Photograph: Robbie McClaranIt's a computer owner's worst nightmare: Your new PC won't boot, and when you call tech support, the representative tells you he's just a contractor--and the company that made your PC has disappeared. When you then call the phone numbers on your PC manufacturer's Web site, you get disconnect messages.
That's what happened to Nicholas Starin, who bought a $1300 PC from California-based Sys Technology last December. "I suddenly got a sinking feeling that I was on my own," recalls Starin, a Portland, Oregon, urban planner who wound up paying a local repair shop to fix his system.
But Sys was not out of business. And what made Starin's experience even more surprising was that Sys products have been favorably reviewed on Web sites and in magazines--including PC World.
Sys representatives say that Starin and others reporting similar experiences are casualties of two problems: a dispute between the company and its third-party tech support firm, Integrated Automation International (IAI), and phone difficulties following the company's relocation from Cypress, California, to City of Industry, California, after its merger with computer parts maker Axper Technology.
Sys spokesperson Ace Garin says that since September, IAI's tech support had gone from bad to worse to unacceptable. By January, he says, customers were often lucky to get through to IAI at all.
Support Dispute
Sys stopped paying IAI in December, hoping that IAI would improve its service in order to get paid, Garin said. That didn't happen, so in February Sys hired a new company, Source Support. However, IAI's support phone numbers were listed on Sys systems sold in the previous 18 months.
IAI president Glen Simmons denies that IAI's service was subpar. He says that IAI stopped honoring Sys warranties for on-site service after Sys stopped paying its bills, but claims that IAI continues to provide phone support for minor software problems.
"If a company stops paying the bills, we simply can't afford to continue offering tech support for them," Simmons says. He says that he directed his tech support staffers to tell Sys customers that the company had gone out of business after he called Sys in February and got a disconnect message.
Garin says that Sys accepts responsibility for some of its phone woes. When the company moved on February 7, its Cypress phones were disconnected without a forwarding message--and for the next seven weeks, Sys failed to update its Web site either with new phone numbers or with a notice explaining that the old ones had been disconnected.
On February 21, Garin says, Sys sent e-mail with new contact information to 18,000 customers who had sent the company their addresses during registration. But Sys didn't post its new numbers on the Web immediately because its new telephone system was not equipped to handle calls from the public, Garin says. Failing to explain the problems on the site was a mistake attributable to "human error," Garin says. (Numbers on Sys's site now seem to work properly.)
"We apologize for any inconveniences," Garin says.
Sys's phone support issues, Garin adds, should diminish as its warranty contracts with IAI expire. In the meantime, customers who don't get satisfactory support when they call the supplied support number should instead call Sys Technology's toll-free number, 866/834-9155, and ask for Garin.
Editor's note: In response to the support problems at Sys Technology, PC World has suspended coverage of Sys products in our Top 15 Desktop PCs rankings. Sys products may become eligible again if the company demonstrates that it has resolved the service issues discussed here.
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