Dear Archos

Hi Archos, and thanks for the replacement tablet.
But I have to say this is a bit of an annoyance now, tablet four and it's got another issue, making me wonder what tests are done on tablets when their sent out as warranty replacements

Let's elaborate in greater detail why I'm annoyed, shall I?

September 2014 The good lady buys me a Xenon 80 tablet, (When was plastic considered as sleek aluminium casing?) it was a good price with a quad core Qualcomm CPU and 3G capability built in. Works well but on occasions the screen loses sensitivity and a reboot in most cases will fix it and when that failed a hard reset does the trick. Annoying if you're working on a project and you forget to save or sync to Google Drive prior to reset.
Come December it's become unbearable, the panel is growing harder and harder to use so I send it back to Archos in January (it was late as Christmas took priority) who take it to their repair centre in France via Geodis. They send me another one a few weeks later.

The new tablet arrives and the touch-panel was never checked and faulty on delivery. tried using it for a day and ended up sending it back, thankfully they picked up via UPS this time, I'm thankful for that to be fair, from this point on they have been good, but it gets worse.

They replace the tablet with the 80b Xenon. a Mediatek based tablet with similar specs but an improved screen resolution, Android Kitkat, dual sim cards and voice calling capabilities. This worked well but the touch-screen wasn't very responsive again. A hard reset didn't fix this and I assumed it was down to different hardware until we went back to constant failures needing rebooting or hard reset.

@ARCHOS my replacement replacement tablet arrived with a damaged sim cover. Lets hope the touchscreen works pic.twitter.com/X9r3KurYYs

— Paul Hooker (@hooker1uk) June 3, 2015

Again Archos kindly replaced the device last week with another 80b Xenon. However the tablet came with a damaged sim card cover, the latches were snapped off. But the touchscreen worked a million times better. I would have forgiven Archos for this. Until a few days later when using the device more when the touch-screen went completely ma. Touches were not working properly, moving apps to the home screen refused to work and it was completely hit and miss.
This seemed to happen while it's on charge but once off charge it requires a reboot to fix this issue, happening with all but one charger and that's underpowered. So I have to power off and leave it to charge. Again, not ideal is it..

I do hope this won't become a constant game of replacing things until September, or for another year if its a two year warranty. And to Archos credit they have fantastic customer support teams and are quick to replace the devices and ship them back and forth but I wish their repair centres would actually do proper checks on devices before they send them out to customers.
And I'll say this now I don't want a freebie, Archos. Just a tablet I can use without fear of it failing every few months.

I've been using Archos products for a long time and the tablet is used at all events when out and about, getting people asking where I got the 80b Xenon down to it's looks with most surprised at the price direct from Archos But how can I recommend a product if they're prone to fail?

If anyone also has any ideas on what to do here, please let me know?

Paul

Update - On asking Archos via Facebook about the situation I got the a response as seen in the image to the right. It seems the social media team are not blessed with the same caring attitude that tech support are.

John Lewis to the rescue!

Operation Bedroom. A grueling monster fueled by the kids needing space and me needing room to blog without the kids turning my desk into a chalkboard, yes. It gets that gruesome at times. That’s without me adding to the mess as well.

I've nearly completed the two areas now, but in tidying up it hit me that I may have messed up. Any clothes washed are left in the living room by my old desk, which is now in the bedroom for taking up too much space, but fits perfectly in the small space given for it in the room. However, through tidy up and putting things in their new place it transpires that Lord Clumsy has broken a few things.  

Bar the computer requiring encouragement to work in any way shape or form I found I’d broken the clothes airer. Panic sets in straight away, knowing I’ll be in the doghouse for sure I start looking for a new one, in the hope I can turn it around and buy a new Clothes airer and at the same time gain some brownie points. I looked around local shops and found the same few, poorly built ones with yet another generic brand on each store. Close to giving up it was suggested I try John Lewis, in hindsight I should have checked first. Yes I didn't think of them. 

I know what we need from a Clothes airer in this house. It has to be strong enough to fit anything from a huge hoodie to the roof of a child trailer and when not being used to dry clothed it’ll become the support for Blode base alpha, the kid’s dinosaur shark hunting base, or their dragon hotel.
On looking through the many John Lewis sell I was able to pinpoint a few good ones from the customer reviews which made the elimination process easy!  

Additionally I needed to get one fast and try and get away with the fact I broke the previous one so it had to be in stock and available to get to me pronto. After all It would be useless of me to buy one if it would not be here when I need it. I would really be in for it. Eventually I chose a large but robust looking one from a well-known brand, what I’d not noticed was it came with a three year warranty. At this price it’s a win. Also next day delivery made the choice even easier.

I got caught out in the end though as the clothes airer arrived while I was on the school run. D’oh!  Luckily I wasn't made to sleep on the couch as the wife had been eyeing a similar model up too. Maybe I should have told her what had happened? Oh well.

Have you tried to hide the fact you've broken something from your significant other and got away with it? If so tell us in the comments below.

Paul

Disclosure:

This post is bought to you in association with John Lewis.