The Gateway to Customer Service

I bought a killer 21" Gateway Monitor (FPD2185W) last August. It's been fantastic, with swivel action on both axes, height adjustment and rotation. It's got all the video hookups under the sun and a powered 4-port USB hub. It's been a fantastic ride for the last several months.

I had the monitor in a dual-monitor configuration. I had a lan party last weekend that required me to unhook it and use it in a single-monitor configuration. After hooking it back up in my office after the lan party, I went to re-enable my multi-monitor configuration.

Mind you it was still in single-monitor mode at the time; and the display was showing up on my killer Gateway monitor. When I re-enabled the multi-monitor... the screen blinked, but the other monitor didn't come on. The display was still solely on my LCD (my other monitor is a CRT.)

So I thought to myself, "Self, you should reboot the computer and see if it will go back to normal." I did so, and when it restarted... the display now came up on my CRT and NOT on my LCD anymore.

Playing with settings and uninstalling/reinstalling drivers for an hour didn't resolve anything. All display was stuck on my CRT with no hint of going elsewhere.

So I unhooked the LCD from my computer and hooked it up to Gwen's computer... no DVI love there either... so I swapped cables and still no love...

I decided to check the VGA port instead on the monitor to see if it was the DVI port that was the problem, or the whole monitor had given up the ghost. Well, the VGA worked, so I decided the DVI port was bad.

Enter Gateway support. I got on their website and figured out how to email support. Their first response came in hours and they asked me a few questions. We exchanged emails over the next several hours. I received one from them that agreed the monitor was defective and that they had already scheduled a replacement to ship to my home.

They cross-shipped the monitor to my home (on their bill) through Fed-Ex 2nd Day Air (I'll rant about Fed Ex' LACK OF SERVICE in another post) -- with an extra box to ship my defective monitor back in (also on their bill and also FedEx 2nd day.)

It was incredible... my monitor's DVI port went out on Saturday; I had the new monitor on Wednesday ... the defective monitor will be back to them by Tuesday.

One word... heavenly.

I wish all big companies would learn a lesson from Gateway... This is the way you build loyalty!!!!

I didn't receive any two emails from the same Gateway employee; but every email was signed with their name and badge number; and they were all intelligent, competent and professional; and all were sincerely concerned with getting me taken care of.

If that kind of service keeps up, I'll be recommending Gateway to others for a long time... Thanks Gateway!