I was going to review some tablets . . .
Essays / F ReviewsKindle Fire / Review / Samsung Nook Table / Tech support hell32 Comments
I was going to review some tablets here. A few weeks ago I ordered one of the Nook Samsung tablets. I was pretty excited about it, actually, because I’ve heard such great things about Samsung devices. My work-provided phone is a Samsung and I like it a lot. So I had high hopes. My Samsung duly arrived and I got it unboxed and began the process of getting it registered.
I couldn’t register it because it rebooted every minute or so, even when fully charged. At first I thought it was my fault, but no. The device simply went into an infinite loop of restarts. A hard restart or two had no effect. So I went to the B&N website and discovered that in order to return the device, I had to call. On the telephone. What the…??
Once I remembered how to make a phone call, I called Nook and said, hey, this device is defective. I’d like to return it for a new one. The answer was I could not do this. In order to return the device as defective and get another one, I had to talk to tech support. I’m a tech person. I know exactly what tech support is like.
HELL.
That’s what tech support is like. Here. I drew you a picture:
It would go like this:
I explain that the device is restarting every minute.
I am so sorry your device is restarting every minute. Please turn on your device.
It is on. For another 25 seconds.
Can you let it restart and then register your device?
No. I can’t get through the process.
I’m sorry for your troubles. Can you explain why you cannot get your device to register?
Because it restarts every minute. I’ve powered it down and back up. Twice. That didn’t do any good.
Please power down your device.
And then, after an hour of this, the tech would say, we can’t troubleshoot your device if it restarts every minute. We’ll send you a refurbished POS where someone else had this problem, too.
The thing is, just three days prior to this I’d shelled out $179 for a brand new tablet. And their solution to a brand new dysfunctional device out of the box for less than an hour would be to send me a refurbished unit as a replacement when what I should get is a brand new tablet. Now, if they wanted to send me, say, $50 and a refurb, maybe.
So, back to my actual conversation:
Me: So I can’t return this and get another one without talking to tech support?
Her: No you cannot.
Me: What if I just return the device?
Her: Let me see if you were able to register it. . . . . . . . . No. The device was not registered. Yes, you can return it.
Me: OK. I want to return this tablet.
30 minutes later, I have the required permission to return a device that was non-functional within 1 minute of powering it on.
Three weeks for the refund, by the way.
Not too long after that phone call, Amazon offered me a sweet deal on a Kindle Fire tablet. OK!!
I got the device and I was liking it pretty well. It was nice and light and ::gasp!!!:: better than the iPad for the treadmill. And then it started doing this weird flicker thing, which was annoying but OK. And THEN a couple weeks in, it began restarting for no apparent reason.
Right. So apparently, Android has an issue….
Anyway, I jump on the website and click return and 30 seconds later I have the RMA for the device which I sent back and then 5 days later a notice that the refund was processed.
So, here is my review:
Amazon is winning the sales war because they are better at business.
Period.
I’m trying to figure out what Amazon tablet to get instead. Because, you know what? If I get that high pixel density tablet and it stops working before 30 days is up, I can get it returned in 5 minutes.
Yikes! I agree Amazon usually has very good customer service.
FWIW, I have a 2nd generation Nexus 7 I bought last November and have not had any issues with it. I bought it at Staples.
Oh Jesus. “Android has an issue”
This is a very sad way for me to start my Sunday morning because I’ve been gearing up to buy a tablet in December with a keyboard case so I’m able to- wait for it- carry something around when I’m out and about that isn’t heavy so I can write when I have a few free minutes. Why is this so much to ask for?
These are both forked versions of Android, right? So I wonder if it’s something in the forks rather than Android per se. I have a 1st Gen Nexus 7 and my husband has the 2nd Gen and both have been trouble-free.
But yes, B&N has terrible customer support and Amazon has great support. If Amazon’s tech can’t fix a problem they just send you a new unit, in my experience. One of them walked my mother through a Kindle 3g problem on the phone and fixed it, to my relief and amazement.
I had a Kindle Fire and replaced it with a 2nd gen Nexus 7. The Kindle was a good gateway into a small tablet, but I wanted something not tied to Amazon. I did have a problem with the battery life on the Fire when I first received it. Amazon had me try a couple of things, but when the battery went dead the next day they overnighted me a new one and provided me with a label to send the bad one back. Amazon is definitely ahead of BN and Kobo in customer service. My brother is still using the Fire and he likes it just fine.
The Nexus is a great tablet. I have had no problems and it does everything I want it to do. I will definitely get another one if something happens to this one (like say I drop it and break the screen like the first one I bought).
Lol. Yes, Amazon is winning the war, for sure. My kids have Samsung Galaxy tablets and they work OK. Nothing fabulous about them and all the spyware drives me nuts because they’re kids and will click on anything. I’ve had my iPad now for 3 years and never once had a problem with it. *shrugs shoulders*
I bought a Nexus 7 from PCWorld in the UK, and it went wrong 3 months in (the screen bowed – a common complaint of the 2012 model). I took it back, and within an hour I had a new one. I bought the 2013 when it came out and gave the 2012 to my daughter. She’s used it every day since.
I’d also consider a Tesco Hudl. It’s making waves over here, and if it weren’t that I love my Nexus so, I’d totally go for that. And Tesco has a good reputation for returns, too.
Got a computer from Amazon, and found a hairline crack on the screen in the first week. Sent it back, got a refund, bought a new one. No arguments, no problem.
At this stage, I wouldn’t go for a Nook as a serious tablet. Only to play with. But my Nook ereader is still going after umpteen years, and my old messed-about Nook Tablet still works. But I wouldn’t buy a new one.
I’d say the problem is with whatever software B&N adds. I thought about getting the new nook, but I had just bought myself a refurbished Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10″ right before they announced it but decided against it because they were only talking about the smaller one at that point. I love my Tab 3 and it’s never given me a problem despite being a refurb. I use it constantly (with a keyboard case) and it’s pretty much replaced my giant laptop.
I haven’t dealt with B&N’s customer service in a couple of years, but back when I got my first gen nook I didn’t have any problems when it had to be replaced (three times, but once it got smashed in shipping). Yes, I had to call, but it never seemed to take more than 6 or 7 minutes. I guess it’s gone downhill since then.
My Kindle died less than a year after I got it. I live overseas and to facilitate replacement, Amazon sent me the replacement free of charge, (to my US address) and accepted the broken original months later to *pay* for the replacement. This accommodation of my situation was really nice. The replacement has worked for several years and is still working.
I’m always struck when there are publisher rants about Amazon because Amazon has won my custom by serving my needs. I’m not the type to love companies; the minute Amazon stops being the best place to buy things, I’ll be gone. But I’m not going to give my custom to some mediocre business which is utterly indifferent to their customers, solely because Amazon is so big and has such a massive impact on the market.
We just had a similar conversation last night. The Fire tablets look great, but there are too many Android apps I need regularly that aren’t available in FIre OS, AFAIK. Still, Amazon’s customer service is unbeatable. Why is this all so complicated?
@Lynne Connolly: I have a Tesco Hudl – it is great as a first tablet. I use it a lot!
@Sunita: Yes, both forked, from what I know. I don’t think, but I also don’t know, that they are using the same fork. It could be total coincidence that I ended up with two different Android tablets that had the same restarting problem.
I feel committed, now, to getting an Android based tablet, probably from Amazon in case something goes wrong.
I’d also like to try a Surface, but the high price makes it hard to justify…
@Christina: Well, it’s possible that the Nook Samsung issue was related to whatever software Nook is adding, but I could never get the device to get past any of the registration which makes me think the issue is with Android and not apps. But it could be a problem with how they set up registration. Add in that my Amazon tablet also showed the restarting issue and I tend to lean toward an OS issue.
But, who knows for sure? I didn’t want to talk to Nook support so we have to give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest that if I had they would have fixed it.
@IAM JSON: I have a Surface RT. It’s a nice tablet, but Microsoft’s app store is seriously lacking. I don’t use mine as much as I thought I would because most of my apps are not available for it. Just my two cents on the Surface.
@Deborah Nam-Krane: Don’t give up hope! As @Sunita points out, both Nook and Amazon have forked versions of the Android OS, so a Samsung tablet might have no such issue at all. Several people in the comments so far are very happy with their Samsungs, which is in line with the reviews I’ve seen.
@Darlynne: Did you know that you can sideload “most” android apps to the Fire? I’ve somehow become the family tech person and Google apps are the only ones I haven’t been able to sideload. I’ve picked up apps from developer sites, 1mobile.com, getjar.com, etc.
I don’t ask much from my personal tablet, mostly web browsing and playing music. My Fire was a gift and after using it for a week or two, I ended up donating my Nexus 7 because I thought the speakers were so much better on the Fire. If I were an app fiend or couldn’t live without Google, I might have made a different choice.
I don’t think anyone in my family uses B&N for hardware these days. I had a couple of poor experiences with their CS on behalf of family members. The second one was horrible enough that I announced that I would no longer assist with any Nook issues.
I don’t know which tablet I’d choose these days if I were in the market for one but odds are that I would be buying it from Amazon because of their customer service.
Customer service is near and dear to my heart and sometimes the most important benchmark in my decision to purchase. B&N is horrible as you’ve said but if you go into their store, it’s a difference of night and day. When a company puts customers first, they usually will see a lot more business. B&N has this strange system where once it’s done it can’t be undone and the whole authorization process is slow and ridiculous. I’ve stopped giving them money because of their awful customer service overall. The stores can only do so much but they’ve swapped out devices for me in the past. For ebooks and the like, you have to deal with B&N corporate office for that and its headache inducing customer service reps.
@Ann: We use Google Voice, now Hangouts, for wifi texting and calling, GMail, and Google Translate (I know, I know) was a literal lifesaver when we were both sick in Mexico last winter. I am not averse to recommendations, however, for a translation program, but seem to be stuck with mostly Google apps.
I don’t think I’m asking too much from a tablet. Moon+ Reader Pro, the lack of which would be a deal-breaker for me, is available on all platforms; Netflix streaming capability; the occasional game when I’m bored and want to be mindless; and decent wifi/internet access.
It still feels as though I’m going to have to kiss a bunch of frogs to find it.
I have a Nexus 7 (2nd gen), a Nook 7″ tablet, and an iPad. I don’t read on any of them, but for use as a tablet, I love my Nexus 7. The Nook tablet is impossible to use as anything more than a glorified color e-reader and the B&N installed apps are annoying. I have a lot more eyestrain when I read on tablets and computer monitors, so a separate e-reader seems to be a necessity for me. I’m on my 4th e-reader (sony pocket, 1st gen nook, kindle keyboard, and finally the nook simple touch with glowlight) and find between that and my phone (HTC one X), i can’t justify carrying a tablet around, too.
I’m a QA Engineer in my day job, and I’ve been having do a lot of device testing on mobile platforms lately. Plus, I just like playing with ereaders.
So for giggles and grins I got hold of a Nook HD–this was just before they shipped the new Samsungs. it doesn’t surprise me that B&N’s customer service was awful in that regard, though. At least in my case I was able to go into the store, and pretty much demonstrate to the guy at the desk that HI YES I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING just let me play with the damn thing and see if I like it. ;) It was a relief to see how fast he backed off.
So far the HD’s been fine as a device but since I have no experience with the new ones, I can’t testify to that.
BUT MEANWHILE I also was able to get a Kindle Fire HDX via the points rewards program on my and my wife’s credit card. I have in fact had a screen flicker problem with it when playing one of my day job’s games–but only on that game so far. Googling around has shown me people on Amazon forums complaining about similar issues with the devices. Plus, my particular Fire has some discolored pixels along the edge, which is distracting when I’m trying to use it to, y’know, _read a book_.
I can’t return it to Amazon directly since I didn’t get it from them, which is a shame, but that’s not really their customer support people’s fault.
All in all I will give this to B&N–they don’t have the HD locked down quite as hard as Amazon has locked down the Fire. I mean, _cripes_, I can’t even set a wallpaper on the Fire. And I can’t even find the logic path that leads me to that. And like I said–I’m a QA Engineer in the day job. I can usually suss this kind of thing out.
And the HD lets me go to Google Play without having to sideload, too. The Fire does not. I was playing around with sideloading stuff onto the Fire, only to discover that even if I put an alternate launcher on the thing to evade the Amazon launcher, I STILL can’t set my own wallpaper. Or change the color scheme, for that matter.
As ereaders go I think both of them deliver perfectly acceptable reading experiences (and I have amused myself mightily by putting the Kobo app on both devices, the Kindle app on the Nook, and the Nook app on the Fire). But as general tablets go, meh. If I were to go looking for a general Android tablet, I’d definitely be eyeing the Nexus 7. I’ve got one of those to test on at work.
After three months with a cheap, no-name tablet, I can’t imagine tying myself to amazon or bn with a store specific one. (Not that I’d recommend mine. The battery life sucks.)
But, yeah, bn’s customer service has taken a nose dive in the last couple of years. However, if you need to deal with them, on the phone is actually the way you want to do so. Their online help is either a crap shoot, chat people can’t switch you to someone else if they have no clue, or worse than useless. I seriously don’t think anyone reads the email questions unless you keep replying three or four times. The first couple tend to read like they auto generate a reply based solely on keywords.
@Darlynne: There is no way that you would be happy with a Fire then. Don’t even look at them because I think you would be seriously disappointed. If I wanted a straight Android device, I guess I would start by looking at Samsungs just because I’ve been very happy with their phones but the Nexus 7 I had also worked fine. The Fire hardware was just better for what I use tablets for.
Choose something else but buy from Amazon because of their customer service and no 40 minute drive to a store? Yes, that’s what I’d do.
Amazon customer service is one of the many reasons why I am considering one of their budget tablets for my first tablet. I am looking at the 6 inch with no ads and 16gb for $134 . Even though that is a budget tablet it is still a large purchase and if something goes wrong early on I want customer service I can rely on.
I’ve bought a lot of Kindle ereaders and tablets over the years and have had almost all of them replaced (some more than once) due to the constant rebooting issue. I’ve also had defective covers replaced. It sucks to have that happen, but Amazon made the process easy and often gave me a credit in addition to the replacement to ease the woe a bit. I’ve always been a lot calmer after getting off the phone/email with CS than I was at the outset, which is the opposite of most CS experiences. When I wrote a negative review of an Amazon product, they contacted me almost immediately via email asking what they could do to make it better, and then did. I compare that to my experience with the Apple geniuses when my iPad 1 died after a few months. The corpse is still in a drawer somewhere and I’ve never bought another Apple product.
I’m a tech person. I know exactly what tech support is like.
HELL.
LOL. I’ve been there the past two weeks trying to work out a problem with Comcast/Xfinity. Gah! Tech support is such a nightmare and the journey to actually get a tech person on the phone sucks just as much. My experience with BnN mirrors yours which is why I don’t have a Nook and never recommend it to friends.
Sorry for your tablet woes. I hope you finally get something that works for you and look forward to hearing what you like/don’t like about it.
@Keishon: Yes to that- B&N customer service is like day and night from the store to the phone. I’ve generally had wonderful experiences with the people in the store, and meh experiences on the phone; (meh ranking can be compared to Apple- pretty good, Canon- are you kidding me, Verizon- 5th circle of fire-and-lava torture).
Unlike most people I’ve really hated all of the Amazon devices I’ve tried- various Kindle and Fire models. I was given a starter Acer tablet running Android Jelly Bean that I had no problems with, and generally enjoyed using. Along the same lines as the Nexus tablets, I think. And I got really good customer support, on the phone no less, from Acer when I had a question.
And the reason why Apple is a cult is because it works, and their tech support is awesome.
Many years ago I had a brand new Dell laptop that didn’t work, and their tech support instructions involved me getting a screwdriver and opening the machine to do something. WTH? A brand new laptop doesn’t work and you’re going to have me do my own tech support?
There is a reason I ran back to Apple as fast as my legs would take me, and yes, Amazon seems to have learned from Apple on both counts–quality and customer support.
Goodness yes on Amazon’s customer service. Someone set a (full) suitcase down on my old Kindle Keyboard, and despite living in Canada (it was a gift and they weren’t available here at the time) the customer service person was amazing and rushed a replacement so I had it within two days. Normal shipping from US to Canada takes about 2 weeks. I was stunned and yep, since then every e-reader I’ve gotten and given to people have been Kindles.
I didn’t get a Fire because Canada (we’re missing most of the content that would make it worthwhile at the moment, and their tablets are a lot more aware of where you ACTUALLY live), but I did recently get a Samsung Galaxy 4 as they were on clearance with the new ones having just come out, and I’m pretty thrilled with it. It has one dead pixel out of the box, but I can barely see it and it annoys me way less than the one on my monitor. So far I’ve had no issues with booting/etc, when apps crash they don’t crash the entire OS (and it’s only one that’s a bit crash-y, and only because I’m overwhelming it), and so far I haven’t gotten it to chug despite a bunch of things going at a time.
I’ve had an Android phone for a while and haven’t gotten NEARLY as much use out of it as I have this tablet, although it’s been great for emergencies. The two also talk to each other easily so I’m finding myself synching across devices (phone/tablet/PC) a LOT more than I ever did, and it’s lovely. My phone’s 3 years old and the differences between them are really noticeable, as well as how apps handle things. Half the apps in the Play store don’t even work on my phone because of the screen size/model type, so I intentionally went for something that was going to have things tested and ported to it. I learned my lesson — the more mainstream something is, the more rigorous the QA involved and the more likely it is to be supported!
I am also so, so happy to have something I can read comic books/picture books/cookbooks on, and finally can start picking up some photography books I’ve been mooning over for years.
@IAM JSON – For whatever it’s worth, I bought a refurb Kindle Fire HD, 8in for under a $100 one day when Amazon had a lightning sale. I rooted it so I could set it up how I like, and sideload other apps, as mentioned above, and I love it. Definitely more work, but I’m a nerd. Regardless, a product, new or not, should work out of the box, and when it doesn’t, the seller should be going above and beyond to make it right. =D
For what it’s worth, I’d recommend a plain vanilla Android tablet, like a Google Nexus. If you can order it through Amazon to take advantage of their great customer service, so much the better. A plain-vanilla Android tablet can add apps from Amazon’s store easily, but it’s a lot harder to get external apps onto the Fire as I understand it. I’m happy with my ’13 Nexus 7, and I have a Nook HD that I put plain Android on with Cyanogenmod that works decently too.
If you go with Google-branded hardware, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get OS updates earlier than just about anyone else, too. I’m supposed to get Lollipop on my Nexus 7 this week. Looking forward to it!
The fact that two different tablets running different OSes start rebooting continually seems more like a coincidence to me than necessarily a problem with Android. I haven’t had any of my Android devices do that.
Your experience with B&N sounds exactly like mine. I haven’t even had my iPad for a year and already I want a new tablet to learn and play with. Now, if I can just figure out which one…
@IAM JSON: All I can say is that my refurbed Tab 3 has been a dream- I signed in to Google and I was good to go in probably less than 5 minutes. I didn’t need the newest top of the line hardware for my purposes. But, in light of this review and a few other things I’ve read, at this point I’m probably going to stick to non-third-party-affiliate devices (if that’s a good way to put it) when they eventually need replacement.
I feel like the odd man out… My Kindle Touch is 3 1/2 years old and aside from a not-unexpected decline in battery life due to age, it’s been great. My daughter’s Fire is … about 3 years old now and still going strong. My 2-year-old Samsung Tab 2 is also great. Never had a problem out of any of the three of them.
::now knocking on wood and praying I haven’t jinxed myself:: =)