From: "Jack Steinhilper" <jsteinhilper@mindspring.com>
To: <CyberPagan@outofthedark.com>
Subject: Early CompUSA problems.
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2002 10:01:56 -0400

A while back, we (guys in the electronics lab) just bought a new top of the line mother board.  But we needed some extra serial I/O for it, and since we had a running account at CompUSA, all we had to do was go down and pick one up.  We did just that, picked up a dual serial I/O card, one port standard, one port optional.  Installed the card, powered it up and ..... Poof!  Smoked the mother board.  Smoke started rising up from the board, by the time we removed power, one of the traces had turned black and started curling up from the board.  Needless to say, that $1000 mother board was a total waste.
 
After some checking around, looking at the serial card and such, I noticed that one of the second port serial chips had been installed backwards (it should not have been installed at ALL!).  That was our culprit, but how??  Looking at the box, I noticed a small orange sticker stuck to the SHRINK WRAP.  This serial card box was still in the "factory shrink wrap".
 
We took the serial card back, and as soon as we walked in the door, some guy wanted to, you guessed it, place a small orange sticker on the box, to show that we were bringing it back and didn't just pull it off the shelf.
 
Somebody else had bought that card and a upgrade, installed the chip backwards, probably smoked their board also, returned the "bad serial card" to CompUSA (getting the orange sticker) and CompUSA simply put new shrink wrap on the box (and the orange sticker) and put it back on the shelf for some unsuspecting customer (aka. sucker).
 
Ever since then, I've avoided CompUSA like the plague, and telling everybody I know to do the same.  And any time I was "forced" to make a purchase there, I opened the box in the store in front of a manager or sales person, making a big "do to" about "checking for )$&@#^ products in the box.  They HATE to see me come in the store, but that's OK, because I hate going it!!
 
I found the same thing with software too.  Wrong disks, erased, missing manuals, etc...  Never really found enough to turn them into the software police though.  I doubt it would have done that much good.  As long as they are selling as much as they are, they (the software giants) can tolerate a few screwups.
 
Jack Steinhilper
Flowery Branch, GA.