Beware of globalpositiongsystems.co.uk

[Zoltari]

Inspiron, I am very interested in your little accident:

What effect did it have on your hard drive? Did it damage the drive, or just wipe the data?

I ask mainly because I am interested to know just how powerful the magnet is in this device and wonder if it could affect other magnetically susceptible things???

As regards global positioning systems, I have dealt with them on several occasions and have always found their staff to be pretty helpful - I can’t comment on your experience of course, but I think you have maybe been a harsh to them here… Would you accept liability for product that you don’t manufacture yourself?

Granted, these things should have magnetic warning stickers on them, seems such things are pretty standard these days on other such items, but one can only assume they have been selling them for years without an incident such as yours occurring…

Just a thought anyway, no offence intended.

[MisterMap]

This guy cannot be serious, firstly GPS are a great company I have had much dealing with and would not hesitate to reccomend their services, as per the tech support, they do a great job of supporting a large number of products at NO extra cost to customers! try find that in the high street shops!, he says he finds it wrong that coments on the situation have been brought to a forum, but its ok for him to "make slanderous comments in this public arena"!! talk about dual standards, are the people he is slating not allowed to have their say?! i thought that was the point of forums.
and as per magnets in the haicom, i dont know if its just my unit, but the magnet is fairly feeble, ok to hold the device in place, but hardly enough to damage a hard drive.
does it say in the instructions that you shouldnt drive your car over the unit? at what point does common sense prevail? personally i wouldnt try sticking something that even might be magnetic to any magnetic media device, especially not a laptop. whats he thinking?

[lbendlin]

@MisterMap,

please be so kind not to add insult to injury. Not all our users are technically conversant with magnetic fields and their effects.

Just the facts, please...
_________________
Lutz

Report Map Errors here:
TomTom/TeleAtlas NAVTEQ

[Stevie]

Whilst I know full well that strong magnetic fields can affect hard-drives I don't think the case has been proven or disproven that the gps mouse actually caused the HD failure (yet!).

As such neither party can be blamed - if it transpires that the mouse didnot cause the problem Inspiron8500 will have some apologies to make. If on the other hand it is proven I'm sure Globalpositioning will take heed and alert their customers.

Forums can be great for venting frustration but please the facts should be used not supposition.

You could be damaging someones business without justification.

[Inspiron8500]

I have received a call from globalpositioning systems this morning offering a 'gesture of good will' to cover some of the cost of retreiving the data on the hard drive.

I am glad someone has taken the time to emphasise with my situation rather than deny any connection.

Now this is how you can judge good customer service. People are too keen to say a company is good when all the company do is what they should be doing anyway. Fast order and quality goods is what you pay for, what you have a right to. Good customer service and a good company should be judged only on how they deal with problems and unhappycustomers, and not if they fulfill orders efficiently.

Globalpositioning systems have came through and apologised and are prepared to do what is necessary to retain me as a customer rather than turn away.

[Dave]

[Darren]

The Hard disk heads operate above and below the disk platter and on some HDD's there may well be more than one platter. All it takes is a magnetic field srong enough to make one of these heads touch the disc platter whish is spinning at anywhere upwards of 4000 rpm and you have instant data corruption to one or more sides of the disc.

The tolerances are so fine that even a particle of smoke is larger than the gap between read/write head and disc surface. If anything, given how delicate hard discs are it always amazes me that they are in general so resilient!
_________________
Darren Griffin

[iancjc]

[BillS]

A few weeks ago, I bought a GPS receiver to work with my laptop. Worked exceptionally well for a few minutes. Saw that it had a strong magnetic base and thought - "that's good, it will stick to the car." For no good reason, I plonked it on the wrist rest of the laptop and - guess what - it wiped the hard disc drive. Not only did it wipe it, it successfully jiggered it to the extent that it will never work again. My own stupid fault and I wouldn't dream of moaning to the supplier since it is obvious to me that it would do this. Why? 'Cause I'm a computer consultant..............

[sparkyweb]

Hi Guys,

I am really pleased that Inspiron8500 has come to a good agreement with Globalpostioning, it seems that their customer services dept. and beliefs are as true as everyone says.

It does however show that with a minor exception nobody here has mentioned anything about the importance of backing up data. In this day where almost everyone has a CD-RW or even DVD -R that there should be no excuse. It does save those embarrasing times when you push the wrong button etc etc. - I would like to point out too that I am as guilty as the next person and havn't backed up my data for ages.

Now I'm off to practice what i preach ...............

Cheers

Sparky

[MrT]

I thought that the strong magnets were necessary as part of the antenna for the GPS signals.

As another warning, don't slip your small GPS bluetooth unit in your pocket next to your credit cards. Mine wiped out the magnetic stripes on a train ticket and parking ticket in my wallet.

[Inspiron8500]

Hi guys thanks for your replies. BillS I am sorry to hear you had the same accident as me. I think you miss the point why I complained to the retailer. When i took it from the box beleive it or not my hands ARE NOT magnetic so short of having x-ray eyes to see through the rubber base I did not know there was a magnet so that it could stick to the outside of the car. It didn't say 'Magnetic GPS receiver' or indicate anywhere that it had a magnetic base.

The other reason I was annoyed at the retailer was beacuse the first person I spoke to laughed at me for thinking magnets damaged hard drives, himself supposedly offering 'technical support'.

[icsys]

[trafcam]

I recall that the manual that came with my TomTom Bluetooth GPS does have a pretty good warning about the magnet in the base of the unit. It's amazing how easy it is to slip into the routine of putting it on top of a wallet, or (worse) a backup tape, when carrying it in from the car when I get to work. No incidents so far, though, always managed to stop myself before it comes into contact.

[Stevie]

Sorry I don't mean to be rude but some of this is like the American'trying to sue an airline as they gave out packets of nuts that did no state 'may contain traces of nuts' on the packing.

Cigarette packets have dire warnings - people still smoke them.

Even with a warning in big bold letters stating 'contains very strong magnet' people would complain that it did not state 'do not put near XXX'
where XXX could be a very long list. Whether this is a GPS unit or fridge magnet!

Remember the McDonalds case of the hot coffee the female car driver bought and tried to balance between her knees and scalded herself.

"Warning do not place hot coffee between legs, under armpits, near your privates... may scald"

Must check my mobile phone manual as I've heard of incidents of them being lodged rectally! Should they have been warned?

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