Totally hosed...what now?

[IO Composer]

I had to reseat my protools cards today and when I turned on my mac, I smelled smoke. Protools wouldn't start up. I ran digitest and my core card failed. I pulled it out and one of the chips is clearly fried. System is 2 years out of warranty, and I've got a session to run tomorrow. What happens now? Do I have to buy a new core card or is there some sort of repair/exchange option that will let me get running quickly? Anybody got any less than horrifying news for me?
Thanks,
Jamey

[jeremyroberts]

Jamey,

Sorry to hear about your hardware failure... unfortunately, it happens every now and then to all of us... I lost a core card earlier this year and fortunately, thanks to Digi support, I was only down for one business day.

Digi is going to charge you about $450 (I'm not certain of the exact charge) for an "advanced replacement" - they will fedex a new card, and you return your damaged card -- that's that. The alternative is to send in your card for repair, and I think the repair charges are at least $300 for out-of-warranty - and in can take 2 weeks to return it. I don't remember the exact numbers -- but since I needed to be working asap, I was ready to pay anything (within reason).

I was VERY lucky in that my failure occurred within 2 years of purchase, and I bought my system using my amex card -- so I had buyer's protection in place - and I got a refund of the repair charges after jumping through a few hoops and filling in claim forms -- if you are 2 years out of warranty, this means your system is 3 years old and you probably can't off-line this to a credit card or insurance.

If it's any consolation, I just spent about $1000 for new brakes for my 4 year old car. Most things will fail at some point... cost of doing business.

Call Digi tech support and ask about advanced replacement. Good luck.

[Drew Mazurek]

good advice. check with your dealer too. he may have a card you can use. i know my guy would do that.
drew

[IO Composer]

Thank you! $450, ain't so bad. I was losing sleep thinking I was gonna have to shell out $3K for a new one.
Cheers!
-Jamey

[IO Composer]

As stated, the $459 fee got me back up and running within 24 hours. That's a really great deal considering that with most products, you'd be SOL, 2 years out of warranty. Say what you want about the cost of the TDM system, but man it's stuff like this that really makes Digidesign shine in my eyes. VERY APPRECIATED, Digi CS!

And just when I was feeling all warm and fuzzy, Digi tech support had to go and totally F it up. I was having a problem with the installation of the card and called tech support. Even though the invoice for the exchange of the card stated that it was under warranty for 90 days, the tech support lady treated me the way they do when you call and your system is out of warranty. Short answers, no attempts to help me figure out my problem...just a "you're welcome to buy a new flex cable at the digistore" and a goodbye. Thankfully, I decided to try the OPPOSITE of what the manual says to do and reversed the ports in which I attached the flex cable to the cards and everything worked again. Would that have been too hard for her to let me know? I'm sure I'm not the ONLY user to get that backwards, since it's totally wrong in the installation manual.

-Jamey

[trakbytes]

Short answers, no attempts to help me figure out my problem...just a "you're welcome to buy a new flex cable at the digistore" and a goodbye.

Just be happy your tech support call isn't going to New Delhi (yet)...