As you regular readers know I am a fan of Google and yet on occasion they fail me totally. Mostly this is due to them doing away with applications I use and enjoy: Google Reader, Calendar Sync, iGoogle, Google Notebook just to name a few.
But I enjoy their products so much that I have purchased hardware from them. Namely the Nexus 7, 2013. They always add the "2013"; however, it should have been named Nexus 7.2. Alas, they did not ask me. It had been working very well until 90 days ago or so.
Occasionally when I turned it from portrait to landscape the screen would not always, "flip" to match. It was a bother at first and I ignored it for a while. I could always start a program that must run in the correct alignment and then it would lock there. That would be good until the next time I turned it. I do not play many games but one day I had a few minutes and fired up, "Go-Go-Goat!" You are required to tilt the tablet to make the goat jump in the correct direction. Since the gyroscopic feature in the Nexus was dead he jumped straight up and died every time.
I contacted Google and the nice folks there gave me three things to try as a solution. They also told me that since I was under warrantee they would replace it with a rebuilt unit if these fixes did not work.
Two of the resolutions were easy but regrettably did not work. The third was easy to do but basically it was to reset my Nexus to the factory settings and rebuild it. That takes a while and is quite a pain. After putting it off for 2-3 weeks I did it and guess what? That did not resolve the issue either.
I called tech support at Google again and they assured me my refurbished unit would arrive the following Monday. Tuesday then Wednesday — I called again. I was told by the first rep that it was already delivered…to Austin, TX. What?! I asked him to check my order and it was correctly set up with my address in Virginia. He passed me along to a shipping person. They were also pleasant and helpful.
There was a problem with the shipment and he would check it and email me the next day. You guessed this correctly too, nothing but the sound of crickets the next two days. The next time I called I was apologized to and handed to a supervisory rep.
Samantha was her name and I got a voice mail which assured me that she would return my message as quickly as possible. She really did. That afternoon I got an email from her saying she would investigate and let me know what was up within 24 hours. Sure?!
The next morning I received an email from her stating that she was sorry for the mix up. She had found the problem, shipped out the correct unit which I should have by the end of the week. She also gave me a credit to my Google account for having the hassle.
I got the Nexus Thursday, a day earlier than she had predicted. Though it had taken three weeks instead of the initial, "couple of days" they did right by me. I shipped mine back immediately and the replacement has been working fine.
I will continue to be a Google Fan-boy for now. Until they do away with a few more apps that I use.
