Tech support for the LG CU500

Had one of those Customer Support Hell experiences today and just had to share.

In the midst of trying to use my new LG CU500 as a music player, I had trouble playing AAC files, which the spec sheet and manual say are supported. I called Cingular tech support. When I got through to the tech support rep (I won't bore you with how many steps this takes!) I explained my basic issue: Music Player on the phone does not see AAC files with the .m4a extension. It does see the same files with the .aac extension, but I get a "Playback Error" when trying to play them.

The Tech told me that she can help me with "network issues" but that I would have to call LG tech support for phone issues. I pushed back a bit and said:

"Cingular keeps trying to get me to buy songs and ringtones, with the Shop Tones, Music ID, The Buzz and Media Mall options (among others) that are all over this phone. So you are telling me that if I have a problem buying some music, you can help me, but if I have trouble playing it, you can't."

Essentially, the answer was - Yes, that's right. She gave me the number for LG Tech Support

LG tech support was completely stumped by this. I tested them a bit by saying: I have the USB cable and a memory card. I can transfer my songs to the memory card and I see them in Windows Explorer, but Music Player on the phone doesn't see them. I didn't mention the extension issue at all. The Tech went away for a while and when she came back she said "You're not going to like what I am about to tell you. This phone is new and we haven't received training on it yet. I can give you some troubleshooting steps and basically what's in the manual, but that's all."

Me "You don't have a CU500 there to try and replicate my problem?"
LG Tech: "No."
Me: "Does this phone play AAC files?"
LG Tech: "The manual says it does, so it should, but you are the first person that has asked me about it. I know that it plays MP3s."
Me: "My library is in AAC format. Do you know if the phone requires a specific file extension for AAC files?"
LG Tech: "I'm sorry I don't know, sir."

At this point I happened to mention that I had created the files with iTunes. She launched in to a speech about how this phone isn't compatible with iTunes, will not work with iTunes and no song from iTunes can play on this phone.

I told her that surely this is not possible. I said I know the CU500 is not an iTunes phone. I am not expecting it to sync with iTunes or to work with the iTunes Music Store. But iTunes also makes standard audio files. If iTunes makes an MP3 file, it will presumably play on this phone. I am asking how to play a standard AAC file, made with iTunes, on the phone. She just dug in her heels and said "Well we were told that nothing related to iTunes will work with this phone."

She suggested I go back to Cingular Tech Support. When I said I had already done that, she said maybe someone in a Cingular store could help.

Sensing this was not going to end well, I called a Cingular company store near me. I asked - "Do you have a technician in the store that can help me with an LG CU500? I am having a problem with it."

Cingular store guy: "We don't have any technicians in our stores, and we don't really fix phones, but maybe I can help you. What is your problem?"

I want back through the whole saga. He ended up claiming that iTunes makes "encrypted" AAC files and that was why they were not playing on the phone.

I told him that I was fairly certain that this is not true. As distinguished from songs purchased through the iTunes Music Store, which are protected .m4p files, songs you import from your own CDs are unprotected m4a files. These should play on any player that supports AAC. He was adamant and we agreed to disagree.

Since then I have confirmed that my .m4a files do indeed play in WinAmp 5.24. MS Windows Media Player can't play AAC files without some additional plug-ins and I haven't gotten that to work in about an hour of trying, but that's par for the Evil Empire. :browani:

Once this is sorted out, I will post more about the CU500's music capabilities in my original review thread. I just thought this was a particularly sad example of customer service. Neither Cingular Support, LG Support, nor the Cingular store could help me with what I am sure will turn out to be a simple issue. They also forcefully gave me misinformation.

Glad I have you guys to vent to.

 

I don't really expect much from store staff. When I have gotten quick and competent service in Cingular stores, I posted that as well. But I do expect more from the main Cingular tech support line and the support line of a manufacturer like LG. What I got was just a waste of my time.

Either the phone does not really do what the manual says, or I am using it wrong, or it is broken. I have my suspicions, but I was willing to be shown any of these outcomes. No one could even begin to walk me through the steps to figure out which is the case.

 

I'm sure if I were using MP3s (although I haven't tried it) they would be fine. I prefer AAC for music, since you get better quality at a given bit rate. Apple/iTunes uses AAC for this reason. Of course, I could have 2 versions of all my songs, and there are probably numerous other work-arounds. I just was frustrated that I couldn't get any answers to some simple questions.

 

I tried to get help from Cingular again, with my problem playing AAC music files on the LG CU500 - yesterday on the Cingular Customer Forum and today with the live "Tech Support Chat".

I posted my long, painful interactions with both Cingular and LG (above) on the Cingular Forum. No Cingular employee responded, although one other user had an interesting suggestion. There are indications that if you make MP3s at too high a bit rate, Music Player on the phone chokes. Same could be true for AACs.

At Tech Support Chat, they again told me that they can't support phones or phone software issues, as they are only the service provider, and I need to go to LG. I was hoping to get a more experienced Support person in Live Chat than on the Tech Support line, but at least they are consistent.

LG part II

So I called LG tech support. I have become very careful about how I describe the problem, since I don't want to say any magic "bad words" (like iTunes) I always tell the truth, just not the whole truth.

I reported that I'm getting a "Playback Error" message when trying to play an AAC file on the phone. The tech asked me where I got the AAC file from, and I said I made it from my own CD. She went away for a long time. When she came back she said "The information we have is that only AAC files that you download from Cingular will play on this phone."

Now that's a creative way of making it not LG's problem, isn't it?

I couldn't resist explaining that AAC is a standard, just like MP3, and any music player that suppports the standard should play an AAC file. The phone specs don't say that only "Cingular AAC" files (whatever that might be) are supported, they say AAC is supported. Of course I was wasting my breath. She held her ground and repeated that "We were told only AAC files from Cingular...".

I gently told her that while I was not blaming her, this answer simply does not make sense. Whoever gave her that information was not thinking the issue through. I thanked her for her time and hung up.

Then I had one more idea on how to get an answer out of LG. I'll report on LG part III in another post.

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Yes, and of course from the customer's point of view, finger pointing is exactly what I don't want. Whenever I exhaust the limited knowledge of either an LG or Cingular support person, their tactic is to make it the other company's issue.

I work for a software company and we have partners too. While we may not always do a good job of making our joint services with partners a seamless experience, that certainly is the goal. I can undersand my clients' point of view when they tell me "I don't care whose issue it is, I need you two companies to make this work." That is a fundamentally correct position. Cingular and LG can't even recognize this.

 

Well, my sparring with Cingular tech support has reached a new level. I am getting a warranty replacement. All I really want to do is talk with someone that can verify whether the issues I am having are due to a defective phone or buggy software. I believe that it is the latter. I also believe that the phone they send me will have exactly the same bugs. But since there is no one who is capable of having that conversation, I am happy to make them spend money on an experiment.

To make a long story longer, I actually went to return the phone at the Cingular store, hoping that that would get their attention. They weren't impressed. The very nice store rep apologized but told me that since I had bought the phone on July 19, and it was August 19, I was at 31 days and they would not do an in-store exchange. After I fumed for a while, she told me that Cingular does guarantee my phone for 1 year and the folks at Warranty Repair would walk me through the troubleshooting of the phone. "It's expensive to send you a new phone," she said, "so they want to try and fix the problem". Alas, it was not to be.

My call with Warranty Repair lasted almost an hour, partly due to having to explain the issues 3 times to 3 different people. My issues are:

1) While using any network application other than those supplied with the phone, the phone asks for permission to access the network every time. You can imagine that Google Maps, for example, is unusable if every time you scroll the map your phone pops up a dialog box. This is a known issue on the phone (to everyone but Cingular!!) and most consider it a bug in the Java implementation.

2) The phone does not play AAC format music files - at least not any that I can make.

The Warranty Repair rep tried to claim that these were service/network issues, not phone issues, and therefore needed to be handled by Cingular Customer Support. After telling her how useless they are, and after insisting that she stay on the line while CS worked the issue, I let her connect me. Eventually, the CS person understood what I was saying and was confident that these are phone issues. I asked her to be sure to note that in my record. Well, the Warranty Repair person was of course no longer on the line, and I had to explain the issues all over again when the second WR rep got on. He didn't really troubleshoot either. Once he saw in the record that CS had listed them as phone issues, he started the replacement process.

I'll report what happens in a few days.

 

Regardless, my goal is to test the functions that aren't working on my current phone. If they work on the replacement I will keep it, if not I will send the replacement back. Of course, I will also take note of the firmware version. I'm betting that the issues are software bugs and that they won't have new firmware yet that fixes them. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. That's why this is an experiment!

 

All it is costing me is $7.50 for 2-day shipping. If I weren't going away next week, and could wait for 5-day shipping, it would have cost $0.

 

Haven't tried this, although I believe it would not help. The phone definitely does not see files with a .m4a extension (what iTunes makes). If I change the extension to .aac, the phone sees it but cannot play it. This same file plays in Realplayer and WinAmp on Windows.

I view the restrictive treatment of file extensions as a minor bug. Not being able to play the file at all is the real bug.

One poster on the Cingular forums claimed that he was able to make AACs that the phone can play by using a specific codec within MediaCoder. This did not work for me.

 

Of course I don't expect much from store reps, but technical reps at the carrier's support line should at least know if there are significant software issues with the phone. As of today, Cingular Tech Support tells me that there are no known issues with the phone. I guess my issue reports have gone into the ether.

Also, I disagree with your premise that being able to make calls and connect to the Internet is enough. Carriers market (and charge for) many phones as multi-purpose devices - a music player, PDA, mobile email device, etc. The carrier should at least be familiar with the kinds of issues that a customer might have with these devices. "I can't play music" or "I can't run Google Maps" are legitimate complaints.

I have not found anyone at Cingular, in multiple calls to Tech Support and Warranty Repair, who convinced me that they even understood what I was talking about - what a standard AAC file is, for example, or that there is a JVM in the phone, independent of any particular application. As far as reading the owner's manual is concerned, that's exactly my issue - I've read the manual and all they can tell me is what I already know - the claims in the manual. If I say that this claim in the manual appears to be false, they have no coherent response.

You would think that after a certain number of calls to tech support, and certainly before they shipped you out a replacement phone, you would be able to speak to someone who was at least somewhat technical. This has not happened with Cingular.

I agree that when these issues are primarily device, not service, issues, the device manufacturer has to be primarily responsible. The device manufacturer has to have technical staff capable of understanding these kinds of issues, has to keep an issues log (and acknowledge it publicly), and has to be committed to releasing bug fixes on a regular basis. I work for a software company and we do all of the above. We would go out of business if we didn't. LG has not done any of them in this case.

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That is perfectly fine and not at all inconsistent with what I expect. All I am asking for, is for the reps to have access to a list of known issues for specific devices, and to be able to record and track an issue. If the rep doesn't have the background to understand or troubleshoot the issue, they should be able to transfer you to someone who does. Not to be snide, but the beauty of having an issues tracking system is that every rep does not have to be an expert on every device. It's that simple.