Dec 29, 2006 10:21 AM
6904 Views
I happened to buy a UPS from ALCOM. It came with neither a warranty
card, nor an instruction manual. I connected it to my computer in
the belief that it was a UPS and started watching a movie on the
comp. An hour later there was a power cut, and along with it my pc
made a restart. I was shocked. The worst thing was that the UPS
was making a whirring noise. I immidiately called the shop -
Netsys at Sector 14 Gurgaon and told him of the problem. He sent
me a replacement the very next morning.
Convinced that the earlier one was a rare faulty piece, I
started using the second UPS. I was playing a game on my pc, when
the power cut came. Again my pc took a restart. Flustered at this,
I called up the shop again and he suggested that I call up Mr. Rajat
at Alcom. When I told him of the problem, he asked me to call up
his office, since he was on leave. I did so and the next day they
sent a technician to look at the problem. He cam when my wife was
at home and after making some repairs, convinced her that the
fault was rectified. I came in the evening to discover that the
problem was now a different one, the pc would restart when the
power came back after the power cut. I called up the technician
and he said he'd come and repair it the next day. He came again
and convinced my wife that the prob was solved. But it was not.
When I complained again, it was replaced a couple of days
later. The same prob existed. Another technician came and declared
this third one to be faulty. Another replacement came. This
continued for about 5 replacements. Either the UPS would cut
output when the power went off or it would do so when it came
back. One of the UPSs actually worked well for 10 days, and I was
happy but on the seventh day, it failed. This was replaced too.
Once the technician exclaimed - "We have informed of this problem
to the people at the factory, but what can we do if they don't
correct the design. After the sixth replacement, I went to the
shop Netsys, to get a different brand in place of Alcom and told
them of the problems I had been facing for the past 4 weeks. The
person there was shocked, told me, "you should have informed us
immediately, I thought your problem had been resolved". Then he
called up Rajat, who was the director of Alcom and told him of the
problem I was facing. When I talked to Rajat, he started saying
that there was definitely some breakage in the neutral supply in
my house, that's why this was happening. He started feeding me
some crap - if there is a break in your neutral, then there is no
return path and so there will be no supply. He had no answer to
the fact how the pc was normally running and how other brands of
UPS like Microtek from my friend, had no probs. Finally he said
he'd get the problem closed the very day.
One of the technicians - Anup, came again and didn't even
look at the problem, since he'd seen it too many times. He
suggested that I get my SMPS checked, since playing games on a
computer weakens some capacitor in the SMPS. This was the second
joke I had heard, after the "break in the neutral" theory from
Rajat. So to humor him, I got a technician from Netsys who came
with a brand new Intex SMPS. After fitting the new SMPS, the
problem with the UPS persisted. The guy at netsys informed Anup
about the failure of his theory.
The next day I was sent another replacement. The seventh
in 5 weeks. This looked a little sleek and trendy. It was supposed
to have a new mother board design. After the pc booted up on this
I switched off the supply to the UPS. This time the pc did not
even reboot, the ups with new design, refused to give any output
power at all. And this was supposed to have been well checked
before delivery.
I had learnt my lesson well. Alcom sells crude looking
heavy metal boxes under the name of UPS. I went to netsys and got
a Microtek UPS after returning the Alcom metal box. There's never
been a problem since.
So friends, don't ever buy an Alcom UPS, at least not the offline
ones for home PCs. If Seven of them don't work at all, there's
some serious design issue or else, they use low grade components
in their product.
