It's never fun when a product arrives without the drivers you need to make it work. But one reader recently discovered it can be a particular problem when the product is from Umax and the customer is an educational institution.
"Our Umax Powerlook 2100XL arrived without drivers for either XP or OS 10," the reader wrote. "The drivers were ordered from Umax, but Umax requires a credit card number to ship the CD with the drivers."
This presented a problem for the reader. "We are a school. We work with POs and open orders. We don't have credit cards. So I put the order on my personal credit card. But the shipping address of the school and my personal address for the credit card don't match. Umax won't ship the drivers unless I authorize payment of all bills shipped to the school address on my credit card. No way. It took six month to resolve this with Umax and finally find the drivers."
But if the reader thought getting the drivers meant his $1,000 scanner would now work, he was sadly mistaken. "It turns out the scanner won't boot -- it never completes the start-up cycle. Umax says it needs to be returned. By this time the scanner is out of warranty. It takes three months for Umax to issue the form to request an RMA, as the first two times they can't get my email right. Then they reject the form. Same issue: No credit card number. They won't deal with schools on an open PO."
The moral of this story is clear. "If you are a public institution without credit cards DON'T buy a UMAX product unless you are prepared to deal with this hassle," the reader wrote. "Anyone want a two-year-old 2100XL, never been run, or someone who can fix it who will take a school purchase order before getting paid?"
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