very simple

So…after a week and a half of working OK, I went to check my e-mail this morning and discovered that my hard drive (yes, the new hard drive they put in the computer two weeks ago), was failing (as in, not booting, not being findable, and making weird "chirping" noises). So I got dressed, packed up the computer in a trash bag, and went to stand in the rain in front of TekServe until they opened at 9am. Where I proceeded to kind of lose my shit. The intake guy was kind of a jerk to begin with – when I pointed out that maybe, just maybe, they installed the drive incorrectly (because, really, it’s kind of impossible that this many parts can fail quite this much), he gave me this completely condescending tone and look and said that it was impossible that they installed it wrong. Impossible. So I refused to speak to anyone but the manager at that point. Where I relayed my entire travail.

And told them that I wanted a new computer at this point. That I wasn’t putting up with this anymore. Manager told me that they weren’t authorized to do something like that, but I was welcome to call Apple directly and talk to them.

So I left the computer and went to work (after, yes, getting on the subway in the wrong direction, because I was just that discombobulated). Got two phone calls from the store, one from manager guy to just give me an update, and one from the new tech, who actually left me a voicemail that said "we’ll try to get a new cs number from Apple, otherwise I’ll let you know how much this is going to cost". So I promptly called back and left him a voicemail that strenuously pointed out that under no circumstances was I paying for anything relating to a week-old defective hard drive that they installed.

When I got home tonight, I decided it was time to call Apple. And after pleading my case (twice, because I actually got disconnected while getting transferred during the first call forcing me to call back and wait on hold for another 20 minutes), I got through to the customer relations department. Where they agreed to send me one of these. I actually opted to pay an extra $200 to upgrade to the dvd-burner, and this replacement requires me to send back my G4 before it’ll ship (which means going tomorrow morning and getting it back from the store). But I’m in a much better mood now. Given my upcoming move, it’s getting shipped to my office, where I’ll probably just drag it to the new place when possible…

How about that. All it takes to get a free shiny new computer is three months of aggravation, frustration, lost files, and $1000 in warranty-covered replacement parts.

Oh, and the previous three entries in the blog weren’t backed up, so I had to manually recopy them to my laptop – if you linked to any of them, you’ll need to update the links.

Tags: apple, bitching, technology