Let me begin by saying, upfront, that this is all about the unlocked Uplay phone/tablet that I bought online from JSLX Technology. It is a global market, after all, and, while I usually buy from American companies, this device was just what I was looking for at a price I could afford.
This story has a beginning and a middle; it does not yet have an end, and I’m hoping that posting this on my blog might help to end this frustrating saga in a just and fair way. Any advice from techies or others, after reading through this whole post, will be greatly appreciated.
I have spent the past two weeks attempting to, and finally actually, contacting both the seller and the manufacturer because the damned thing has a variety of issues, mostly, I believe (and so does the computer repair place I brought it to) because the drivers, while downloaded, are not installed and the tablet offers no way to install them.
So, I am now on that interwebs Yellow Brick Road, slogging through e-mailing territories lined with various conversational pitfalls, detours, dead ends, and side paths that are designed to wear me down. BUT, as that Lilith logo in my right sidebar proclaims: “She is that which will not surrender.”
Yes, I could send the device back to China, but, according to DHL and UPS, it would cost me $180 to do so — more than I paid for the damned thing. And that’s how the company asks you to send a return. So, that’s not an option.
Yes, the manufacturer and seller could possibly send me a driver installation disk or some instructions on how to install the drivers, but they are refusing to do so. I don’t know why, except that they keep insisting that there is nothing wrong with the device and there are drivers downloaded in it. (As you will see from the screen images posted below, the drivers are there but they are not installed and the device offers no way to install them, making the device function like something out of the very early ages of this technology.) Even with an excellent wifi signal, trying to download anything via the browser takes so long that the servers time out. Navigating anywhere in the device is worse than trying to get to the Land of Oz. That’s certainly not what their website PR indicates. This is a young company, and it surely needs more work before it can compete in the global marketplace.
I started a PayPal dispute and got nowhere, so I escalated to a claim, which is under review. One reason for this post is so that I can send PayPal the URL and give them all of the details that way.
The devil is, indeed, in the details, and the details are in the screens that come up when I connect the UPlay phonepad with my HP Pavilion Notebook PC so that I can see what’s in the tablet’s folders. These are details that can’t be argued. (What can be argued, and are being argued, are my experiences not being able to download stuff like the Kindle Android app, and of other downloading efforts timing out even though the wifi signal is excellent. Maybe it’s that driver problem; maybe the device is simply a LEMON.)
So, what I am doing is documenting, via screen images, attempts to prove to the seller and manufacturer that the Android drivers that are supposed to be installed are NOT INSTALLED.
Any techies (American,Chinese, Indian…whoever…) reading the following — please tell me if I am wrong and, if so, what I might be able to to do get this problem fixed.
The first thing I do is go into Control Panel, and then Devices. This is what the UPlay phonepad appears as. There is a yellow exclamation point by the device, which comes up as an MP3 player. (My iPhone comes up as a camera, so I understand how that works.) I’m assuming that the yellow exclamation point means “Whoa! There’s some problem here! Check it out!)
So, then I click on the device and see that there is no general information for it. Well, OK. I go on from there.
Next is device functions. There’s a whole list of Android drivers listed ALL WITH YELLOW EXCLAMATION POINTS. There are also other functions without the exclamation points. Obviously, there has to be some reason why the Android drivers are highlighted as problematic, right?
AHA! Click on an Android and you get a CODE 28 MESSAGE THAT THERE IS NO DRIVER INSTALLED!!!
Here is information about the Code 28 message, which includes:
Code 28 is a device manager error indicating that the drivers for a given hardware device are not installed. This error means that a previous attempt to update the driver failed or a driver was uninstalled for a given device but was not replaced/updated. This error prompts you to reevaluate your driver installation and reinstall the driver if necessary. In most cases, reinstalling the driver will fix the problem
OK. So, let’s try a fix.
UH OH. NO STRAIGHFORWARD FIX. Windows can’t find a way to install, and the internet can’t find a way to install.
Well, maybe there’s a file somewhere in the device that’s an installer.
Hmm. There are two drivers listed.
OK. Let’s click on Android Driver. Well,that’s all well and good, but where do I go from there to install.
This is where my expertise wanes. I don’t know what these files are, but I click on one that looks promising, anyway.
Hmm. Let’s try this.
No, I don’t think I want to take a chance and go this route. Here’s where my knowledge of this stuff stops. So now what?
It is the responsibility of the seller or manufacturer to provide me with the capacity to install the drivers. Otherwise, the device is defective and they are the liable parties. IF they do that and the drivers are installed and the device still doesn’t work, then it is a LEMON. Do I have to suck up the cost as a bad purchase, or are they still liable?
ADDENDUM: After another unhelpful response from the seller, I will explore some cheaper cost of returning the device. They do have a return policy: will pay between $9 and $25 toward the return shipping cost. I believe that should get the $25, but their decision will be based on whether they think anything is wrong with the device or if I am returning it “just because I didn’t like it.” By now, I don’t trust them to care at all about fairness or truth.
I waged my battle as though with the wind. There’s no getting any satisfactory fix from them.
And the truth is that this is a device that looks good on their website but is a real lemon. And their customer service sucks as well. AFLE for me.
[NOTE: Go to the next post to read the end of the story.]
I think you are wise to abandon ship and send it back. I love my iPad (with AppleCare for two years), and the Apple people are much more helpful than these guys. My guess is if anybody’s going to successfully combine a phone and a pad, it will be Apple. More cost but less aggravation.
And p.s. : Your new chair looks like a winner and thankfully it requires no calls to techs.
I have an IPhone, which I do like. The Samsung Galaxy Note phonepad is only a little bigger and closer to what I was looking for. I wanted a 7 inch combined phone/tablet. I recently found out that some will be coming out this way soon, but I get antsy for what I want, and so, thus, his adventure. I hardly ever use a mobile phone unless I am on the road somewhere and need to make a call. The same would hold true of my use of a tablet, although I would use it with my wifi connection at home and to read, listen to music, surf the web from my new chair, etc. Anyway, the 7 inch combo was my target. I decided to keep the one I bought, as you might have noticed from my latest post. I’m developing a post about my tendency to acquire something “close enough” and then figure out how to make it work. I do that with clothes, men etc. and always wind up with an interesting discard pile. Heh.