear the nervousness in their voices, because they know it's a sham. SHAME ON TOSHIBA! I WILL NEVER BUY FROM THEM AGAIN!"
"I have been a long time HP user but for who knows what reason, I recently ordered a Toshiba laptop. In this day of credit card fraud, the better banks will sometimes put a hold on an account when they see suspicious charges. That happened to me. They saw charges from two very different locations in close time proximity. They placed a hold on it until they could contact me and verify the charges. During that time Toshiba tried to run the credit card for the computer I had ordered from them. When the approval was not obtained, they canceled the order and never so much as dropped me an email to notify me of such. Three or four days later, I checked my Toshiba account to see the status of my laptop, hoping it was almost finished being built. I saw that it had been canceled. If they had not had my email address and telephone number I could understand them not contacting me, but they had both. They just didn't care enough to contact me. I can only imagine the lack of support I could expect if I already had the computer and had tech issues. Since that time I have done some research and found that I am by far, not the only person that this has happened to. They may have great computers. I will probably never know. If you order one I hope you don't need customer care...because they don't care."
"Well, I have actually dealt with Several Toshibas at work, doing tech support, and they are nice, but not having a purchase order to actually rate them myself (and they weren't my machines), I did not.
But I rated them with my wallet, and my most recent notebook is a Toshiba. Ultra-high quality, beutiful screen, and lightning fast for only modest specs, as long as you aren't doing 3D graphics (Satellite A105-4001).
Anyway, after a bit of carelessness on my part (doing some long-term CPU intensive stuff in a warm room), the graphics chip went. Given this was the first time out of dozens I've dealt with, I can hardly complain about quality, it should have happened sooner, if anything.
Still, I went through the diagnostics myself, and I verified it was the graphics chip. I called the tech support, expecting to go through the whole thing again, including answering idiotic questions. I never actually dealt with their support before, and I was wrong. No idiotic questions, the agent had a brain /and/ used it. He asked me to do one thing I hadn't done, and replied with "Yes, your guess was right, it's the graphics, here are some service tech shops..." The whole thing took less than 8 minutes, and 4 of that was wait time (oh, and no phone system maze!)
Still waiting to get the notebook back, but given the quality I've had so far with dealing with them, and their prodcuts, I'm not worried. I will update when I get it back, if I remember, if I forget, it was a good run."
"I don't know how Toshiba's tech support is, but if it's anything like their after-sale support/shipping system, I fear to send my laptop back. I ordered a new notebook on Sept 24 because my old one was rapidly flaking out (motherboard/ps issues). The online ordering system said 8-10 days build time; I paid an extra $30 for FedEx overnight shipping.
On October 11, much more than 8-10 days after ordering, I called customer support and was told that the notebook was shipping out either that day, or the next. The system finally showed as shipped on October 15 (a saturday, strangely enough).
With great relief, I went to check my invoice for the tracking information, only to find that the system is being shipped "UPS GROUND" from Shanghai China. Furious, I called up customer support and was told that "all our build-to-order notebooks ship 2-3 days out of China" -- then why does the website allow you to choose FedEx overnight as a shipping option? The support person offered to refund my shipping, as she should. Now the problem becomes how do I get my notebook? The closest UPS distribution center is over an hour away, and I can't make it there between the end of work and closing time. Adding to the problem, I live on a busy street and can't have them leave a $1500 notebook out for anyone to take. There's a reason I chose FedEx -- I can't say that I'm very happy that things have taken so long, or that I seem to get thrown a lie and an attitude every time I call Toshiba either. Here's to hoping the machine is better than this first step in the ownership process."
"I've had nothing but bad luck with toshiba. I bought a A35-s209 laptop from circuit city with a 2 year extended warranty. I sent the laptop to them the first time for overheating problems. Took a week and I had the laptop back. About 2 weeks later, my modem died. Called them up, they dident beleive me so I had to do some b/s test and it failed. Sent it in and a tech called saying nothing was wrong. Bull crap. I even had to tell him my dial up account to prove it'd disconnect. Well, the paper I got back stated the mother board was replaced, keyboard and I think the hard drive. Great! Its fixed, or so I thought. About a month later, it started overheating again. I called and asked for a replacement since it's a peice of crap anyways. I was transfered to their "replacement department". I talked to this woman who was some indinishian THING that couldent talk worth a crap. I explained my situation, and she said they'll just repair it even though I've had problems with the stupid laptop for the whole time I've owned it. I tell her NO, I wanted a replacement and that was final. She said that if it burnt my house down (cause it was running so hot), that it was MY problem and they wouldent do anything but "fix" the laptop thats BURN TO A CRISP! She said "I'm sending a box to repair it", so I just hung up on her. The next day I had a box on my porch. I just burnt the box and said screw toshiba.
Moral is: Buy a dell. They'll replace it if you have alot of trouble. Now the laptop just SITS in the corner because I can't use it or it will overheat. I bought a dell desktop for $855 when I paid $1500 for this PEICE OF CRAP. Thanks toshiba! You just cost me $800 because I can't use your laptop.
I'll never buy from toshiba again and I hope that toshiba is reading this."
"Purchased a M30x laptop off the toshiba website and had great contact with the customer service. When I first got the laptop it had a bad charging circuit, but technical support wait was almost non-existent for me. I would call and about 20-40 seconds later I had a service rep. They were friendly with me and gave me a few options on fixing the problem. One was having me swap the power adapter, and another was sending it in for depot express service. I had the new ac adapter shipped along with the laptop repair box jsut incase it didn't fix the problem.
It turned out that while this happened I changed my whole mindset on which laptop I wanted, and explained to the rep I wanted to return the laptop and get a refund. They set up the free shipping on the repair, and stayed in contact through the whole ordeal. I found the customer service to be one of the best I have ever dealt with.
I recently placed a new order for a Tecra M2 laptop, and awaiting arrival of that as it was just shipped today. Hopefully this one works 100% and I don't have to deal with repairs for a long time.
Great Experience, and would buy from again. You can't ask for a better customer service."
"I don't know why this company is still in business. Here is what happened with Toshiba and laptop.
I purchased the laptop from bestbuy on 2002 December. The laptop worked quite nicely except for a mouse problem ( solved after sending it back to them twice, but service time was short). I purchased additional warranty and right after 8 months of original warranty expiration the CDRW/DVD drive failed. As I am covered by additional warranty, called up Toshiba and sent the laptop back to their depot. Here comes the horror story.
Everytime I call them they used to lie about the servicing status and the expected shipping date. Usually it is always next week by thursday. So that they would not be bothered for another week. Turned out that they somehow ruined the motherboard and harddrive and was waiting for the parts. Funny thing is they have no clue when they are going to expect the delivery of the parts although these parts are readily availble from other laptop servicing companies around US. Well, this pain of calling them over and over again and listenning to theri lies came to an end on October, 27th. I opened the laptop and just after using it couple of times, it broke down, now showing no hard drive in the computer. I called the toshiba again and ask their explanation of holding my laptop for over a long time and for the faulty repair. The lady at customer service gave me $50 credit for all my hassel and I decided to sent the laptop to a premeir service center in Kansas and thats another story. Anyway, after receiving the $50 credit I decided to order some stuff from toshiba and alas! they have no idea about the store credit. Turned out it takes a week to get the store credit.Well after one week I called again, and still no credit is showing up in my account.After two weeks I finally managed to place my order in phone and though wow!finally. In th enext day got another email that my item will be shipped very soon. Another week passed and I call them again. This time the CSR told me they will ship it tomorrow. Another 4 days passed and finally I got an email from Toshiba that I have to call them for credit approval! Finally, I think my order pass through their system as of today. What I learned from my experience is that Toshiba is not meant to run an online business. I believe most of the CSRs are paid for lying to the customers whenever they have no clue about the things going on. Final note, avoide Toshiba in all respect."
"I've had this laptop the Satellite P25-S670
It's been working great since I bought it, although I wish I bought it later, since it's had some price drops.
Other than that, it works great, runs games fine, dvd picture is great on the 17 inch screen, and the tv tuner is awesome, I record all my favorite shows.
There is only one complaint that I have, when I start up UT2k4, it takes forever to load up maps and such, but I doubt this is a problem due to the computer, as many of my other friends also have this problem, and they use a wide range of computers (dell, Hp, etc.) Battery life isn't that great, around an hour to an hour and a half, but I bought this mainly as a desktop replacement, so I rarely have to rely on battery power.
The buying process was quite simple, went to comp usa, ordered one (since they were out of stock) came back a few days later to pick it up.
I immediately took it to a lan party not more that 3 days later (didn't feel like lugging my pc with me) and it ran great. Ran all the games I wanted to play, and ran them fast (even faster than my desktop.) I would most definitely buy another Toshiba Laptop in the future."
"I ordered a Satellite 5005-S507 laptop. I said I wanted to pay by check and furnished an addrerss to send to referencing Quote # YO7722. I mailed the check with accompanying letter containing quote #. Long story short, Toshiba cashed my check then wanted me to go to the bank and xerox both sides and send it back to them before processing my order. Of course they didn't even bother telling me this until two weeks later when I called to find out why I had no computer.
When is the last time you gave someone a check for a purchase, let them cash the check and 2 weeks later still had no product? Have you ever had to verify as a customer that your check (which they already cashed) was cashed and send them proof?
Needless to say I cancelled purchase and when I asked for a refund was told it will come after 30 days - they want to be sure they have my money!!
Toshiba is not equipped to sell anything to the public. If this is an example of their customer service - what can you expect after you have their product?
Their business model must have come from Mars 'cause they sure don't operate like any other business I know or have heard of.
Art Guertin"