I have a Moto G (2014) second generation model 1064. I had been waiting for the Android Marshmallow release because the 8 gigs of space isn't enough for the OS and apps. I had bought it because it had an SD card slot, thinking that would keep the lack of space in main storage. I had heard that Marshmallow allowed you to move more things onto the SD card and out of internal storage.
I finally got notification from Motorola via my phone that I could do an OTA update to Marshmallow. I went for it. When it finished the update the phone was sitting at a dead android with the error message "No Command". I did some research online and several people said that if I did a factory data reset and clear the cache it would bring it back. Some said they had to do it repeatedly before it came back. I did that and it did not fix it.
I initiated a chat session with customer support. They did next to no trouble shooting before telling me I was out of warranty. The only solution they had for me was to buy a "Like New" phone of the same model for $75. Had they offered the next model year of phone to make up for crashing my phone I might have taken it, but to give me a used phone of the same model when they broke it was insulting. They wouldn't even admit that it was refurbished. They just kept saying "Like New".
I asked for a supervisor and she just echoes the stuff the first person was saying.
They both copied and pasted into chat large amounts of text rather than answering my questions or giving a solution.
When your company's update breaks a functioning phone, the warranty should not matter. Is it ok for them to break my phone if it is out of warranty?
Solution
I fought with the phone for a couple of weeks, looking online for how to get it back to how it was when I bought it to try to start over. I couldn't find anywhere where Motorola had put the factory images for download.
At one point I found a backup of Marshmallow from my model of phone. I restored the backup to my phone and things seemed to work well, except I could not send or receive texts. I also noticed that some of the screens were in Portuguese. It turned out that the backup was of a Brazilian version of Marshmallow.
I ended up having to root my wife's phone, which is the same model, and do a backup of it and restore it to my phone. This took several days and I was risking breaking my wife's phone as well.
Both phones appear to be working now, but the boot loaders are stuck in an unlocked state. I have no idea what issues that causes.
Average Users
I am a computer programmer, but don't program Android. After a lot of research and work I was able to figure out how to get it working, but what about the average user that doesn't understand installing an operating system or creating a backup and restoring it. How would they recover from this?
It is not right for a company to abandon a customer after the customer followed their direction to update the phone and the update kills the phone's ability to boot.
Will I Buy Another Motorola Device?
I had purchased the Moto G 1st generation. One for me and one for my wife. We then purchased the 2nd generation and gave our phones to our daughters. While I wasn't happy that they abandoned providing OS updates to the first gen phones and were slow to roll out updates to the 2nd gen phones, I was considering getting a couple more Moto Gs this year to get some updated hardware.
Previously I only passively looked at other phones and nothing grabbed my attention that it was as good as the Moto G in that price range. I now am seriously researching other phones and considering paying a little bit more, just to get away from Motorola.
Will I buy another Motorola device? Hard to say right now, but I am highly motivated to look elsewhere. Before Motorola broke my phone and tried to extort money out of me, I was pretty locked in to staying with Motorola. Now I am very motivated to find another brand. If I find another brand that I am comfortable with I will take it. I also, because of my knowledge of technology, am the person my family comes to for recommendations of hardware to buy. The brand I find will also be the brand my family likely buys.
Showing posts with label Cell Phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cell Phones. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 09, 2016
Friday, December 20, 2013
Motorola Moto G Technical Support
We recently purchased two of Motorola's new products, the Moto G. For the most part we are initially impressed with the new phones, but only one of them will connect for transferring files. I think they call the type of connection MTP. It would connect as a camera, but that limited it to just the camera directory, so I couldn't transfer to the music directory.
I am guessing I could've transferred to the camera directory and then transferred out of it and into the music folder with the phone itself.
I contacted technical support via chat. I waited to be connected to someone for about 15 minutes. Once I got connected they asked me to do the usual "turn it off and back on" and such. I had already done that and did it again. No luck. They gave me a link to some article about clearing the cache or something. While I read the article and tried to figure out how to do what it was explaining the tech support agent typed to me that I had been inactive for two minutes and they were going to give me one more minute and then disconnected.
The link they sent me did not work for me. I could not tell them, since they hung up on me.
I don't understand why they were in such a hurry to hang up. It is a chat window. You should be able to have several chat windows up, so they could help another customer while waiting on me. The only explanation I can think of is that there is some metric that some manager is using to measure performance. They must be tracking how quickly they resolve the call. That doesn't measure if they actually helped me.
I hurried and went back to chat and sat on hold for another 15 to 20 minutes. The customer service person quickly walked me through finding my serial number and then quickly gave me a phone number and other information on Level 2 tech support, which I couldn't call until morning, and then hung up on me again.
Level 2
The next morning I called level 2 support. Level 1 had told me that if I entered in my phone number at the beginning of the call, level 2 would see the chat history and be able to read everything that we had talked about before helping me.
When I called level 2, then asked me for my phone number a second time, even though I entered it in their system via the phone I was calling from. They then asked what they could help me with. I asked if they had read the chat history. They said they had not and put me on hold to read them.
Level 1 support had tried to switch me into developer mode at one point, but didn't know how to do it properly. Level 2 tried the same thing.
They wanted me through switching it, but also gave the wrong instructions, but I ended up getting it to go anyway. They had told me to tap About Phone 7 times in settings. It only took three. That allowed up to turn on USB debugging. Once I did that I could see all the folders, even though it still would not go into MTP mode normally.
I took this work around, since it did what I needed, but I was concerned about leaving a phone in developer mode, where the user could inadvertently get into something that could make a mess. Tech support told me how to turn it off (tap About Phone seven times) and the instructions were incorrect. All it did was tell me the phone was already in developer mode. They never could get it to switch out of developer mode.
While in developer tools I notice a switch to turn it off. It still left the developer tools menu, but once in there it had to be turned on or off, so that was more acceptable to me. It still did not fix the problem with the phone, but it gave me a work around.
As support worked with me, it was like they were unfamiliar with my phone. This was true of level 1 and level 2 support. Perhaps it is too new, but I figured Android Jelly Bean on one Motorola phone would be the same as another.
The bottom line is that Motorola customer service appeared not well trained and more interested cranking a call queue than solid support of their customers. By the length of time I spent on hold and the desire of customer service to dump calls, it also appears that they are under staffed. Additionally, I got a work around, but the problem was not solved.
I am guessing I could've transferred to the camera directory and then transferred out of it and into the music folder with the phone itself.
I contacted technical support via chat. I waited to be connected to someone for about 15 minutes. Once I got connected they asked me to do the usual "turn it off and back on" and such. I had already done that and did it again. No luck. They gave me a link to some article about clearing the cache or something. While I read the article and tried to figure out how to do what it was explaining the tech support agent typed to me that I had been inactive for two minutes and they were going to give me one more minute and then disconnected.
The link they sent me did not work for me. I could not tell them, since they hung up on me.
I don't understand why they were in such a hurry to hang up. It is a chat window. You should be able to have several chat windows up, so they could help another customer while waiting on me. The only explanation I can think of is that there is some metric that some manager is using to measure performance. They must be tracking how quickly they resolve the call. That doesn't measure if they actually helped me.
I hurried and went back to chat and sat on hold for another 15 to 20 minutes. The customer service person quickly walked me through finding my serial number and then quickly gave me a phone number and other information on Level 2 tech support, which I couldn't call until morning, and then hung up on me again.
Level 2
The next morning I called level 2 support. Level 1 had told me that if I entered in my phone number at the beginning of the call, level 2 would see the chat history and be able to read everything that we had talked about before helping me.
When I called level 2, then asked me for my phone number a second time, even though I entered it in their system via the phone I was calling from. They then asked what they could help me with. I asked if they had read the chat history. They said they had not and put me on hold to read them.
Level 1 support had tried to switch me into developer mode at one point, but didn't know how to do it properly. Level 2 tried the same thing.
They wanted me through switching it, but also gave the wrong instructions, but I ended up getting it to go anyway. They had told me to tap About Phone 7 times in settings. It only took three. That allowed up to turn on USB debugging. Once I did that I could see all the folders, even though it still would not go into MTP mode normally.
I took this work around, since it did what I needed, but I was concerned about leaving a phone in developer mode, where the user could inadvertently get into something that could make a mess. Tech support told me how to turn it off (tap About Phone seven times) and the instructions were incorrect. All it did was tell me the phone was already in developer mode. They never could get it to switch out of developer mode.
While in developer tools I notice a switch to turn it off. It still left the developer tools menu, but once in there it had to be turned on or off, so that was more acceptable to me. It still did not fix the problem with the phone, but it gave me a work around.
As support worked with me, it was like they were unfamiliar with my phone. This was true of level 1 and level 2 support. Perhaps it is too new, but I figured Android Jelly Bean on one Motorola phone would be the same as another.
The bottom line is that Motorola customer service appeared not well trained and more interested cranking a call queue than solid support of their customers. By the length of time I spent on hold and the desire of customer service to dump calls, it also appears that they are under staffed. Additionally, I got a work around, but the problem was not solved.
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