JimH wrote:
On Aug 15, 6:47 pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:29:34 -0700 (PDT), JimH
wrote:



On Aug 15, 6:21 pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:05:05 -0700 (PDT), JimH
wrote:
On Aug 15, 5:55 pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:44:43 -0700 (PDT), JimH
wrote:
On Aug 15, 4:34 pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:26:00 -0700 (PDT), JimH
wrote:
That about sums it up.
What you need is a good, thin crust five cheese pizza.
Which is exactly what I'm going to eat at this very moment. :)
Sounds good. Burgers on the grill for us tonight.
We can finally use our deck tonight and cook out. Our 13 year old
cedar deck was beat up and I got tired of trying to maintain it. We
had the flooring replaced with Eon Ultra deck boards and Trex railing.
The contractor started on Monday and finished the decking and railing
today. The skirting will be finished on Monday.
So..........we can now use the deck and it looks great!
I've been thinking of replacing the deck on our house - been looking
into the same deck boards and railing.
Don't know if I want to do it myself though.
You do not want to do it yourself if you want professional looking
results. The guys doing our job were certified by Eon and Trex as
neither the decking or railing are a simple installation like wood is.
Eon decking was rated best by Consumer Reports testing in a variety of
categories. Mechanical fasteners are used below the deck face with no
fasteners used on the face of the decking resulting in a very clean
look. Our contractor upgraded us to Ultra (heavier) at no cost.
Can't be that hard - my next door neighbor did his deck with it and
he's a half-wit. :)
Came out pretty good.
Besides wanting a professional looking result I am at the point in my
life where I hire professional contractors to do the big house
projects I used to do.
I constructed 2 wood decks......with the first taking close to the
entire summer because I was out of town just about every week. It
was a bi-level beauty wrapping around 2 oak trees and was pretty big.
No more deck building for me.
The only projects I will now do myself are minor fix-up things.
Other than that...........I get quotes from 3-4 professional
contractors having good credentials and customer reviews.
I totally understand where you are coming from.

I'm just not at that stage yet. :)

I suspect it won't be long though. :)

BTW: I researched all the options before I decided on the Eon
decking. ;-)

Isn't Consumer Union the same company that rated Dell highest in
customer satisfaction when you went looking for laptops? If CU rated
this product HIGH, you should look again.

Whenever I have seen a CU rating on a product I was VERY familiar with,
they ALWAYS were wrong.

See what the real experts are saying about Dell quality.

Dell Quality Control Issues Not Going Away Dell continues to battle
quality control problems, and is now offering make-goods to customers
who bought 17-inch notebooks with LCD problems. Lionel Menchacha, at
Dell's corporate blog, writes:

Here's what they found: on some 17-inch LCD displays shipped with Dell
Inspiron 9200, 9300 and Dell XPS Gen 2 notebooks, a one pixel wide
vertical line may develop across the LCD screen over time. Systems that
may be affected by this issue shipped from Nov. 2004 through Oct 2006.

Here's what we're doing: for affected systems, Dell is offering to
replace any LCD that develops a vertical line within three years of
purchase, at no charge for parts and labor. Also, Dell will offer
refunds to customers who paid Dell to replace defective LCDs with this
issue.


The ongoing issues haven't escaped the notice of MGI Research, which
offered up this remark:


Recent data points indicate that on top of mounting corporate governance
and sluggish growth issues . . . Dell may be also battling quality
control problems. The quality problem relates to low end servers,
laptops, and desktops, not the high-end server models. Channel checks
indicate a noticeable increase in the number of machines that need to be
serviced by Dell in the field shortly after delivery, and also units
returned to Dell for replacement/repair.


MGI adds:


The rise of problems with low end servers and desktops is troubling --
and our checks indicate that it is costing Dell money and starting to
erode its brand. The timing of this quality lapse could not be worse for
management, considering the recent announcements about errors in
accounting and lax financial controls.


An executive of a system builder that often competes with Dell said he
finds the company has been much less cost-competitive since Michael Dell
has returned to the CEO position at the company, and that the PC maker
is exhibiting a certain amount of "confusion" in competing for business
throughout this quarter.

Cost issues and turmoil appear to be piling on to Dell's quality issues
from last year, when the company recalled 4.2 million notebook batteries
due to fire hazards. For its part, though, Dell has said it has found
its response to customers with quality or technical problems has improved.



In the 1990s Dell switched from using primarily ATX motherboards and PSU
to using boards and power-supplies with mechanically-identical but
differently-wired connectors. This meant customers wishing to upgrade
their hardware could encounter unforeseen problems. However, company
practice in this respect changed in 2003.[82][83]

In 2005, according to the Better Business Bureau, complaints about Dell
more than doubled, to 1,533 after earnings grew 52% that year.

Consumer complaints about the quality of customer-service mounted, and
in 2006, Dell acknowledged that it had problems with customer-service.
Issues included call-transfers[84] of more than 45% of calls and long
wait-times. Dell's blog detailed the response:[85] "We’re spending more
than a $100 million — and a lot of blood, sweat and tears of talented
people — to fix this." Later in the year, the company increased its
spending on customer-service to $150 million.[86]

In May, 2008 the New York Supreme Court ruled that Dell and Dell
Financial Services "engaged in fraud, false advertising, deceptive
business practices, and abusive debt collection practices." The relevant
lawsuit aimed primarily[citation needed] to highlight and seek
restitution for a lack of technical support given to customers by Dell.
The court plans to hold further proceedings to determine how much money
Dell has to pay out to customers and how much profit Dell made
unlawfully in New York.[87]