Complaint Review: Gateway/MBNA - Poway California

I was very excited to be going back to school. I was lucky enough to get ahold of a lump sum of cash when I went back to school fulltime so that I could get a new computer (I transferred in as Junior with my 2-year technical degree). I took my money and went down to the gateway computer store in Boise, ID. I had just enough by my calculations to get a computer but not a monitor... so I decided to put a big chunk of cash down on a new gateway. I bought it around June of 2000.

The reason I picked a gateway is because I had worked at a National Laboratory where I maintenanced computers. We had 4000 users and at one time I had a good opinion of their quality.

I paid $900 down on the new computer and financed the rest through MBNA. I mailed in several payments using money orders but they seemed to be getting their late because I kept getting zinged with late charges. I walked a few of the payments in directly to their store, but that did not seem to make a difference. We even called Gateway to find out where to wire in payments using Western Union. It did not matter, we *STILL* got late charges.

During the midterms of 2000 school year I had my computer crash and I lost everything on the hard-drive including most of my programs. I believe in backing up my work frequently but I had just finished the programs and the only back-ups I had were ones that needed to be fixed. My teacher gave me an extension but I was unable to finish all the programs with the extra day gave me. His name was Mr. Jain and I appreciated his mercy.

I planned to get my grades raised toward the end of the semester but my computer kept crashing... the same symptoms every time. It would get 8 gigabytes of it filled and it would crash. This happened during finals and I managed to do poorly in my classes because I was trying to duplicate work I had finished for my computer classes and finished the work of my non-computer classes. Part of the problem was that it did not go over big that my computer crashed whenever assignments were due.

I was placed on academic probation and I finally got frusturated about having to take most of my classes over and I left school to find work.

***WHEN THE SCHOOL YEAR ENDED I DISCOVERED THAT MY MODEL OF GATEWAY HAD BEEN SHIPPED WITH A FAULTY IMAGE ON THE HARD-DRIVE AND RECOVERY CD'S; IT WOULD CRASH EVERYTIME AT 8 GIGS.*** I discovered this on accident because it was not in their tech support documentation at first; and when it was put in their system it was tech support info that they kept well buried.

I moved to find work, and I worked for a year until I got laid-off. I had figured a solution around the faulty image CD's. I was using my computer to file for work online. I backed up my data regularly on CDR. The first thing to go was my CDR, then the motherboard; I replaced these myselves and got the computer working again so I could still find work.

6 months later, the memory chip burned-out... I replaced it, but it had trashed the Windows Registry (for you technical types). When I tried to reinstall the operating system that came with my computer I got the following error message:

*** THIS OPERATING SYSTEM IS ONLY FOR USE WITH GATEWAY SYSTEMS ***

Gateway likes to design their machines so they are proprietary and so that you will have to go to them if and by their overpriced hardware. Kind of a junkie/dealer relationship...

So now my computer has no Operating System on it and I have to write this complaint using a DELL laptop that my dad gave me!

Now, back to those payment issues:

We finally got fed-up with their late fees and asked them to send us a full read-out... they sent us a bunch of confusing garbage...

From what we can tell, they have not taken into account a lot of the wire transfers and some of our money order payments that we have documentation for.

*** APPARENTLY GATEWAY'S ACCOUNTING IS AS GOOD AS THEIR PRODUCT IN THIS INSTANCE***

MBNA did finance the part of the computer I did not pay for initially and they are the ones that have done late charges that have zapped most of the payments I have sent in.

We tried to contact the Boise, ID store and ask about their records, but apparently they don't store them their anymore. They gave us a number to call that was Gateway Voicemail tree that eventually led to an MBNA voicemail tree.

They say we still owe them $2000 when initially it was around $1100. We refused to pay and now they are threatening our credit rating if we don't pay-up! Furthermore, they have contacted my in-laws in all of this mess which doesn't concern them in the first place. The individual was TOM DAVIS from Gateway.

Well, *TOM* I got news for you, buddy.

We have records of payments made that you don't have in the read-outs you sent us. We're not going to send copies to you so you can get this mess "straightened-out", but we might show them to an interested third party!

GATEWAY and MBNA has left me wondering if corporations believe in using Good Accounting Principles, or if they are all "cooking the books" to look like they are earning a profit! I guess that's my opinion but time and a good investigation will tell.

Ken

Kent, Washington
U.S.A.

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