I'm trying to figure out how to word this, I just had the WORST experience with this company. I contacted them for support regarding a motherboard that needed a BIOS upgrade.

Not only is this company NOT open on the weekends, they take 12 - 24 hours from the time you submit your request to get back to you. This time frame DOES NOT INCLUDE WEEKENDS, so if you submit a request to them on a friday afternoon, you won't hear back from them until Monday afternoon at the very earliest.

Their support representative, Gene, was less than helpful. He e-mailed me Friday afternoon to tell me I needed to call him because he had a question regarding MY computer. He gave me roughly 2 hours to call him back. Considering I didn't see his e-mail for 3 hours, it was already too late for me to call him back so I had to wait till today to call him.

While talking to him, it was blatantly obvious that he didn't need to speak with me regarding the computer. He started to rattle on about how the latest version of the BIOS provides support for this that and the other and if I wanted the upgrade, I had to pay them $60!!!!!!

Unfortunately, I was already extreamly frustrated with his company and made the mistake of blurting out "sixty bucks, you must be on drugs." So he says "yep, we're all on drugs up here, and I'm a terrorist." :eek: I was so beyond upset I couldn't speak.

Before I could say "I want to speak to your supervisor NOW." He asked me why I thought they were on drugs for charging sixty dollars for an upgrade. I called back and spoke to his supervisor who backed him up and said, well he said it in gist because you said we are on drugs so I don't see that he did anythign wrong.

Esupport.com supplies BIOS upgrades for computers with Award, American Megatrends, Pheonix Technologies, and Mr. BIOS. My personal experience with them is listed above and if you HAVE to deal with them, I wish you the best of luck. I personally would suggest going with another BIOS manufacturer.

Are you talking about a flash BIOS upgrade or actually changing out your BIOS chips?

If the latter, what do you gain by changing out the BIOS?

Flash BIOS upgrade, I can't see a benefit to ripping out the BIOS chips. I actually may have felt a little better paying 60 bucks for an actual chip rather than a floppy disk that was going to be mailed to me. Dell offers BIOS upgrades for free for all their machines, considering I bought the motherboard I presumed an upgrade of the bios would be free or at a relatively lower cost (like 15-20 bucks.)

That's what confused me. Most if not all BIOS manufacturers offer free flash BIOS upgrades. Why do you need to pay for one?

The rep at esupport.com said that they have always charged for the upgrade of Award, American Megatrends, Pheonix, and Mr. BIOS upgrades. I haven't looked further to see if I can find anyone else that supports those BIOS's so I may just investigate getting a different motherboard. I definately have NO INTENTION of supporting these clowns.

You should check the website of the manufacturer of your MB. They are the ones that should be issuing a BIOS update, especially for your specific chipset.

The real bummer is when the company no longer supports updates. Which, for me, happens about a month after I get the MB :crying:

The burning question is why did you need to update your bios in the first place?? The only time I have ever needed to do this was to get a slightly older computer to work with XP.

The computer in question, has bios dated 1999, it supported a 20GB hard drive, the drive died and will not read the new 40GB drive that was purchased for it.

The computer in question, has bios dated 1999, it supported a 20GB hard drive, the drive died and will not read the new 40GB drive that was purchased for it.

Ah..ic. makes sense :)

I actually did buy a BIOS upgrade from Esupport a couple years back and did pay around $60 for a replacement chip. That was pretty much their going rate for updates and they did seem to be about the only ones out there offering updates for older motherboards.

Are you absolutely sure that they were offering to sell you a floppy disk to Flash the BIOS and not a chip? If the BIOS on the motherboard is old enough that it doesn't support hard drives over 40MB, there is also a fair chance that the BIOS isn't capable of a flash upgrade. I do seem to recall, though, that Esupport did charge roughly the same for either type of upgrade.

Considering the age of the motherboard, you might want to seriously consider whether it would be preferable to just replace the whole thing instead of updating the BIOS. Even if you get the latest BIOS, you probably will find that it lacks a lot of the features you would get with a newer motherboard. The $60 BIOS upgrade cost probably gets you roughly half way to the price of a replacement board.

In the short term, you should also check with the hard drive manufacturer to find out if they have a work around for those with an older BIOS. Most hard drives have a jumper setting that will cause the drive to announce itself as smaller than it is and come with a special boot sector driver that will then allow the OS to see the entire drive. That would get everything working until you can get the BIOS and/or Motherboard replaced.

-Jeff

I hate to say this, but I agree with the idea about getting a new motherboard. Head over to motherboards.com and see what you can find. Upgrading may be better than any hassle you may get from these people.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input. Jeff, the $60 charge was for a floppy disk to flash update the bios to the latest revision. I've already started looking at motherboard upgrades. I was more not impressed with the CSR. I realize I shouldn't have blurted out what I did, however, that doesn't excuse his retort. If, I for whatever reason lost my mind and treated a customer as he treated me, I would have been terminated, regardless of what the customer said. I'm not saying I was innocent or guilty, however the CSR could have handled the situation better.

I'm not impressed with this company on several different levels. The fact that they are not open on weekends and take 24 hours to respond to customer requests is also frustrating in an age where you can fill out a webform on the dell website and download all the updates for your computer to include flash bios updates for free. I certainly will not be patronizing them, at all.