I had a Gateway Pentium 120 MHz for at least three years. Gateway's customer service was excellent and they were always there when I needed them. There were at least two times I had caused major problems in my operating system when I had tried to add on new software. The Gateway service people worked patiently with me for many hours over the phone in the middle of the night in order to guide me in reloading all of my software.
I already had a service contract and they didn't charge me a single dime extra for any of their many hours of help. Gateway also sent me a free replacement hard disk drive when mine went out. They were also willing to send me a free replacement CD-ROM unit after I had accidentally broke it.
Consumer Affairs has an excellent site. And the complaints are very informative. But it looks like you would need to list satisfied customers as well in order to really give an accurate balanced picture of Gateway's service because there are many of us out there.
Scott raises the lament that has been heard since the first newspaper was published -- where's all the good news? Why don't you write about the planes that didn't crash today? Answer: News reports the unusual. Sites like this one do the same. Obviously, not every Gateway is a dud. Our goal is to point out problems so they can be corrected. We don't have any particular axe to grind but we think consumers -- and companies, for that matter -- can benefit from learning about the problems that others have encountered. We're constantly being threatened by companies who would better spend their energy improving their products and service.
