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The Mouse Mess and Wondering If I Made the Right Choice

Like I was saying last week, my new mouse does seem to have some of the scroll wheel issues that have plagued the series, and while testing it more thoroughly I was at one point able to make it fail to scroll almost half the time. It very rarely does it in normal use, with the finger in the typical position one’d expect it to be when using a right-handed mouse and applying a moderate amount of pressure, and when it does happen it’s not a problem while browsing or reading a document, but an issue obviously exists, it’ll likely get worse and it would be bad enough even now if I’d be using the wheel in games. Since I don’t, however, I decided I could live with it for a while as long as the warranty problem also described in last week’s post was resolved.
The problem with that is that I sent a support message to the shop I bought it from last Friday and received no reply. In addition, on Monday I sent an e-mail to the importer, and while the reply I received confirmed that the mouse has a two-year warranty and pointed me to the service that will perform any repairs if needed, the service request form available on that site did not have ROCCAT among the supported brands, one of which needing to be selected for the request to be valid, and after pointing this out I have received no further reply. As such, on top of simply feeling ignored, I was more than a little concerned that I was being taken advantage of and had purchased an item known to fail, which the shop and the importer had agreed to get each other out of servicing when required.

That’s pretty much where I was Wednesday evening, when it became obvious I’ll need to actually return this mouse in order for anyone to take me seriously. Of course, I had specified in my e-mails that I will do so unless the warranty issue will be solved to my satisfaction, but with every day that passed I was hoping more and more that I won’t actually need to. I mean, in terms of the features it has, the customization options available, the size and shape, the feel of the material most of it is covered with, the button placement or the scroll wheel’s feedback each time you scroll, it’s just about perfect for me. The software has room for a few improvements I likely wouldn’t even have thought of if it wouldn’t have been so good to begin with, but other than that, the only thing that doesn’t feel quite right is the fact that the button above the wheel, which I went back to using as middle button in the standard Windows profile as well, requires significantly more force to push than any other, and I’m already getting used to that as well.
In other words, I can say that this mouse pretty much ticked all the boxes I could think of and invented new ones, so the thought of returning it for a refund and quickly grabbing an A4Tech X-718-BK instead, as that was the “fail-safe” I had set for myself, was becoming increasingly disturbing. Even if the store in question claims to accept returns after up to 31 days, I had to act quickly or I knew I would end up feeling quite rotten when I eventually will return it, or even wanting to simply risk keeping it regardless of the lack of any replies and the resulting potential warranty issues.

Because of that, Thursday afternoon, after coming back from the dentist, where I had gotten another filling replaced, I reset the driver and statistics, uninstalled the software, removed the weights, wiped it a little to remove the few visible signs of use, then replaced it carefully in its box, with everything exactly the way it was when I first opened it, and took it back to the store. Needless to say, I couldn’t quite imagine myself actually saying something and getting the matter sorted out, but I spent my time on the way feeding my anger, so it’ll override the anxiety and at least give me a chance to say something, even if not necessarily what I had rehearsed or anything particularly rational for that matter.
In that state, and after catching the eye of a couple of security guards to point out the bag I was carrying the mouse in before tripping a few alarms as I was passing through, so they won’t call me over to inspect it themselves, I walked to the cashier and said it seems that if I send a message to support I get ignored, so maybe somebody’ll look at me if I come to return a product, and asked where and how to do that, managing to get the words out rather more coherently than I thought I would. Then I said pretty much the same thing to the two guys I found nearest to the area of the store that she had pointed me to, as nobody was where she actually said I should go.
That resulted in some confusion, as they at first thought something was wrong with the mouse, but I said that’s not why I was there, then told them how my messages were ignored and was rather amused when one of them replied that the service office is such a mess even they don’t get replies, much less the customers, so to just ignore that next time and come directly, because they’ll sort me out. Then I somehow managed to explain what the problem was, during which time one left to look for some warranty certificates and therefore was still rather confused when he returned, telling me he’s surprised such a good mouse failed so quickly, so I had to explain to him again that it didn’t fail, or at least not yet.
They were very willing to do the return even after finding the proper form to fill, even seeming to expect it as a result of a poor support experience, and also told me the warranty certificate’s irrelevant, as is the fact that the receipt says six months, since the product clearly has two years and bringing it and the receipt will be enough to have any issue that appears during that time taken care of, though they said they’re quite sure they’re yet to have a ROCCAT returned under warranty. However, one of them said that if it’ll make me feel better to have a piece of paper actually stating it’s two years, he can write it right away, and the other did just that, stapled it to my receipt and sent me back to the cashier to have it stamped again.

So I guess I committed to this mouse now, which also means I’ll get very used to a good thing and when it will fail after the two years are over I’ll need to get something similar or better, because by then I’ll probably set so many things on it and customize the buttons and profiles so well to my needs that using anything that won’t allow me to do the same will likely feel like replacing the keyboard with one with an entirely different layout and no keypad and needing to learn to type all over again. It also means I definitely dread the moment when I eventually will need to send it to have the scroll wheel issue fixed, if it’ll get worse or perhaps towards the end of the warranty period even if it won’t. However, perhaps most of all it means I’ll be worrying about it for quite some time to come, as I have absolutely no idea whether I made the right choice and feel I perhaps shouldn’t have risked buying this in the first place.

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