SoftwareCB.com >AGPTek >Screamworx >His Tail
that have brought me nothing but pleasure
and joy. All indications at the time were that I
had chosen a kick-ass system from a truly
excellent outfit. That was, until two weeks
ago, when my e-mails and phone calls to the
company began to go unanswered. I have yet
to receive a reply from five e-mails and two
phone calls, and the final straw came upon
discovery that the phone number Screamworx
provides is “temporarily disconnected.” The
fact that Screamworx offers a three year
warranty as standard fare, when most vendors
choose to charge for the extra coverage, led
me to believe the company would be ready to
stand by its product into the foreseeable
future. Is my warranty up in smoke along
with Screamworx?
— DAVID MOODYTHE DOG RESPONDS: When the Dog tried to
reach Screamworx’ toll-free number, things
didn’t look good for David or Screamworx as the
number was still “temporarily disconnected.”
However, when the Dog pinged Sohaib Bhatti,
CEO of the company, it was confirmed to be just a
telephone problem.
“We are still very much in business” Bhatti
said. “We recently had to shift our facilities and
our telco provider did not manage our move very
well. We will have the lines restored shortly. It’s
just one of the challenges of this move we are
facing, but we hope to resolve all issues shortly.
And we continue to provide effective support to
our existing customers.”
At press-time, however, Screamworx’ toll-
free number was still offline. While it sounds
like Screamworx is still making noise, consum-
ers should exercise caution when purchasing
from the company, at least until its phones are
fully functioning. Arf.Blaming the Wrong Party
DEAR DOG: The Dog needs a whack on the
nose for suggesting in the July issue that
some of the blame lies on pirates and not
just game publishers for making games that
won’t work with virtual drive programs.
The problem is solely with greedy game
publishers rushing to get games that are not
ready out the door and on the shelves. The
result is that the game is far from finished
when it’s put on the shelves and we the con-
sumers are left doing the job of beta testers.
Sorry, but it isn’t fair to make the consumers
pay for a beta copy of a program or force
them to download patch after patch.
My final bitch is about trying to return
these defective games. Most stores (most
notably Best Buy) have no return policy for
software, or I should say, have a return policythat is so stupid it borders on the insane. You
buy a piece of software from them. You take
it home, it doesn’t work. You try to return it,
they say “Sorry, you can’t return opened soft-
ware, and we will only exchange unopened
software for the same title.” Excuse me, how
in the world is anyone supposed to know if
the program works if they don’t open it? And
if you didn’t open it, why in the name of all
that’s holy would you be returning it for the
exact same title? What, you didn’t like the
funny smell of the packaging or something?
This makes no sense. So what’s a person to do?
You get some tape and you reseal the packag-
ing. Now, it’s unopened.... But here’s where
it gets even dumber. If it’s now been resealed
(and they can’t tell if it’s their seal or mine)
how do they know I didn’t just put in a blank
disk or, hey, a slice of toast, for that matter?
They don’t know. This is the dumbest concept
going in retail today.
So the fault lies with the game manufac-
turers and nobody else. It isn’t the fault of
the consumer, and it isn’t even the fault of
pirates. So stop trying to blame the poor aver-
age hard working consumer for the corporate
greed of software publishers.
— MICHAEL A. SMITHTHE DOG RESPONDS: Not all the responses were
so adamant. Some readers offered useful tips on
getting games to work. Reader Wyatt Gruver said
his EA Games titles stopped working after he
switched from a VIA KT400A-based motherboard
to an nVidia-based nForce2 400 Ultra board. EA
reps and the usual sources could offer no solu-
tion. Gruver said the latest version
of nVidia’s IDE drivers corrects the problem.
Reader Kevin Gay had a problem with
Battlefield: Vietnam, which uses Safediscinstead of SecuROM. “I tried everything that the
support page says to do. Finally I did the exact
opposite of what was “supposed” to work. I got
an ISO creator at http://www.magiciso.com, created an
ISO of my original BF:V disc. Reinstalled Daemon
Tools, turned on every bit of emulation it had,
loaded the ISO and played my game. So in the
end I used the very thing they didn’t want to be
used to play their game.” nSORRY, IT ISN’T FAIR TO MAKE CONSUMERS PAY FOR A
BETA COPY OF A PROGRAM OR FORCE THEM TO DOWNLOAD
PATCH AFTER PATCH.”
”
Got a bone to pick with a vendor? Been spiked
by a fly-by-night operation? Sic The Dog on
them by writing [email protected].
The Dog promises to get to as many letters as
possible, but only has four paws to work with.