What grudges do you hold against tech/software companies and why?

[B16CXHatch]

Well, I held a grudge against MSI for years. I bought an MSI laptop that I was cool with at first because it was the highest end, most powerful laptop I had ever had (i7 4710HQ + GTX 850). It started to drive me insane though. The cooling wasn't adequate on the CPU. The slightest of loads would send it soaring to 95+ degrees and have the fan running wide open even after a thermal paste change. I just couldn't stand the constant noise. Gave it to my dad. To its credit, my dad still has it and still uses it. It's still loud as butts though. Then shortly after buying that laptop, I had also bought an MSI motherboard (some Z97 board), and it crapped out after about 30 minutes of use. I swore off MSI after that.

 

Now, a few months ago, I bought an ASRock X570 Extreme4 WiFi ax board to upgrade my main rig with for two reasons. My old Asus Strix X470-F never really behaved quite right after the BIOS updates to support Gen 3 Ryzen. It worked but it was a little derpy. Also, after upgrading to a Ryzen 7 3800X, I now had a Ryzen 7 2700 just sitting there and I wanted something to do with it. That went horribly awry. Turns out, ASRock is kinda shit at making BIOS updates. At least for this board. After updating to V2.1 TWICE, it was horribly unstable (updated once using my 2700, after installing the 3800X, it somehow reverted to V1.0).

 

By the time I got around to this, the board was well outside the return period. So I bought a different board from a different manufacturer. I was much quicker on the swap but not before trying another BIOS update. ASRock released V2.2 and delisted 2.1. So yeah, I figured it was just a bad BIOS update and this new one will fix it. Nope. Just as bad. I have never removed a motherboard as fast as that ASRock. I threw the 3800X into the new board, installed the latest BIOS and it was smooth sailing. Stable, CPU somehow runs cooler, installing M.2 drives is easier, and the chipset fan is quieter, doesn't whine, and even has a 0RPM mode.

 

You might see where this is going. That new board is an MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon WiFi and so far, I love it. I bought it because MSI's X570 boards were consistently higher rated on Amazon and Newegg than everybody else and this particular one was the highest rated board within what I wanted to spend. Before buying, I came to terms with the fact that that board failing all those years ago, well... It might have been my fault. I'm not going into details but there's something I did that, while it never was a problem before, might have killed that board.

 

So now my grudge is with ASRock instead of MSI. It's so weird seeing an MSI logo every time this thing boots. Oh, yeah. A double kick to the nuts. Not only did I have to buy another board, I had to buy another Windows license cause after two board swaps, I couldn't get my license to activate on the newest board. Screw calling support. My time is worth more than that.

[Flying Sausages]

Grudge against Apple

 

1) Too much expensive

 

2) Old IPhone still cost a lot of $$$

 

3) Apple is a luxury brand. No longer tech innovation anymore

 

4) Tim Cook is all about $$$ than tech passion

[Anomnomnomaly]

13 hours ago, MadAnt250 said:

The tech inside modern automobiles failing that cost big bucks to fix(cough)replace, for example: The heater buttons will not work and the "correct repair" is to replace the whole climate control board/module which is $1200 and needs to be flashed, and what the stealership does not like is that the problem was fixed by fixing a bad solder joint. Times were better when it was just replacing a $20 switch or a $5 nob.

 

And oh yea, Microsoft Edge on Xbox, freezes, crashes and glitches sometimes where your courser gets stuck and the way to fix it is by exiting. 

So much this... There's a known defect in the bluetooth modules on the Honda Accord, it would start to fail and cause battery drain.  To repair it via a 3rd party is around £350, or to replace from Honda is more like £550.  So most people simply unplug them to stop the battery drain, and some then fit a parrot kit as a top of the range one of those with music streaming (which the Honda ones didn't have) can be bought/installed for around £200-220.

 

But some of us are a little more creative... there were two main issues... occasionally one of the chips failed... which is a dead unit that can't be fixed.  The most common cause was a dry/cracked solder joint.

 

So we invented 'The Great British Bluetooth Bake Off'... stripped the units down, placed the PCB's in a 200ºC Oven raised up on each corner using some balled up greaseproof paper for about 20 mins.

 

It reflowed the solder in the joints without damaging anything else, and a year later... they're still working.

[Archer20]

The Epic Games Store. I refuse to download it, even if the spyware thing has been debunked. One reason: timed exclusives barred from other stores. If I wanted to play the "exclusives" game, I would have bought a console. Exclusives should not be a thing on PC. I should be able to use my game launcher of choice.

[Anomnomnomaly]

12 hours ago, Shammikit said:

The only thing that comes to my mind is HTC mobile devices. Back in the day when they were running Windows mobile OS I used to love them. My dad had one and its the coolest phone I remember. I remember thinking to myself I should get an HTC phone too someday. 10 years later I did, my first phone HTC 820G+. Was very excited when I bought it and after a couple of months of use, realized how crap it was. it was bad in performance and it never got any feature updates.Sometime not even security patches. HTC for some stupid reason makes several versions of the same phone for the same price. They make one set which has got their Sense UI (this is the range that gets updates). The other range has a fake UI that had been made by HTC themselves to look like the Sense UI that never gets any updates (my phone was one of them). IDK who wants a phone that doesnt get any updates and why it had to be in the same price bracket as another one of their own phones that does get updates. Newer HTC devices dont get updates too and their  features are not competitive with what other brands offer.

 

HTC has a bad habit of not sending updates to their flagship models too and sometimes when they do the mess up phones features with updates and decide not to fix them by moving on to new devices. The example that comes to my mind is that pink issue bug that happens to their camera after updates in the M series phone (M8 i think). When it happens is when u update ur phone and try to open ur camera everything is pink. As i heard there was no fix to this by HTC. maybe they screwed up the camera's hardware.

 

Theres a local HTC group here and everyone is like, their current HTC mobile is the last HTC they will ever buy. This will be my last one too.

I swore of HTC after I had the Desire HD back in around 2010... that was the flagship phone at the time... We were promised that the new version of Android was coming... the lower end phones go it... We never did, they simply lied about it and then pushed yet another version of their sense overlay... It's that reason why I sweat off phones with a manufacturer overlay and will only buy phones with as near to vanilla android as possible.  I can cope with a few apps, but not anything more... That sense overlay baked in so many apps, on top of the built in baked versions of the same apps... so you were left with 2 versions of facebook/twitter that couldn't be removed along with other garbage.

 

Got rid of that phone around 2012 and wouldn't touch them again... No wonder they've all but disappeared from the marketplace... treat customers like shit... people stop buying phones... HTC goes 'surprisedpikachu.gif'

[Anomnomnomaly]

1 minute ago, Archer20 said:

The Epic Games Store. I refuse to download it, even if the spyware thing has been debunked. One reason: timed exclusives barred from other stores. If I wanted to play the "exclusives" game, I would have bought a console. Exclusives should not be a thing on PC. I should be able to use my game launcher of choice.

Yup.. it's not going on my system.. all they're doing with the timed exclusives crap is making people look for.. erm.. alternative ways to acquire it.

[WereCatf]

Just now, Archer20 said:

The Epic Games Store. I refuse to download it, even if the spyware thing has been debunked. One reason: Time Exclusives barred from other stores. If I wanted to play the "exclusives" game, I would have bought a console. Exclusives should not be a thing on PC. I should be able to use my game launcher of choice.

I don't like EGS's bullshit and I'm still waiting for Metro Exodus to come to Steam, but I'm not sure I'd classify my distaste for them as a grudge. I mean..I'm just not supporting their practices and I find their services to be far inferior compared to e.g. Steam, so I'm voting with my wallet. If they did change their practices and improve their services, I might vote differently.

[Archer20]

1 minute ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

Yup.. it's not going on my system.. all they're doing with the timed exclusives crap is making people look for.. erm.. alternative ways to acquire it.

Mine neither, anti-consumer practices should never be accepted.

[WkdPaul]

For me, it's always when customer service falls through, if they can't be bothered to keep a client, they don't deserve my money!!

 

 

HP (not HPE) ; long story short ; they wouldn't agree to warranty service on a 6 months old device and were telling me to buy a new laptop because it was discontinued ... Yeah ...

 

Asus ; their VERY poor customer service (had a shit experience) : got an Android tablet (can't remember the model), was sent 3 times under the 1 year warranty because on day it randomly wouldn't wake up after being locked, had to pay roughly $20 in shipping every time even though it was obviously a defect on the device. Complained about it but never got my shipping fee refunded. Didn't sent it back when it broke again.

 

Bell Canada ; was given a rebate to keep my landline, it expired after 6 months, I called back asking if there was other rebates I was eligible for, and got a better rebate for a year. Called again after it expired, they said no more rebate ... Called retention and was basically told "tough shit" ... Sorry, I'm not paying for $40 for a landline when YOU'RE offering better prices for a mobile line!

 

Switched to a cheap BYOD mobile provider and switched my DSL internet to a 3rd party ISP ... The next day I got a call from retention telling me they had great deals to offer, I replied "tough shit" and went on with my life.

[Archer20]

Just now, WereCatf said:

I don't like EGS's bullshit and I'm still waiting for Metro Exodus to come to Steam, but I'm not sure I'd classify my distaste for them as a grudge. I mean..I'm just not supporting their practices and I find their services to be far inferior compared to e.g. Steam, so I'm voting with my wallet. If they did change their practices and improve their services, I might vote differently.

They are indeed far inferior compared to Steam as far as app functionality in concerned. I often reference the comparison image below.  Tim Sweeney, on record, has said he has no intention of changing course with exclusivity. Metro Exodus and BL3 are first of many to comme sadly....

[Mira Yurizaki]

22 minutes ago, Archer20 said:

The Epic Games Store. I refuse to download it, even if the spyware thing has been debunked. One reason: timed exclusives barred from other stores. If I wanted to play the "exclusives" game, I would have bought a console. Exclusives should not be a thing on PC. I should be able to use my game launcher of choice.

The only thing I don't like about Epic at this point is Sweeney's "my dick is bigger than yours" attitude.

[Archer20]

26 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

For me, it's always when customer service falls through, if they can't be bothered to keep a client, they don't deserve my money!!

 

 

HP (not HPE) ; long story short ; they wouldn't agree to warranty service on a 6 months old device and were telling me to buy a new laptop because it was discontinued ... Yeah ...

 

HP is one of my grudges that I forgot to mention. Short story.

 

I had used HP for my laptops for years(3 HP laptops I had bought within 9 years) and my last HP was starting to have issues towards the 4 year mark, and HP was claiming(via a popup advertisement that support for my model was ending), that I would receive a 5% loyalty discount on new purchase. So I found an OMEN that I wanted to apply it on. Guess what? The site rejected the "loyalty" discount. So I call HP and ask why I can't use it, I was told.... that the site is already a discounted price and coupons cannot be applied on the majority of laptops on the site.

This is FIVE PERCENT we are talking about. I mentioned that i had been buying HPs for years. I escalated it ti a supervisor and was again told no.

Bought a Dell. Dell has always been good to me.

[Tovape]

NXZT, Razer, Trust and Game
NXZT and Razer are overpriced, overrated and has a toxic community

Then Trust and Game (a new brand) pretends to be a high quality brand but actually its products aren't

[Retro_R]

I don't really have that much grudges although, I think there are a couple of problems with a couple problems with a couple companies.

 

Apple: No upgradeability on Macbook pro (at least storage)

 

NZXT: from what i've seen thier social media is kinda ran stupidly. I remember I saw a insta post from them with thier motherboard and the caption was 'WhEN wilL YOu GuYs mAke a x570 bOaRD?" or something like that. I kinda find that stupid and mocking people who like thier products and want to see more of them. They were even kinda mocking people who were asking when/if they will make a x570 board

 

Microsoft/Windows 10: Task manager not being turned to dark mode when the system theme is dark

[Zando_]

AMD for my 2700X being boring to OC (especially for the money I paid for it) at the time, and AMD again for their Radeon VII drivers being consistently rather shit and most versions somewhat broken, and their control panel using GPU acceleration so it lags whenever I have Valley or anything running in the background. Yet I have to use it, because Wattman (in the current driver version I'm running were it isn't broken for once) actually works better than Afterburner. 

Dell's monitors because the one we've had so far at work was a bad egg. 

Microsoft, specifically for Windows 10, and more specifically for two reasons:

• Control Panel and Settings having half the stuff from the other but half not, instead of just leaving everything in Control Panel
• I forgot the other thing because I've been awake for... 30 hours now? It'll come to me eventually I guess. 

[Sauron]

I have a problem with all forms of proprietary software, hardware and DRM, so there you go. I only hold a direct grudge against companies that play a big part in promoting those things though.

[Curious Pineapple]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

I have a problem with all forms of proprietary software, hardware and DRM, so there you go. I only hold a direct grudge against companies that play a big part in promoting those things though.

Oh dear, better not pay with card again then

 

Only company I won't buy (new) hardware from again is Apple. I've had and still have a lot of Apple hardare, but their intentional use of non-replacable hardware in anything other than phones and tablets is an utter fark bucket. That and instead of allowing the installation of a new OS on older hardware, they just prevent the installer from running and pull support for hardware which it would be no issue to leave drivers in for. When it's as much effort to install Mac OS on actual Apple hardware as it is to install it on an AMD machine from 10 years ago, it's not a good sign.

 

Also EA for dropping online support for NFSU2 because the next one was released. I miss that game.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

Apple: Steve Jobs is was a jerk that neglected his daughter in her earlier years. I have nothing against their products (I personally believe they make good products, a bit overpriced but good) I just don't like the guy.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Dissitesuxba11s

[Curious Pineapple]

4 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

Apple: Steve Jobs is jerk that neglected his daughter in her earlier years. I have nothing against their products (I personally believe they make good products, a bit overpriced but good) I just don't like the guy.

*was

[Sauron]

34 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Oh dear, better not pay with card again then

Well, I didn't say I had a choice I just hate it

[Curious Pineapple]

Just now, Sauron said:

Well, I didn't say I had a choice I just hate it

You wouldn't want an open source payment terminal.

[Sauron]

Just now, Curious Pineapple said:

You wouldn't want an open source payment terminal.

I would actually, I'd rather banks be accountable to the public on what exactly the software in their ATMs does, plus it would avoid deprecation problems like what happened with Windows XP. Open source software is no less secure than proprietary software, in fact it's often more secure just by virtue of having more (and crucially independent) security researchers poking at it. Security by obfuscation is the least effective in most scenarios, encryption algorithms are just as effective even if you know what they're doing.

[Blademaster91]

Asus- terrible customer service and RMA, their motherboards are usually overpriced compared to other brands.

EA- lootbox greed, releasing games with bugs or glitches that shouldn't be in the game past beta testing, online live service games that get awful support from the devs with little communication to the community on content releases.

Apple- overpriced fashion statement devices, hardware designed to be thrown away instead of repaired or upgraded, and they are against right to repair.

Razer- expensive junk with flashy RGB, their mice and headsets have pretty crappy build quality and break often, they're the Apple of PC gaming hardware.

Microsoft -Windows 10, just let me buy Windows 10 without all the spyware. Microsoft Office, because the subscription service sucks.

[Anomnomnomaly]

16 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

Apple: Steve Jobs is was a jerk that neglected his daughter in her earlier years. I have nothing against their products (I personally believe they make good products, a bit overpriced but good) I just don't like the guy.

Jobs was a genius... at marketing... a liar and a thief for almost everything else an unbelieveable narcissict and one of the most unpleasant people to work for apparantly. Apple haven't 'invented' anything that they currently get lauded for... First mp3 player... the iPod... nope... 3yrs earlier... The smart phone... nope... iPad... nope... airbuds... nope... laptops.... nope.

 

if anyone can think of anything they have actually invented, and been the first to market with over the last 20yrs... Please let me know and don;t forget to provide source for the claim.  I do enjoy being proven wrong. 

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Anything Epic 

beating a dead horse at this point, so am gonna copy paste a comment i made a whole ago

  

On 2/4/2019 at 12:57 AM, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

i don't care if it's a single player game or multiplayer, epic lacks any basic features such as cloud save or even achievements, and anti consumer opt in dev reviews now, people are upset that they are giving no choice, it's not competition. installing another 10 mb launcher was the least of anyone's worries, 

there is no actual one Upside to buy it on EPIC either.  doesn't mean people want to ditch where all of their friends are, where all their achievements are, where all their games saves have been saved, where you can make an informed decision in buying a game reading the user reviews instead of paid media, where you can look up stats of the users before buying an online game.

why are you so intent into forcing users to buy it on EPIC by force and not by choice anyway? 
 

people are reasonably very angry about this and a lot of console gamers seem to be confused as a why PC gamers seem quote/unquote so entitled, let me make an analogy say you really like Call of Duty and you own a ps4 well what if two weeks before launch Activision announced that the next Call of Duty game is going to only be on the Xbox one for the first year and then it'll go on all platforms and that the reason this happened is because Microsoft bought the rights for the first year of call of duty, this means that in order to play Call of Duty you would have to play it on an Xbox one you have no choice there is no competition.
 

I really want to stress I made this analogy with a third party game this is not something epic games is making this is a third party title and makes sense the EA's games would be on their own platform, it makes sense the Ubisoft games would be on their own platform, but for a third party game being restricted to a specific store is not good for the consumer people defending this seem to mistake it for being good competition this is not good competition, the developer and publisher aren't leaving Steam that's not what's going on 
 

Epic Games is buying games to force them to be an exclusive on their platform, what would be good competition is if Metro Exodus was on both steam and the epic store, this is actually something we need, we need another company to really push valve to make steam better but this is not how you do it, again people are not leaving steam because steam is bad, Epic Store does give developers more profits and if this is the only reason they were leaving that would be great but it's not, people are not willing to leave steam and lose all the sales they would have made on Steam to make less sales on epic, that cut does not make up for that, so epic has to pay people to make their games and go on their store, exclusive deals like this aren't necessarily new to the gaming space on consoles but they are pretty new to PC gaming and this is why people are so upset, we DO NOT want this to become the norm, this is not good for consumers and this only benefits epic games
 

People aren't upset just because they have to download another program people are upset because this is a whole bunch of bullshit the consumers shouldn't have to deal with to make all this worse the epic store is flat-out terrible compared to Steam, now keep in mind steam is not the world's best thing but comparatively it looks like the work of God"Gaben", epic store doesn't have cloud saving, reviews, message boards, achievements, in-home streaming, family sharing, there's no Linux support, there's no community pages, there's nothing like big picture mode, it is complete garbage in comparison, to make things worse it's forced DRM and ALWAYS online(you can't play exodus offline on Epic regardless of it being a fucking single player game.), this is why it's bad for the consumer we aren't going over to their store because it's a better thing than Steam, we're going to the store because we are forced to, nobody wants this, because it's enticing in comparison, it looks awful in comparison.
 

And this is why you're seeing a lot of claim from people saying "well I guess I'm just not gonna play a metro Exodus for the next year until it comes to steam" or the other comments saying "well I guess I'm pirating Metro Exodus", which let's be real that means they're going to pirate it beat at once probably never play it again probably never buy it, these are people that would have 100% bought the game on Steam if it was on Steam or perhaps if the epic store was actually any good they'd buy it over there instead and give a bigger cut to the developer, but as it stands right now it's a trash fortnite launcher that people are being forced to use and all of this is because Deep Silver is greedy and wants money right "now" like most publishers do, the blame 100% goes to both Epic Games and Deep Silver for this, epic games for being incredibly scummy and really having an over aggressive marketing strategy for a product that's subpar on top of that it's a product I don't trust.
 

It seems to be selling a lot of information to people and people seem to reporting their accounts getting hacked rather quickly I don't trust my information in the store at all, now a new store is going to have some growing pains but at the same time Epic Games is not a small store and this clients been around for a little while because a fortnite, so they should have been working things out to, add on top of all of this the head of the epic store is one of the same guys that ran telltale into the ground, not only did he do that but he was also present as a marketing consultant for the dying days of Atari Midway accolade, I'm not sure how this guy manages to continue getting a job higher up but he always seems to fail anywhere he goes.
 

Epic right now has a very aggressive strategy, I don't think it's really going to pan out for them I feel like more people are just going to boycott it but we'll see in the future and if it fails I doubt epics going to give up on their store maybe they'll start doing things the right way.

I still love the Metro franchise but I do not approve of where they're taking Metro Exodus ie the epic game store.

Edit : Also, the damn game doesn't even have regional pricing here.