Incredibly disappointed with Leadtek

[Calzinger]

To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a more unprofessional company. Don't get me wrong, they make great products and hardware, but I've found that when they're hardware doesn't work, you just wasted your money.

I bought the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP Expert TV Tuner card from them. Yes, I have had problems with it. At random times for random periods of time, random buttons on the remote will not work. Yet, it manages to be the same buttons every time. But the buttons are like volume up, numbers 1-3, record, and a few other ones. Yet, volume down and numbers 4-9 & 0 work fine. It's COMPLETELY RANDOM!

Lots of randomness to it, eh?

It's not really the problems I'm getting that are frustrating me the most. It's the fact that Leadtek gave me no response over a gap of weeks after I emailed them numerous times. Some pages at their website even point to broken links. They have no replace/repair policy.

Perhaps I can't find their RMA page, but in all honesty, the fact that they can't even answer an email is very pathetic.

I may never buy a Leadtek product again. And not because of their hardware but because I'll have to sit there praying that the hardware works. Why? Because if it doesn't, I'm stuck with it.

I may just be one unlucky case who can't get a response and receives a faulty product, but it's just so frustrating to have to deal with an unresponsive company where you can't do a single thing to help the situation.

 

[Hacp]

RMA it.

 

[Calzinger]

Like said, I can't find the RMA page at http://www.leadtek.co.uk/, nor can I email them since they manage to be sleeping 24/7.

 

[Hacp]

Ow you bought it directly? Nvm then. Usually when you buy off a middleman they give you a 30 day warrenty.

 

[Calzinger]

Well I bought it from newegg.com and perhaps I can RMA it with them, but what if this occured in a few days when my 30-day warranty would be over? I would basically be screwed, eh?

Here's an interesting development. My remote works again for some strangely odd reason.

I set the volume to 0 using the remote since only volume down works. I kept hitting volume up but the computer acted as if I was hitting nothing at all. However! a few minutes later, I hit volume up again, and the volume was at 100. Therefore, it must have been registering the volume up action, but the computer wasn't handling it properly.

Can we assume that this is a software/driver/hardware issue and not a remote issue? If it isn't the remote, I can't assume that RMAing it will fix the issue. It must be in the installed software/drivers and replacing the hardware won't fix a corrupt app. I even tried completely reinstalling the software/drivers to no luck, but I even had trouble uninstalling them since Leadtek didn't even include an uninstaller (Add/Remove Programs didn't work).

I can easily bet that this same problem will occur tomorrow since it's been a bit of a habit lately.

Whether or not the hardware works, I'm still very disappointed at how badly the Leadtek support is conducted, or not conducted I should say. Then again, they are this newbie company. It's just too bad that their hardware is such high quality but backed by such horrible technical support.

I don't think I'll have a Leadtek product in the future simply due to their lack of technical support.

Has anyone else had problems with contacting Leadtek? Or am I the only unlucky soul?

*EDIT
Doesn't work again...

 

[Hacp]

I have never dealt with leadtek, but i'm sure other people have. As advice, I would def RMA it. Newegg has awesome customer support, and if you tell them you have a faulty product(which you do), then they will give you a replacement.

 

[Calzinger]

I'd rather hear what Leadtek has to say about it before going through the very long process of RMAing it. If Leadtek can fix the problem, then it would be time saved. But I obviously won't be getting any help from Leadtek.

If they won't answer me by e-mail, the only choice would be to phone 'em. They don't even have a toll free number so I can't even contact them at all.

*
I shook it, and it started working. Give it about 6 minutes while it's sitting still on my desk and it will suddenly stop working. The remote must be broken. RMA time unfortunately.

 

[003]

You can RMA it through newegg.

 

[Calzinger]

Well the whole point was that I would rather diagnos the problem first through Leadtek. If I bought an Audigy from newegg but had problem installing software, I would obviously first contact Creative so they could help me. Then if there was a problem with the hardware, I would RMA it.

I'm not certain that the hardware/remote is broken which is why I would like Leadtek to tell me "Your hardware is broken and not working". Then I would go and RMA it.

I would just like to avoid RMA'ing it if it isn't necessary. There is no sense in sending a card back for a new one if you don't have to.

 

[HAVOC]

It sounds to me like you're experiencing more of a software issue then a hardware issue. The software seems to be buggy. What software is it? May-be there's a patch. Plus, there are a lot of other TV capture programs out there.