A word of warning about the zen stone plus 2GB

whallenich

February 2, 2008 11:09:36 PM

Just putting this out there - I wouldn't recommend buying the Creative Zen Stone Plus 2 GB.
Additionally this post should serve as word of warning for dealing with Creative Technical Support generally.

I bought a Zen Stone Plus 2GB player late last year.
It initially worked well (except for the extremely poor battery life).
About 2 months out the screen started playing up and the player would not power up unless I connected to my PC via the usb cable.
Later the screen stopped working.

I RMA'd the player - it took about 2 1/2 weeks for Creative Support to give me an address to send the player to, and even then I only got the address after I reminded Creative that I was waiting for them to tell me the address.

1 and 1/2 months after sending the player away I received a new player - 'fantastically' this player was faulty out of the box.
The display on the replacement player appeared to be corrupted as it shows garbled text and images. Surely they would have checked the replacement player for faults before sending it out? Apparently not!

I went back to Creative informing them of their blunder. After receiving an initial stream of emails from Creative querying what is wrong with the replacement player specifically and requesting me to fill in a customer satisfaction survey I have heard nothing - 3 weeks have passed.

Creative have not told me what they are going to do, or how this problem will be resolved.

I've resigned myself to the fact that I wasted money buying a player that is faulty and consequently pretty much valueless. I'm also resigned to the fact that obviously Creative doesn't care enough to fix a fault in their product.

I have owned and own a range of Creative products but my experience with in relation to this player mean I will probably never buy a Creative product again.

You have been warned!

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fps_noob

February 11, 2008 3:57:10 PM

Well thats a surprise. Although I've never used the Zen Stone Plus, I do have a Zen Vision:M. The worst problem that I've had was the player would freeze up about once every couple of months. That is not much of a problem because all it takes is a push on the reset button, which restarts the player and keeps all the music.

I do see your problem with the customer support. That sounds terrible. Did you try calling them? It usually gets them to help faster.

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uncle_ben

February 12, 2008 3:19:55 PM

You should definitely ring them, explain the situation and not let it go like that.
Phone them and ask for another exchange. They should give you authorization number over the phone. I dealt with them in the past and they were alright.

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trekcip

June 5, 2008 5:17:49 PM

The first post is correct!! Beware about this product. Tech support sucks and warrenty a joke. After 90 days phone calls are $12.99 for a half hour. To send for repair $25.99, parts free for a year. big deal! My son's first one bought in Dec. somehow got the screen broke. Bought one on ebay for $5 for parts and replaced the screen. worked great until May when suddenly wasn't recognized by his laptop, installed software into a new Vista computer, same problem and into xp with all correct service packs, same problem. Did every fix I could find on various internet forums with same result. Not believe it has to be the motherboard. It charges of all computers, plays fine, but can not sownload anything since computers don;t recognize it. Creative really doesn't care about supporting these so I have given up on it. My son bought a new ipod on ebay and is very happy with it. So buyer beware, they are cheap compared to other players but you get what you pay for.

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