Toshiba E335 dead... after only 2 weeks.

[BigDan37]

:cry:

I left my Pocket PC under the front seat of my fiancé's car. It was in the leather protective case it came with. When I retrieved it the next day there was a black spot about 4 mms across and 2 mms high on the left side about 2/3 down. When I turn it on the black spot remains and the screen only appears below the spot. I am guessing it got crushed at that spot.

I know it is my own fault for not being more careful with it. Am I screwed? There isn't any sort of return policy for being an idiot is there? I will still redeem my Amazon rebate but I think I just lost my whole investment.

:cry:

[kidA]

there's no return policy for being an idiot, but sometimes you can be covered by your credit card (some american express cards for example).
it sounds like it may have gotten smashed, but it could also be that you left it in a car, and cars, as we know, when left parked, can heat up to upwards of 150 degrees this time of year thanks to the heat and intensity of the sun. pdas aren't made to survive baking.

[BigDan37]

I don't think it was baked. It has been pretty cool here lately (San Diego). Most likely it was under a piece of metal and got pushed. *sigh*

I might convert to Palm now. I found out right after I bought my Pocket PC that my work only supports Palm anyway.

[Chris Spera]

Call your auto insurance company and see if they will cover the damages. They might...they might not; but if they do, at least you can get the unit replaced...


Kind Regards,


Christopher Spera

[BigDan37]

I called Toshiba and they were actually very cool about it. I think they are going to fix/replace it. They sent me a prepaid, padded FedEx box. I sent my PDA to some repair facility in Montecito. Hopefully they will be sending back a working one.

:D

[zpaz]

I broke my e335 after only 2 weeks also, but when I called Toshiba, it would be $129 to replace it. How did you get them to replace it? Or do you not realize they charge for that service? Or were they sympathetic to your pleas?

[BigDan37]

I didn't say that I broke it. I just said the black mark appeared. After looking at the mark again I noticed that there were no scratches or indentations. I really don't think it was mushed like I previously thought. I am hoping they will agree that there was an error in the manufacturing and fix/replace it for me. We'll see. I'll post here once I find out. :)

[SleepDirt]

I had the exact same problem. In my case, I left my PDA in a drawer, inside the leather case, overnight. It was working perfectly when I put it in, when I took it out the next morning, it had the same type of dark black lines accross the screen. Obviously there's no way I dropped it or cracked the screen but the Toshiba people trired their hardest to blame me. They wanted the same fee to fix it. I told the rep straight out there was no way I was paying that and they'd have to send the unit back to me unrepaired, so he did.

2 days later, another Toshiba rep called me and told me they had changed their minds and would indeed fix my PDA. Since they had shipped out my non-working PDA (as per my request) they told me I'd have to send it back in again and they would send me out a replacement PDA, NOT my old PDA with a fixed screen.

Here's where it gets weird. My old, supposedly non-working, PDA got here on Monday. Same serial #, same box I sent it in. However, it works perfectly. They called me on Saturday afternoon and the unit was here on Monday, along with the box to send it back to Toshiba in.

So it sounds like my unti never had a cracked LCD, only something covered under the warrant. It was fixed and ready to be shipped back to me but the customer reps filed it as a cracked screen to hit me up for the $130 to fix it. So the moral of the story here is that Toshiba's tech support seems to be in total disarray. I talked to 3 reps and got a different story from each one of them until I talked to, I assume, a manager or higher teir technical support rep. Even then, he was wrong. So I urge anyone having this problem to really press Toshiba on fixing your PDA.

[portnoy]

So it sounds like my unti never had a cracked LCD, only something covered under the warrant. It was fixed and ready to be shipped back to me but the customer reps filed it as a cracked screen to hit me up for the $130 to fix it. So the moral of the story here is that Toshiba's tech support seems to be in total disarray. I talked to 3 reps and got a different story from each one of them until I talked to, I assume, a manager or higher teir technical support rep. Even then, he was wrong. So I urge anyone having this problem to really press Toshiba on fixing your PDA.

Or perhaps the screen was not the problem from the start, it could have been a "soft" problem that healed itself. Did you turn off the shutoff switch on the bottom before sending it out? If so, did you try cycling that before to see if that would fix it?