[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
James/DarkCow wrote:
Well its been 2 years since I was working at Ebuyer (they're based in Sheffield, so it would be a bit of a commute if I was still there :-D)...Rob Beard wrote:ohh them e-notes, I hated replying to them, much prefered the returns department where I normally worked).What's it like working in returns? I've always been curious about what you do and how you do it. If you get a motherboard to check, do you have to spend ages plugging it in to parts that you know work, like ram, processor, screen, HD, etc, or do you just have a couple of cables that you plug in and get a readout that says 'it works' or 'it doesn't work'. Do you have to make checks for things so (for example) if a motherboard blew your test processor, and then you tried to use that test processor in a new system that did work, you would realise that it was the processor, and not the motherboard that was broken? Or did you just deal with the customers?
When I was there, there were 3 teams in the tech support department. It was taken in turns (2 weeks at a time) to what we would be doing. When I originally started at Ebuyer, I was working on returns, and after 2 weeks was put on e-notes & tech support on the phones and this kept going on a 2 week rota.
When I started at Ebuyer, the returns department was simple, there were about 6 or 7 of us with our own bench. We would collect a cage full of items (average delivery of cages every day was about 8 cages from Royal Mail, and a few boxes from Citylink/other couriers) and go through them.
Most of the stuff returned was testable, we were each given a reasonable (for the time) selection of components. They were usually a couple of sticks of memory (PC133 memory, or if we were lucky, DDR400), an AGP graphics card, motherboard and Duron or Athlon CPU, CD drive and a hard disk with Windows 98 installed on it.
Between us we had a few bits to hand which enabled the testing of the majority of kit we got back. We'd get an item, check it for any physical damage (this was oftern a favorite with AMD processors - chipped cores due to too much force!) and then if test them. In the case of a physically damaged product, this would be photographed, and the item returned to the customer at their expense. Other items would be tested for faults. Graphics cards, motherboards and memory would usually be put on test for 30 mins or so, depending on how busy we were. We'd use the latest drivers, and software such as 3D Mark & SiSoft Sandra to check for any problems. Items such as hard drives would be checked with the manufacturers utilties and error codes attached to the notes on the RMA.
From memory, the only thing we couldn't really test were Intel P3/P4 and Celeron CPUs as we didn't have boards for them. I'm not sure if things have changed (they didn't while I was there for 6 months).
Just before I left eBuyer, they altered the returns slightly. They added an extra section between the testers and the goods in. Any items which couldn't be tested (usually with RMA numbers beginning with NT) would go straight to the girls who'd return them to the suppliers, and the testable stuff (usually RMA numbers beginning with TE) would get tested.
The other side of the tech support, phone support & e-notes was office based. This mainly consisted of arranging courier collections for big items, dealing with tech support queries on the phone, and also dealing with angry customers (usually the ones which had their faulty items sent back to them due to physcial damage).
Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html