Synology Update 2 problem and support

[rendu]

Last Thursday I have followed the recommendation from Synology and installed the update 2. Once the instalation finished the unit was unable to re-boot and showed a blue light flashing. It is completely bricked and useless since more than 2 days now. There are hundreds of people out there with the same problem and the support from Synology is totally unable to cope with the mess they have created. Fortunately, I only use my NAS for home enterteinment but those who may use it for business purposes must be very unhappy with this situation. In my case after more than 48 hours I still have no reply from Synology about the 2 tickets that I have opened.

Companies these days are contineusly focussing in cutting cost at the expense of everything else including and specially customer service quality and this is the result of it. Outsourcing of IT to Asian countries, centering of user support globally, lack of local support, lack of resources and lack of proper testing of products. You name it. Heads up if you own a Synology or if you are planning to own one in future.

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=84383

 

[bigboss]

It does not matter where the outsourcing goes to. Asian countries are in no way inferior to, say, Australia. In an age where companies are closing down, everyone looks at how to run a business model most efficiently, and outsourcing and centralisation are amongst the most attractive ones. It's not a bad thing in itself, the key is to have systems in place to do it well.

 

[rendu]

I am working in IT for a company and your comment about Asian countries vs ex. Australia in terms of quality is very debatable. They are catching up and learning everyday but for the end users it is night and day in terms of quality support. They allow companies to provide the minimum quality services to "survive" while keeping costs down. You get what you pay for. The focus is definitelly not the quality.

Anyway that was not the objecive of my post. They can be more efficient, compete better, etc. but as a final consumer which is what I am in this case, the result in terms of customer support sevice is totally unacceptable.

 

[bigboss]

I am working in IT for a company and your comment about Asian countries vs ex. Australia in terms of quality is very debatable.

You may want to read up about the contributions of Indians and Chinese in IT, and the proportion of Asians employed in IT sector world over. It's all about the quality of training they're provided with, and the amount of freedom / power they have to take decisions when dealing with customer complaints rather than sticking to a script.

 

[rocketrazor]

Last Thursday I have followed the recommendation from Synology and installed the update 2. Once the instalation finished the unit was unable to re-boot and showed a blue light flashing. It is completely bricked and useless since more than 2 days now. There are hundreds of people out there with the same problem and the support from Synology is totally unable to cope with the mess they have created. Fortunately, I only use my NAS for home enterteinment but those who may use it for business purposes must be very unhappy with this situation. In my case after more than 48 hours I still have no reply from Synology about the 2 tickets that I have opened.

Companies these days are contineusly focussing in cutting cost at the expense of everything else including and specially customer service quality and this is the result of it. Outsourcing of IT to Asian countries, centering of user support globally, lack of local support, lack of resources and lack of proper testing of products. You name it. Heads up if you own a Synology or if you are planning to own one in future.

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=84383

this sort of software update issue is a little worrying, I was thinking of purchasing a synology nas device at some point. I don't however want to be left with lost data after a firmware update

um........decisions decisions

 

[his dudeness]

my synology has updated and works perfectly,i was on dsm 5,the few problems seem to be with boxes still running 4.3,why people aren't on the latest firmware is beyond me.

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

I am working in IT for a company and your comment about Asian countries vs ex. Australia in terms of quality is very debatable.

It's all about the quality of training they're provided with, and the amount of freedom / power they have to take decisions when dealing with customer complaints rather than sticking to a script.

Hammer ,nail,head BB. Couldn't have said it better. Where it happens is irrelevant,it's how the support is supported.

 

[professorhat]

my synology has updated and works perfectly,i was on dsm 5,the few problems seem to be with boxes still running 4.3,why people aren't on the latest firmware is beyond me.

It's always a risk jumping straight to the latest firmware - I tend to wait for the first update before I move up a version. But as the OP indicates, any jump can cause an issue. However, generally updates to more established firmwares are less likely to cause issues compared to being on the bleeding edge code which will have more bugs in it. So it's a question of playing the probabilities.

 

[rendu]

my synology has updated and works perfectly,i was on dsm 5,the few problems seem to be with boxes still running 4.3,why people aren't on the latest firmware is beyond me.

I do not know where you are getting that the issue is with boxes still running 4.3. This is not what I am reading in the forums and certainly it was not what happened to me since I was already in DSM 5.0 since it was released. The diskstation will not offer you update 2 unless you are already in DSM 5.0 by definition. If some users have tried to download it on their own and install update 2 to ther 4.3. and broke their units in the process then that is the user´s fault. The problem I am describing has been caused by Synology only and it is impacting users who have followed their instructtions properly.

As stated by synology support in the link which I have posted, the issue is with DS112j and RS214 only and it affects users that applied the update 2 correctly following the instructions from Synology to their DSM 5.0 as it was my case. Also, there are not "few" cases as you seem to indicate, there are actually so many that their support is not able to cope with this crisis. You only need to look at the post to see how many people already reported the problem. People are so desperate that they are implementing solutions on their own even whe in some cases it means loosing all the data. More than 96 hours and still have not heard back from the Synology support. Not a sigle post from Synology support to tell people about status and plans to resolve this problem.

 

[his dudeness]

synology are a good company im sure they are working hard to sort out the issue,there seems to be a few rush fixes for bleeding heart,which maybe down to the time it took to inform people of the problem,hope its sorted for you soon.

 

[rendu]

Thanks Hi dudeness, I just received news from Synology as I was posting. I still believe Synology is a good company and have very good products. This incident will not put me off for future purchases but I do hope that they learn from this errors to make sure they avoid them in future.

It has been a painful process but the NAS is up and running now. I had to generate an error in the NAS so that it activates the telnet support, then I had to work with my internet service provider to adjust port forwarding to port 23. In my case due to technical constrains I had to use external port 2323 and redirect to port 23. Then, advise Synology of the IP address and port that they need to use. I am very lucky that my ISP has very good support in place otherwise I would have never been able to manage on my own to open the conection correctly for them to fix.

Once the telnet is open they can log into the NAS and perform the fix. I have just received notification that the fix has been done and it seem to work fine without data lost.

My recomendation to anybody in same situation is to wait for Synology to make the fix in their machines. If you go and install the fix posted in the forum you may invalidate your unit for future support. In addition people were reporting that it caused data lost which is not the case if Synology performs the fix.

 

[Chisy1]

Companies these days are contineusly focussing in cutting cost at the expense of everything else including and specially customer service quality and this is the result of it. Outsourcing of IT to Asian countries, centering of user support globally, lack of local support, lack of resources and lack of proper testing of products. You name it. Heads up if you own a Synology or if you are planning to own one in future.

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=84383

Rendu, very pleased you got your issue sorted out. Synology are a Taiwanese company, does that mean they are still outsourcing to Asia if they have a presence in the UK?

 

[rendu]

Hello Chisy1, that was a general comment not meant to focus on Synology. It was not meant to focus on Asia either but at this moment this seem to be the trend, specially in the ERP arena with India being ahead of it. More and more companies centralize their customer support services and we loose any possibility to get local support and even regional support. The only options we are left with are contact forms and forums for remote support. In case of Synology, they do not have any support or technical service in my country (not even a phone number), only remote support via contact forms.

It is very interesting to know they are Taiwanese company, one person from my team is also from Taiwan so next time this happens I can tell her to contact their offices and shake them up a little bit to get it fixed